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Helpful Tips for Running a Successful Property Development Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | Helpful Tips for Running a Successful Property Development BusinessMany people have the desire to begin their own property development business. This shouldn’t come as a surprise due to the potential financial rewards on offer. Not only can properties be sold for stacks of cash, but they can also be rented out for a fruitful passive income.

Aside from the monetary gains available, property development also has several other advantages. It allows you to tap into your creative side, where you attempt to solve issues and devise attractive room designs. Also, you don’t require any prior qualifications or knowledge to get started, and it can be done at the same time as working a full-time job.

While the advantages are clear for all to see, the pitfalls are often disguised. If you want to avoid these and run a firm that generates a healthy profit, consider the following three tips for running a successful property development business.

Choose your location

Location is an important aspect when it comes to property development. You want to try and pick a location that isn’t in the most affluent areas, as this will typically leave you with limited room to earn a profit. Then on the opposite end of the scale, you don’t want to end up in the outskirts where nobody wants to live.

Ultimately, it is best to aim for somewhere in the middle. This is on the fringes of a popular area, where it is likely to grow to be part of said popular area in the near future. The reasons for this are simple. Firstly, the property itself will still be relatively affordable to purchase. Furthermore, you are still in an attractive place that will appeal to homebuyers.

Add value… with a helping hand

In general, you’re always in search of properties that possess untapped potential. This could be drab décor, a loft space that hasn’t been converted into a room, a garden that looks more like a jungle than a tranquil oasis, etc. By transforming these spaces and adding value in the process, you stand to gain a larger slice of profit for your trouble.

While this can be done on your own, it’s often recommended to bring in expert help. Say you’re doing up high-end homes in San Diego. Rather than trying to design the rooms in your own style, you could hire an experienced interior design firm in San Diego to do the job for you. This way, you can be safe in the knowledge the property will boast a transcending style that delivers the quality buyers seek in an upmarket home.

Avoid getting personal

In the end, you have to remember that any property you purchase and develop isn’t going to be your home. This means you have to try and remove all personal feelings from any projects you take on.

While you can add touches that you feel will benefit a property, avoid going all-in with your own tastes. The design must be one that appeals to the market on the whole, rather than just you.

The Most Dangerous Things for Businesses

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | The Most Dangerous Things for Businesses | Business RiskIf you are in control of a business, no matter how large or how small it is, you likely have problems that keep you up at night. There will always be inherent risks to any business-owner, which typically runs proportionally to rewards; everybody knows that entrepreneurs take big risks by not being employees, but they do so because they anticipate a payoff. In business, you should be looking for ways to minimize inherent risk at every opportunity. Here are some of the most dangerous things for businesses.

Non-Paying Customers

The world of commerce is relatively simple: a customer buys a product by giving you money and leaves with a product in a simple exchange. Unfortunately, this is not how most business operates. Many business transactions involve large sums of money, and as a result, customers become more likely to complete a transaction over several payments instead of one lump sum.

Not everybody pays on time, however, and this isn’t an unusual encounter in the business world. However, problems arise when non-paying customers build up or when customers try to avoid paying altogether, as Donald Trump’s power asymmetry negotiation style is famous for. This can have a major impact on cash flow, which can decimate most businesses. When activist investors take over a company, one of the first things they do is call in any remaining debts to the company with the help of a good legal team.

Fires

A wise man once said that the rich should fear two things: gambling and fire. Fire has the potential to destroy any business, even one which isn’t physical — a fire in a server room can wipe out an entire online enterprise if the servers do not have backups. A glance at a list of businesses that were destroyed during a town’s fire in Tennessee in 2016 would send shivers down a small-business owner’s spine. Fires are impossible to completely prevent, but with regular fire protection inspections and, of course, good preventative measures like working carbon monoxide detectors can mitigate the risk massively.

Legal Action

A lawsuit can be an exceptionally damaging thing for a company to deal with, especially if the business is small. In America, lawsuits have become a very common part of dealing with competition, especially when a larger company is fending off a smaller competitor. In these business skirmishes, whoever is willing to spend the most money can often bankrupt their competitor, causing many small companies to pay special warning to cease and desists from larger businesses.

Legal action can also be completely justified if you have, through negligence, committed a fault that can put an employee or customer in harm’s way. This is especially dangerous for companies that do not have a good vetting process for their managerial employees, as a bad mistake from a managerial representative of a small business could cause a lawsuit that could bankrupt the business completely.

Preventative measures hence become incredibly important. They ensure that all employees and business operations adhere strictly to legal guidelines; also, health and safety procedures can be the difference between a healthy, long-lasting business and a business with good prospects that made a mistake and went bust.

How The Cloud Can Help Businesses During Covid-19

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Times are unusual for everyone at the moment due to the Coronavirus across the globe. Businesses have had to take a fresh look at how they function and how they can best enable their employees to work from home to keep their business afloat.

Never have there been such testing times for the business world during the pandemic. Many have had to take swift action to keep systems in place, as well ensuring that they enable remote access to their employees.

StrategyDriven Managing Your People Article | How The Cloud Can Help Businesses During Covid-19

Covid-19 has highlighted the need for widespread adaptation, laying aside outdated, manual ways of working in favour of secure, internet-based tools, built to handle everything from your accounting and invoicing to meetings and quick chat options. All of this, and a lot more, is easy to set up in minutes, thanks to cloud computing for business.

Due to enforced social distancing and many offices having to close (or at least have reduced access). It’s been imperative that companies utilize the various online tools that are available, such as video calling.

This is where the cloud comes in as it means businesses can use the internet to store and get hold of data, instead of using their hard drives in the office, server or things like disc technology.

There are some key advantages to using the cloud for business:

It enables employees to work from home

If the cloud was already part of your business before Coronavirus, then it meant that you were one step ahead of those who didn’t. Many businesses were still very traditional in the fact that they operated from premises and were used to their employees reporting into the office. The pandemic really turned this style of workforce on its head.

Now employees have been helping to ensure businesses and their jobs are still there, by working from devices at home. Employees now need access to hardware such as laptops, mobile phones and desk phones which has created a huge demand for these items.

Security is a critical aspect of home working that is not as apparent to employees but of paramount importance to the organisation. Cyberattacks are on the rise and a big concern for businesses and other security professionals implementing work-from-home and cloud solutions.

IT efficiency

It can often be perceived that employees are not as productive at home, at least to their employers. However, this is not always the case. Many people are working to their best, perhaps more so, since working from home and it will often be facilitated by the infrastructure that the company has in place. This in turn makes it even more crucial that IT departments are working effectively to make sure that systems are running as smoothly as they can, plus, having a cloud service provider and is like having a specialist third party on-tap, as well as utilizing companies such as techsquared.com.

It gives your business resilience

In uncertain times, it’s having the tool to be able change that’s key. Due to rapid changes, that in some cases have had to happen overnight, having the ability to scale up and down has been paramount. By enabling employees to be able to perform their role from home, it really helps to make the business far more resilient and as a result, more likely to be less affected by the pandemic in the long run.

4 Ways To Lower Costs and Increase Your Business Revenue

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Businesses cost money to run. As the owner, you should be looking for ways to lower costs and save money as much as possible, without affecting your staff or production rates. There are many ways to lower your costs and the earlier you are in your business, the sooner you start saving money, the more you will have to re-invest in the future. So how can you lower costs efficiently and quickly? Here are 4 methods you can look into to help reduce the money your business is spending.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | 4 Ways To Lower Costs and Increase Your Business RevenueLowering production costs

Have you ever considered the price of a zip tie? How many do you use when building your products? If you lowered the amount in each one, how much would this save in the long run over thousands of products? Small incremental savings like this are the key to reducing your production costs through your business’s lifetime. Lowering production costs doesn’t have to be as ruthless as lowering staff numbers but by finding ways to save small amounts that add up in the long run. Automation and time-saving techniques are easier to implement. If you need to, consider other suppliers of your products to lower your outsourcing and production costs further.

Free-licence software

Many software suites now use an expensive subscription service that adds up quickly when you start to add multiple users. However, there are other options available to you. As users became tired of paying for expensive software, well developed, managed, and most importantly free, software exploded onto the market with alternatives to almost every major software suite. As a smaller business, it is within your best interests to become accustomed to what free software is out there for you. Do keep in mind though that you must consider compatibility issues between different pieces of software. Don’t waste time forcing a square peg into a round hole, when the paid-for software will do the job.

Go digital

Newer businesses have the luxury of being able to perform almost all of their admin digitally in the modern-day, with paper or hard copies rarely being required. With widespread software or mobile apps designed to provide you with paperless, digital alternatives to paper forms and documents. Going digital means you can cut out almost all of your paper documents which removes unnecessary storage and the costs associated. Yes, at some point you are going to have to print something, but if this is rare, you also save money on expensive printer maintenance costs as you only need something small to suit your need.

Speaking to financial professionals

Speaking to tax and accounting professionals is a great way to learn about what options are available to you. You may be surprised to find out where you are overspending and what your actual liabilities are in certain areas of your business. For example, in some cases, you may be able to look into a tax segregation report to cut tax liabilities across your premises. To learn more about cost segregation click here. Financial advice can cost. But the money you can potentially save makes the initial outlay small in comparison. Good professionals are worth it so invest your money into them wisely.

5 Key Fire Safety Measures for Small Businesses

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StrategyDriven Risk Management Article | 5 Key Fire Safety Measures for Small BusinessesIf you’re a fledgling business owner or are in the early stages of setting up premises for a new venture, one aspect you are likely not thinking about a lot is fire safety. Starting a new business requires a hefty amount of thought and planning, but most of that will be focused on acquiring customers, financial planning, marketing strategies, overheads, and so on.

Once you’re up and running, ensuring that the bricks and mortar of your small business are physically and financially protected from fire is essential. Below are five safety measures to implement as a small business.

Identify Fire Hazards

The importance of a fire risk assessment cannot be underestimated. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), there are roughly 37,000 fires on manufacturing and industrial properties every year in the US, resulting in nearly $1 billion in damages. The first place to start when conducting a risk assessment is to evaluate any fire hazards around the facility, such as electrical hazards or combustible and flammable materials. It is also a good idea to review all areas of the office and consider how fires may start because of surrounding materials.

Identify People at Risk

Once you’ve identified potentially hazardous areas or materials, you will also need to evaluate any people who are more at risk during a fire. For example, do you employ anyone who may be visually or physically impaired? Or do you have people whose roles put them at additional risk to fire than others? Identifying these people means you’re able to put secure plans in place should a fire strike.

Invest in Fire Protection Services and Products

It goes without saying that installing the necessary fire protection products around the office is a necessity. Items such as fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, alarms, emergency lighting, and the like will all need to be evaluated and installed. If you are unsure about how to go about this, try consulting experts at a fire protection services company like APFE.

Plan and Practice a Fire Exit Strategy

Every business or office should have a sound fire exit strategy and this should be practiced regularly. All employees need to be aware of the main exit points and what is expected in the event of an alarm. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) require all companies to have evacuation maps and visual communication so that staff can quickly refer to guidance if needed. Facilities are also required to have two exit points and paths that are clearly identified.

Train Staff in Fire Awareness and Safety

Creating a fire safety plan for your business is not enough. You will need to train your employees so that they clearly understand the risks of a fire, how they can prevent fires, and what they need to do during an emergency. As fire safety training is a legal requirement, there are various fire safety eLearning modules that your staff can complete online at any time.

The risk of fires is a very real and serious matter to consider when setting up and running a business. To ensure that you and your staff are safe, refer to the above tips and take the necessary precautions. Otherwise, the danger to life and financial consequences for your business could be huge.