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How to Start a Team Building Events Company

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StrategyDriven Business Startup Article | How to Start a Team Building Events CompanyWhile most business owners are aware of the fact that their employees play a huge part in the company’s overall success, it has really only been in the past decade or so that business owners have come to appreciate that to its fullest. Not only do you need a staff of properly trained, experienced, and knowledgeable employees, but they also need to work well as a team. If there is a lack of communication or conflict between staff and departments, the entire company suffers, as does the bottom line.

This is where team building activities and events have really taken center stage, as they are the perfect way to bring everyone together and start to open up lines of communication and build trust with one another. This has also sparked the creation of team building events companies, who are the ones that put these events together and host them.

If you’ve been watching this trend and feel like now is the time to get in the ring and open your own team building events company, then here are some tips that can help you get started.

Create a Business Plan

Just like with any business the best place to start is with a plan. Within this plan, you want to outline the basic concept of your company, outline the business’s goals, describe what actions and plans you will take in order to reach your goals, who your target market is, what services and products you will offer, the financials, and how many employees you’ll need.

Invest in Engaging Games, Activities, and Rides

In order to be successful with your team building events company, you’re going to need to stand out from the competition, as this is an industry that is growing fast. One of the best ways to stand out is to offer your clients the best of the best when it comes to engaging games, activities, and rides. Clients need to be able to take a look at your offerings and feel as though you’ll knock it out of the park where employee engagement is concerned.

Take a look at the options available through Galaxy Multi Rides via https://galaxymultirides.com/ as great examples. You can invest in any one of these games and rides and know that displaying them on your company website will draw attention.

Ensure You Have a Digital Presence

This leads us to the next tip which is to ensure you have a robust and engaging digital presence right from the start. This means a professional looking website that operates smoothly and a presence on all the top social networks. Digital platforms will provide you with a way to interact and engage with the public, fill them in on new and exciting offerings and promotions, share useful information, and start to build name recognition.

Remember Any Business Takes Time to Grow

Even with following each of these tips, it’s important to remind yourself that your team building events company will take time to build and grow. This is natural and just part of being an entrepreneur.

Staging Your Independent Coffee Shop

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Business Startup| Staging Your Independent Coffee ShopIn 2018, the US coffee shop market grew to over $45 billion, with over 36,600 stores across the country. While a lot of stores belong to chained brands, such as Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, more and more independent shops are carving a spot to call their own in a competitive market. Indeed, more and more coffee enthusiasts are looking for a unique experience with their favorite brew. There’s plenty of room for independent business owners to tap into the interests of an educated and savvy audience. But at the same time, it’s essential to provide the same level of service than your customer would get in a branded chain.

Too many independent coffee shop owners forget to prioritize their customer expectations as part of their decor. While an independent shop can be the stage in a more rustic approach, it doesn’t mean that you should miss on some essential factors, such as:

A menu that blows your customers away

Your customers have probably experienced the likes of Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and Tim Hortons before they’ve diversified their search for good coffee to include independent stores. As a result, they’re used to updated and modern visual displays when it comes to the menu. If you want to appeal to coffee amateurs, a digital signage would allow you to capture an image of each type of drinks, which can be useful – not everyone knows the difference between a Cortado and a Ristretto, for instance. Additionally, with the popularity of Veganuary, it’s impossible to ignore the impact of the vegan diet in everyday business. With customers demanding dairy-free alternatives to milk and vegan biscuits, you need to offer a diverse and inclusive selection of drinks and snacks.

Your interior says a lot about you

Your decor is your brand. It goes beyond the choice of furniture or colors. Ultimately, you need to find options that not only fit your budget but that also supports your vision. Creating a style that emphasizes the personality of your coffee while keeping your customers comfortable is significant. Independent shops prefer to focus their attention on reclaimed materials, which gives an eco-friendly finish. Additionally, using specialist materials on the wall, floor and ceiling can help to create a space that isn’t too loud – or that doesn’t sound too echoey which could be creepy for customers. Even though it is fashionable to create an atmospheric shop with dramatic lighting, do try to maximize natural light to make the room feel brighter and friendlier.

Go big online or don’t go at all

Last, but not least, you should seize every occasion to ask your customers how they like their #coffee. Indeed, Instagram is changing the way coffee shop promote their brands, encouraging bold creations and inspiring designs. The account @coffeeoprops, for instance, bring expert together to share their knowledge and passion around coffee, through artistic photos. There’s a lot of exciting ideas for you to learn how to make the most of each shot online by playing with the light, the colors and the contrast.

Independent coffee shops need to build a solid presence, in their premises and online, if they want to appeal to an audience of brew lovers. From offering practical solutions to introducing inclusive designs and menus, you need to make your shop everyone’s cup of tea… or coffee!

Starting Up Your Small Healthcare Clinic

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleIncreasing numbers of people are growing tired of working for someone else. Sure, employed life has its perks. Your employer takes responsibility over your safety and well-being in the workplace, they have to guarantee contracted hours (ensuring you always take home a livable pay packet), and you benefit from paid annual leave, sick leave, and parental leave. But it does grow tiresome building someone else’s dream on their behalf and only getting paid a portion of what they are gaining for your hard work. It’s not all too surprising that many people are turning to setting up their own businesses. Huge numbers of employees are becoming self-employed and heading to the world of E-commerce. This is a good idea – selling consumer products online can be extremely profitable and is a relatively simple path to pursue, as long as you have an innovative product concept. But it’s important to remember that this isn’t the only option out there. There are plenty of other paths you can follow when it comes to setting up a small business. One idea that you could undertake is setting up a small healthcare clinic. Here are a few of the basics you’d need to follow to do this!

Hire a Consultant

It is highly recommended that you hire a consultant who has dealt with opening medical practices before. There are numerous pitfalls that could get in your way during the startup process, so it’s a good idea to have someone on your side who can warn you of different steps that you need to take to be granted permission to open and operate your business.

Invest in High-Quality Equipment

One of the most expensive steps of setting up a private medical practice or clinic is purchasing the equipment necessary to treat patients safely. This will range from medical supplies such as needles, syringes, intravenous lines and solutions to furniture that can organise these supplies like Medical Supply Carts with Drawers.

Invest in Software

You will also have to invest in software such as electronic health record systems, practice management systems, medical billing systems, medical transcription software, background check systems, and credit card processors. This will all allow your staff to monitor patients’ conditions, keep records, and process payments.

Taking On Staff

You need to be extremely vigilant when taking on staff of any kind to work in your clinic. Medical staff must be fully educated, trained, and qualified to practice – you will require proof of this. Administrative staff must understand patient confidentiality and data protection law.

Marketing

You will have to market your small practice a lot in order to draw customers away from their current service provider. It’s generally best to collaborate with professional marketing services who can conduct market research and find the best way to reach out to your target demographic.

These are just a few brief steps that you should bear in mind when getting started on this journey. While setting up a small healthcare clinic isn’t the easiest of tasks, it can make you a whole lot of profit in the long run!

Setting Up a Corporation

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship Article

If you’re at the point in your business where you are wanting to set up a more formal structure, there are many things to consider and this can be quite a serious business challenge, in terms of deciding which legal entity is going to be best.

After all, one size does not fit all when it comes to corporate structures, particularly when it comes to working with other people, and whilst it might feel more respectable to set yourself up as an s corp or a limited liability partnership, it might be more appropriate and tax efficient to remain as a sole trader that works in partnership with another sole trader – rather than setting up a joint venture together.

In the sense of making your business feel more credible, there are many different options to consider when it comes to your legal status; the main options in the US are;

1. Sole Proprietorship
2. Partnership
3. Business Corporation

In this article, we’re going to look at each of these options and weigh up the pros and cons.

1. Sole Proprietorship

This is the simplest form of business set-up and is the default to most people setting up a business, in that it reflects the fact there is one person owning and controlling the business – meaning they are personally responsible for all liabilities but also benefit from all the profits (in that they don’t legally need to be shared with anyone else).

PROS
A sole proprietorship is very inexpensive to form, easy to dissolve (which means to stop trading), and there are very few formalities other than basic bookkeeping and reporting your earnings to the relevant authorities. This type of business is ideal for people that are selling a service, such as personal training or beauty therapy, though it’s just as relevant for consultants – however, some companies will only do business with other registered corporations.

CONS
The business ceases to exist upon your death, meaning it’s not willable or can continue in perpetuity after you die. You are personally liable for the debt and any legal issues that arise from your business operations. It has less credibility when trying to win business with large companies.

In a nutshell, this is the simplest business to form and operate, as it’s simply an individual using a trade name to operate under – yet, the owner has full liability for the obligations of the business, which, if you consider the possibility of being sued or owing substantial debt can feel much more onerous than if you are a director of a company.

2. Partnership

A partnership is simply an association of two or more components, which include people, corporations, other partnerships, trusts and so on. The parties within the partnership are responsible for the business.

In simple terms, the people enter into a partnership make an agreement to share the profits and losses that result from their activity.

The challenge is that the liability of partners is joint and several, meaning any person can be made to pay the debts of the partnership, irrespective of all other factors. This can make things feel very unfair and risky, as whilst one partner might only receive 10% of the profits they could find themselves liable for 100% of the debt of the partnership.

PROS
It adds a sense of formality to the relationship when multiple stakeholders are working together for a common purpose. It is relatively inexpensive to form. The profits are distributed according to the terms of the partnership, which makes things simple and unambiguous in terms of future profit allocation.

CONS
Each partner is liable for the whole of the partnership’s debt, even if they have a small share of the profit – meaning the risks are very high, particularly if you are going into partnership with a person or company that turns out to not be as trustworthy as you first thought.

There are a number of different partnership structures and this one is something to think carefully about, as whilst you might feel more secure in terms of entering a formal partnership, you really do need to be careful who you “go to bed with” in this sense.

3. Business Corporation

A business corporation is a legal entity in its own right. This his means that unlike a partnership and sole proprietorship it is a separate entity that is governed in accordance with laws set out by the state.

In broad terms, there are two types of corporations; for profit and not-for-profit.

The majority of businesses are ‘for profit’ in the sense that they aim to conduct activity that derives a profit, and from that profit, dividends are paid to shareholders depending on their allocation of shares.

There are two types of corporations in the sense of where they have been registered, you can have a domestic corporation that means the company was incorporated under the laws of the United States (specifically, the state in which the corporation was registered), or you can have a foreign corporation, which is a company that has been incorporated under the laws of another country, or state within the US.

A corporation is much more complex than a partnership or sole proprietorship, as a new legal entity is created, that is subsequently regulated by a number of onerous administrative procedures. The benefit to this, however, is that unlike a partnership where things can get a little dicey in terms of liability, if a company incurs a debt, it is the company’s debt rather than the partner’s liability.

The owners of a corporation are called shareholders. The shareholders then elect directors (often themselves) to set the policies of the corporation. The directors then appoint officers of the corporation to manage the day to day operations.

In reality, you could be a shareholder, director, and officer of the company – but the key point to focus on here is that corporations are their own legal entity, and as such, you are employed by the corporation (usually) even though you are technically the owner of the business.

In essence, a corporation is separate from its shareholders. This means that a shareholder cannot just take the funds and abscond, unlike a partnership, which offers a lot more legal and financial protection, but can feel inflexible if you are a one person startup or small family business.

PROS
Things are secure and regulated. Everyone knows the score, and things are not ambiguous or open to personal discussion – there are processes and procedures to follow… meaning, all shareholders have security in terms of their interests. It also creates a democracy, in terms of decision making, which some entrepreneurs value whilst others do not.

CONS
There is a significant administrative burden with regard to setting up a corporation and maintaining the records.

Five Key Aspects You May Miss Out When Starting Your Business

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StrategyDriven Entrepreneurship ArticleStarting a new business can be simultaneously exciting and terrifying. You have this idea in your head, and now it’s time to make it into reality. But it can be easy to get caught up in the excitement of starting something new and wholly yours that you might neglect some parts of the process. And as the saying goes, “the journey is far more important than the destination.”

Here are five things you may miss out as part of your business endeavor that proves to be essential in the long run:

Make sure you have a detailed and well-researched business plan

This is the foundation of your business idea. Without a business plan, you might as well be grasping in the dark and may even jeopardize the running of your business in the long term. It’s easy to make mistakes when it comes to business plans, and you may miss out on certain things so do your research, and you’ll thank yourself later.

Customers, products or services, operations, sales and marketing strategies, management and competitors – these are the absolute minimum, and when writing up your business plan, you must include all of these key areas. Show that you have done your research and that you did not just run into the business industry with an idea and no plan by including industry trends and market analysis. As well as this, your plan must include a detailed financial flow, from month cash flow to income statements.

That being said, don’t get caught up in the details. This can be common with technology-based start-ups where technical jargon is thrown around, without taking into account the reader. But if you must include such keywords, make sure to include an appendix to increase accessibility. A business plan must be easy to read and understand so lay down your idea and your plans as succinctly as possible. Take into consideration that you may be required to submit a business plan when asking a bank for a loan or applying for business grants to further grow your business. Without strategies set in place, whether this is for sales and marketing or otherwise, you cannot persuade a bank to lend you what you need.

A business plan is not only useful when applying for loans or grants, but also acts as a guide to grow your business. This helps you identify and pursue goals and objectives that lead to the growth of your company and details the steps that will need to be taken to accomplish this.

Invest in reliable security

Whether you are starting an e-commerce or are venturing into opening a physical store, investing in reliable security is one of the most important steps you can take.

This is particularly relevant to data security. Chances are, your business will use electronic systems and these use data to operate. From information regarding your employees to your customers, these are all data.

With such sensitive and confidential data in your company’s system, you must put into place to keep these as secure as possible. Your customers, particularly, are trusting you with their sensitive information, whether these be bank details or home addresses, whenever they buy your product or use your service. When there is a breach in security, it is not only revenue that is at stake but your customer’s trust – and as a result, your company’s reputation. It is important that you invest in reliable security to keep sensitive and confidential data as safe as possible.

Likewise, keeping your home office or store safe is also a priority. There are many security technologies that allow you to monitor the location through real-time updates and notification systems and you can find out more from this website about the options available.

By increasing the security for your business and ensuring your customers know that you take their data protection and safety as a priority, you can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty and increase your business’s reputation.

Check if you are legally allowed to use your business name

Make sure you check if your business name is taken by another company before you start printing this on business cards, social media and other marketing and sales related areas. A simple search can let you know if the name you have chosen for your business is already taken or if you are free to use it. If the name is already trademarked and you have used it, then this can land you in legal trouble.

Don’t forget to set up a business bank account

Combining your personal and business finances leads to confusion – and it can create suspicion if ever your local or state tax bureaus or the IRS start asking questions. You’re far better off keeping personal and business monies separate for those reasons – and certain legal structures require you to do it that way. As a bonus, you’ll appear more professional and credible when writing checks from your business versus your personal account.

Know your competitors

You may think that your new product or service has no competition, is novel and above existing products – you’re wrong. Most often than not, it’s extremely rare to not have any competitors in an increasingly saturated business industry. But this doesn’t have to be a weakness; instead, do your research. Find out who your competitors are and how your business can be better.

How can you differentiate your business from an existing one? By researching your competitors, you can not only find ways on how you can improve your own business but also learn more about your own business as a whole, your customers and their habits.

By constantly improving and adapting to a constantly changing business industry and customer base, you can ensure your business stays on top and beat out competitors when the tides change.
Making your business idea, a reality can be exciting. With these few things in mind, you can ensure that even if the road towards your business goals and objectives is rocky, that you will know exactly where to go for success.