There’s a time in your business growth when you might need to consider the purchase of a vehicle. Whether you want to launch a mobile business such as a food truck or a courier service, taking your business on the road affects your brand strategy dramatically. Indeed, your vehicle acts not only as an extension of the office, but it also is a crucial part of your delivery service, regardless of whether you deliver parcels or speeches. As such, there’s a lot more to think about than the choice of vehicle. You need to prepare your business to use the vehicle as safely, effectively, and successfully as possible in any situation. Are you ready to handle the challenges of taking your business on the road?
When you acquire a business fleet, you have to treat your vehicle as a business asset. Therefore, if you’re taking the vehicle for a drive, other car users and pedestrians around need to know about it. Your vehicle becomes a promotional tool. It’s a good idea to consider wrapping your car or your van to showcase your logo and your brand culture, for instance. Additionally, car wraps can be detrimental to attract your audience’s attention. Food trucks or other mobile service vehicles can also use their social media platforms to keep their customers in the loop. It’s especially useful to update your location if you travel a lot. For instance, a pizza truck that parks in different spots in town can use their social media profile to keep followers informed. Making your vehicle as visible and noticeable as possible can make sure people easily know where you are.
#2. Be prepared for any driving conditions
When you’re on the go, you need to be able to tackle challenging road conditions. While it doesn’t mean you should take unnecessary risks, you need to make sure you’ve got people on your team who can maneuver your vehicle by rain, wind or snow, and or steep or narrow lanes. If you haven’t already, now’s the perfect time to brush up your driving skills with truck driving in winter safety tips or van three-point turn in a dead-end street. Ultimately, if your vehicle gets stuck, your business is wasting time and money in the process.
#3. Have the right insurance plan
Solo entrepreneurs and small business owners sometimes find it hard to figure out the best car insurance for their business vehicles. More often than not, the confusion arises from the way you use the vehicle. For instance, a white van man could use his van for both professional and social trips. In other words, your vehicle doesn’t entirely fall into the category of residential insurance. However, its multifunctional use can make it tricky to find affordable car insurance companies. Don’t be afraid to spend time selecting the best solution for your specific needs. You are more likely to receive a better service if you explore the different types of companies available, as well as their features.
#4. You need a reliable tracking system
Ideally, every business car or truck should be equipped with a tracker. Indeed, trackers can prove highly effective in finding the vehicle in real-time, which is precisely what you need when your driver calls for assistance or when your customers want to know where their parcel is. A reliable tracker can be a valuable source of information, and it doesn’ have to break the bank. Ideally, delivery vehicles should be equipped in priority. You want customers to be able to refresh their apps and see where the truck is in real-time. For couriers, it can help customers to plan the delivery and reduce the amount of calls from people who are getting worried about missing their parcels.
#5. An accident will harm your business reputation
Last but not least, driving safely on the road is a no brainer. As a business, your fleet represents your brand outside of the office. As a result, a truck caught speeding on camera or a van causing a collision is likely to have negative consequences. Your audience judges your reputation by your drivers’ behaviors on the road. Nowadays, a photo shared on social media can damage your business growth. In other words, you need not only to hire people you trust with your vehicles but also to build a caring culture. Many drivers involved in speeding or crash accidents suffer from high stress levels and exhaustion. Needless to say, many are pushed to make harsh decisions on the road because of the way the business treats them.
Taking your business on the road can be a fantastic opportunity for growth. However, you need to make it your priority to address the many risks and challenges that come with a business fleet. If you’re going to make it a success, start with your vehicle strategy.
If you’re worried about keeping your employees safe then don’t worry, you have definitely come to the right place. Whether you have just employed your first member of staff of you’re employing a larger number of people, you need to ensure you’re doing everything you can to keep them safe. Luckily, there are a number of things you can do to ensure you’re doing exactly that. From ensuring your office is safe to providing health and safety training, the more you’re doing the better. With that in mind, here are 5 ways to keep your staff safe:
– Ensure Your Office Is A Safe Place To Be
One of the first things you need to do when it comes to keeping your staff safe is to ensure you’re making your office a safe space to work. From looking out for potential hazards to giving everyone a set of safety rules to adhere to, it should be your priority to keep everything safe. If you’re worried, you may want to consider hiring someone who is specifically dedicated to safety. For more information when it comes to hiring a health and safety officer, you can visit this site here.
– Carry Out Risk Assessments When Needed
Another great way to ensure your employees are kept safe is to carry out risk assessments when needed. Whether you’re getting a new piece of machinery or you’re moving to a new office, you need to be sure you’re carrying out an assessment for absolutely everything. Again, this is something a health and safety professional will be able to do. For tips and tricks when it comes to risk assessments, you can visit this site here.
– Ensure They Sign Up To A Healthcare Program
Another great way to keep your employees safe is to sign them up to a healthcare program. Although it will come at a cost to you, a healthcare program will ensure that they’re able to get the care that they need. If you are going to invest in healthcare for your staff, you need to ensure it meets ACA reporting services criteria.
– Encourage People To Take Sick Days
Although it may cause you to struggle during the day, you need to encourage your staff to take sick days when they need it. Whether they’re suffering from a cold or they need a mental health day, it’s important they’re taking the time they need to recover and get better.
– Provide Health And Safety Training As Standard
Finally, you need to provide health and safety training as standard within your business and your office space. Whether it’s something your staff do during orientation or something they do on a regular basis, the more training they have the better.
Are you looking for ways to keep your employees safe? What can you do to ensure they’re as safe as they can possibly be? Did we miss anything off the list? Let me know your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.
Business finances are a tricky thing to get right, and a lot of new business owners really struggle. Handling the financial aspect of a business is a lot different from managing your own money, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, things can soon go wrong. It only takes a few months of low sales and reckless spending to land your business in some serious trouble. Unfortunately, getting out of that situation and getting your business back on track is much harder, and a lot of new businesses fail at this point. However, there is a way back if you are willing to put in the work. These are some of the things that you must do if you are going to dig your business out of a financial hole.
There is one reason that you are in financial trouble; you’re spending more than you are bringing in, and your cash reserves have run dry. In some cases, that spending is unavoidable and you simply can’t afford to keep the business afloat. But more often than not, a lot of that spending is unnecessary, which means that you should be able to make some cutbacks. You need to go through every single penny that you spend and find places where you can cut your costs as much as possible. This will buy you a bit of time and stop the business from failing while you come up with a long term solution to your problems.
Bring In The Experts
The reason that you are in this mess in the first place is that you didn’t handle your finances well, so what makes you think that you have the expertise to get yourself out of that hole? In this situation, you need to admit that you are out of your depth and call in some expert help. You can outsource to an interim chief financial officer (CFO) for a limited time to help you get things in order. These CFO services are ideal for a business owner in your position, and they will help you to identify where you went wrong. They will also put together a comprehensive plan of action to help you get out of financial trouble and thrive in the future.
Find A Loan
If things are really bad and you have basically nothing left, you will need to find a loan to keep your business afloat until your plan of action begins to take effect. Long term financing will take a while to apply for, and if you are already in serious trouble, you may struggle to find a lender that is willing to deal with you. However, you should be able to secure a bridging loan instead. A bridging loan is a short term loan that is designed to help you keep your head above water while you look at long term solutions. This should be enough to help you survive while you turn things around.
It may seem like it’s impossible to turn your financial situation around, but don’t give up yet. Follow these steps and you should be able to dig yourself out of that hole.
When you run a small business or are working from home in any capacity, there can be underlying stress to combat. Everything falls on your shoulders. From accounting and taxes to pitching, bid writing, and closing those contracts.
There are many supplements that can help your body reduce stress and anxiety. It is worth considering if they might be right for you.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids: There have been studies that show people who received an omega-3 supplement had around a 20% reduction in anxiety symptoms.
Lemon balm: The great thing about lemon balm is it is part of the mint family and is known for its anti-anxiety effects.
Avoid Procrastination
One of the quickest ways to get stressed and anxious is if you aren’t learning how to manage your working time more effectively, and instead of spending a lot of time doing nothing too productive. You reduce your working hours and have to squash everything in. While there are people who say that procrastination is a great thing, it is better to have a well-organized to-do priority list instead.
You might choose to organize your working week into time segments, or you may prefer to write a to-do list each morning. Work out a system that gives you breaks and solid, focused work time too.
Fresh Air
You might not enjoy heading for a walk in the woods, perhaps a sport is more your speed. Golf is a great option for getting fresh air and relieving tension too. Plus, the social element can really bring it into a whole other realm of relaxation. Like most hobbies, there are cool gadgets that you can purchase too. A great set of golf clubs, the right clothing, and golf carts all add to the experience.
Systems and Tools
If you have a range of admin items that you do every day, then it might be time to look into how and where you can automate what you do. If you spend a lot of time in your social media, then consider tools like:
Buffer
Hootsuite
IFTTT
Chatfuel
BuzzSumo
Rest
If you aren’t getting enough breaks between working hours, or enough sleep each evening, then your stress levels will rise pretty rapidly. If you are drinking coffee late into the evening, or watching TV, scrolling your phone, or playing video games, then you are keeping your mind stimulated. It is important that you, as a business owner, are on top form as often as possible. Try to finish work as early as possible, and wind down over the space of a few hours in time for bed. This will give you the best chance and get some good quality sleep.
When you can recognize your triggers and learn what brings your stress levels down, you can preempt and take care of it earlier. High-stress levels over time can lead to a range of health problems that will impact both your personal and professional life.
Find things that make you feel happy and relaxed, and you’ll bring work stress down with ease.
Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? While hard skills such as bookkeeping and marketing can be worth learning, it’s also important to develop the right soft skills. These skills can be largely determined by your personality, however you may still be able to cultivate these skills later in life. Below are just five of the key soft skills every entrepreneur needs.
Problem-solving
Running a business is a constant cycle of identifying and overcoming problems. Only by doing this can you improve your business and conquer any obstacles.
There are many ways to develop your problem-solving skills from completing puzzle games to working out directions to new places (without a GPS). Optimism can be a vital ingredient of problem-solving – always try to focus not on the problem, but on the solution.
Time management
Becoming an entrepreneur gives you the freedom to use your time as your wish, however this also requires you to develop time management skills. You need to be able to prioritise important tasks while also ensuring that less important tasks aren’t forgotten.
To improve your time management skills you need to get into a habit of creating daily schedules and setting alerts to ensure that you keep to these as best you can. Finding ways to eliminate distractions could prevent you from being thrown of schedule.
Leadership
If you plan to hire employees, leadership skills could be vital. This involves a good understanding of how to manage people and get the best out of them.
There are courses in management skills training that can help you to develop leadership skills. Volunteering to organise social activities and lead clubs can also help you to gain leadership experience.
Communication skills
Entrepreneurs need to be good communicators. The involves being able to articulate your points well, as well as being able to maintain communication with multiple people at the same time whether they be customers, employees or suppliers.
There are similarly many courses out there that can help you to develop communication skills. Written communication is just as important as verbal communication in today’s world – it could be worth practicing your email and telephone skills.
Confidence
Being confident is important in all walks of life, but can be especially important when starting your own business. Confidence will help you to take risks and make decisions. It will also help to inspire confidence in others.
The key to confidence is learning to be proud of your strengths and learning to be accepting of your weaknesses. We all have moments of self-doubt – but a confident person knows when to suppress these doubts or when to seek approval from others. There are many courses, self-help books and support groups that can help people to become more confident.
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