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Building up Your Business the Right Way

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business | Entrepreneurship | Building up Your Business the Right WayMaking it past the first anniversary of your business is a huge achievement; all the hard work and long hours you put in will have paid off. However, the hard work shouldn’t stop there. As the owner of a business, you should constantly be striving to build, grow and improve your company because that is exactly what your competitors will be doing. In order to have the continued success of the previous year, you have to ensure that you are not just building your business up but that you are doing so the right way.

Become more visible online

Having a website and social media platforms might have got your name out there, but now is the time to start taking what you have and making it better. You can ensure the necessary growth your business wants by focusing on SEO strategies implemented by an experienced agency such as Pearl Digital Marketing. They will be able to conduct an audit of your website and make it optimized for search engines and large volumes of traffic. Increasing your visibility online will help you to outgrow your competition and appear on the first page of the SERPs which is a gold dust spot for many companies.

Work on goals for this year

All businesses need to have yearly goals. As you move into your second year of business, this is the perfect time to reassess the goals of last year. Did you meet them? Were they achievable? What have you learned from it? Without first assessing these, you cannot possibly move on to build up your business in the right way.

If the goal is to increase sales and make an even bigger profit, then you need to ensure that you have the means to do so. For example, if your product line is doubling in size, do you have the staff numbers to oversee this? Hiring more employees at this point will give you peace of mind that you will be able to cope.

Thank loyal customers

Focusing on the customers this year and how you can make their experience even better should take precedence above all else. After all, your customers are what have helped you survive over the last year, so be sure to thank them for their continued support. Send them an email offering a discount on your products or services as a way of thanking them for their loyal support. By thanking loyal customers, this way, you can be assured that through reviews and word-of-mouth, your business’ name will spread and all for the right reasons. This, in itself, brings about the prospect of new customers.

Make the most of networking

Networking is a fantastic way to build up your company without needing to spend as much money. But as your company grows, so should the number of contacts you have to hand. Building up a bigger network will bring about more opportunities that your business can benefit from such as making the most of new technologies and software or investing in discounted but high-quality equipment. There is no harm in having contacts with lots of businesses and professionals. They will appreciate it as much as you do. You can offer them something in return just as they can you.

Eight Tasks To Outsource When Running A Small Business

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All entrepreneurs should know how valuable time is. When you waste it, you put a strain on the entire business. Anyone starting a new venture understandably wants to be active in every aspect of the company. However, trying to do everything yourself, especially when you’re not qualified, is risky. Even if you avoid making mistakes, success will take longer and cost more to achieve. Because of this, every business should outsource. Not only is this cheaper, but it causes less hassle. With that in mind, here are eight tasks to outsource in small business.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Entrepreneurship | Eight Tasks To Outsource When Running A Small Business

1. Employee Training

Outsourcing in business doesn’t have to mean giving up employees entirely. Certain tasks are much better performed in-house. However, if you insist on having employees, you must provide the proper training. Having inexperienced workers in your business can cause many problems. Untrained staff members are dangerous, but wasteful too. Thankfully, you can outsource the training of your team to an expert, which avoids any problems and ensures the task is done well.

2. Market Research

Before making any changes in business, you must conduct market research. After all, you don’t want the changes that you make to put current or potential customers off. Marketing research is also essential in learning about competitors and customers. While market research seems relatively simple, many businesses make mistakes that lead to incorrect results. Outsourcing to an expert is recommended because third-party companies can provide entirely objective data.

3. Receptionist Duties

Most people start a business to make a difference. Unfortunately, that will be difficult to do when you’re chained to a phone all day. The good news is, you can outsource many receptionist duties, including answering phone calls. Many answering services, like the Ivy answering service, offer value for money by providing you with experienced and professional virtual receptionists. What’s more, you aren’t stuck in a contract, so you can change the service to suit your needs.

4. Website Design

A website is a powerful digital marketing tool for any small business. Even if you don’t intend to sell online, you should still have a company website to connect with customers and raise brand awareness. Unless you have web design experts in-house, you must bring in professional help. The only problem worse than having no website is having an unprofessional one. Rather than choosing the first design company you find, therefore, you must research to find the best one.

5. Content Creation

No website in today’s market is complete without a blog. Most company websites use blogs to educate customers and clients about what the business does. Blog content can also optimize websites for search engines and attract more customers. The trouble is, producing and publishing content that converts will take time. For this reason, many companies outsource the task to freelancers. Although this isn’t free, the rewards of doing so far outweigh any expenses.

6. Inventory Management

All businesses typically begin with a small and manageable inventory. With so few units to keep track of, you can manage your stock on a simple spreadsheet. However, with any luck, your marketing campaigns will pay off. When that happens, the orders will multiply, which will make inventory management much harder. Rather than risk losing stock, you must minimize shrinkage by outsourcing this task. Doing so will reduce operating and staffing expenses, among others.

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7. Customer Support

Unless you’re sure you have enough time to handle customer support, you shouldn’t be doing it. Customer service is perhaps the most important aspect of business. After all, without loyal customers, your company wouldn’t stay afloat. Outsourcing customer support will ensure that you have access to any resources necessary to provide excellent service. Unlike in-house customer service, you will also have the capacity to expand quickly and support efficient growth.

8. Tax Planning

Money keeps the business world alive. While there are many reasons why a business might fail, all those reasons typically boil down to lack of capital. Because of this, you must take care with accounting tasks, like tax planning. Even a small mistake can cause huge problems for your business. Entrepreneurs can save money and hours every week by using an outsourced bookkeeper. What’s more, you will have peace of mind that your finances are in trained hands.

When done the right way, outsourcing in business will save money, time, and plenty of hassle. Rather than taking on every area of business yourself, you should hand over certain tasks to the experts. Hopefully, with the advice above, you have an idea of which tasks to start with.

How To Succeed As A Taxi Company

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There are many great reasons why you might want to run a taxi company. Not only is it the kind of business that people are always going to have a demand for, and therefore will prove to be a particularly successful business, but it is also fairly easy to run once you have it all set up. Of course, setting it up properly is the real challenge here, and something which you are going to have to think about well if you are going to have the success you want. In this article, we are going to look at some of the things you will want to consider if you are keen to succeed as a taxi company. As long as you make sure of these things, you will find that is much more likely to happen.

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Find A Good Location

Probably the most important thing of all is that you can find a location which is going to work out well for you. That means somewhere which has a need, and does not already have too much in the way of competition. You will probably find that this is one of the harder elements of all, as there are not going to be many places left which have that kind of goldilocks status. However, with enough research you should be able to make sure that you are finding somewhere good to operate, so it is something that you will find it is worth spending some time on. Remember too that you are competing with companies like Uber these days, so you need to think about that as well. If you can find somewhere they don’t tend to go, you might have better luck.

Track Your Vehicles

Ultimately, you need to make sure that you have a good level of control over your vehicles. If you don’t, then you don’t know what kind of money you might be losing out on without even being aware of it, and that is obviously not the kind of situation you want to find yourself in. so make sure that you are tracking your vehicles as closely as you can. The best way to do that is to use technology like TripLog. It’s simple enough to install, and you can check on the mileage of any vehicle just by looking at your phone. The more acutely you track your vehicles, the stronger a position your business will be in.

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Focus On Customer Care

People really care that their taxi drivers are caring for them, so this is something that you are going to want to think about too. The more that you set your business apart as a taxi company that shows a great deal of customer care, the more you will find that you have a good chance of people really respecting you. They will then use your service more, and recommend you to more people too, so this is an important consideration to think about as early on as you can.

Why You Need Both Knowledge and Wisdom

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Why You Need Both Knowledge and Wisdom

If just being the smartest person in the room was enough, then no smart person would ever fail.

But failure lurks around every corner for all of us. It’s hard to believe in our youth, but time reveals how little ‘d’ democratic failure can be. It stalks all of us sometimes, and it finds us often in life unless we figure out how to thrive and how to avoid the land mines.

It takes wisdom to figure that out. And though a handful of us get wisdom early in life, most of us acquire it from a struggle or two or ten. Many times, these difficult moments are of our own making. As we successfully work through those trying moments, wisdom imprints itself and becomes a guard rail against ever failing like that again, whatever it may be. There is safety in wisdom.

When we studied wisdom for our new book, we found many interesting qualities that it has versus knowledge. For example; Knowledge may change as times change, right? What we learned in college may not apply anymore in the current business environment. New technologies and new leadership styles are needed to succeed and win. Those changes are moving at an ever-increasing pace, and so knowledge can be quite fluid. It requires us to chase it and try to catch it to keep from falling behind.

Wisdom, on the other hand, turns out to be static and true in all generations. Get wisdom and you can use it for a lifetime.

So, how do you get knowledge and wisdom?

The knowledge part is easy. Your childhood and young life are filled to the brim with school of one kind or another. You are taught by people who know more than you and who most likely care about you. You go to college and we are surrounded by doers and achievers who understand the competitiveness of the world and how to win by outdoing other doers. You listen. You make notes. You read books. You get knowledge.

Then, you leave college, go to work, and use your knowledge to start making money, usually without a great deal of wisdom and foresight. For example, nobody in college told you that money and power can be dangerous if you let them become your primary focus. See also ENRON. A room full of the best and the brightest decided to take their chances and ignore the sirens going off in their heads. The carnage of that decision was strewn across the media. Billions of dollars lost. Suicides and jail time. Bad things tend to happen when we only have knowledge without wisdom.

Our research regarding wisdom took us back to purportedly the wisest man in history, Solomon. As we studied his life and teachings we wondered over and over again why he is not mentioned and written about more often. He was a smart businessman. He was historically wealthy, probably in real money the richest individual ever on this planet.

If you remember the story, Solomon was offered anything he wanted by God himself. He didn’t choose money or fame. He chose wisdom. And, interestingly, the other things he didn’t ask for just came as part of the deal with that request. He got very famous and rich. And wise.

As we read through the book of Proverbs that he penned we found a lot of wisdom, not surprisingly. Though written millennia ago, most of it sounds like something you would say this very day to someone you were counseling to keep them from making a big and costly mistake.

For example, be careful what kind of company you keep. Bad company corrupts good morals. Did your mother ever tell you that? I’ll bet she did, and she was right. Groupthink is a real thing. It’s why gangs can get their members to kill other gang members and rot in jail for it. It’s why a terrorist can be talked into blowing themselves up for a cause. Bad decisions don’t usually come upon us like a tsunami. They happen by inches. Hang out with people who consistently tell you a lie and pretty soon you start believing it. The business pages are filled with cautionary tales about this one piece of wisdom alone.

Solomon talked about money corrupting us, too. He understood firsthand the perils of great wealth and the pitfalls that had to be avoided. Bottom line: It’s OK to have money. Don’t let it have you.

And, the same can be said for power. Being in charge is an opportunity to do good, to serve others in your organization and community. It’s not there for you to use and take advantage of for your own gain. People don’t follow narcissistic leaders unless they are forced to. But they will follow a servant leader into hell and back every time.

Get the picture? We spend a lot of time and money getting educated and acquiring knowledge. We should spend at least that much effort acquiring wisdom because together the two are the jet fuel that leads to a great and profitable life.

About the Authors

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Drew HissDrew Hiss launched his outsourced payroll and HR technology solutions company, Checkdate Solutions, in 1994. He merged Checkdate Solutions with payroll industry leader Paycor, stepping away from the company in 2008 and serving on its board for eight years.

Drew founded Acumen in late in 2015. Acumen is a catalytic iron-sharpening-iron environment forged from the fiery furnace of entrepreneurial battle, marketplace survival and integration of the timeless wisdom of the ages.

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Dan CooperDan Cooper co-founded ej4, a video-based online training company, in 2003 and was its CEO until selling it in 2012. He then took his leadership and technology experience to work on and in the Sparklab startup business accelerator as well as leading change management and profit building initiatives for mid-market companies.

Today, he is the President and partner of Acumen, an accelerator community experience built for CEOs and Owners of strong and growing companies. Dan is also a certified Executive Coach credentialed through the International Coaching Federation.

Dan and Drew are the authors of a new book, Sharpen: A Guidebook for Business Ownership and Adventures in Leadership.

Keys To Your First Apartment Redevelopment

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Keys To Your First Apartment RedevelopmentAre you looking to invest in real estate? Are you hoping to redevelop an apartment complex or multi-family home? For first-time renovators, there is a lot to take into account before investing in a redevelopment project. Here are several tips to consider when taking on a new project.

Get Some Real Estate Advice

The best thing you can do with your own project is to get a partner who has experience. Consult a real estate professional like Steven Taylor, who can help guide you through the process of purchasing apartments to redevelop. Having someone who knows what they are doing the first time you take on your own project will help you avoid the pitfalls that first-time developers often experience. If you consult with someone on your first project, it will help you learn more about the real estate world so that you do not need a consultant down the line.

Learn How To Be A Landlord

If you are planning on redeveloping an apartment building and renting it out to people yourself, make sure you know all the responsibilities of being a landlord. Take into account not just the work of renovation, but also the expected rent of the apartments. Make sure you establish how you will find tenants, Adelaide strata management, cleaning, and maintenance services, and what your expectations of them will be as the landlord. Set yourself up for success and be ready to run your business.

Consider Your Location

Do not forget to make sure your apartment redevelopment project fits in with the community you are in. If the apartments are in a working-class neighborhood, you probably do not want to make huge luxury apartments with expensive fixtures. Adhere to where you are, because an apartment development project can not be focused on just making money. You need to attract the right people to live there, which is more determined by the people who already live in the area you are working in.