5 Business Tips for the New Entrepreneur

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Tips|5 Business Tips for the New Entrepreneur600,000 new businesses receive their licenses to commence operations in the US annually. While the business market can be challenging for the new entrepreneur, you can succeed with the right strategies. Although the sheer amount of responsibilities to establish a new brand is enormous, you shouldn’t be discouraged. Instead, you should discover your reins as you get into the entrepreneurial seat. That said, here are some tips to help you out.

Mental commitment to put in the hours

Nothing good comes easy, including starting a business. It requires a commitment to spend more hours to make it work. Therefore you should work extra hard for the following purposes:

  • Implementing business strategies
  • Connecting with customers
  • Setting the groundwork to bring in revenue (with a strong focus on the long term)

It’s prudent to focus on strengthening the business’s framework in the first year or two. Acclaimed entrepreneur Dave Conklin believes that grasping this concept builds your mental fortitude as an entrant in the business world. Moreover, it would motivate you to work harder than you’ve ever done.

Keep your finances tight and smart

For a small business owner, having control of your finances is crucial to business sustenance and survival. Usually, small businesses tend to use fewer resources than bigger establishments comparatively. Therefore, keeping tight control over your finances helps you carefully determine your resources’ utilization. It would be disastrous if you allow your spending to spiral out of control.

Remember that most small business start-ups in the US fail in the first year because of poor financial management. Moreover, Pew Research findings revealed that more than 40% of new small businesses seek bank loans to remain operational each year. While you may think that bank loans are lifelines, they come at interest rates that can cripple your young establishment.

Know your competition

Unless your small business is a unique niche, you do not have the luxury of dominance. This stems from a business need that thrives on winning the most significant customers while offering value. Indeed, it is a dog-eat-dog business environment, making it imperative to stay ahead of others.

Keep your current job

You shouldn’t quit your job immediately. First, you need your regular monthly income to support your expenses, as it would be illogical to depend on business profits in the first year or two. Ideally, business profits made in the first few years should be reinvested into the establishment to make it better.

Work with a plan in mind

More than 80% of the time, small business start-ups have it quite challenging in the first three years. While this is to be expected, you must work with a plan as an entrepreneur. Moreover, you will not be making profits immediately; therefore, never leave business decisions to chance when you’re still finding your feet. Define your goals, expect not to make a profit immediately, and avoid time waste. Stick to the plan to improve your focus.

Hopefully, these tips will be helpful as you embark on your new small business project. No matter how much theoretical knowledge you have on business management, you still need the practical aspect. Therefore, learn as much as you can when you finally get the opportunity to run yours.

Intrepid Entrepreneurs > Entitled Entrepreneurs

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Entrepreneurs|Intrepid Entrepreneurs > Entitled EntrepreneursIt’s very important to consider what kind of entrepreneur you hope to be once you decide to go it alone. More than simply branding yourself and wearing a cool suit, its the values and virtues you bring to this role that will really sustain you.

Some people may misinterpret that fact as meaning that as an entrepreneur, you have to get everything right. That would be nice of course, but it’s usually far from the reality of how success is actually gound. Entrepreneurs that come into their own and feel as though their willingness to take risks should define their success are not entirely wrong, but with that comes a sense of entitlement that can make them inflexible, immodest, and less open to opportunities that come.

It’s much better to be intrepid than to be entitled. Does that mean that you have to fly blind and think that nothing wrong can happen? Absolutely not. But it does mean curating a certain willingness to not only being taught the path through foresight, but through error too, as it’s almost impossible to ignore the latter. How can you achieve this? Let’s consider:

Follow Similar Thought Leaders

It’s good to follow thought leaders that focus on fearless visionary thinking while also never allowing that optimism to render their practical assessments useless. Dee Agarwal is a great example of this, and a sterling person to showcase how resilient business leadership should operate not just in general, but also the world of today. Thoughts leaders like this can show you just how visionary thinking works, and why it’s so necessary.

Learn From Your Mistakes With A Clinical Attitude

Learning from your mistakes isn’t easy. It’s not nice to say ‘this is where I messed up, and wasn’t prepared enough, and didn’t realize the error I was making.’ But it’s essential to do that, because even the biggest CEO’s in business make mistakes from time to time. A good way to look at this approach is to learn from your mistakes with a clinical attitude. Just see mistakes as tools and stepping stones to help you get to where you want to go. Feel your way forward and dont’ be afraid of making additional mistakes. Your character isn’t defined by the mistake you make, but how you react to and what you do with it.

Know The Value Of A Risk

Intrepid entrepreneurs know the value of risk. Some entrepreneurs think that risk is something to be minimized in all areas. But outside of safety precautions, that’s never really what you should chase. A healthy understanding of what the risks are and how to properly deal with them is much better than trying to eliminate them entirely and failing to make any progress because of that. This can help you become motivated to accept an investment, or try a service offering never done in your industry, or champion sustainability in an industry known for its waste. When you can more readily approximate a solution like that, you’ll not only achieve potentially resounding success, but you’ll have learned something from the effort.

With this advice, you’re sure to become a worthwhile and intrepid entrepreneur.

Is Your Business Struggling To Grow?

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Struggling to Grow|Is Your Business Struggling To Grow?Life as an entrepreneur is tough, and when your business is struggling, it can make life very difficult for you. You don’t want your business to be pulling funds for your personal bank account for too long, and you should be looking for solutions to help your business pick up the pace again. There are often many solutions when it comes to fixing the problems that your business is having, and it may just need a little push in the right direction to get things as they should be. Whether it’s finding new customers, changing up your marketing strategy, or rethinking the direction that you actually want to go in.

Improve on your financial decisions

Taking the time to look into your financial decisions and really analyze where you might be going wrong can change everything. If you’re properly managing your cash flow, then it will allow you to see where you might need to make changes and cuts here and there. It’s important that you do these things so you know how much money you’ll have available and where. Not only that, but you can use the data that you get from your last month of sales to help you reconsider where you should be putting your money. You might need to allocate more money to marketing rather than overstocking your products.

Hire an advisor

Sometimes you just don’t have the answer yourself, and it can be hard to handle the decisions on your own. Hiring a financial advisor, for example, can help you to figure out what the best investment for you is at this moment, and what you should do later on. You shouldn’t expect to be able to do everything on your own, and an advisor can make life much easier for you. Maybe you need help with marketing, maybe you need someone to help you get off match list. Even the most experienced entrepreneurs will struggle with the right answer from time to time.

Invest into your reputation

An effective marketing campaign can significantly improve the cash flow within your business, and you’ll find that you’ll be back on track in no time when you’ve learned how to properly appeal to your audience. Finding the right way to reach out to that demographic, while also not having to break the bank over it can be a promising investment, and will be paying for itself in no time at all.

Putting out new marketing ideas isn’t the only way you can improve your reputation as a business. Sure, you need to make your presence known, but advertisements aren’t always the best way to do it. People don’t want to have a constant stream of marketing displayed to them, and it can help to break the mold here and there. For example, running a social media page that isn’t all business and promotions can be a great way for you to build a better relationship with your audience. It doesn’t have to be all business all of the time, and sometimes no marketing is good marketing.

Are You Protecting Yourself As A Freelancer?

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Freelancer|Are You Protecting Yourself As A Freelancer?More and more people are now starting to work from home and provide their skills by freelancing. It has rapidly increased over the last few years, however, because some people have been pushed into it, they have had much less time to plan and research their move to this way of working.

Freelancing, of course, has many benefits such as the ability to work from wherever you like and the flexibility to work around your lifestyle, however, self-employment needs to be well-researched in order to protect yourself and your income.

Self-employed people are protected in the same way as an employee, which can lead to issues. Protecting yourself with a firm that has a good reputation in lawsuits such as the Zarwin Baum lawsuit, outsourcing to an accountant for your taxes, and using an IT service are three ways you can protect yourself, but what uncommon areas need to be looked at?

Let’s have a look below at some of the ways you can protect yourself, that you may not think about.

Sickness And Holidays

This has to be one of the top benefits of being an employee, sick and holiday pay. As soon as you are a freelancer you lose this benefit, and it’s not something that people think about until they need it. This can pose a threat, especially if you need ot take a week off sick, or want to go on a well-deserved holiday without worrying about losing money.

The best way to resolves this is by resting yourself a sickness and annual leave fund. Put some funds to one side each month. This way you have a buffer to rely on if you are sick or go on holiday. If you have a business bank account, then you will probably do well if you pay yourself a wage each month, and leave the remainder in the business bank.

Insurance Is An Essential

It’s natural to make mistakes, therefore, you need to ensure you are protected. You can have strict protocols and consider yourself a strict worker, and still make a mistake. NOt having insurance to protect yourself could have a huge impact on your earnings, especially if you end up being liable for a mistake. Liability insurance is the most common insurance that freelancers use.

Use A Contract

This is the first way that you can protect yourself. It is the number one way you can ensure you are getting the correct payments. You should have a contract for your clients ot sign when you are planning any projects. This both protects your funds as well as protecting you if there are ever any disputes. It provides something for you and your clients to refer to throughout the contract period so you both know what to expect.

Although freelancers may face some challenges, there are still many benefits that outweigh the negative, even more so if you protect yourself with the above tips. As long as you put steps in place to ensure you are protected freelancing is a brilliant way to have control over your career and earning potential.

Why You Should Start A Company

/in /by

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Start a company|Why You Should Start A CompanyMany people would love to start a company. But have you ever really asked yourself why you’re doing it? Like, what’s the point?

Well, in this post, we provide some answers. It turns out that starting a business is about more than just having more money in the bank. It’s about so much more.

You Have More Job Security

Climbing the corporate ladder is an ordeal. You never quite know whether you’re about to go up the next rung. And when you don’t progress, you can feel like you’re being deliberately targeted or let down by the people around you. It’s not fun.

But when you have your own business, those sorts of politics don’t matter one bit. Instead, you’re the boss and you decide the direction that the company goes. It’s your job to create a system that generates money. And because you’re not worried about promotions, you have so much more energy to devote to providing customers with value.

You Can Be More Creative

Another advantage of setting up a company is the fact that you can be more creative. Corporate environments often force people to follow tried-and-tested paths. But as an independent businessperson, you can branch out and take risks that regular management teams would never allow.

You Get Tax Breaks

Why do some many ultra-wealthy people own businesses? It’s pretty simple really: they love the tax breaks.

Think about it. Corporate taxes are much lower than income taxes. So if you run your salary through a company, you wind up keeping more of your profits than if you do it through regular PAYE.

You Get More Control Over Your Life

Here’s the biggest benefit of owning your own business: you get to call the shots. There’s no manager sending you emails at the weekend, demanding that you have work done by Monday morning. Instead, your time is your own, and you can use it as you please. If you’re not happy with the amount of time you’re spending at work, you can always hire somebody to take over the necessary tasks for you. Nobody is telling you that you should do anything.

You Can Get Real Financial Independence

You can achieve financial independence working nine to five in a regular job. But it takes years and years of struggle.

When you own a business, though, you can massively shorten the time it takes to build wealth. What would take some people ten years might only take you two. If you’re really quick off the mark, you could make serious returns that outpace your regular job in less than a year.

You’re Following A Passion

Following your passions in life is critical. You’re only here for a limited amount of time, so you need to find things to do that make you feel fulfilled. And, if you’re like most people, that’s not working in insurance for 30 years. Starting a business is a blank slate which you can take anywhere you like. It’s something that makes you feel engaged every day of your life.