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Working Out Your New Business on a Shoestring Budget

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Finances Article |Starting a New Business| Working Out Your New Business on a Shoestring BudgetThe internet has streamlined everything in our life—this is a clichéd statement that gets repeated in what we read, hear and see. We often quote this statement ourselves. However, is it absolutely true? For instance, many people believe that starting out a new business is as difficult as it was, say, 20 years ago. They maintain that working out on a shoestring budget is still a tricky rope to tread no matter if you are online or offline.

We can’t deny that steering through the formative phase of a business with limited monetary resources is no mean feat irrespective of the day and age. However, it is also true that the internet helps in any such endeavor. Even if doesn’t ease it out completely, it surely reduces the difficulty level of starting out a business from scratch and on a shoestring budget.

In this article, we are going to discuss how one can work out their business dream with limited resources and how the internet can come in handy in this regard.

Making and Pitching Business Plan Online

If you are on to capital collection for your startup, then you definitely need to create a business plan to reach out to investors. Taking a conventional route with the creation and pitching a business plan is itself a costly affair. You might have to hire a specialist to make you a business plan. After that, you have to bring that plan to the tables of people that matter. It’s obvious that this approach needs both your time and money.

You can do both planning and pitching online without spending a buck. And if you don’t sure about the free business templates, you can get fully professional business plan services at a minimal cost. Similarly, you can pitch your idea through the internet. The business plans you will find on the internet are so self-explanatory that the investors will know if they need to call you to have a one-on-one meeting.

In short, you can save a considerable amount of resources on making and proposing your business plan if you are using the internet rightly.

Start out as an LLC

There are different business categories in the legal framework that are assigned to every new business. We would recommend you to choose the LLC (Limited Liability Company) categorization for your business. To begin with, being LLC is the most advantageous option for any new and small business from many legal and operational aspects.

Moreover, you don’t need to allocate a big chunk of money to complete the registration of your business as an LLC. You can do it yourself online without spending more than $100 dollars for registering anywhere in the US. Lastly, you don’t need any legal aid while filing the online LLC forms, which means you are saving yet another cost.

Even if you have the dream to make your business a C-corporation, we would suggest you start out as LLC. You can shift to your preferred classification anytime you want. Forming LLC will not just save you cost, but it also involves fewer risks.

Secure Intellectual Property

Today, when startups are mushrooming at a very quick rate, it has become really important for any new entrepreneur to secure its intellectual property at the earliest. Amidst all the informational proliferation all the time, you can’t keep your business plan and trademark under the cover for long. It’s also possible that someone else will come up with the same plan as you and have it formally patented while you are still mulling over it.

In short, the better business sense suggests that one should register their intellectual property at the onset. If you don’t have enough money at the start to hire costly experts to do this on your behalf, don’t just sleep on it for any other time. The US Patent and Trademark Office now offers its services online. From trademarks to patents and copyrights, you can register every piece of intellectual property online for a few hundred bucks.

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Arrangement of Office Space

No matter how virtualized our lifestyle gets, we still need to operate through physical spaces. Even if you are planning on to start out an online business, you will need to have some physical space to operate from. Getting a full-fledged office in commercial zones seems like an insurmountable task when you don’t have enough money to work with.

One way to steer out of this tricky spot is to go for virtual office space services where you and your team can remotely work without needing any physical space or desk. However, this idea can’t work for all business plans, particularly not for the ones where you have to meet clients in person and call meetings. In such cases, the need for physical office spaces becomes inevitable. The internet can also come in handy to find physical office spaces.

There are entrepreneur outreach programs and incubators that offer physical office spaces, conference rooms and other business amenities at the fraction of the price of the main real estate market. You can start your journey to find office space from here.

Make the Most of Cloud Computing and Pay-as-you-go Software Subscriptions

This is where the internet helps budding businesses like a guardian. With Google providing so much free online storage and Amazon providing web services at exceedingly marked down prices, you don’t need to invest heavily on you digital and software infrastructure initially.

Make the Most of Social Media

This is another domain where the internet provides some unmatched benefits. For instance, you can save the entire cost of your marketing if you are using social media the way it should be. With search engine optimized curation of content for platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, you can reach out to your target market without spending a single cent.
Obviously, not every business plan can execute in the same manner. It has its own peculiarities. Nevertheless, the points that we have discussed here will surely help in working on any business idea with strained budgets.

The Environmentalist’s Approach To Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Environmentalist|The Environmentalist's Approach To BusinessRunning a business and being an environmentalist are two things that might not seem to naturally go together, but they can actually work together pretty easily if you know how best to approach it. The truth is that there is a way to run a business which is good for the environment, but you do have to make sure that you are specifically doing that, otherwise it won’t just happen on its own. Let’s take a look at some of the things to bear in mind if you are keen to run your business in this way. You might find some of these things make a huge difference.

Be Honest With Shareholders

One of the things you need to do is to make sure that you are being honest with your shareholders about what you aim to do regarding the environment and your business’ approach to it. If you are not honest about this, it only means that you are going to attract the wrong kind of shareholder, so that is something that you’ll find doesn’t pay off anyway in the long run. Be honest with them upfront, however, and you should be able to get a lot more out of it.

Take Care With Construction

Essentially, anything new that you create you have to make sure that you are doing so as sustainably as possible, as otherwise you can’t really be sure that you are genuinely helping the planet as much as you would like to. You should therefore consider it a general rule of thumb to take care with your construction of products, buildings and whatever else, and to ensure that you are sourcing your resources sustainably and using them appropriately too. That is going to really make a huge difference, so it’s something you’ll want to think about.

Reduce Waste

That feeds in nicely to our next major point – that you should be aiming to reduce your waste as much as possible as you go about running your business. The less waste you produce in business, the better for the planet it is, not only because it requires energy to have it disposed of, but because it helps to reduce the amount of leachate in landfills and other such toxins that you would rather avoid if at all possible. Do all you can to reduce waste and you are going to be helping the environment a lot.

Take Responsibility & Hold Yourself Accountable

Above all, you need to make sure that you are actually taking responsibility for what you do, and that you are making a point of holding yourself accountable at all times. As long as you are doing that, it should mean that you are going to have a much better chance of doing right by the planet at all times. This is something that you can then do better and better as time goes on and as your business grows – just as it gets more important to do it, too, as your impact grows as well.

Let the Data Decide: Using Wifi to Inform Your Hybrid Workspace

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Hybrid Workspace|Let the Data Decide: Using Wifi to Inform Your Hybrid WorkspaceAs organizations talk about the pivot to hybrid work and what it means for workplaces themselves, let’s look back at where our modern-day concept of 9-5 work even came from.

In 1908, according to this Atlantic piece, a New England factory started to give its Jewish workers two days off around Saturday sabbath. That is believed to be the start of our “weekend” concept. A few decades and a Great Depression later, the trend of working five days a week took hold across the U.S.

Even as office work started to evolve, and technology started to accelerate decade by decade, that old notion of when we work continued strong. This century it seemed like we might be edging toward possible acceptance of a four-day week as even big companies sparked conversation. Google’s Larry Page wondered aloud if by dropping one day from the workweek, would it be better for employees and businesses. Entire countries have trialled the concept.

Today all that seems forever ago. Because a pandemic has compelled corporate chance as it lays bare the foundations of how and when we work. Companies now have to see how they can navigate change and make hybrid workstyles work for them.

The Office Must Serve A Purpose

Employees now seek the flexibility to commute to offices on specific days for specific purposes. The office is no longer a place to simply perform work. Instead, it is the destination to serve a wide range of specific needs for each employee, and each department.

It naturally follows then that an office space designed to serve the “office as a factory” mindset can’t adequately serve the “space as a service” mindset that’s now front and center in a hybrid work model.

Hybrid employees require spaces that drive efficiency, promote collaboration, and enhance comfort – elements your typical office was not necessarily designed to do. For some, this rethink of space is an opportunity to right size real estate portfolios. Others are seeking to reconfigure in new and better ways, being flexible and thinking holistically about what a business and its many different teams need from that real estate – now and into the future.

To that end, it’s important to know:

  • Do you have the space you need to support your teams?
  • How could your existing office space in fact serve more people?
  • How can you make the greatest, and most cost-effective impact to your workplaces?
  • How can your real estate best serve employee experience, helping the team be productive and working together?

Data For A Functional, Efficient, Strategic Space

Understanding how people use a space is essential. This is where data is invaluable. Insights such as visit frequency, new and returning visitors, and the levels of interactivity between employees provide a rich tapestry to design the office, assign resources, inform policies, and, if needed, rationalize the overall portfolio.

The good news is the infrastructure to strategize efficiency and empower growth is already available using always-on WiFi-powered indoor location technology.

Since WiFi already exists in most workplaces, these solutions are quick to implement and easy to scale across large portfolios. A solution from InnerSpace works by tracking the movement of anonymous smart devices throughout a building from the time that device enters to the time it leaves. As you can imagine, patterns in how people are using the space are quick to emerge, challenging assumptions or validating changes to layout or function.

The platform was recently installed in the main office of a global leader in lodging and hospitality. The client wanted to design the space efficiently, putting resources where they were needed most.

But first they needed data to understand the true needs of their teams. Using WiFi signals, we identified how two distinct teams of employees used the space differently, demonstrating unique needs for their environment. In fact, we also identified sub-teams within those departments whose movements etched predictable patterns over time.

In this particular case, the client was able to use these insights to inform office design, resourcing and seating assignments and notably, to find room within its existing footprint for 100 additional people, saving themselves the enormous cost of office real estate expansion.

In any workplace change project, it is essential to measure and continue to adapt the office space as needed. In a hybrid scenario, this typically means collaborative space must increase and office designs made as flexible as possible, with room versatility a priority. To both chart course now and tweak direction over time, WiFi-based indoor location data can paint a clear picture and provide a strong foundation for all future transformation.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor |James WuJames Wu is the CEO and Founder of InnerSpace, a thorough space utilization and analytics platform that goes beyond people counting backed by proprietary technology and advanced data science. InnerSpace enables their enterprise-class customers to optimize their two most valuable resources: people and property. Download Blueprint for a Hybrid Workspace to learn how indoor location data can empower you to make better decisions about your workplace.

Entrepreneurial Ideas for College Graduates

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |College Graduates|Entrepreneurial Ideas for College GraduatesGraduating from college is one of the biggest milestones in a person’s life. While some graduates will move straight into a chosen career, others will be exploring options like starting their own business. If you’ve just completed college and are interested in being an entrepreneur, below are some ideas.

Clothing

If you have a passion for fashion and want to be an entrepreneur, one lucrative idea is to start a clothing business. While you could acquire specialized training, you could easily start an independent clothing company with simply some business acumen. If you’re passionate about this industry and need a few extra skills like silk screening or pattern cutting, you could always take additional courses.

Catering

For grads who are passionate about cooking, catering is another way to go. While it can be a stressful business, it has one of the highest ROI rates. If you’re interested in pursuing this type of business, you’ll want to specialize your services. For example, will you cater to businesses? Weddings? Funerals? Whatever you decide, it’s important that you build a solid team and shape your business around your niche so that you can stay competitive.

Handmade Crafts

Do you have a talent for sewing, jewelry, or other crafts? If so, you could turn a hobby into a thriving venture. Whether it’s a knitting business, a soap-making business, or a bespoke company that makes college cornhole boards, turning your talents into a business can be exciting and highly rewarding. Start-up costs for handmade businesses can be fairly low, depending on what craft you decide on. Once you’ve established your niche, sites like Etsy and ArtFire are great places to start selling your handmade wares.

Content Creation

One notable skill that college trains you in is writing. From essays to reports, most college students will have honed their writing skills over several years. If you love writing and are interested in turning it into a business, content creation is one of the fastest-growing industries online.

As with all businesses, you’ll want to specialize and decide whether you want to create content for a specific industry or a range of them. You’ll also want to decide what type of content you’ll specialize in, whether it’s articles, blog posts, social media copy, etc. While it can take time to make consistent money with content creation, it is a good place to start when you’re fresh out of college.

Event Organizing

If you spent a lot of time in college organizing workshops or conferences, you might be well-positioned to turn event organizing into a career. While this industry is demanding and fast-paced, it will suit those who love the buzz of gathering people under one roof. If you have a talent for setting up events, you can set yourself up as a freelance event organizer or team up with other people and create a company. As event organizing is quite broad, you’ll also need to decide what types of events you’ll organize. The options are endless, ranging from corporate events to private parties. While you may need special training, many event organizers use their experience as a starting point.

7 Ways To Improve Your Personal Credibility As A Business Owner

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Personal Credibility|7 Ways To Improve Your Personal Credibility As A Business OwnerIf people don’t trust you, they won’t trust your business. This is why it’s so important to not just prove that your business is credible, but that you are credible too.

Invest in the right qualifications and licenses

Qualifications and licenses are compulsory to work in certain industries (you can’t become a doctor without a medical degree or an electrician without an electrical license). In other cases, qualifications and licenses may be optional – but they could still be worth pursuing in order to prove to clients and employees that you know your stuff. Nowadays, there are so many flexible options when it comes to taking courses. Think about which qualifications and licenses could be a benefit to you.

Create a LinkedIn account and get people to endorse you

Every business owner nowadays needs a LinkedIn page. Certain clients may want to look you up on LinkedIn in order to get an idea of your credentials – if you don’t have LinkedIn, they may not trust you. Build a page today if you don’t already have one and start connecting with people you know. It’s worth asking these people to endorse skills as this will help you look more reputable.

Show off your achievements with a personal bio website

A personal bio website such as this one belonging to Jonathan Dax Cooke could improve your online credibility further. Such websites are a great opportunity to list your achievements in your own words and paint the best picture of you. It can be particularly good for SEO – when people search your name, they’re likely to see your bio and read it.

Join professional groups and organizations

It’s good to network with other professionals and influential people. By getting to know these types of people, you’re likely to get recommendations, which will improve your credibility. There are all kinds of groups and organizations out there that you can join. This could include local business groups or even industry committees.

Lead seminars and workshops

Seminars and workshops are a chance to pass on your skills and knowledge. This can help you to look more credible – if a client knows that you’ve run a workshop on a subject, it will show that you’re competent enough (or at the very least confident enough) to do a good job. You could host seminars and workshops in person, or you could host them online.

Give advice through blog posts or vlog videos

Blogging and vlogging is another way to pass on your knowledge and skills – and it’s much easier than running a seminar or workshop. Potential clients may read your blog posts or watch your videos and then trust you as an expert. Consider starting a blog or launching a vlog series today.

Make sure that you look the part

How you look can also impact your credibility. Make sure that you don’t look scruffy when meeting clients – keeping your appearance neat and tidy will give off the impression that you’re organized and that you take pride in your image. This guide from Marcus Lemonis explains more about how to look the part.