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What Motivates You In Your Business?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | What Motivates You In Your Business?What motivates you in your business? What do you strive to accomplish? Answers to these pivotal questions reflect the character and personality of the business owner. As a woman of Asian ethnicity, an immigrant, in a highly competitive, male-dominated printing and publishing field, my answers rose to the surface after receiving discriminatory and stereotypical mistreatment while on the job. Instead of defeat and victimization leaching and sucking the life out of me, I chose to rise above. Discrimination motivated me and I pushed harder, worked tirelessly, looked past boundaries, dug into my creativity, and became a top salesperson in the first company, and opened a business in the printing/publishing field with my specific niche some years later.

I left that traditional printing company to start my own printing business TSE Worldwide Press, Inc., and in that process, realized as an entrepreneur I had to reinvent myself. My beginning in printing coffee-table style books of the highest quality caliber stood above my competitors in the field. My ability for meticulous precision, to spot issues and correct them quickly and before printing, gave me the business edge.

Entrepreneurship excites and invigorates me. As a graphic artist, to create products and services with ingenuity starting from zero to completion thrills me and makes me more than satisfied to have left the “traditional” behind. The ability to take a client’s dream, an image in their heads, and fashion it into a completed product while solving problems along the way, makes my life work fulfilling! I knew I had struck gold when my products sold out repeatedly, and my customers kept reordering. Their feedback crucially contributes to my achievements. Customer feedback should be carefully listened to and learned from. This may make or break your business.

However wonderful operating my business may be, there are times in which I am left wondering what had I done wrong. Jumping feet first into this opportunity, I felt like I would drown. The fear of the unknown, lack of experience, lack of strength caused problems at the beginning. I suffered huge losses from not knowing how to handle dishonest customers. The difficult realization that “honest” customers turned into “dishonest” customers, those who took advantage of my naivetés and trustworthiness, eventually toughened me up. I learned to listen to my gut, which would warn me, and to advisers, friends, family, business associates who gave input into my life. I constructed guidelines, terms, procedures to protect my company and myself, and became increasingly selective of customers. I also made the same choices for hiring employees. Not only did these steps accelerate my business, they accelerated my personal growth. In addition, I learned to stop and take a break, and implement self-care. The temptation to overwork increases as passion increases, but soon you find yourself burnt out. Solve the question, where do I want to go? Find a mentor or two who will guide and give input into your life. On my website, I include tips for new business professionals looking for guidance.

Today, my definition of success focuses on helping others succeed. The joy I receive when my happy, satisfied, and financially successful customers see their dream project become reality compares to no other. Furthermore, it is extremely rewarding when my staff members and employees excel under my mentorship. Corporately, as a group, we contribute a section of our revenue to charity in giving back to the community which supports us. These define success for me.

My advice to new entrepreneurs: find a passion, a trade, that you genuinely enjoy and that does not feel like work. Think of something that you absolutely love to do and make a product out of it. Ask for input about your ideas from family, friends, people who know you well in business and as acquaintances, to obtain an objective perspective. If you are a female entrepreneur, take any negativity and obstacles thrown at you and use them as opportunities to improve yourself. Those who doubt you now will one day respect and trust you. If they do not in the future, put them aside for they are not worth your time or energy.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Sarah Y. TseSarah Y. Tse is founder and CEO of United Yearbook Company and co-founder and CEO of TSE Worldwide Press. Her new book is 7 Years on the Front Line : True Stories and Tough Lessons about a Small Business that You Won’t Learn in a Classroom.

For more information, please visit www.sarahytse.com or www.tseworldwidepress.com.

Building A Team Without Taking On Employees

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StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | Building A Team Without Taking On Employees

Getting to the stage when your business is ready to start building a team can be a great achievement. Not only will you have already proven yourself and the concept that your company is built upon, but you will also be getting to the point that you can feel secure in your business. Of course, though, taking on employees is extremely expensive, often taking up the vast majority of a small company’s resources. This doesn’t have to be the case in the modern world, though, and this post is going to be showing you how to overcome this sort of issue with a business of your own.

Freelancers

Freelance work has been increasing in popularity over the last couple of decades. With the web enabling people to work at home and look for opportunities outside of newspapers and job adverts, it’s become easier than ever to take on a team that you don’t have to directly employ. Tools like Snupit make it incredibly easy to find freelance employees without having to spend weeks searching for them. Thousands of workers are on sites like this, making it much easier than you might expect to find freelance workers that won’t come with the cost of hiring someone.

Remote Employees

While permanent employment is an expensive game for businesses, looking at the idea of remote employees can be a good way to save some money. You will still have to pay to hire them, including things like pensions and health benefits, but you won’t have to fork out the costs of additional office space. People are getting more and more used to working at home, making it a great time to start looking for employees that can work from their own place. As time goes on, this sort of work routine is only going to get more popular, especially if companies continue to push for it.

Service Businesses

Service businesses make it possible to have the jobs that you would usually hire someone for covered by someone else. There are companies that can handle your marketing, web design, tech support, and a wealth of other services that you would usually have to hire a dedicated employee to handle. Not only does this make it cheaper to run your business, but it also gives you the chance to improve your productivity without having to hire more people to work for you. It’s always worth reading reviews before you choose to pay for something like this, with many companies offering very different levels of service.

With all of this in mind, you should be feeling ready to take on the challenge of building a team without employees. This sort of process can be tricky, with many companies finding themselves struggling when they can’t afford employees but need to take on a team. Thankfully, though, the modern world has you covered.

How To Make Everything Easier For Your Business

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | How To Make Everything Easier For Your BusinessIs taking care of your company a challenge? Even if your business is thriving, there may be a lot on your plate. You may feel that there are too many responsibilities to take on. This is a normal thing to feel when you are taking on a large project, such as starting and maintaining a business. Even years down the road, you may feel that stress again. Here are three things that can make your life and the lives of your employees easier.

1. Get An Office

If you have lots of responsibilities, it may be time to rent an office. An office can be a space where you and your team can focus on the goals and needs of your company. You may also need an office so all of your workers have space to work. This is an important stepping stone for many companies as it makes the business feel established. Mail can be delivered to the office, you can store company equipment and you have a place to conduct meetings.

Once getting the office, you can more fully organize the company. You may consider delegating smaller tasks to all who work there to lighten the load and increase productivity. It may be easier for you to meet with clients and customers and host incentives.

2. Use Cloud Services

Tired of storing all your data on your computer? Make accessing data ten times easier and safer by using cloud services to back up your information. You can also use these services to run software and applications through the internet, making it efficient for all members of your team to do their duties. Microsoft Cloud Solutions offers security, IT service and flexibility that can make your company run smoothly.

3. Make Good Goals

If you are feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities of your business, it’s time to make some serious goals. Have a meeting and plan out your yearly, monthly and daily goals. What are you trying to achieve? Where do you want the business to be in five years? Make sure to plan financially and take account of what expansions you want to make in the future. Try to keep your goals reachable and inspire your team to work hard. You may want to think about some digital marketing, local advertising and improved customer service to help you progress.

As you expand your business, increase digital security and make achievable goals, you can take on the responsibility of a business step by step. Don’t forget to make it a team effort!

Create A Business Strategy That Works

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Having a business strategy is more important now than it ever was before. As a small business you might find yourself in hot waters at the minute due to the current economic climate, and the fact that many small businesses haven’t survived the pandemic. When the world shut down and nobody was trading, business profits obviously plummeted and a lot of small businesses that were already on the brink have had to cease trading. So if you’re here reading this as a trading business then you’ve already done far better than many small businesses before you. Unless you’ve found some way to have a huge cash injection from somewhere you will no doubt be feeling the pressure to perform at the minute, especially if you’ve got staff employed under your belt. So, we’re going to try and help you create a business strategy that we think works during these current turbulent times.

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning Article | Create A Business Strategy That WorksA Financial Plan

This is the most important one that you need to be thinking about. Your financial plan now will be far different to the one that it was at the start of the year. Our advice is to be a little more cutthroat with the cuts you make. It’s like with your personal spendings, you get used to the money you have to spend and it’s hard to change back from that. Business is no different, areas of your business are used to receiving a certain amount of money and it’s hard to change that. So one area we would suggest making cuts is with employees, if you need to. If times are really testing, you should consider joining the many businesses who have had to make their staff redundant. Although it’s such a hard thing to do, it’s the easiest way to save a lot of money for the year.

A Marketing Plan

The quickest way to get your business back on track is to sell sell sell, and the quickest way to do that is to get people thinking about your business again. One we think small businesses in particular seem to not focus on, is SEO. Everything is online at the minute and most people will Google your business, or keywords related to it, before they decide to work with you. But what if they can’t find you? Or what if competitors beat you in the search? That’s where SEO comes in. ECommerce SEO might be a little more expensive compared to some marketing methods, but it’s going to prove the most effective if you want to gain attention. So are simple marketing techniques such as billboard advertising. It’s the sort of in your face advertising that you need!

A Sales Plan

Finally, make sure that you have a solid sales plan. One idea might be to go through your directory of old clients or customers and get in touch with them. Just a courtesy phone call or email to see how they’re doing and to put your business back in their mind. You don’t have to push sales or make multiple calls, that’s when your business gains a bad reputation.

It’s A Dog-Eat-Dog World Out There, But Only If You Allow It

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Business is often described as a dog eat dog world. But things only usually get that bad if you let them. Here is some advice from entrepreneurs who learned serious lessons through their own experience on how to avoid getting screwed over by their business partners, and the people that they work with.

Always Avoid Emotionality

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It’s great that passion motivates the positive aspects of your business and drives you forward to new heights. But passion in business can get you into trouble, especially when emotions turn negative. Things will go wrong in business. People will try to take advantage of you, colleagues will lie, and business partners will let you down. The key to running a successful business is to always remain cool and calculating in these situations. Losing your head can lead you to make damaging decisions that could ultimately be harmful to your business in the long run.

Meditate

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Meditation and entrepreneurs don’t seem like great bedfellows. After all, entrepreneurs are all about living life at 100 MPH, and people who meditate, usually Buddhist monks, are interested in the precise opposite. But when it comes to entrepreneurship, meditation is actually of critical importance. The reason is that our brains tend to make new connections and come up with original ideas when our minds are clear from other worries. Many entrepreneurs like to meditate in the shower and are sometimes referred to as “urban shower monks.” Being able to get away from the mayhem often allows you to think about how you’ll deal with a difficult situation better at work.

Set Clear Parameters With Your Stakeholders

One of the biggest problems companies face is defining relationships between their partners, vendors, stakeholders and colleagues. Often these agreements can get out of hand, and you can find yourself losing out. This is why so many companies now use contract management software to stay on top of all their relationships with their customers. It allows them to make sure that all of their contracts are in the best interest of the company and easy to find. It also helps organizations that need to scale rapidly manage their risks in real time.

Be Strategic

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Command and control entrepreneurs don’t usually do all that well. They think that people are working for them because they really want to and they believe in the company, but most of the time it’s just so that they can put food on the table at night. Some business leaders think that all they have to do is tell their employees what to do by force of will and they will obey. But this isn’t how people work. Instead, interacting with people is more like a game of chess. It’s strategic, and often people will do and say things that lead to their strategic advantage. For years Donald Trump ingratiated himself with the highest echelons of society. Now he’s bringing them to their knees. It’s all about long-term planning and cunning. Think carefully about what is actually motivating the people who work for you and with you.