What Motivates You In Your Business?

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | What Motivates You In Your Business?What motivates you in your business? What do you strive to accomplish? Answers to these pivotal questions reflect the character and personality of the business owner. As a woman of Asian ethnicity, an immigrant, in a highly competitive, male-dominated printing and publishing field, my answers rose to the surface after receiving discriminatory and stereotypical mistreatment while on the job. Instead of defeat and victimization leaching and sucking the life out of me, I chose to rise above. Discrimination motivated me and I pushed harder, worked tirelessly, looked past boundaries, dug into my creativity, and became a top salesperson in the first company, and opened a business in the printing/publishing field with my specific niche some years later.

I left that traditional printing company to start my own printing business TSE Worldwide Press, Inc., and in that process, realized as an entrepreneur I had to reinvent myself. My beginning in printing coffee-table style books of the highest quality caliber stood above my competitors in the field. My ability for meticulous precision, to spot issues and correct them quickly and before printing, gave me the business edge.

Entrepreneurship excites and invigorates me. As a graphic artist, to create products and services with ingenuity starting from zero to completion thrills me and makes me more than satisfied to have left the “traditional” behind. The ability to take a client’s dream, an image in their heads, and fashion it into a completed product while solving problems along the way, makes my life work fulfilling! I knew I had struck gold when my products sold out repeatedly, and my customers kept reordering. Their feedback crucially contributes to my achievements. Customer feedback should be carefully listened to and learned from. This may make or break your business.

However wonderful operating my business may be, there are times in which I am left wondering what had I done wrong. Jumping feet first into this opportunity, I felt like I would drown. The fear of the unknown, lack of experience, lack of strength caused problems at the beginning. I suffered huge losses from not knowing how to handle dishonest customers. The difficult realization that “honest” customers turned into “dishonest” customers, those who took advantage of my naivetés and trustworthiness, eventually toughened me up. I learned to listen to my gut, which would warn me, and to advisers, friends, family, business associates who gave input into my life. I constructed guidelines, terms, procedures to protect my company and myself, and became increasingly selective of customers. I also made the same choices for hiring employees. Not only did these steps accelerate my business, they accelerated my personal growth. In addition, I learned to stop and take a break, and implement self-care. The temptation to overwork increases as passion increases, but soon you find yourself burnt out. Solve the question, where do I want to go? Find a mentor or two who will guide and give input into your life. On my website, I include tips for new business professionals looking for guidance.

Today, my definition of success focuses on helping others succeed. The joy I receive when my happy, satisfied, and financially successful customers see their dream project become reality compares to no other. Furthermore, it is extremely rewarding when my staff members and employees excel under my mentorship. Corporately, as a group, we contribute a section of our revenue to charity in giving back to the community which supports us. These define success for me.

My advice to new entrepreneurs: find a passion, a trade, that you genuinely enjoy and that does not feel like work. Think of something that you absolutely love to do and make a product out of it. Ask for input about your ideas from family, friends, people who know you well in business and as acquaintances, to obtain an objective perspective. If you are a female entrepreneur, take any negativity and obstacles thrown at you and use them as opportunities to improve yourself. Those who doubt you now will one day respect and trust you. If they do not in the future, put them aside for they are not worth your time or energy.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Sarah Y. TseSarah Y. Tse is founder and CEO of United Yearbook Company and co-founder and CEO of TSE Worldwide Press. Her new book is 7 Years on the Front Line : True Stories and Tough Lessons about a Small Business that You Won’t Learn in a Classroom.

For more information, please visit www.sarahytse.com or www.tseworldwidepress.com.

It’s A Dog-Eat-Dog World Out There, But Only If You Allow It

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Business is often described as a dog eat dog world. But things only usually get that bad if you let them. Here is some advice from entrepreneurs who learned serious lessons through their own experience on how to avoid getting screwed over by their business partners, and the people that they work with.

Always Avoid Emotionality

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article

It’s great that passion motivates the positive aspects of your business and drives you forward to new heights. But passion in business can get you into trouble, especially when emotions turn negative. Things will go wrong in business. People will try to take advantage of you, colleagues will lie, and business partners will let you down. The key to running a successful business is to always remain cool and calculating in these situations. Losing your head can lead you to make damaging decisions that could ultimately be harmful to your business in the long run.

Meditate

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Max Pixel

Meditation and entrepreneurs don’t seem like great bedfellows. After all, entrepreneurs are all about living life at 100 MPH, and people who meditate, usually Buddhist monks, are interested in the precise opposite. But when it comes to entrepreneurship, meditation is actually of critical importance. The reason is that our brains tend to make new connections and come up with original ideas when our minds are clear from other worries. Many entrepreneurs like to meditate in the shower and are sometimes referred to as “urban shower monks.” Being able to get away from the mayhem often allows you to think about how you’ll deal with a difficult situation better at work.

Set Clear Parameters With Your Stakeholders

One of the biggest problems companies face is defining relationships between their partners, vendors, stakeholders and colleagues. Often these agreements can get out of hand, and you can find yourself losing out. This is why so many companies now use contract management software to stay on top of all their relationships with their customers. It allows them to make sure that all of their contracts are in the best interest of the company and easy to find. It also helps organizations that need to scale rapidly manage their risks in real time.

Be Strategic

StrategyDriven Practices for Professionals Article
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Command and control entrepreneurs don’t usually do all that well. They think that people are working for them because they really want to and they believe in the company, but most of the time it’s just so that they can put food on the table at night. Some business leaders think that all they have to do is tell their employees what to do by force of will and they will obey. But this isn’t how people work. Instead, interacting with people is more like a game of chess. It’s strategic, and often people will do and say things that lead to their strategic advantage. For years Donald Trump ingratiated himself with the highest echelons of society. Now he’s bringing them to their knees. It’s all about long-term planning and cunning. Think carefully about what is actually motivating the people who work for you and with you.

Constructing an Office in a Desert: 4 points to look for

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Constructing an office |Constructing an Office in a Desert: 4 points to look forDeserts are an unforgiving place for people who are not prepared for it. People often visit deserts for tourism purposes. They like having a glance at the never-ending patches of land with no signs of water around and the unbearable temperatures. Visiting a desert is all fun and games but working in a desert is a different ball game altogether. A desert isn’t hot all the time. It’s temperature skyrockets in the day and drops down drastically at night. It is basically chilly at night and hot in the daytime. For businesses that have night shifts, it can be a very challenging environment. Working in such conditions requires some extra effort and things that are not so common in a regular office. Let’s have a look at them.

Light-colored reflective paint

Heat in the daytime is almost unbearable in most deserts. An office in the desert means that the whole structure will be absorbing the heat in the day time which will be trapped inside the office. It will no doubt start heating like an oven within an hour. To avoid such heat entrapment, you could start by using reflective paint on the exterior walls and roof. A reflective paint which is usually of a light color helps reflect a lot of the heat rays from the sun. This simple trick helps bring down the temperature of the house by a lot of degrees.

Insulating Material

Insulation is the quality of a material that restricts the movement of heat through it. As discussed earlier, an office mostly heats up due to the sunlight which falls on it causing the heat to get trapped inside. By simply using insulating material to build the office or covering it with layers of insulating material, you can help tackle the heat problem effectively. Using mineral rock can be a very good idea in a desert. Structures that are built with mineral rock stay up to 30% cooler than those built with wood.

HVAC systems

Thankfully, we now have the gift of technology with us to fight extreme weather. HVAC stands for heating, ventilation and air conditioning. The experts at https://www.reznorhvac.com/ explain why HVAC is much more suited for an office in a desert than an AC. They explain that deserts don’t stay hot all throughout the day and the temperature drops very quickly when the sun falls. Soon you would be longing to bring back some of the heat. So instead of getting an AC and a heating unit separately, it would simply be a smart and economical move if you got an HVAC system installed to deal with both types of extreme temperatures.

Thermal Window Curtains

You would be surprised to know how much of the heat that gets the temperature boiling comes through the windows of an office. Getting a thermal curtain can solve a lot of your heat problem by letting a bare minimum amount of heat pass through. You would feel your workplace to be a few degrees cooler in a matter of minutes. Getting such curtains and blocking off the heat will also make the other 3 tips more effective.

Getting an office in a desert can be challenging but you can easily avoid any hurdles provided you have these tricks up your sleeve. Not taking such measures can result in a lot of discomforts faced by your employees which will ultimately reflect in a negative way in your business.

Protection From A Fall, Coming In The Fall

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Protection|Protection From A Fall, Coming In The FallIf you have survived so far as a business, you may be in for another shock. Due to the lockdown, so many companies have had to let people go and some businesses have even had to close down. But for those businesses that have survived and began to go back to normal trading days, you may still be in for an uphill battle. Scientists are now saying that during the fall, there will be an ever-greater threat of getting coronavirus. It’s a strand of the flu virus, so it can survive in colder temperatures. So, professional bodies are guessing that during the fall, many more people will get the virus and thus, workers will be forced to stay at home once again.

At-home working infrastructure

Taking a survey of all your employees that are able to work from their own homes, is vital at this point in time. Make sure that you are asking these types of questions.

  • Do they have good internet to make sure they are staying on top of their emails, correspondence, conference call schedules, etc?
  • Are they able to use similar or the same software they would normally use in the office, but at home? In other words, is their computer capable of doing the work they would normally do?
  • Do they have an ability to store their work in the cloud, but also, at home? This would entail that they need to have a hard drive of some sort.
  • Do they have recreational space? Remember that working from home can sometimes feel like being trapped. So make sure that they have a space they can use for a lunch break, or talk a walk to the local park.

Protect your business

You want to also be careful about your own business and that it doesn’t get shut down or closed by a governing body. You should tell all your employees to be careful and do not bring the virus to work. However, if there is a positive case in your office, you may be told by the authorities to close your business while it is still a haven for the virus. Speak with tried and trusted insurance brokers who can find you the best and most modern business insurance plan. Check out their business interruption plan as well. This will allow you to recoup some of the losses from no longer being functional, so you can continue to pay bills and the rent, etc.

A reporting method

Coronavirus tests are relatively cheap. Every employee should be asked to buy several tests and make sure that they are testing themselves once a week at home. This allows them to tell you, every Monday, whether they can come to work or not. This prevents them from bringing the virus to work and keeps your business flowing.

As business owners, we have to prepare for the worst, so we may stay active and keep our clients and customers happy. Using these methods, you can keep your employees safe, your business flowing and planning for the fall and what it could bring.

The Importance Of Staying In Your Lane As A Business Owner

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Staying in your lane|The Importance Of Staying In Your Lane As A Business Owner However, staying in your lane isn’t always an insult, and it can actually be very beneficial for your business.

What does staying in your lane mean?

Basically, it means that you don’t try and do things that you aren’t good at. Or, more accurately, you focus on your key strengths. Lots of business owners will try to tackle too many things, which means you end up exposing your biggest weaknesses.

As a business owner, you must realize the importance of staying in your lane, rather than attempting everything by yourself. It may seem like you’re lazy, but the following points do a great job of explaining why this is the best approach to management:

Everyone focuses on their strengths

If you stay in your lane, it means you focus on what you’re good at. You might be an exceptional salesperson who captures leads like no other. It’s what you built your whole career around, so it makes sense to devote your time to closing sales. If you don’t stay in your lane, you waste time doing things you’re not good at, meaning your business misses out on your sales skills.

The same goes for other aspects and individuals within your business. If your employees focus on their strengths, you will see an improvement in performance. This is why things like IT outsourcing services have become so popular in modern times. Business owners are starting to recognize that they’re not adept at dealing with technical IT issues all the time. Instead of wasting time trying to fix IT issues, they outsource to people who are actually good at it. Everyone stays in their lane, leading to a massive boost in productivity and efficiency.

Fewer mistakes and errors

If you were asked to translate something, with very little knowledge of the foreign language, what do you think would happen? You’d give it a go, but there’d be countless mistakes and errors. In fact, you’d continue making mistakes until, eventually, you get the translation right. By contrast, what if someone fluent in that language was asked to translate it? They’d get it right instantly, saving a lot of time and minimizing errors.

You can apply the same principle to your business. If you’re doing things that are out of your comfort zone, you’re bound to make mistakes. There’s no avoiding it as you aren’t experienced. But, if you stay in your lane and focus on your strengths, there will be fewer mistakes. It’s the same for everyone else in our company, meaning your business makes fewer mistakes and errors on the whole. Again, this translates into improved performance, but the lack of errors can also boost your customer service.

In conclusion, business owners should identify their key strengths and stick to them. If you’re not good at something, find others that can fill the void. When everyone stays in their lane, a business operates far more efficiently.