Anyone can start a business, but the real question one should ask is should you start a business? Creating a business is not like any other form of profession. Normal working hours will no longer apply to you and your hard work will not be acknowledged by a boss, because you answer to yourself. So that also means, no one is there to hold your hand, tell you when to speed up, or instill any kind of discipline in you. However, this new life will come a test of character. Many people pass cognitive tests such as planning and networking but very few pass the tests of mental strength, confidence and self-criticism.
The test of integrity
Many entrepreneurs lie on their resume or about an aspect of their business. Most investors, B2B partners and even employees expect that. It’s not uncommon for a young hard-charging entrepreneur to boast about how many contacts they have in the industry or how far along a product is in terms of completion. However, some people will not be willing to work with you if you display this sort of behavior. Integrity is simply priceless and so many entrepreneurs don’t understand what the value of having it would do for their success. Remember that your words will carry more weight when they have been consistently true. ‘Just trust me’ doesn’t convince people as much as ‘my track record is impeccable’. When you meet with investors, just be honest. Don’t think you’re going to scare them away by showing them the issues you have. Someone who is truthful is seen as a long-term partner.
Persistency before consistency
The biggest challenge you’re going to face is the repeated nature of being knocked back. When you feel as if things are going right, all of a sudden something will push you back to square one. It’s part and parcel of being an entrepreneur. By the very nature of that title, you are making waves, breaking barriers and trying to innovate beyond your competitors. So before you achieve consistent results, you will need to stay persistent. Get used to overcoming odds as an entrepreneur as getting feedback and seeing results from consumers will be something you need to chase after. A mass texting campaign may garner little to no results in the first couple of tries. Eventually, you will learn to get the timing and techniques right and slowly increase your customer engagement skills. During the process of persistency, you will be learning a lot.
Become action-oriented
If you stop to wait for things to happen, you will be waiting for a long time. In the meantime, you will watch your rivals overtake you. Part of being an entrepreneur is chomping-at-the-bit. You need to be action-oriented. This means you need to make educated but quick decisions. Being adaptable is thwarted by being too slow. Learn to trust your gut which should be making assumptions based on experience. Read books on leadership as you progress as a business owner.
If you want to be successful you must get used to being honest every step of the way. You must learn to make good decisions in a timely fashion. And most of all, be persistent as it will lead to you becoming consistent in many areas.
Small businesses need to be creative about saving money, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cutting costs down is an essential requirement to protect your staff and keep the business afloat. Therefore, small business owners are looking at a variety of options to reduce their expenses. Remote work is not always a viable solution. As a result, many companies that didn’t perform any essential work during the crisis have been forced to shut down temporarily. Therefore, you may be tempted to delay business expenses to maximize cash flow when you’re ready to re-open for activities. For instance, business maintenance comes at a high cost when you’ve got no revenue for several weeks. However, skipping maintenance duties is a false economy that will come back to bite you in the future!
Ultimately, your business relies on working equipment. If you’ve had to furlough your team for the lockdown or to reduce employee presence, chances are that your day-to-day equipment has been left untouched for several weeks. Using out-of-sync equipment or tools that might not be in sufficient working condition is going to cost you money in the long run. Corrosion, degraded machinery, devices that have not been upgraded are some of the factors that can dramatically increase your cost. For a start, without regular maintenance, your equipment might break. Additionally, injuries are more likely to happen with damaged tools. Finally, repairing damages will incur a higher cost than maintenance duty.
You put your employees at risk
We’ve just mentioned it above. Failure to maintain your equipment and workplace can lead to accidents. When your employees and customers are injured due to poor maintenance, you are likely to be found responsible for the accident, which means you will have to pay monetary compensation. Injury experts, such as Krzak Rundio Law Group, are specialized in ensuring that individuals can claim against negligent behaviors. As a company, you can’t afford to fail to maintain equipment and fleet that are in regular use without being liable for the consequences of your decision.
How much are you likely to lose if a fault holds the production? As a rule of thumb, a single hour of downtime could cost a manufacturing business approximately $10,000 in lost revenue. When you have no choice but to be productive to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, skipping maintenance can be the last draw that drags your business down. Giving yourself the best chance to generate revenues post lockdown is detrimental to your survival.
What will the press say?
Unattended damage and issues that force a business to shut down its production line or pay compensation to workers and clients are not just bad news. They are also bad press about your brand. Boosting your reputation as a company that supports your community economy and takes part in the national effort to rebuild financial stability is the way forward out of lockdown. You can be sure that negative events caused by your negligence to maintain your equipment and workplace will reflect poorly on your reputation.
Saving money by cutting down unnecessary costs is a smart approach. However, as a business, you need to be very careful about what you perceive as unnecessary. Carrying on maintenance checks on your assets is not a luxury. It is indispensable to the survival of your company and the protection of your team. Don’t be the business that saves money by putting profits before people’s best interests.
Good businesses are always looking to reduce their overheads. No matter if you’re a small entrepreneur, or heading up a sizable enterprise, there is always a benefit to be had in streamlining fixed costs, reducing waste and adding to the bottom line without having to raise prices. We all work in a competitive global marketplace, and that means the difference between success and failure often comes down to the details. Everyone knows of promising start-ups that failed to go the distance due to issues with cash flow, or even established businesses that got complacent and ended up in financial difficulties. Therefore, finding strategies to reduce cost and maximise profit must be a part of your operational focus on a constant basis. Don’t wait until something comes up – be proactive and reap the rewards of making small savings frequently. Here are some of the best places to start.
Improve Your Processes
There is almost always money to be saved by improving your business processes. Often over time, operational ways of working evolve organically, to suit the person doing the task, But this may not be the most efficient way of doing it. Areas of duplication, low-value time intensive actions and administration are all areas it pays to tighten up. Set deliverables for each area of your business that can alert you if standards are dropping, and look into automating the most basic processes or outsourcing things like telephone management services to save money on staffing costs.
Look To Your Assets
Often liquidizing some much-needed cash in your business is just a case of looking at your assets a little differently, and carefully managing them. For example – if you need to refurbish your office, then why purchase new when you can easily buy office furniture second hand in barely used condition? Think about the essential machinery that you have – are there things that you could hire instead of purchasing outright? This is often a good way to access the latest technology without the heavy upfront costs, or to respond to peaks and troughs in customer demand or seasonal conditions. If you have a vehicle fleet, look in detail at the costs. What is nearing the top of it’s mileage agreement, possibly incurring additional charges or making it harder to sell on? Is it a good idea to look at 12-Volt DC Fuel Transfer Pumps so you can move fuel around where it’s most needed? Are there internal services that you could make chargeable? Often a bit of creative thinking will unlock lots of small areas where you can make a saving – and this adds up to larger cost reductions overall.
Renegotiate Your Contracts
If you have long-standing relationships with suppliers, now could be the time to get a little tougher on charges. If you can guarantee a certain amount of custom in advance, could they reduce the unit cost? Negotiation with suppliers can yield significant extra profit if it’s done right.Seek out trade partners who can give you more leverage, and always adjust payment terms to the benefit of your own organization wherever possible.
If you run a business, you’ve likely been dealt a huge blow by the COVOD-19 outbreak and the lockdown that followed. It’s likely that all your employees have moved off-site and that you’ve had to make some huge operational changes. You’ve had to invest in the software and hardware to facilitate remote working. You’ll probably have had to take a much more hands-off approach to management. And because you’ve been feeling your way while adapting to unprecedented circumstances, you likely haven’t felt able to be very strategic or proactive.
With some countries and states show signs of relaxing lockdown, even if you’re not ready to reopen your premises you’re likely thinking about how you’ll do so. Do you want to go back to business as usual? Or do you want to start laying a foundation to be better? Now’s the perfect time to invest in revivifying your premises by revisiting the following while your business is under lockdown…
Your network
You’ve probably had to make a lot of changes to facilitate secure remote working. You’ve most likely had to integrate a lot of your operations to the cloud and started using VPNs to make remote employees more secure. Why stop there? Maybe it’s time to revisit your on-site network. Perhaps you could make it faster, more efficient and more secure. Maybe it’s time to start using a hybrid cloud architecture, which gives you the perfect combination of scalability, affordability or performance. Whether your employees are off-site, or continuing to work remotely.
Your equipment
The state of your equipment, however functional, can play a huge part in determining your employees’ productivity, motivation and turnover. It’s not enough for your equipment to work. It should be frictionless and satisfying for employees to use. This goes for everything from your vehicles- check out TCS Upfitting to revitalize your vehiclers- to your desks and chairs. In these uncertain times, you can give your employees a huge boost in motivation and morale by treating them to brand new equipment when they get back on-site.
Your waste
One of the few positives of the lockdown is the impressively restorative effect that it has had on the environment. It’s clear to many consumers that we need a more ethical and eco-conscious form of capitalism going forward to ensure that the environmental gains we have made over the previous months do not go to waste. You’ll want to rethink what you do with your commercial waste, as well as taking active steps to reduce waste in your business.
Your staff
Finally, when your staff return to the workplace, you may wish to reconsider how you keep them engaged and motivated. While they’ll undoubtedly be glad to return to the workplace and their colleagues, you may want to take steps to capitalize on that forward momentum. You might want to rethink your bonus structure or consider using an employee recognition program to improve motivation.
Your business has the potential to bounce back stronger than ever when lockdown measures are lifted. All you need to do is make a modest investment in a few strategically chosen key areas.
There are many businesses out there that produce a lot of waste, even when they don’t realise it. Most of the time, those same businesses are producing more waste now than they were two years ago. Reducing business waste is a must for every single business in every single industry – why? Costs, mostly!
A business that is dealing with waste also deals with higher costs and longer downtime. It’s important that your business demonstrates good industry leadership and social responsibility. Waste is a cultural thing with most businesses in the bigger industries dealing with more waste than others. Reducing waste is an absolute must for a business and if you want to ensure that you reduce your consumption and your waste you need the tips below:
Composting. It’s not just something for the home, but composting is the biggest help you could give your business. Organic waste is a big piece of the waste puzzle and with the right composting program, you can ensure that you reduce waste removal fees and reduce landfill, too.
Management Systems. If your business is in the oil and gas industry, you may benefit from management systems like PetroBase Pro. You need to streamline the way that you do things in your business and this is the best way to do it.
Facility Auditing. Look at how you do things in your facility and evaluate your supply chain. Look at the consumables that you are stocking and check out how you do things right now. Make sure that you engineer your facility so that things move forward without interruption. Business interruptions are going to be a big cause of waste.
Reduce Your Packaging. If you are manufacturing products, look at how much waste you are causing by overuse of packaging. If you can eliminate single-use plastics and swap to cardboard, you are going to reduce the amount of packaging used. This will save you the money you’ve wasted, too.
Add Glasses. If you stock vending machines with bottled water for your staff, or you buy in bulk and stock in the refrigerator, it’s time to swap from bottled water to glasses and a few filtering jugs! You can give your staff fresh water, but why waste packaging? Not only that, but you’ll spend far more on bottled water than you would on tap water.
Swap To Digital. Technology can offer your business a lot of ways to reduce waste and the first thing to do is to go paperless. You can swap everything to online invoicing and online paperwork and this way, you can get rid of half of the paperwork at least! The amount of money you spend each year on storage will be reduced, too, which is the perfect reason to swap to digital tech over paper. You can save 30% and more in ten years and that’s something to be proud of as a business.
Waste in your business can be reduced – and you can start right now.
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