It is no easy feat to make serious changes in any business field. However, some people are making big waves. The last few years have seen so many industries be disruptive with new technology, new ways to deliver products and services and micro businesses.
The tech industry has skyrocketed, to heights that no one saw coming. There are many people driving change in their own sectors too. Let’s take a look at some of the game-changing women of the last few years.
Elsa Bernadotte – Eco Queen
Zero waste is not only a buzzword, but it is also entirely possible. The founder of the Karma app, Elsa Bernadotte connects grocers, cafes and restaurants to customers who want to buy food products at massively discounted prices.
It has been labelled as one of the hottest startups in Europe and with good reason. Not only does this mean that the food waste created by the food industry is kept low (if they’re using the app, of course,) but it means people have to spend a little less on their own food shop and can cook and eat fresh food every day.
Unsold food is still fresh, but it no longer adheres to food standards set for many establishments, the Karma app fixes that.
Shao-Ning Huang – Funding Angel
The co-founder and chief angle for AngelCentral. The big name in making angel investments to smaller start-up companies. AngelCentral works across Southeast Asia. This Singapore based company has well over 500 angel investors that have been linked to start-ups. Of those startups, most, if not all, are aimed at making positive global changes.
Not only is she making a significant impact on many a start-up with funding and finances, she also is a consultant to tech startups. AND, an avid supporter or women-founded companies.
Belinda Stronach – Sports Mover and Shaker
If you know about millionaires, billionaires and some canadian congress you have likely heard of Belinda Stronach. If not then her latest endeavour is set to change the face of the horse-racing industry might ring a bell. As a lifelong businesswoman, she has a tenacious appetite for a challenge and a lot of smarts. This breast cancer survivor is the chairman and president of the Stronach Group (owners of Pimlico). She aims to bring Preakness, and then the entire industry into the 21st century. Which is no small feat. Implementing innovation and modernizing a sport will make a global impact and last change.
Ayah Bdeir – Inspiration For Younger Generation
LittleBits is the little innovation in around 70 countries right now, across 20,000 schools that are making a big impact. Ayah understood that children are forever learning and has created what is essentially electric building blocks. She aims to get more girls interested in Science, Maths, Engineering and Technology by getting creative and building what they want. Instilling confidence in kids that they can make things that they can imagine, and an impressive 40% of LittleBits users are currently girls.
If you search online for tips on starting up your own business, you’ll get a lot of results about business ideas that you can get off the ground with relatively little money. That’s great for people that have limited funds and want to start their own company. But what if you’ve got a lot of money to invest in a new business and you want to start a company that is going to generate a lot more revenue? There isn’t as much advice out there for people who have the spending power to start a more expensive business. If you’ve got a lot of money to invest and you want to put it into a new business, these are some of your best options.
A construction company that has the equipment and manpower to take on large projects can be very lucrative. Often, when people are starting a construction business, they’ll focus on residential properties to start with because they don’t have the capital to invest in the machinery and the employees that they’ll need to work on bigger projects like constructing office blocks or housing developments. But if you’ve got a lot of money to put into a construction business, you can invest in equipment and staff and start taking on the bigger contracts. The payout on these contracts is a lot higher and your profit margins will be a lot larger, but most construction start-ups simply aren’t equipped to handle them. The only issue that you might face is competition from established construction companies that have good relationships with the clients that offer these kinds of contracts, but as long as you market yourself effectively and your prices are competitive, there will be work out there for you.
Boat Sales
If you want to earn the most money, you need to go after the high profile clients who have got the most cash to spend. That’s why boat sales is a good business to go into because you can charge a premium for a good quality boat. However, it’s an expensive business to set up because, if you want to get the high level clients, you’ll need to pay for a good marine architect to design your boats and then cover the manufacturing costs as well. You could also consider buying from an existing boat manufacturer and selling them on, but you won’t make as much money this way.
Manufacturing
If you can set up a good manufacturing operation that has the capability to make a wide range of products, you can find contracts from so many different businesses. There is always a need for good manufacturing facilities so you won’t be short of work. But manufacturing equipment is so expensive that most people can’t afford to get started in this industry. If you’re going to start a manufacturing business, it’s important that you consider market trends. For example, it’s probably not a good idea to set up a facility that manufactures plastic packaging, because people are moving away from that in the majority of industries.
If you have the money to make a large investment in a new business and you want to see a big return on that investment, these are some of your best options.
In many respects, a business is made up mostly of the projects that are taken on board. The more involved everyone is in these projects, and particularly in ensuring that they go to plan, the more successful the business is likely to be. If you are in charge of a business, whether your own or someone else’s, you will want to make sure that any big internal projects are likely to go to plan. That means knowing how to focus on them in the right way to bring about the desired results, and it’s something that you will need to make sure you are clear on from the start. As it happens, there are a few key elements to most projects which you might want to look into, which we are going to discuss here. As long as these are being taken care of, most projects should succeed – and bring more success with them.
It is vital to make sure that you are as sure as possible about what is likely to happen as a result of the project. That requires a certain amount of forward thinking, testing and modelling to ensure that you are perfectly clear on at least the most likely results. Depending on what the nature of the project is, this might involve any number of methods for trying to work out where the project is likely to go. In the world of construction, you might take to using literal models, radio controlled vehicles like the ones at https://bestrcgear.com and so forth, to make sure that you are clear on what the outcome is likely to be. In other cases, it might be as simple as asking customers what they think, and going by that. However you do it, you must ensure that you are testing and re-testing at all times to ensure the success of the project at hand.
Staffing
It makes little difference how good the overall plan is if there is hardly anyone there to oversee it, of course. This is why you need to spend at least as much time on the staffing of your project as anything else, and you might actually find this to be a particularly strenuous and stressful part of making the project work. You will need to make sure that you have a good number of people – not too many, certainly not too few – and that is something that can be a case of trial and error. Over time, as you carry out more projects, you will come to appreciate what staffing level is appropriate, so you can hope to have the right numbers for all future projects.
It’s incredibly useful to have some kind of auditing process going on, so that you can keep yourself, your colleagues and your project in check. This auditing can be self-auditing based on a predetermined set of questions, or it could be something you hire an external company to do. Either way, it will ensure that you are moving in the right direction.
In case you have been working with computers for a long time, and your business relies on information technology, you might already know how it can improve your overall productivity. However, there are some unusual ways to utilize modern technology that will help you develop your own competitive advantage and make the most out of business intelligence. Find out more about them below.
Competition Research
It is important that you know your competitors as well as you know your customers. You can gather information manually, but this will take a couple of hours or days. Alternatively, you could use a software or outsource the project, so you can get a graphic representation of the things that really matter. Find out more about the pricing structure and the satisfaction score of your competitors, so you can find a way to provide more value and differentiate yourself.
In case you spend a lot of time on the road, visiting clients, or on the road, you will need to set up a cloud collaboration system that will allow you to manage your team and keep an eye on what is going on in the office. You can simply sign up for Google Suite that can grow with your business, or have an advanced project management platform such as Slack,
Service Monitoring
No matter if you worry about the security of your business, or simply would like to ensure that your employees are responding to customer queries on time, you will need the right monitoring tools implemented in your business. You should talk to an IT company that provides managed services at https://www.frontlineinc.com/it-consulting/ get help with finding the right solutions that will help you maintain your business productivity and quality.
Digital Marketing Analytics
If you are marketing your company and don’t measure every touch point of your sales funnel, you might be wasting time and money on things that don’t bring in the expected results. This is why you will need to have a system that gives you statistics on each post’s engagement and lets you know where your website visitors are coming from, so you can make the most out of your budget and focus on the right target market.
It is crucial that you focus on productivity improvements in your business, so you can deliver the products or services more effectively. You should monitor your staff and put systems in place to improve your overall business productivity. There are some smart tools that will block access to social media at certain times, or limit the use of different sites to a couple of minutes. It is important that you have adequate policies and company procedures in place, and you sit down with your staff to discuss the proposed productivity solutions, to make sure they are on board.
If you are not using information technology to make better business decisions, your company might get left behind the competition.
You can’t go through life without making a mistake every once in a while. If you do, then that means that you’ve been playing things too safe. Life is an adventure, and it’s worthwhile throwing yourself into it with all you’ve got — you never know where it’ll lead. However, it’s worth noting that there are differences when it comes to mistakes. If you’re aiming in a positive direction, it’s less likely that you’ll end up somewhere terrible because of the risk you took (though it does happen). If you’re putting yourself in risky positions, then the chances you’ll end up in a bad position increases. Below, we take a look at some of the mistakes with the biggest negative consequences.
They say that we’re the average of the five people we hang around with most, and there’s definitely something to that. While we might begin a friendship in one position, over time, we naturally move closer to our new friend’s way of thinking, at least a little bit, and especially when we’re younger. If this is a crowd of people, rather than just one person, then we move even further. If you fall into a crowd that normalizes drug use, crime, or generally bad behavior, you might have to live with the consequences that follow those kinds of behaviors.
One Summer Mistake
You could be excelling in all areas of your life, and then make one mistake, and have your life transformed. The rates of people who drink and drive increases significantly during the summer (and also around the holidays), and it’s not just the type of people from whom you’d expect this behavior. People are prone to making mistakes when they drink alcohol! While most of these mistakes are more embarrassing than harmful, those who get behind the wheel are likely to be involved in an accident, and could face manslaughter charges. Never forget the consequences that can follow the act of operating a vehicle while under the influence.
Buying Before You’re Ready
Not all mistakes we make have such instant, tragic consequences. Some of them are more subtle, more long-term. Some even disguise themselves as good things — it’s only much later that we realize this wasn’t the case. Take buying a house, for instance. It’s commonly encouraged, but it’s not always the best decision. Indeed, sometimes it turns out to be the worst decision. If you buy before you’re reading, as in you’re not financially stable, aren’t settled, and so on, then it can become a chain that is difficult to untie. You could end up in severe financial difficulties, or spending your life just scraping by.
Health Issues
Finally, remember, the earlier it is we take care of our health, the better it’ll be in the long-run. Don’t wait until you have a health scare before you decide to take action — be proactive about exercising, the foods you eat, and your lifestyle. You’ll regret it down the line if you don’t!
With so many tech startup successes, you may be forgiven for thinking that running this type of business is easy. However, there are plenty of potential disasters that could ruin your business chances of success. Luckily, to be forearmed is to be forewarned, so read on to find out some of the most significant issues to avoid.
You run out of funding.
You have to spend money, to make money in the tech startup world, and that means funding is key to avoiding disaster. It also means that it is crucial to find finance for each stage of the development and launch process. After all, when it comes to tech you need enough money to create your product, then refine it, and only then can you launch.
Luckily, there are several options you can use here. The most desirable one is to find an angel investor that puts up the majority of the finance that you need. Of course, not everyone is lucky enough to secure this and therefore may need to use bank business loan or even peer to peer lending products to avoid the disaster of running out of money at a crucial time.
Someone steals your creations.
Next, one of the most essential things in tech startup success is having a smart concept and executing it well. Unfortunately, once your creations hit the market, it’s easy for other business that are in competition with you to use your ideas for their own success.
Happily, even if you do experience this issue, you can use one of the many intellectual property consulting firms to deal with your case. You can even ask them to help you with litigation support, something that means you can protect your hard-earned concepts, and guard your startup against disaster.
You don’t have the right employees.
Employees are essential, no matter what type of business you run, but when it comes to tech startup you absolutely have to have the right staff to avoid failure. The reason being that you will need not only the specialists that are relevant to the field of tech you are working in but also just the right people to market and sell your product as well.
Luckily, you can maximize your chances of finding this sort of people by being proactive about your recruitment. This means making sure that you have an attractive employment package to encourage the best applicants, as well as keeping the names of good, but unsuccessful candidate on file.
You run into heavy competition.
Lastly, remember that half the appeal of setting up a tech startup is that the initial costs and time to get things off the ground is relatively small. Of course what this means is that it will also be small for your competitors, and that can be problematic.
In fact, you may start as the only business to offer your particular product or service in your industry, but there is no guarantee that things will stay that way.
To that end, it’s crucial that as well as the chief product that your business is focused around, you also have plans for expansion into other areas and markets as well. Otherwise, after a short time, your startup could be facing disaster!
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