Preparing Your Business To Go Global

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Global Success|Preparing Your Business To Go GlobalSo you’re past the start-up stage, and you are now experiencing some fantastic results that show your hard work has paid off. Now is the time to think about preparing for your business to become a global success. With the Internet and communication options available to us now, there are many different things we need to consider ahead of taking the plunge to offer our services worldwide. They start with just translation options and can end with opening a store in a different country. But whatever you choose to do you must be prepared for every eventuality. As taking your products or services worldwide is a huge step for anybody. So what sort of things do you need to consider? And how can you improve your chances of worldwide success?

Translation of documents

Documents that you would’ve had in English will need to be translated into the language of the country you are planning to provide services in. It’s important to note that where possible everyone should have access to clear and accurate information about your products and services. Luckily we have many online options that will translate things for you, and services such as a spanish voice over, that will put you one step ahead. Ideally hiring somebody to do this for you will get you the best results in the shortest time. But of course, this will be a costly option. As with anything, you get what you pay for, and this is something you may not want to fall short on.

Research laws

When planning on taking your products and services to a different country, you will, of course, need to consider the rules and legislation inside the country, the reason for this is that you don’t want to accidentally break the law or not keep up with legislation that will ultimately cause you a headache. This is quite only done if you have a good lawyer or solicitor, and of course, will mean you will prevent fines and legal fees once you start your change over.

Provide Information

Providing information and training to all of your staff is essential. Also ensuring that you hired the right people in the right places for your plans to work, it’s going to save you a lot of trouble further down the line. People have in the past come up short and discovered that they didn’t train their staff effectively. This in turn can cause stress and a loss in profits if you aren’t careful. Ultimately you need to make sure that you are well-informed, and your staff are as well. Paragraph if you don’t feel as though you are prepared for the significant change, there may be something you should reconsider, or more research to be done before you take the big step.

Taking your business global is an exciting but potentially difficult to manage. Still, if you do it in the right way, by researching checking everything thoroughly, and ensuring that you have done everything you can to prevent problems, you should see success follow. Ultimately if you don’t try, you will never know if it could work.

Freelance Career Taking Off? Three Strategies You’ll Definitely Need

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Freelance|Freelance Career Taking Off? Three Strategies You'll Definitely NeedIf your freelancing business is growing fast, you may be starting to think about hiring more people, and even asking questions about outsourcing. And that’s not a bad idea. A period of growth can be thrilling for a freelancer. That said, it can also pose significant challenges if you find yourself unable to cope with the uptick in demand, as well as the increasing complexity that comes with becoming a larger operation.

But that’s no reason to feel intimidated. These tips will help you anticipate some of the most common pitfalls of rapid growth for freelancers, and put measures in place to avoid them.

Manage Your Cash Flow

When you had just started your business, you may have been able to manage your accounts without too much confusion. But expansion brings more clients and staggered projects on different timelines, both of which contribute to a vastly more complex cashflow system. Cash flow can be a bit like dominoes: letting one piece fall can quickly result in the whole system collapsing. With that in mind, it makes sense to invest in freelancer accounting tools to help you keep your ducks in a row.

Goodbye, Home Office

Launching your freelancing business from home makes sense on so many levels. You have no overheads, you can work whenever you want, and you can control your environment to avoid distractions.

But once your business starts to grow, you may start to feel like your home office is holding you back. Unless you live in a very central location, you may not be able to make it to important meetings with clients at short notice, so you could be missing out on opportunities for expansion. (And if you do commute in to meet with clients, where will you meet them? A Starbucks? How unprofessional does that look!) And how are you supposed to grow your team if you don’t have opportunities to meet like minded people? Working in isolation means you miss out on networking opportunities, which could be costing you more business than your thrifty home office is saving you per month. In other words, working from home has started to cost you money.

Time to get out of the house. That’s not to say you need to lease your own office. A coworking space could provide the central location and networking events you need to boost your business, without the upfront financial commitment or high rent.

StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Freelance|Freelance Career Taking Off? Three Strategies You'll Definitely NeedBe the Boss of Your Taxes

The bigger your business gets, and the more people are involved, the more complicated your tax situation becomes. There are decisions to be made about how you present yourself legally, like whether you want to incorporate or remain as an individual trader. And there’s nothing more detrimental to a business than falling behind or defaulting on your taxes simply because of a lack of organization and foresight. If your business is starting to grow, it makes sense to sit down with an accountant and get your head around your tax obligations, making sure you tick all the right boxes and stay fully above board.

Whether you’re a copywriter, web designer or social media manager, your freelance business will go through some significant changes once you start to gather momentum. These tips will help you avoid the speed wobbles that this exciting period of growth could bring.

The Strains And Positives Of Owning A Commercial Building Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article | The Strains And Positives Of Owning A Commercial Building BusinessThe commercial building sector is on fire right now. Never before in the history of humanity, has the desire for office space has been greater. Now you have millions of entrepreneurs, micro and small business owners that are growing at an alarming rate, who all want office space. They almost always look toward the commercial high-rise building sector to fulfill their needs. So if you own a series of commercial office buildings, you’re probably making a killing these days; well almost. Energy efficiency is a hot topic these days because we’re in a transition period. The world is heading toward a fossil fuel free climate, whereby coal, crude, and gas are going to be slowly phased out in favor of electricity and green energy. It won’t happen overnight, but if you own skyscrapers, you will want to prepare your structures for a mass upgrading marathon.

The way in

Wherever there are ways into the building, you’ll see the most amount of heat loss. This will be the windows, roof steam vents, and HVAC units to name a few. These are the major problem areas for any high-rise building. The wind up at hundreds of feet is a lot more than it is down on the ground. Thus, HVAC units have to work harder to make sure cold air is not filtered into the offices. On top of this, every single pane of glass has to be sealed properly and also, trap heat as efficiently as possible. The buildings have to provide excellent views and also not allow the warmth to be stolen from the climate outside. So you should be seeking to fit energy-efficient glass in incremental stages as this process can take months to do properly. On top of that, you will want steam vents to be properly designed so no air is allowed back in through the major opening.

Modern material implementation

Modern energy-efficient building materials are a must for any commercial building. You don’t know what your clients are going to be doing in the offices all the time. They may be working all day and all night long. Thus, you should have a mindset of allowing your clients to work 24-hours a day non-stop. So, learning how you could implement modern materials by speaking with Energy Management Association about their certification process is in your interest. They seek to train you in energy management that will benefit you as a building owner. Utilizing the latest materials, you could slowly upgrade your buildings while retaining the existing structures. You’ll also learn how to implement and use new technologies that help you discover when things are faulty in your buildings such as pumps not working properly or pipes leaking.

Plenty of advancements

There’s no shortage of advancements in the energy efficiency realm for those that own commercial buildings. Since it’s a highly profitable industry, you’ll never be without good solid advice and professional channels for sound advice. Head to an energy efficiency conference for commercial high-rises to get educated on your existing and future challenges.

Owning commercial buildings is a great pathway into the future since there are so many people who want their own or shared office spaces. However, you must continue to upgrade your materials and re-evaluate your designs to save money on energy.

Environmental impact

Though the above steps are useful in moving towards an eco-friendly future, it’s important that you always consider the environmental impact of any work that you carry out. For example, if you were planning on constructing more commercial buildings – your focus should not only be on obtaining land but instead should focus on obtaining the right kind of land. For example, you may need to carry out ecological surveys ahead of time if the construction of your next commercial property could interfere with animals or wildlife. This is due to the fact that many animals, such as bats, are classified as a protected species – meaning certain steps must be taken ahead of time to maximize their safety.

Therefore, it is within your best interest to work with companies that provide bat surveys for professional ecologists,  as this means they can perform routine surveys to figure out whether any bats are living in the area in which you intend to build upon. Working with these companies means that you can continue with your construction without damaging animal life – thus clearly demonstrating your commitment to a greener planet.

Use Your Story to Sell Yourself

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Brand Marketing|Use Your Story to Sell YourselfBrand marketing is something every business should focus on if it wants to excel in its industry. If you are a business owner, you must apply this strategy to every campaign you launch to ensure that people don’t just use your service, but they keep coming back for more.

But how does a business decide on its brand? Everyone has a story. A tale of who you are and how you got to where you are, but some business owners prefer to forget the past and only focus on the future, where in fact it’s the past that can prove most fruitful for them.

Through this story, you can start building something that customers and clients come to recognize. They associate the story with your business, and if done right, this can make you more appealing.

Be Authentic, But Avoid Sob Stories

Authenticity in business is difficult to unlock. Regardless of your best intentions, a company that appears to be pandering to its customers can drive them away. A little sentimentality is okay here and there, but if it doesn’t match your brand, then it can have adverse effects on your business.

It’s also vital to avoid sob stories. It might work on reality TV, but business is not reality TV. A sob story can come across as fake, and it can distract from the service your company offers. No business wants customers that pity them, so while it’s okay to be honest, it’s perhaps best to ease off on going full superhero-origin-story.

Customers are smarter than a lot of people like to admit, and they are sure to catch on if something about your business seems a little off. In a time where information is accessible to anyone who knows how to Google, any half-truth or an outright lie can be easily fact-checked.

Freebies to Reflect You

Everyone loves a freebie, so you should take advantage of spreading awareness for your brand by investing in promotional products complete with your name, logo, and even contact details that you can give away at events.

Anyone who has ever been to a business convention knows these places are ripe for grabbing as much as you can, and freebies are up there with networking and competitor research as one of the big reasons people attend.

So it’s about time you use this to your advantage. The promotional items you hand out there can give future customers an idea of why they need your service, even if they don’t they do just yet. If the products reflect you, it makes it easier for people to identify with you, which will drive them to choose you over competitors.

A Brand Personality

Once upon a time, brands were brands, and people were people, and they lived in (mostly) harmony. However, the rise of social media and the ability to interact with customers, this has blended into something a little too Frankenstein’s Monster for some people’s liking.

But this is a minority, and more and more brands are jumping on the social media marketing train to spread brand awareness. You likely saw the Wendy’s phenomenon from 2017, and many companies followed suit. They understand that the general audience is sick of the corporate nonsense that plagues LinkedIn. They don’t want to talk to a representative anymore with a clean-shaven face and slicked-back hair. They want to speak to someone real.

Creating and maintaining a brand personality helps customers differentiate from similar brands in your industry. If you do it right without causing offence or being several weeks behind internet trends, then you can reap the benefits, and even if people aren’t buying what you are selling, they are at least talking about you.

Fighting For A Cause

Every company should have a cause to fight for. However, there are so many charities and fundraising opportunities that it is difficult to decide which is right for you. However, here is where your story comes in.

We’ve already established that sob stories are not always ideal, but you can still use the inspiration from your past to help choose the right cause to fight for. If you have had family members with illnesses, then help improve donations for charities fighting such diseases. If you’ve always had a passion for nature, then environmental causes are the way to go. Only you know what motivated you to start your company, so choose something based on that drive.

Fighting for a cause help you appeal to a broader market and even people who may not be your target market. They will see you have principles and be drawn to discover what you do. As long as you stick to these principles and don’t sell out for a profit, your fight could inspire others.

A Human Touch

Despite all these options, there are few better ways to use your story to sell yourself than actually getting your face out there so that customers can put a face to the logo. It’s often too easy to forget that behind the branding and the products are people hoping to do their best, so you can help people remember this by being ever-present.

You can do this by taking the opportunity to engage with your community, especially when launching a store somewhere new. This helps ease any fears they may have, and also gives you the chance to field questions regarding your business.

It’s too easy for people to be cruel when hiding behind a keyboard, but seeing you in person may change their approach, and instead of spitting bile, you might be able to have a conversation that’s productive rather than destructive.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

A business that has a story, especially one that others can relate to, is the perfect way to guarantee that your brand marketing is on point every single time. However, you cannot solely rely on this story, as once you get big enough, it may not be as relevant as it once was. Combine your story with ideas that set you apart from your competitors so you can add chapter after chapter to a story that is only just beginning.

3 Knowledge Gaps That Small Business Owners Need To Fill

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article |Business Owner|3 Knowledge Gaps That Small Business Owners Need To FillThere are a lot of misconceptions about running a business, and the biggest one is that some people are born to be business owners and some aren’t. But the idea that you either have it or you don’t isn’t really true. There are certain qualities that a good business owner needs and some people do have those natural talents. But if you are going to be a successful business owner, there are a lot of skills that you have to learn as well. A lot of new business owners don’t realize this and they think that they are guaranteed to succeed because they are a born business leader. Unfortunately, that means that a lot of new business owners have some serious knowledge gaps, and they run into problems. If you are about to embark on your business journey, it’s important that you fill these skills gaps.

Finances

The most important thing in any business is the finances. If you are an accountant that has experience working for a business, you should be fine. Otherwise, you won’t have a clue what you’re doing when it comes to business finances. Poor money management could sink your business, so it’s vital that you learn about business finances and where to turn for help when you need it. This small business bookkeeping guide will give you more information on how to manage your money and find the right bookkeeping service to help you stay on top of your finances. If you start a business without a good working knowledge of how to handle your money, your chances of success are slim.

The Law

There are a lot of exciting things about starting your own business, like watching your simple idea progress through the development stages until it finally becomes a working product. But it’s not all fun and games and there are some boring bits to deal with as well. One thing that people struggle with the most is the legal aspect. Business laws can get very confusing, and if you make mistakes, it could land you in a lot of trouble. These legal tips can help you out, but it’s important that you spend some time learning about business law and you hire a lawyer when you are out of your depth.

Process Management

Process management really catches people out because it’s not something that you will have to deal with when you first start the business. With a small team of 2 or 3 people and a relatively low number of sales, it’s easy to manage the workflow. But when your sales and marketing team start to grow and your sales volume increases, things get a lot tougher. Productivity will take a big hit if you don’t put processes in place to manage things, but a lot of new business owners don’t know how to run a business on that scale. You can use automation software to help a lot here, but you need to spend some time learning how larger businesses use process management to handle a large workload efficiently.

If you can’t fill these knowledge gaps before you start your new business, you will soon be out of your depth.