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How to Start a Painting Business From Scratch

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article |Start a Painting Business|How to Start a Painting Business From ScratchIf you’re handy with a brush and paint rollers, you may want to consider going into business for yourself as a professional painter. Your startup costs will be negligible and there’s a huge market out there for you. What do you have to lose?

However, you may feel a bit hesitant to jump on this opportunity if you don’t know the first thing about starting a business. Don’t worry, learning how to start a painting business isn’t incredibly difficult. And we’re here to help.

Keep reading for everything you need to know.

1. Research the Local Painting Market

Before you dive headfirst into the professional painting industry, you need to make sure there’s room in your community for your company. You also need to find out more about the costs of doing business, who you’re going to market to, and how much you can expect to earn with your company.

Ask yourself some important questions:

  • What is the local competition like?
  • What are they doing right/wrong?
  • How can I be better/different?
  • Who will I market to?
  • Do I have a niche in the industry?
  • How much money do I need to get started?
  • What are the costs of day to day operations?

Successful businesses are built on in-depth market research.

2. Create a Business Plan

Next, you need to create a business plan to serve both as your business blueprint and as your means of financial assistance. Creditors, lenders, and investors will want proof that you know what you’re doing. They’ll use your business plan to determine your credibility and the potential of your business.

Make sure it includes:

    • An executive summary of the business
    • A description of the business
    • Your market research and analysis
    • The structure of your company (organization and leadership)
    • A description of your services and products
    • Your marketing strategy and analysis of your target audience
    • Your funding requests
    • Financial projections of your business (ranging from the first year to several years)

Don’t skimp on your business plan, there’s a lot riding on it. It needs to be thorough and well-researched.

3. Get Financed

As noted, learning how to start a painting business may mean getting the startup funds you need. With your business plan in hand, apply to your bank for a small business loan. However, if you get rejected here, all is not lost.
There are several other options, such as:

  • Private investors (friends, family)
  • Angel investors
  • Crowdfunding campaigns
  • Personal loans
  • Trade future services for startup funds
  • Etc.

If you have poor credit and bad luck with investors, get creative to earn money to finance your business.

4. Take Care of the Logistics

Once you get the funds you need, you can start taking care of the logistics. For example, you can start procuring the official certifications you need to operate legally. In most states, you need a specific license to be a professional painter on top of the business license you need from the city.

You’ll also need to look into liability insurance for painters. This will protect you financially if you inadvertently cause damage to a customer’s home or business.

5. Start Marketing

Finally, learning how to start a painting business and make it successful means learning how to market to potential customers. You must strive to gain brand recognition within your community. They need to think of your painting business logo when they think of professional painters.

Here are our top marketing suggestions:

  • Build a user-friendly website
  • Perfect your website SEO
  • Get on social media
  • Use PPC and SEM marketing
  • Create a blog on your site

Experiment with different methods of marketing to determine what works best for your business. Don’t be afraid to invest resources in building brand awareness.

Looking for More Tips on How to Start a Painting Business?

Are you new to the world of entrepreneurship? Don’t feel bad, everyone has to start somewhere. Fortunately, there are people like us around to help.

Our blog is designed to help people like you carve their way into the business world. Whether you want to know how to start a painting business or are looking for the best marketing tips, we can provide answers. Be sure to check out some of our other articles before you go.

Top Reasons Why Selling a Small Business is a Good Idea

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Selling a small business|Top Reasons Why Selling a Small Business is a Good IdeaIf you’ve ever considered selling a small business, look no further.

People sell businesses for a variety of reasons, but most of them revolve around getting away from something. While you may think that you’d only sell a business if you’re getting a lot of money, many people sell theirs because of personal issues.

Running a business is difficult, so you may find that it isn’t worth getting stressed out. You could also have a falling out with someone in the company, making it difficult to focus on what needs to be done. So how do you sell your business and justify it?
Read on to learn some of the top reasons why selling a small business is a good idea!

Avoid Potential Losses

One of the main reasons why people sell their small businesses is because they want to avoid losing revenue. A loss in revenue is bound to happen at some point in a company’s lifestyle, but it’s best to get out if the revenue is in a constant decline.

Several things can cause your business to start losing revenue. If there’s a shift in consumer interest for a certain product, your business may come out short. This is why it’s crucial to monitor consumer trends at all times to prevent this from happening.

Your business can also suffer if the economy declines. When an economy declines, people are more concerned with holding on to their money rather than spending it. In cases like this, revenue losses are inevitable.

While you can change your business up to try and keep the interest of customers, you could also sell it to avoid further losses. Understanding how to sell your business will make this process easier because you can get a lump sum of money instead of hoping your business turns around.

Seek New Business Partners

When starting a small business for the first time, it’s common to see an owner partner up with investors. Unfortunately, not all business partners are compatible, and disputes can make it hard for an owner to continue operating the business.

If you have business partners that are constantly disagreeing with your decisions, the best thing you can do may be to sell your business. While this is a drastic decision, you’ll have to do it unless you have the money to buy out your partners.

However, those partners don’t need to give up their share of the company if they don’t want to. Before selling the business, ask them if there’s something you can do to take over their shares. If they own large portions, it’ll be much harder to buy them out because they have a larger impact on the business.

Change Your Lifestyle

Running a business of any kind is tiring as it requires more time than a full-time job. When you own a business, you have to dedicate your lifestyle around it so that you can be prepared if your business needs something.

For example, if you own a retail store that runs out of stock for a popular item, you’ll need to decide what the appropriate action should be. If a plethora of customers are trying to purchase it, you’ll miss out on a lot of income if you’re not around to take action.
Should you decide that running a business takes up too much of your free time, you can sell it to help you change your lifestyle.

Instead of having to keep track of everything and work with business partners, you can start focusing on other things that mean more to you.

Health is something that many people have in mind when they answer the question, “Why should I sell my business?” While running a business comes with many benefits, it can also be deteriorating if you’re someone that wants to focus on your wellbeing.

Invest In Other Things

It’s best to expand your portfolio so that you don’t need to rely on one source of income. The best time to sell a business is when you decide that you’re ready to use that money towards other things. Many people don’t know what happens to cash when selling a business, but it goes directly into your bank account.

Selling your business will give you a plethora of cash that you can then use for things like stocks, real estate, and starting another business. Small businesses typically don’t cost too much to start, so you can most likely jump back into another one if you have an idea for something else.

If you do have an idea, it’s best to sit on it for a while until you figure out how you’re going to approach it. Should you decide to sell your business to help you fund another business, you’ll need to know how much the other business will require to start. From there, you can decide how much you want to sell the business for.

Consider Selling a Small Business Today

If any of the reasons in this article sound appealing, you should consider selling your business. You’ll get a lot more freedom to do other things and you can relieve yourself from stress relating to the business. All you’ll need to do is think about how you want to approach the sale.

Creating something like a “selling a business checklist” will help you put together a list of things to do when you’re ready to start selling a small business. You’ll need to think about how much you want for the business and what you plan to do with the money.
Check out our articles to learn more about running your own business!

Improving Customer Satisfaction As An Online Business

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Satisfaction|Improving Customer Satisfaction As An Online BusinessProviding ultimate customer satisfaction when you have no face to face interaction with your clientele can often seem like a bit of a tricky task. Giving customers the best experience possible involves more than just being respectful in your tone, as every feature of your business, products and services contributes towards the individual opinion of the people you serve. Luckily, finding out exactly how you can improve customer service when operating a business exclusively online doesn’t have to be as difficult as you might initially believe, as there are a few innovative ideas that you can utilise to start making beneficial changes today. So, if you would like to find out more, then read on to uncover some of the best top tips and tricks to make the most of now!

Design Matters

One of the biggest factors that you simply mustn’t skip over is the design of your web store, as this is the first thing that a customer will see upon clicking your link meaning you must take the opportunity to give off an amazing first impression. Focus on creating a design that will work for different people from all walks of life, making accessibility a key feature to ensure that those with impairments and disabilities can just as easily navigate around your site. Utilise white or yellow tones as a background colour and a strong dark black or blue for text, as this will make the words jump out from the screen whilst being extra handy for those with difficulties such as dyslexia too. Picking a colour scheme that matches in with your brand or it’s products and services can be a great way to include a little style, so stick with a couple of shades and use these to highlight and draw attention to important features.

Providing Information

A considerable issue that may be holding you back from achieving your full potential as an online business is the lack of information that you provide to your customers. Simply posting your products or services with a small brief description is not enough to give potential customers faith in your business, and it can give off the feeling that you put just as little effort into the quality of the items you sell, too. Providing as much information as you can about the history of your brand, the origins of your products and materials, your environmental pledge and other key areas will allow customers to get a better understanding of who they are buying from. If you sell your products and services outside of the country, all of this information should be provided in the correct language for local customers to understand your business too – investing in the help of a professional translator such as Para Plus Translations can provide you with everything you need to maintain your quality customer experience all around the world.

Improving customer satisfaction as an online business has never been so simple when you are able to make the most of the top tips and tricks detailed above!

Here’s What CEOs Say on Working From Home Without Compromising Productivity!

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StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article |Working from Home|Here's What CEOs Say on Working From Home Without Compromising Productivity!How many of us realize that we are experiencing history? This is the most unprecedented and unforgettable time of our lives. The outbreak of the pandemic has left for us nothing but experiments, challenges and learning opportunities. Mid May Twitter announced its employees can work indefinitely from home, being the first big tech company to come up with such a policy. For over a long time, a lot of employees who thought of #wfh as a luxury are now compelled to stick to it overnight for the time as long as eternal.

Amid this crisis, a lot of CEOs are coming up with various ideas and offers for their employees to not only ensure their productivity but also their mental well being.

1.Stay Organized: It Is Going to Help in the Long Run

Having a fixed schedule and creating boundaries between professional and personal life is the key to maintain productivity and be efficient when working from home. It is comprehensive that one needs to look after their home and work simultaneously in this tough situation. It is important that people identify when to work and where to work without being pulled into domestic chores or personal matters when working from home. If you start your day with a proper schedule and stick to it strictly, you would surely be comfortable with the new normal.

Do Not Just Work! Work! Work!

Plan your breaks too as you would at the office premises. But remember not to leeway and stretch these breaks.

2. Have a Plan Before You Begin

Well moving your workstations overnight to your home was surely a big thing to do. It is important for the organizations to gather a cross-functional team that includes business-line leaders, IT, HR, communications, and facilities, to plan for the worst and the good to come. It is important that the business is least affected by the employees working remotely. A lot of software development firms that had been providing remote services had an experience of handling clients remotely, but handling the teams remotely is a completely different chapter. Also, it is vital to ensure that employees have a good infrastructure back home to support their tasks and meet the business process.

Lack of communication is going to be a major drawback here. It is important that your team bridges the gap between them and doesn’t let its productivity be affected. Trusting the team in such times is very important. Provide your team members guard rails with the flexibility to deliver their defined targets in the defined time.

3. Short Breaks and One at a Time Approach

It is crucial to take care of your mental well being when working from home. Taking short breaks while staying connected to your colleagues always helps in remote working culture. This is not the time to take it all together. Understand this is not a productivity competition. This is pandemic and not regular work from home exercise. With no domestic help and lots of things being messed it is always difficult to find the right schedule, In the initial days experimenting a little is cool. No one knows how long we are going to stay out of the office, so making temporary adjustments won’t help. Employees and even the managers and leads need to have a plan where they can easily connect and enjoy their work. Enjoying your work is the priority here. Push yourselves and enjoy your work, maintain your productivity and keep calm.

4. Millennial Workforce Are the Key Drivers

The on-the-go technology helps the millennials be more productive and available all the time. They have better ideas to stay connected and hold meetings. With various apps put to function, we can easily predict their productivity. Working from home is quite beneficial for employees as it eliminates their daily commutes. It also helps them to lead a better and healthier life with their family around all the while. A lot of employees relish the model for the flexibility it has to offer. It is always a great choice to work when you are comfortable. This adds to productivity and better results.

A lot of millennials are making the best of the opportunity by joining e-learning classes and certification courses. They are making the most of their time and coming up with some great ideas to hone their skills and contribute to the organizations.

5. Discipline and Dedication Drive the Results

When at home, many of the employees go lethargic with their work. It is important to put your laziness in the backseat and work in a disciplined manner. It is always important to have a balance between work and personal life. Remote developers and other employees often struggle with a stringent deadline. It is important to deliver your customers a world-class service you are available as per their ease and strictly stick to the deadline that you have asked them. This not only makes you look professional but reflects your sincerity for your work too. To make sure you stick to this, the magic trick is to have a well-designed work set up and be dressed smartly. If you take things seriously and work dedicatedly the work hours at work from home won’t be as long as at the office because of the cozy set up and support of being at home. Initial work from home is going to be all kinds of a mess, taking more time than ever, but once you adjust to it, you will realize how easily you can be through your day.

6. A Separate Work Station Gets You Halfway Through

This advice actually works wonders. Get a separate work corner for yourself. This makes it easier for you to realize what and where you need to focus. Keep all your work-related documents, notes, and other accessories together so that you don’t waste hours looking for them each time you want to use them. Add some beautiful quirky elements in the place to ensure that you like the place and it helps you stay concentrated. A cool workstation is always an inspiration to work well and work hard. It becomes a little corner that you would always want to be at. Be at your office on time, take short coffee breaks, and don’t let the pandemic affect your productivity.

7. Trust Your Team

A lot of organizations that have experience in providing remote IT consultation service and development services understand how important it is for them to trust their team in the situation. The head of mobile app development team at A3logics quotes,

“We have been providing remote services for over two decades now, and we never had complaints from our clients’ end. We thought working from home would be the same, but it wasn’t. When in office the team was available on the go and discussed ideas and we knew we were all working. Being home made things a little uneasy initially. But gradually we realized it is almost similar to working remotely where our clients trusted us to deliver their projects. When working from home we need to trust each other that they are dedicatedly working on their parts and things would be in line. This small shift in thought process has actually made working from home quite easy.”

The Final Words

With the outbreak of the pandemic, we have experienced the world’s largest Work From Home experiment. Maybe the organizations won’t go 100% work from home forever but they will certainly enjoy much support from the virtual environments. With so much good and bad going around the business leaders are expected to support their employees and show some empathy towards them. Surely, this is the first time most of your employees are working from home and are connected virtually, but if this works then you are surely going to appreciate the way the results turn out to be with a happier workforce.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Scarlett BrownScarlett Brown is associated with the Content Writing team at A3logics for over a couple of years. She has been working on projects related to mobile app development and closely follows the trends in the field. She loves to read about the technical advancements and incorporate them into her work. She has been publishing a few articles on employee well being and work from home productivity hacks lately. When not at her writing desk she is often found enjoying her coffee in the nearby cafe and enjoying some storytelling shows.

Key Factors to consider when Choosing Best SEO Service in Singapore

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Key Factors to consider when Choosing Best SEO Service in SingaporeHave you finally launched your business website and are ready to face whatever it takes to succeed online? Congratulations on making such a rewarding decision. Now the next thing you need to do is to pick the best SEO services in Singapore that will drive qualified traffic to your business site and implement a viable marketing strategy. This may be somewhat a complicated procedure, especially to newbies who have never done it before as they don’t know how to go about it. In this post, we will talk about the key elements to observe whenever picking the best SEO services in Singapore.

Key Factors That Comes Into Play Whenever Choosing the Best SEO Service in Singapore

Budget

The first thing you should think about on how to pick the best SEO service in Singapore is the amount you have to spend. Different Singapore SEO services will charge you varying amounts depending on various factors. It’s upon you to do your research and find a good SEO company that offers excellent SEO optimization services at extremely affordable prices. There is no point in robbing a bank to afford reputable SEO services.

Get Referrals

There is a likelihood that you have some friends who are already outsourcing SEO services in Singapore. Why don’t you reach out to them and get some help on how to do the same professionally? That would be a great idea considering that you’d get firsthand information from real individuals (who are already using the service). Ask them where they outsource their SEO services, how much they pay for the services, their experience, and whether they’d recommend the same to you.

StrategyDriven Online Marketer & Website Developer Magazine


Read Online Reviews

Online reviews are real feedback from actual individuals who have previously tried the services of a particular SEO agency. If you visit the various online platforms that post such reviews, you will get a clue of what to expect should you hire the SEO agency in question. Generally, positive reviews would mean that the company in question performs great, while negative feedback would indicate shoddy services.

Get Testimonials

Before settling on a decision to subscribe to the services of the SEO agency in question, it’s worthwhile to look at what their previous clients have to say. Most of these SEO agency websites have a testimonial page where you can visit and witness the feedback of their real previous customers. You will be able to tell what to expect from the company once you go through this page.

What about their Portfolios?

Another thing that you should pay attention to when choosing the best SEO services in Singapore is the company’s portfolio in question. This tells you what the company has done for other individuals who had similar SEO optimization needs. Usually, a portfolio should be readily visible on their website; however, if you do not see the same, you can request it. Witnessing what they have done for others will let you know the result to expect in advance.

Final Thought

Having gone through this post, you know some of the critical considerations that count whenever choosing a reliable SEO agency in Singapore. It’s now upon you to make a wise decision but with the help of this guide. If you are struggling with this decision, First Page Singapore is the way to go!