Category: Business/Entrepreneurship

Presenting The Best Of Your Business

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Part of the success of your business will be impacted by how people perceive it. As such you must consider how it comes across to the others. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Presenting The Best Of Your Business.

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Presenting the best of your business isn’t always as guaranteed as some people might like to make out. It can take time, dedication, and error in order to learn how your business should present itself. What might work for you might not work for another business and vice versa, despite you both selling extremely similar products at an extremely similar price point. Businesses don’t live and die by their presentation, but that doesn’t mean they can’t necessarily struggle or flourish because of it. Presenting the best of your business is often something that gives you room to grow, room to attract an audience, and a pride in that which you offer.

There is no shame in refining your strategy and learning as much as you can to find where the sweet spot lies. Nor is there a shame in rebranding if you think you’ve gotten things wrong. There are a range of benefits you might consider when dealing with this mindset, so be sure to allow our advice to help you get there:

Focus Groups

Focus groups can help you refine your product over and over again, or perhaps gain a deeper understanding of how your business is perceived. It is extremely important to get this outsider perspective, even if you decide not to act on the information you gain. Figuring out how your branding works on a random sample size of people, or how your product is used, or exactly if your product would be necessary for them can help you redirect your understanding, help you develop a more cohesive idea of where in the market your product might work, and often help you learn things about yourself and your business that might have evaded you thus far.

This kind of raw, brutally honest feedback can often let you cut away some of the dead weight from your idea, but be sure not to give this feedback an unlimited amount of credence, because sometimes the public aren’t always completely understanding of what they want, especially when it comes to new innovation. That being said, focus groups are an essentially useful tool when hoping to present the best of your business in the future.

Visit An Expo

Expos can help you in a range of ways. Not only can they motivate you to express the absolute best of your business, and help you present that in a celebratory tone, but it helps you directly engage with those you may hope to sell to. With the use of a brilliant convention display, the willingness to enjoy a large, focused presentation effort, the potential growth of customer engagement, and the development of your best ideals, you can learn just how your branding, product and scriptwriting comes together to help your firm show itself as you had imagined it. This can not only help you learn more for future expos, but potentially begin to craft a customer base of loyal fans, that might take interest in your product for a good amount of time.

Metrics Of Success

Finding the metrics of success can help you try to repeat that which went very right, or reduce that which might have gone wrong. For example, considering the demographics of those who signed up for your Facebook promotions at the trade expo, or seeing who responds to customer feedback surveys, or considering just how many eyes your social media marketing has reached (but most importantly who engaged with the post) can help you understand a little more about that you’re offering. It can be quite interesting to see just how your product can become extremely important to a select community over time, and sometimes you may want to cater to that. For example, if someone shouts out your brand in a genre of music you might not have expected them to, you might redirect your future branding or marketing efforts to potentially capitalize on that fact, among a range of other things.

When Branding Works

It can be essential to figure out how your branding is perceived, so you can develop its presentation even further in the future. You might ask those who have never purchased your product what words come to mind when presented with your logo or simple name of your business, and if any of your advertisements, watched blind, motivates a purchase. You might try and find what social media posts worked where over others, and just what response you get from risky posts.

With these tips, you’ll learn how to present the best of your business as the years pass on.

How To Run Your Business On The Road

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Money, and Technology. In today’s digital age, it’s now possible to conduct business on the road, free of any office or store front. While this provides many, many advantages you have to the systems to do it. The following contributed post is thus entitled, How To Run Your Business On The Road.

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Whether you’re attracted to the idea of being a digital nomad full time or you just like to travel a lot and know that running an online business can actually allow you the freedom to travel all over the world as you please and still make money from your business at the same time, then you might be wondering how to get started with living such a lifestyle.

Of course, running a business is still going to be hard work no matter where you do it – of course nice beaches can certainly make it more enjoyable, so in this post we’re going to share with you some simple things you can start to implement that will allow you to run your business on the road.

Automate:

Even if you’re running your business from home, then you should still be looking at automating it as much as possible since this is what creates freedom for you and allows you to focus your time and energy on the things that you’re actually going to be seeing make an impact in your business, so using tools like schedulers as well as things like Zapier, and different apps that can work together to automate your systems and processes will really make a big difference and help you run your business on the road so that even if you’re not able to do things manually, they’re still getting done thanks to automation.

Create digital systems:

Having systems in your business is a must, however, if you run a business from home or use a physical office, then you can choose how to set up your systems and have them on paper if you want – although this isn’t recommended. However, if you want to run your business on the road and make your life easier, especially if you’re traveling around a lot between different countries, then you’re really going to want to go as digital as possible with your systems – unless you really do want to be carrying lots of notebooks and pieces of paper around with you between countries.

Use cloud storage:

Cloud Computing and storage systems are one of the best things you can start using for your business – no matter where you run it from, but if you run it on the road, then these are even more essential since they ensure that everything is backed up securely and that even if your computer was to be lost, stolen, or simply crashed on its own, that you’re not going to lose anything important, which is always a big risk when using non-cloud based systems that don’t back up and save automatically.

Sync your devices:

When traveling, it’s not always going to be convenient or possible to pull out your laptop and access something you need, so if you’re able to sync this to your phone, then you could start accessing things from there, which is going to make your life so much easier when running a business on the road or just when you’re unable to access your laptop.

Going Up In The World: Building A Multistory Office

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. At some point if and when you’re business becomes big enough, you may want to consider building your own office space. There are multiple steps involved which are discussed in the following contributed post which is entitled, Going Up In The World: Building A Multistory Office.

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If launching your own empire has been a dream of yours for some time now, and you have taken the time to save up and prepare for this feat, one of the things which can be amazing is to build an office for yourself this year. 2019 has the potential to be your best year yet and it can be an amazing year to spend building your business and soaring high above the competition. Today we are going to take a look at some of the steps you will need to take to build an amazing office building for your business.

Test the land

When you are searching for the ideal plot of land for your office building you will likely think a lot about the location and the budget you have. One thing you may not think about is contaminated land and your ability to build on it safely. It is crucial to make sure that you test the land to make sure the soil is safe and this will allow you to build on the land without any worries.

Lay a great foundation

Building an office which is tall and sturdy is always going to be a challenge and you will need to really think about the logistics of a crane hire company for the higher levels and the materials you use for the site. The first thing though is to make sure that your foundation is solid and perfect for the job. Your foundation is the most important part of the building process and you should take your time to ensure it is absolutely perfect to ensure a stable structure later on.

Create light for the space

When designing an office building with an architect at your disposal it can be helpful for you to think about light in the space. The natural light you get inside the office is super important and it will have an impact on the productivity of your workers. Be sure to add as much light as you can to the office and you can do this with floor to ceiling windows for the ultimate modern effect. The light will penetrate your space all day long and this can actually cut down your need for switching the lights on. This can be a huge help for you when you are trying to save money and grow as a business.

Add facilities

A kitchen, some bathrooms, a communal space, a games room… these are all options for things you can add to your office to make it feel like a well rounded and happy building for all involved. As much as you want your employees to work when they are in your office, you also want to make the office feel like a home. Add fun elements and quiet spaces for people to escape to and your workers will appreciate you for it. If you really want to, you can have a small bar in the basement which you can use at 4 pm on a Friday for happy hour!

3 Ways to Make Money with a Wellness Business

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Health/Wellness. Wellness businesses can be lucrative if run the right way. If you’re thinking about running this type of business, or if you’re running one right now, it’s important to know how to make money with them. The following contributed post is thus entitled, 3 Ways to Make Money with a Wellness Business.

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Wellness is now a $4.2 trillion industry worldwide. If you’re an entrepreneur, it makes sense, then that you would at least consider the possibilities of getting into this market. A lot of people shy away from doing so because wellness seems to be everywhere, and they think that the market must be saturated by now, however, there are always opportunities to be had and as long as you’re willing to work hard and create a unique brand there is no reason why you could not launch your own wellness company and succeed.

If you like the idea of running your own wellness business, but you don’t know where to start, here are just some of the ways you could make money in the wellness business right now:

Sell Your Skills

If you’re looking to start your business on a shoestring, think about any skills you may have and see if you can monetize them. The only costs you will incur doing this are your marketing costs and with the use of social media, these could be pretty minimal.

In terms of wellness, there are plenty of skills you can sell from teaching meditation to helping people start running, to life coaching. If you don’t already have these or similar skills, learning them can be very affordable, and building a business very doable.

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Capitalize on Cannabis and CBD

It isn’t for everyone, but cannabis is now legal in many states and it is doing big business in all of the places you can buy. You might think that getting into the industry involves too much red tape, but you don’t actually have to sell cannabis yourself. In fact, you could potentially make a lot of money by simply selling cannabis accessories. If you visit trimleaf rosin press guide, for example, you will see that there is far more to this business than you might think and the accessories are numerous. If you don’t like the idea of cannabis at all, then consider the possibilities of CBD, which is non-hallucinogenic, completely legal in most places and a huge wellness trends which many people use for stress and pain relief regularly.

Slow Fitness

The slow fitness movement has been ramping up for a few years now, and it’s just about set to explode, which means it’s a really good niche to get into if you’re looking for a new business venture.

The slow fitness movement is all about taking it easy and taking recovery seriously when you have worked out hard. It’s all about foam rollers magnesium baths and percussive therapy tools such as Hypervolt, which you can read about at https://hyperice.com/hypervolt, and which can massively aid recovery and wellness. The good news is there is plenty of room for new and similar products to hit the market, especially if you can develop something which is even better at aiding recovery, and these products can be sold at a premium. This option will likely involve a greater investment but the rewards could be huge.

Whatever you decide to invest in, wellness is not going away and you have the potential to do very well for yourself!

Ways to Save Money When Starting a Business

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. When trying to get your business off the ground, it’s important to understand where you can save money initially. This can pay dividends later. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Ways to Save Money When Starting a Business.

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One of the most difficult challenges start-up’s face is that of having to set things up on a limited budget, particularly in the very early days when they are yet to get any traction, times can be tough.

Yet, it’s usually upon an injection of capital into the business, for instance, via angel funding, that start-ups get themselves in financial hot water as there’s a tendency to overspend, or at least go on a spending spree to kit out their start-up with anything from a fancy website to the best premises.

Now, there’s a time and place to invest in your business, of course, and investing in items such as cold room panels to replace the bootstrapped domestic solutions used previously, make financial sense – it’s just important you don’t fall into the emotional trap many entrepreneurs fall into which is to overspend and put themselves in a precarious cash flow situation down the line.

In this article you’ll find seven ways startups can save money, in the early days:

1. START OFF WORKING FROM HOME
A common mistake many startups make is they feel the need to secure premises, even with a digital business.

It’s emotionally understandable as there are clear benefits to having the space to focus in a distraction free environment, yet if this isn’t absolutely necessary to your business functioning (i.e. you employ a team of people or often have physical rather than virtual meetings) then you’ll want to try to avoid acquiring premises as it will put a significant strain on your start-up budget.

2. KEEP YOUR COSTS DOWN
There are certain essentials every entrepreneur needs, for instance printer ink, yet there are ways to keeping costs down by shopping around and/or looking for cheaper alternatives.

3. DON’T HIRE STAFF
The majority of entrepreneurs feel the need to do everything on their own, but when business starts picking up one of the first things they’ll do is go out and hire more people than necessary. A much more cost efficient strategy is to hire virtual assistants to outsource tasks to, as they tend to operate on a more flexible freelance basis meaning the workload (and therefore, the amount you pay them) can change with your needs.

4. DO IT YOURSELF
There are certain things within your business that might feel good to outsource, for instance, web design, yet there are plenty of ways you can do it yourself and come up with a “good enough for now” solution that gets you to a place of more traction.

Similarly, it can feel important not to waste your precious time on tasks that could be outsourced – and whilst this is good advice for business owners, when starting a business, it really is a hard slog that requires you to do most things yourself; from the accounting to the cleaning. The good news, however, is that this is a fantastic education that all entrepreneurs should embrace.

5. STOP BEING A PERFECTIONIST
Often, entrepreneurs put a lot of pressure on themselves to have everything perfect; yet this paradigm of ‘good enough for now’ is very helpful when it comes to starting up a business, as in many ways, it’s about leaping between stepping stones where you build more and more traction. If you let go of the need to have everything “perfect” then you’re likely to get a lot more done, for a lot less money, and make much more progress as a result.

6. STOP TRYING TO IMPRESS
It’s very tempting to feel the need to impress, when starting out, but often this comes from a place of insecurity in the terms of the value you are offering.

Sometimes we rely too much on symbolic statements of success in the material world such as the clothes we wear, or the ability to arrive at a meeting in a fancy car or signing a contract with a Mont Blanc pen – yet, none of this is necessary.

The one thing you need to create as a start-up is VALUE. When you focus more on substance over style, people will naturally be drawn toward you and you won’t feel the need to impress so much.

The reality is, in the modern world, most business people don’t respect this flashy stuff nowadays. Whilst some do care, they tend to be somewhat superficial, and in reality a good business person cares about one thing and one thing only; the value you create and your ability to deliver results.

Whether you sign a contract with a Mont Blanc pen or a Bic biro, the one thing they truly care about, is that you deliver on the promises made.

In today’s world you can’t use this material puffery to hoodwink people into believing you are an established business, if you’re just starting out, as everyone checks digital resources like Facebook and LinkedIn now to work out where you’re really at.

7. FOCUS ON VALUE CREATION
A lot of the time, start-ups struggle to be able to spend money on certain services they need, and therefore, it can be wise to look at other ways to create value. For instance, as a simple example, let’s say you would like to purchase a tailor made suit – but don’t have the required cash. If you have web design skills or social media marketing skills that the tailor does not have, and would like their website to be improved, you could offer your services in exchange for the suit as a barter agreement.

In summary, when starting out it’s all about keeping perspective and focusing on what really matters – which is creating value for your end user.

That’s the one most vital currency in any business; create value and everything else will fall into place. Indeed, the only way to reliably earn respect as a start-up is to focus so much on creating value that your successful trajectory speaks for itself.

Remember, everyone has to start somewhere and the journey to major success often starts from a very humble and small beginning.

Signs Your Business Is Going To Be Targeted By Criminals

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. No matter what your business enterprise is, it’s important to think of all the things that could go wrong and how you can be targeted by criminals. There are numerous ways that criminals can attack you operations. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Signs Your Business Is Going To Be Targeted By Criminals.

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No business owner wants to believe that their business could be susceptible to criminal attacks, but the truth is, your business could well be a target if you notice the following signs. Business security, both online and physically, is more important than ever. Don’t wait to rectify any issues you have, or you will probably end up regretting it and wishing you had done something sooner. Read on to get a good idea of whether you could be a target…

Your Data Isn’t Secure
Many businesses have data of some sort and have to keep it safe. This might be your customer data, such as email addresses, phone numbers, physical addresses, and even card details. It might even be the details of your employees. Whatever kind of data you have in your possession, you need to make sure it’s secure. It should be kept on the cloud and safely encrypted so that no hacker can get their hands on it. You’ll find yourself with a lawsuit or two if this information falls into the wrong hands. Even if nothing untoward happens after, this breach of privacy can get you in huge trouble. People won’t trust your business and you might even find that your reputation is ruined.

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You Haven’t Taken The Steps To Protect Your Premises
Protecting your physical premises is just as important as protecting the information that you find yourself with online. Making sure your doors and windows are secure, you have metal fencing panels, and that you have a quality alarm system with CCTV will deter criminals. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be safe, but it does give you a better chance of keeping criminals at bay. If you keep things on your premises such as expensive equipment or money, you’ll need to look into extra precautions to ensure that crooks can’t get a hold of them.

You Don’t Background Check Your Employees
Many of the breaches that happen can be at the hand of employees; sometimes accidental, sometimes not. If you don’t background check your employees, then how can you know they are trustworthy? How can you be sure that they are who they say they are? You absolutely need to background check anybody you consider employing, or it could come back and bite you. It doesn’t matter how great somebody seems during the interview stages, they might not be who they say they are.

You Aren’t Careful And Selective With Keys And Passwords
Something as simple as password protection can help, providing you take it seriously. You should be careful and selective with keys and passwords – you don’t have to give important keys and passwords to everybody, so make sure the people who absolutely need them are the only ones who have them. Make sure your passwords are strong, impossible to guess, and changed regularly.

Have you spotted any of the signs that could mean getting targeted by criminals? Leave anything you may have found below and tips of your own to stay protected. Thanks for reading!

The Business Tasks You Can Easily Automate

Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Whatever you business is, it’s important to consider which tasks you can automate in order to save yourself time and money. The following contributed post discusses this and is entitled, The Business Tasks You Can Easily Automate.

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Automation not only gives you and any employees you may have, more time to concentrate on the kind of work that really needs a human hand and brain and less time on those menial tasks that are necessary, but which are not, perhaps, the best use fo anyone’s time. Not only that, but it can often boost efficiency, and both of these things combined will help you to save money where you can, and potentially make more through greater levels of productivity and creative thinking.

So, I’m sure you’ll agree that it makes sense to automate, right? But where to start? Here are some things most small businesses can easily automate:

Social Media

Social media is obviously a vital part of modern marketing, but it can be pretty time consuming if you let it. Luckily, there are tools like HootSuite which can help you manage your content more efficiently by enabling batch writing of posts, which can then be scheduled and posted at the proper time. Of course, if you have the budget you could always outsource to a social media manager instead, which may be even better than automating.

Online Ads

If you use paid online ads to generate traffic for your business, and you aren’t already, you should think about using some or all of the Top 50 Adwords automation scripts to automate many of the processes such as controlling and interacting with your data. It will free up heaps of time while ensuring that your ads are up and running and doing exactly what they need to be doing for your company.

Email Responses

Okay so you probably don’t want to go down the route of automating all of your email responses because, quite a lot of the time, your customers will need an actual human response that is tailored to their situation, and failing to give them one could land your company with a reputation for bad customer service! However, there are lots of aspects of email contact that can, and probably should be automated such as read receipts/acknowledgements and answers to the most commonly asked question for starters.

Bookkeeping

Unless you’re an accountant or you’re the only small business owner in the world who has heaps on time on your hands, don’t even try to do your own bookkeeping. There really is no need when there are numerous apps and software packages that can do the bulk of it for you just as well, and quite possibly even better!

Recruitment

Sorry, they haven’t invented a robot that will interview candidates for you yet, but there are programs such as ZipRecruiter that will take your carefully crafted job description and post it on all of the best job websites around the web, so that you don’t have to bother uploading it a million times or contacting a million different recruitment companies yourself.

Research

Don’t waste hours looking for the latest research in your niche when you can simply set a Google Alert to tell you everytime car manufacturing, digital sales or HR policy is mentioned anywhere online!

Automate the simple stuff, like this, first and your life as a small business owner will be so much easier. If you can then automate more complicated processes, well that will be of even bigger benefit to you and your bottom line.

Considering Investing in a Franchise? Here’s Everything You Need to Know!

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. If you’re interested in going into business or yourself, you can either grow and nurture your own idea, or you can buy into a franchise-model. What are some considerations for this? The following contributed post is entitled, Considering Investing in a Franchise? Here’s Everything You Need to Know!

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The majority of people fall into one of two categories when it comes to making money – they tend to either be an employee working for someone else’s company, or they take matters into their own hands and create their own business from scratch. There are, of course, benefits that come hand in hand with each of these options. When you are employed, you benefit from contracted working hours, sick pay, annual leave, parental leave, and you are likely to get a redundancy package if your job falls through. If you run your own business, you get to keep a much larger share of the profit that you are actually earning. But it’s important to remember that these aren’t the only options out there. There are alternatives. One alternative is to take control of a franchise. Here’s everything you need to know on the topic if this is something that you could potentially be interested in!

What Is a Franchise?

Let’s start out by establishing what a franchise actually is. Put simply, franchising is a form of licencing relationship. When a business takes off, the business owner controlling it might recognise that there is demand for more branches of the company to open up, but they may not want to have to control the extra branches themselves – after all, this would be a lot of responsibility. So, these business owners may then decide to open new branches, but relinquish the majority of control over these branches to someone who is willing to buy the franchise from them (a franchisee). If you become a franchisee, you will generally have to follow rules and guidelines set out by the original business owner. You may have to keep their branding, operate under their brand name, and provide particular products or services that their brand is known for. But you do gain the control of running the business yourself and profiting from the business. There are seemingly endless types of franchises out there – you can find anything from fast food outlets to a tick control franchise for sale. So, there’s likely to be a franchise out there that genuinely interests you and that you would enjoy running.

Sticking to Terms and Conditions

If you do decide to go ahead and invest in a franchise, it is absolutely essential that you stick to the terms and conditions laid out by the original business owner. So, make sure to read through them and ensure that you are happy to abide by them before investing. The main terms and conditions tend to revolve around maintain the franchiser’s brand. This, of course, can be relatively frustrating if you want to make changes or alterations to the products and services that your franchise is offering and you are denied permission. However, remember that the brand is what is going to make you a lot of money with little input from yourself in the long run. When you invest a franchise, the business owner has already put a whole lot of hard work, time, effort, and financial investment into establishing the brand. People are already going to know what your franchise offers and there are likely to be loyal customers already in the area, who will be happy that a franchise has opened near them. This will save you the time and effort of carving a space for yourself in the market, and you can start making sales and generating profit a lot faster.

Expanding

If you do want to make changes along the line, make sure to open up a line of communication with the business owner. There’s always a chance that they will take your ideas and suggestions on board and you never know – they might grant permission for your plans to go ahead. It’s always worth at least asking.

Moving Forward

If, over time, you do find that franchising isn’t allowing you the creativity and control that you want over a business, you can always sell your franchise and move forward. But remember that engaging with a franchise is a great way to ease yourself into running a business and to familiarise yourself with how businesses work. You can then use this knowledge and experience moving forward to establish your own small business that you will have complete control over!

As you can see, franchising could prove to be a great business opportunity for anyone considering taking a little more control over their own careers. Whether you intend to stick with franchising or use this as great experience in running a business with lowered responsibility to start out, it’s worth looking into and getting involved with!

3 Tips on How to Represent Your Business Well

Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. A major component of building your business/enterprise is personal appearance. This encompasses both physical appearance, demeanour and actual preparedness. The following contributed post is thus entitled, 3 Tips on How to Represent Your Business Well.

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If you’re a small business owner at a trade event, or if you’re a member of a much larger organisation and have been tasked with representing the organisation in some official and formal context, it’s essential that you know how to conduct yourself in a manner which presents your business in the best possible light.

Of course, there’s a lot that goes into a professional presentation, and there are many aims that you will likely be trying to accomplish.

It will, for example, be important for you to present your business as a serious, professional, and diligent force to any competitors in the field. It will also be necessary for you to reassure your clients, or would-be clients, of your organisation’s strong ethical standards that sit above reproach.

Here are a few tips on how, specifically, you can conduct yourself to represent your business well.

Be sharp in your presentation — both your personal presentation and the presentation of your branding and marketing materials

If you’re in the position of representing your business in an official capacity, then it’s important for you to treat your own personal presentation as an extension of the kind of image you want to convey for the company at large.

This means tailoring your outfit for the day according to the image the company would most like to convey. Should you wear a suit or a pair of well-fitted jeans and a black T-Shirt? Of course, your personal grooming and hygiene should be impeccable in any case.

The next step is to carefully select the branding and marketing materials that you plan to use to represent the company more specifically. Will pull up banner displays help to make a strong impression, and highlight some of the company’s key benefits and USPs?

It’s worth spending a good amount of time considering these questions.

Be the person who accepts responsibility — let the buck stop with you

It’s all but impossible to respect people who don’t accept responsibility and accountability — certainly for issues which are essentially their own innate responsibility anyway, but even for things that aren’t necessarily their responsibility in the conventional sense.

If your company has been embroiled in recent controversies, and you’re going to be representing your company in public, expect people to raise those topics, and have answers prepared. Answers which position you as someone who is accepting responsibility on behalf of the company.

If someone raises a point of company controversy, and you shrug and say “don’t ask me, nothing to do with me, I just work here”, the impression made is not likely to be stellar.

Play it straight and stick with the truth, don’t get caught up in spin

Obviously, you’ll want to present your company or personal business in the best possible light. But you should nonetheless do so in a way that is rooted in the truth, and that doesn’t involve deceit or mischaracterization of the facts.

If you get caught up in spin, you undermine your own position, put people off you on an instinctual level, and also are liable to get caught up in your own tangled web of confusing half-truths.

Speak positively of the company, but only to the extent that your words are true. If you can’t find anything to say about the company which is both positive and true, you’re likely working for the wrong company.

Getting Your First Small Business UP and Running

Two of the key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. They say that the majority of business fail with the first couple of years, but even to give your idea a chance to succeed you have to start it. There are some key considerations to getting it up and moving. The following contributed post is thus entitled, Getting Your First Small Business UP and Running.

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Nowadays, increasing numbers of people are opting to set up their own small business in an attempt to escape the rat race and work towards building their own dreams rather than making someone else’s dreams a reality. But setting up a business can actually prove to be a relatively complex process. So, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the start up process before throwing yourself in the deep end! Here are just a few areas you should focus on to get the ball rolling in the right direction.

Company Formation

One of the first steps that you need to take when it comes to setting up your company is to engage with company formation. If you are unfamiliar with the process of starting a company www.yourcompanyformations.co.uk will be able to help you out. This process will essentially establish your business as a distinct legal entity, making everything official!

Product and Service Development

Now that the ball is rolling, it’s time to start seriously considering what kind of products or services you are intending to provide the consumer market with. If you already have an idea, that’s great. But if you’re feeling lost and are unsure what area you’d like to specialise in, choose something that you are genuinely interested in and try to identify a gap in the market within this field. The marketplace is already a very saturated place, so it could prove extremely difficult to offer a product or service that already exists – someone else will have already established their company as a leading brand or force and chances are that they have more money to play with when it comes to advertising and securing brand loyalty. Identifying a gap means you have a good opportunity to dominate an area of the marketplace for yourself.

Conduct Market Research

No matter how good you might think your idea is and how much encouragement you might have from friends and family members, it’s absolutely essential that you conduct market research. Market research is essentially a process where you pitch your products to your target demographic and see what they think of them. You can gain a whole lot of information, including:

● Whether your product concept appeals to people.

● What they feel could be improved about your product.

● Whether they already source a similar product from someone else and who these alternative products are being provided by.

Engaging with this process will give you unbiased information and advice from the exact people you are targeting. These are the people that your company relies on for sales and profit, so who could possibly be better to ask? At the end of the day, no matter how much time, effort, and money you pump into your business, everything will be wasted if people don’t want to buy what you have to offer them. Once you’ve got the go ahead with your product concept, you can also use market research to determine whether your products will be financially viable and potentially profitable. You can ask target consumers questions about:

● Their income (this will help you to figure out an average so you know how much the average consumer you are targeting earns and has disposable).

● How much they would be willing to pay for the product that you are offering.

This will help you to come up with realistic price points and you can then work out profit margins. If there’s a large margin, it could be worth going ahead. If you’d be making a minimal amount of profit after forking out for manufacturing, packaging, shipping, and other factors, you might want to give creating this product a miss. As you can see, conducting market research before going any further ahead will help you to only make wise investments and only move forward with bringing concepts to life that will actually sell. If you are unfamiliar with conducting market research yourself, not to worry. There are plenty of different tutorials out there that can help you find participants and ask the right questions. However, generally speaking, it’s best to outsource this service. This ensure your market research is conducted with as little bias as possible (as it will be carried out by a third party) and you can better spend your time focusing on other areas of your business’ progression while market research is being carried out.

These, of course, are just the starting blocks of starting your own successful business. But everyone has to start somewhere and focusing on these areas should get things off to a good start!