“The hospitality business can be a tricky one. If you’re planning on starting some kind of hospitality business, like a restaurant or a cafe, then you need to make sure you’re cut out for the job.”
Two of the key focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. If run properly, the hospitality business can pay great dividends. There are some considerations before getting involved. The following contributed post is entitled, Things To Consider Before Entering The Hospitality Business.
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The hospitality business can be a tricky one. If you’re planning on starting some kind of hospitality business, like a restaurant or a cafe, then you need to make sure you’re cut out for the job. Not only do you need great food and drink that keeps people coming back for more, you need highly trained staff, a great theme, a unique selling point, and the perseverance to see it through no matter what. Some months might be quiet, and then other months you may feel overrun with customers. You need to be prepared for just about anything in this kind of business, from people attempting to run out without paying, to others making complaints. No two days are the same!
Let’s take a look at a few things you should consider before you enter the hospitality business:
1. Do You Have The Right Stomach For It?
As no two days are the same in the hospitality industry, you need to make sure you have the right stomach, or the right personality for the job. How will you deal with a customer that’s seriously upset because they found a hair in their food? What about one that doesn’t want to pay because of a ‘rude’ member of staff? Being able to think on your feet and deal with any situation is a must! Some customers may be within their rights to complain, while others might just try to get a freebie.
2. Do You Have The Right Skills For It?
It isn’t enough to have the right stomach. You need the skills! Do you have people skills? Customer service skills? The skills to run a business? Consider doing a few courses and workshops at the very least before you start.
3. Are You Prepared To Take Your Time Hiring The Right Team?
You’ll need the right team on your side, and you need to be prepared to take your time when hiring them. Interviews should be thorough, and you need to make sure they have the right personality. Training your team is still important, but if you take your time at this stage you’re half way there.
Are You Willing to Research the Best Suppliers?
A great hospitality team is vital, but it won’t create a successful business if you don’t also pair it with the best suppliers. In fact, you could quickly end up with a notoriously bad menu this way, never mind the quality of your chefs. In terms of food production right now, it’s especially vital to work with suppliers who prioritize sustainable production, otherwise, you could find yourself facing reputational backlash. Research is the best way to overcome this risk, and is especially important when it comes to meat distributors like Superior Farms, who prioritize sustainable practices like renewable energy, as well as farming practices that boost the nutritional value of their products, and your recipes in turn.
5. Do You Have Competition In The Area?
Extensive research on the competition is a must, and the only way to differentiate yourself in the area.
6. What Will You Do If Things Get Quiet?
Things will get quiet from time to time. You’ll need money in reserve to keep afloat – and it’s probably a good idea to hold off on hiring too many permanent staff members in the beginning.
Three of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money, Business/Entrepreneurship and Technology. Customer service is critical in ‘bricks and mortar’ business but its especially critical for online business. You want to stay in your customers’ good graces. The following contributed post is entitled, How To Stay On The Good Side Of Your Online Customers.
The business world has always been competitive, but none more so than now, as internet businesses are popping up all over the place.
Should you run an online business then, it is important to know that you are but a tiny dot on the internet, competing with thousands of other dots (this is probably the first time anybody has described businesses in such a way) in a bid to gain customers.
To stay ahead of the game, you need to stay on the good side of any potential or existing customers. By doing so, you will receive good word of mouth instead of bad, and you might elevate your business above the many others sharing the virtual space of the internet with you.
Here are some of the things you need to do.
#1: Deliver on your promises
Online business owners often sway potential customers with promises of fast shipping and better quality products than their rivals, as just two examples. So, if you are going to tempt customers in with promises such as these, you need to ensure that you can live up to your word.
With the examples given, you would need a steady supply of mailers in your inventory to ensure fast shipping was possible, and you would also need to work with a decent courier company that could offer speedy delivery. And in terms of your product, you would need to research what other businesses offer, and find ways to improve the quality and the functionality of what you were selling.
Having delivered on your promises, you would have very happy customers on your hands!
#2: Secure your online business
Businesses, both large and small, are in danger of hacking attempts, so never assume that your online business is safe, even if it is just you and your computer set up in your bedroom.
If you get hacked, not only will your financial information be compromised, but your customers financial and personal data might be too. Should your customers become aware of this, be that through communication from yourself or because they have become the victim of cybercrime themselves, then your reputation will plummet.
We have some tips on our website with regards to protecting your online business, so have a read and follow the advice we give you at your earliest opportunity.
#3: Treat your customers well
Customers are fickle people. If they feel mistreated in any way, they will voice their opinions on social media and business review sites.
Therefore, give them the respect that they feel they deserve by treating them well.
What does this mean in reality?
Well, we have already alluded to two ways you can do this in the previous points we made in this article. But there is more you can do. This includes offering them speedy responses when they get in touch with you. You should respond to any complaints, and do what you can to make amends to any disgruntled customers. And you should go the extra mile in your customer service, perhaps by including hand-crafted ‘thank you’ cards with your deliveries, or by offering loyal customers a discount or the occasional freebie as tokens of your appreciation.
Finally
By staying on your customers’ good side, you will retain their loyalty and benefit from new customers who have heard about your business. Follow our suggestions then, and research other ways to win over the hearts and the wallets of potential and existing customers.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Understanding the difference between assets and liabilities is critical to understanding and building wealth. Likewise, simply having a job and working for ‘earned income’ versus acquiring money-generating assets is the difference between solely being an employee and one day becoming financially independent. The following contributed post is entitled, If You Don’t Own Something Your Wealthy Isn’t Real.
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We are all beholden to the economy of the nation we live in. The nation’s economy is beholden to the global economy. And round and round we go, in this daisy chain of ours. Everything is affected by everything else. Now, your biggest concern is your personal wealth; as it should be. The secret to protecting your wealth is to try and make it insular from everything else. In other words, you want to have a wealth that isn’t affected by the outside world. But, as aforementioned everything is tied to everything else. Whether you’re shopping for clothes, buying groceries or applying for a mortgage, before the price is levelled at your feet it has to go through the market. The market determines what that price will be. So two things we can conclude. There’s no way for your wealth to not be affected by the global economy and the market is how price is determined; in other words your wealth is given it’s true value. The giants that tower over everything else are assets. If you’re not holding something, owning something and backing up your monetary wealth by an asset, it’s not real.
What is an asset?
Firstly an asset is a complex entity to describe. However, for the sake of simplifying things, think of assets as something other than cold hard cash. Yet there are some people who will include their cash in ‘personal assets’. Number one, the most common asset is your home or rather property that you own. Land and structures on them home are all part and parcel of the same asset. A business is also considered an asset. A car or some kind of vehicle such as a boat is also considered an asset. Investment holdings such as stocks, insurance policies, mutual funds etc, are all considered assets. Warehouse storages, garages and equipment are all assets too.
There seems to be one running theme doesn’t there? An asset usually has the ability to convert it’s sale into cash or rather, it produces more wealth. Property prices rise year-on-year, thus you have an appreciating asset. A negative or loss-making asset has become an oxymoron as the whole point of having assets is for your wealth to increase just by ownership of said asset. Cars are a use to someone. It gets people to work, is enjoyable to drive and might be personally valuable to a collector. Stocks are a piece of the pie. A business that grows pays out to its stockholders so again, you have an asset that accumulates wealth for you.
Assets are a ‘hard wall’
Assets are usually a tangible entity. You can touch a property, you can live in the property. It provides you with a value or betterment to your life. Even if that enjoyment is subjective to the person, it still holds that value to be true. Capital assets are purely bank accounts or rather your cash wealth. Cash wealth on it’s own isn’t so confidence-inspiring. Look at it this way, if a wind came to blow your money away, how would you stop it? The simple answer is, you would protect your money with a wall and keep your capital inside. That’s exactly what assets are for. They give your capital asset worth and back it up. Nations do this for their currencies. Why should someone believe your currency is worth something, after all it’s just paper. Well, gold and other precious metals have been used to back up currencies and provide them with a solid wall of protection.
Look up the ‘Gold Standard’ the ‘Gold Standard’. For the majority of the time human beings have had complex, large and global economies, gold has been the number one material that has backed up FIAT currency. People are reassured that the paper they have in their pocket has a value which if they exchanged would allow them to buy food, water, property and live a comfortable life. This is because a precious metal is vouching for it. Assets have the exact same power for your cash wealth. If you were to go to a bank and ask for a loan, if you didn’t have a property, car, or some kind of asset, the chances of being turned away would be high. Assets, like gold jewelry you buy and sell with Gold Buyers, give you a solid foundation of trust and support personally and for your capital.
The age old asset
Since time immemorial there has been one thing we all recognize as an asset. Jewelry is valuable to us in many different ways. It’s easy to understand why it’s valuable too, even as children we already know to look after a piece of jewelry that we have been given or perhaps found. Silver, gold, platinum, rubies, emeralds, diamonds etc, are all the most sought after kinds of jewelry. Precious metals and precious stones, have an innate shine or gleam to them. These materials have taken millions and millions, sometimes billions of years to form. Since this process takes so long, they are inherently valuable to us because they are things we cannot make.
If you have gold chains, diamond rings, ruby encrusted goblets, silver necklace charms or whatever the case may be, you need to protect these assets with some kind of insurance policy. For knowledge on what kinds of jewelry insurance you should get, look at Morison Insurance Brokers and ready their article carefully. They list all the valid reasons why you would need this kind of insurance policy and for what kind of jewelry. Jewelry is such a versatile asset, that almost any kind of financial institution will accept it as collateral holding. It’s not uncommon for bank loans to be given to people with low capital but who have very valuable jewelry assets.
They age like wine
Assets are the number one priority for people who are looking to retire without relying on a state pension. It’s clear to see that owning a couple properties and renting them out would net you a constant stream of capital flowing in. The properties will need to be kept to a high standard so they retain their value for longer, but that’s easily done. Properties are quite easy to understand and maintain. There are lots of services such as roofing, plumbing, landscaping and interior designers that can repair and update your properties to keep with the times. In this sense, assets have the ability to age like fine wine if you know how to take care of them. As the saying goes, if you take care of it, it will take care of you.
Assets like rare cars also have much the same appeal in terms of longevity. One of the original Ford GT40 cars was sold for $10+ million and a Ferrari GTO for even higher. Classic cars are not just interesting to hold as an asset, but they never seem to run out of buyers. No matter how many generations have moved on since the first day they rolled out of the factories, they are still enthusiastically bought for millions of dollars. There will always be a wealthy class of people that want a rare toy in their garage. That’s why having assets is so important, because the value they return to you is always set to increase year after year.
Create your own buffer zone
If none of the previous reasons have convinced you why you need to be owning assets, here is one last attempt. This one should win you over. When an economic crash ensues, capital all across the world gets slaughtered. Stocks and bonds plummet, currency values drop substantially and any hard cash is worth much, much less than it was just yesterday. Essentially, if all your wealth is in some kind of money hedge or just a lump sum in a bank, then your wealth will be cut down dramatically when an economic crash happens. Recessions all hit the cash flow in the market the same way. Consumer confidence drops, people pull their money out of investments and they go into hibernation to wait out the storm.
Now you may be thinking that assets will also have to fall in price because people aren’t spending as much. However, assets retain a lot more of their value even when there is a recession. This is because at the end of the day, someone will have enough money to buy or utilize your asset for their needs. Crucially, that need or desire is still there no matter what is going on in the economy. People who were saving up to buy a house don’t suddenly stop wanting a house because they lost a lot of money. No, the desire is still there so you have an inherent value in assets even in hard times. In a sense, assets create a buffer zone between you and the recession, they allow you to have more authority in the eyes of banks and governments.
Do not put all your wealth under your mattress so to speak. Put your wealth in asset acquiring. Own property such as a house, land, automobiles, boats and jewelry. When you have hard tangible wealth, your paper wealth is automatically boosted in so many ways.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. No matter what you’re selling, you must understand how to properly price your product in order to compete. Proper price setting will give your business every chance to succeed. Improperly pricing your products will hurt your business. The following contributed post is entitled, Tips that will Help you to Price your Product Way more Effectively.
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Pricing your products can be difficult to say the least. If you set the price for your product too high, then you may find that people can’t afford to buy from you. If you set it too low then you may find that people associate your business with poor quality and low value, and this can be detrimental to your level of success. Striking the happy medium is crucial here, but if you want to get some help with that then you can find out whatever you need to know, right here.
List the True Cost of Your Product
There’s a high chance that a lot goes into making your product everything that it can be. One way for you to set a fair price for your product would be for you to take into account the cost of creation. When you do this, you have to make sure that you include the cost of all materials, regardless of how small they might be. You also need to include worker benefits, labour and your overheads too. These might not be associated with your product directly, but they are expenses nevertheless. This can include your taxes, insurance, rent and even transportation too. You also need to take into account your salary and replacement for your machinery as it ages. If you’re not careful then this can easily add up and you might run into problems. To get the best result out of your calculation, consider thinking about MAP pricing too.
The cost of running your small business will always be way higher than you think. If you have been in the business for years on end, then you may find that some of your earlier processes are clumsy and that they need reoptimizing. You should set your prices a little higher than you think to try and accommodate this, and you should also make sure that you always think about the future of your company.
Analyse your Customers
If you have the capital to hire a firm to handle your market research for you then this is great. If you don’t have access to a resource like this then you might want to think about conducting your own instead. This can be done through surveys or you could even scout out your competition instead. This will help you to find out how much your competitors are charging, and it will also help you to see how much of a demand there is for your product too.
Don’t Try and Compete Too Much
Comparing your small business to that of a corporate empire won’t get you anywhere. If you try and undercut huge companies then you will be doing yourself a disservice and you may even find that you end up losing out on money. The reason why corporate companies are able to offer such low prices is because they buy in bulk and it’s super unlikely that you will be able to beat that.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Some businesses excel and thrive, while others sputter and perish. There are distinct reasons why this occurs and if you want to be in the former group there are things that you need to do. The following contributed post is entitled, Why Some Companies Stay in the Slow Lane.
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There’s no company on earth that is guaranteed success when they first get started. Sure, sometimes it’s more likely for some businesses than others, but if the number of high profile failures has told us anything, it’s that failure is always an option. But let’s not focus on those large ventures: let’s look, instead, at small companies, and specifically at why some seem to rocket up, up, up, and some stay in the comparative slow lane for the duration of their existence. There are some shared characteristics that seem to run through businesses that follow this path.
You’re not going to get very far, or anywhere at all for that matter, if you possess a small mindset. A company that sees themselves as small will find it impossible to achieve big things. It’s all about vision. There’s a big difference between a business owner that dreams big, and one that has eyes for nothing more than mere survival. Of course, it’s riskier to have a big vision, but as with most things in life, the person that dares is the one that wins.
The Wrong Players
Your company’s strength will depend on part on the need for the products and services that it provides, but you should also look at your staff; they’re the people who are driving the ship. If you’re not hiring correctly, then you will likely find that you’re not making as much progress as you would if you’d developed a robust hiring policy. It takes time, money and effort to hire any employees, but it’s worthwhile devoting that little extra effort to get the right one. If you don’t know how to hire the right employee, take a read of these useful tips.
They’re Not Wired For Success
You could have excellent ideas and a stellar team of employees, but if your business doesn’t have the right infrastructure, then success will likely be hard to come by. That’s because you won’t be working as productively as you could be, and when it comes to business success, productivity is what counts. If you’re currently managing your IT needs on your own, look at handing the responsibilities over to a company such as Tech Squared Inc. They can install the systems you need in order to work at your best, and also free up your time so that you can focus on your core business offerings.
Outdated Working Practices
The working world is changing, and, as with most advancements, it’s for the better. Studies have shown that the traditional way of working has major flaws. The new ways of working, which include more relaxed working hours and unorthodox offices, can significantly boost employee happiness and productivity.
Lack of Development
Finally, make sure you’re not standing still for too long. It’s the companies who refuse to settle, and who instead push forward with new ideas and plans, that achieve success. It’ll be in your interests to keep an eye on where your company is moving in the years to come.
Two of the focuses of blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. No matter what kind of business you’re operating, a key aspect is employee health and safety. Neglecting this aspect of your operations can cost you a lot of money moving forward. The following contributed post is entitled, You Can’t Ignore Health And Safety.
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Health and safety is an important aspect of running a successful business. Businesses that fail in their health and safety duties run the risk of damage, personal injuries, lawsuits, and ultimately, closure.
While there are regulations in place to help make sure you carry out your operations safely, there’s always more that can be done to make sure your business is a safe and secure place for employees and customers.
Don’t ignore health and safety, take a look at some of the ways you can go above and beyond to put safety at the heart of your business.
Many accidents in the workplace happen because employees haven’t had the right training to prevent them. Every employee on your books needs to have health and safety training, whether for manual handling or what to do in the event of a fire. You can run this training as an online module, as well as some face-to-face training to help the message sink in. Health and safety training is something that should be refreshed regularly, so make sure it’s a part of your ongoing onboarding program.
Make your policies clear
Your health and safety policies need to be clear and visible to all. There are some useful resources available to help you draft a health and safety policy to share with your employees. Be unstintingly clear what is acceptable within your business, and what is not. If some of your employees will be working at height, you need to address what is expected of them when they do so. Whether this means they need to be wearing fall protection lanyards, or harnesses, or have crash mats in place, what’s essential is that everyone knows what is expected from them in order to ensure safety is maintained. In addition to your health and safety policy, you need to make sure that your liability insurance is in place and that you have lawyers on had to advise you on any health and safety issues that could become serious.
Don’t scrimp on supplies and materials
While saving money is in the best interests of your budget, it’s not always in the best interests of your business. Choosing materials because they’re cheap could cause problems later on if they’re not of a high standard. When it comes to safety, only the best should do. An ABS butterfly valve can be a valuable item for your equipment, and choosing an inferior product could pose a major risk. Choose suppliers you can rely on and are trustworthy, the reassurance will far outweigh the cost.
Remember to pay attention to wellbeing
While you might have the safety of your employees covered, have you given much thought to their wellbeing? You can improve employee wellbeing in a number of ways, including promoting fitness in the workplace, encouraging healthy eating and making the workplace a more sociable and positive place to work. Paying attention to the wellbeing of your employees helps them to feel more valued, which can boost your turnover rates and make your company a better place to work.
Ensuring the health and safety of your business is one of those common challenges that all business owners face, but it’s also one of the most important. Make sure you make health and safety a high priority in your business to ensure it’s longevity and demonstrate that you’re a smart and successful business owner.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. Successfully running a business involves proactively managing potential problems. Doing so ensure that your business will have a long life. The following contributed post is entitled, Take Big Troubles Away.
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If all it ever feels like you’re doing with your business is battling, we know the score. It really can feel like one problem after the other when business isn’t going great, and even when it is going great, it can still feel like there is a constant barrage of problems coming your way. But do you ever think that it might be because you’re just trying to do too much? Well that’s most likely because you will be. Small businesses in particular don’t seem to utilise the tools that there are out there, and the support networks to lean on. There are just so many ways of being able to take some troubles off your hands, you most likely have not found the solution just yet. So, we’ve created a perfect post that will be full of tips that should help you to remove a few of the problems you’re having. These are based on common problems that we know all small businesses seem to be facing, so we hope you can relate to at least one of them.
Technology is the key to every business, but it’s not always the easiest to manage when you’re not really sure what you’re doing, and you have a million and one other things to do with your business. But yet we don’t seem to outsource to businesses who can control our IT servers and other functions, and manage them for us. It makes so much sense to do this, especially if the server you’re using at the minute is causing you problems, such as downtime. Cyber Shift Technologies is just one of the businesses you could contact if this sounds like something you need. It’s just nice to have a business there who is an expert in something you’re not, and who can fix so many of the problems that you’re having.
Sales Issues
Every single sale that you have points towards your goal. The more you have, the quicker you’re going to get there, and that’s why so many small businesses obsess over them. But when sales issues start to come so early on, and you realise that you’re losing more money than you’re making, it can start to get a little tense. So you need to think about sales and marketing consultants that would be able to help you. When both of these work together, you find a solution that should make you more visible as a business, as well as help to facilitate those all important sales, making things like the order process and your website easier to use, which might be slowing down sales at the minute.
HR Issues
HR issues are so common, and they start as soon as you hire your first employee. As a small business you won’t have the funds to employ another person as HR manager, simply because there’s not enough staff to give reason to do so. But the one staff member you have hired will need an HR path they can follow if ever they need to, so why not think about checking out online services that offer this. All you have to do is a quick Google search and you will see the services we’re talking about!
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. If you have a ‘bricks and mortar’ business, it’s critical to keep you business premises in top condition. In order to do that, there are some tasks that you have to stay on top of regularly. The following contributed post is entitled, Routine Tasks For Your Business Premises.
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Your business premises are much more than just the place where you physically work. They’re a reflection of your company, they can help solidify your branding, they give your visitors and customers an insight into who you are as a business. So it’s important that you’re spending some time to ensure that your office or store is in tip-top condition. If you don’t, you may be unnecessarily hurting your venture, for no good reason at all. Below, we take a look at a few of the routine tasks you’ll want to complete to keep your premises in tip-top condition.
Anywhere that sees flurries of activity is going to suffer from general wear and tear over time. As such, you’ll want to conduct regular checks to ensure that there’s nothing that’s seriously undermining the quality and appearance of your premises. When you’re so “close” to your surroundings (you work there, after all), sometimes it happens that those small damages pass us by. But if enough of the small matters are left untreated, we’ll eventually end up with one big issue that seriously compromises the quality of our building. Stay proactive, and promptly take care of any damages.
Maintaining Standards
It’s not just the little scuffs and damages that you should be aware of, either. You’ll also need to work on maintaining the overall standards of the building, so that you’re not inadvertently presented with a big problem. Think of your business premises in the same way you do your house: you can’t let things run on autopilot, they need to be actively managed. Some areas of your building, such as your roof, can severely disrupt your business operations if they suffer damage. To ensure you don’t arrive to a damaged interior after heavy rainfall, looking at having your roof inspected by a commercial roofing contractor. Other areas include the electrics and the heating system; if they’re not working properly, both of these things can cause long-term damage.
Updated Decor
Your decor might have looked the part when you first opened, but this isn’t going to be the case forever. After a few years, it might be that your interior is beginning to look a little dated and worn. While it might seem like one of those tasks that can be delayed for another day, just think about the first impression your visitors will have of your company. It won’t be positive! And talking of first impressions, take a look at your exterior, too. Some businesses have well-designed, modern interiors, yet forget to do anything about the outside area of their premises.
Clean and Tidy
Finally, remember that there really is no substitute for having a clean and tidy office or store. It’s an essential ingredient! What type of cleaning your premises needs, and how frequently, will depend on the type of space you have. If you’re not sure which way you need to go, then work with a company that offers cleaning services to do the job for you.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. While being a business owner can be one of the most liberating things one can do, but it can also be one of the most challenging. There are a few pieces to be aware of. The following contributed post is entitled, Common Challenges Business Owners Face.
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Being a business owner can give you the freedom you’ve always wanted. It can help you to get success, validation, and all of that good stuff that the ego just loves. However, this isn’t to say that it’s going to be an easy ride. It doesn’t matter how great your business idea is, you’re going to encounter some challenges along the way. Below, we’re going to take a look at some common challenges that business owners face so that you’re prepared and know what to expect:
Health Care One of the most challenging aspects of running a small business comes from managing health care for your employees. Your workers health is important. When they are healthy, they can work to the best of their abilities and feel great in the workplace. You’ll have less sick days and other issues related to health. However, the increased healthcare costs can make finances difficult to manage. Companies like Syntrix Consulting Group can make managing the healthcare of your team much easier.
Tax Compliance You want to keep your profits high as a business owner, and that means making suitable office deductions, whether you work from home or not. However, record keeping can take up a lot of your time, and it can be extremely frustrating if this isn’t something you’re naturally good at. Working with a trustworthy accountant will mean making sure your tax is completed correctly the first time around, and they will often be able to make deductions for things you didn’t think of or realize you could deduct, so you can pay them with the money you’ve saved. You’ll save money and won’t even notice that you’ve forked out for an accountant. Smart!
Staying Passionate About Your Business
Working on your business day in day out can be exciting at first, but keeping the passion alive can be tough after a while. You need to be absolutely obsessed with what it is you’re trying to achieve. Make sure that your business fits in with your goals and values and that it’s something you know you’ll never get bored of. If it isn’t yet, make it so.
It can be especially tough to stay feeling great and energetic when you’re spending longer days in the office than your employees, fearing that things just won’t work as well in your absence. You must find a pace that keeps the business running without wearing yourself down.
Hiring New People To Join Your Team Hiring employees can be tough, and you have a lot to consider. You need to think about things like benefits, taxes, bonuses, equipment, and more. You need to consider all of these hurdles before you even come up with the position’s salary. Having a solid hiring process is also important. Getting other members of your team involved and actually asking questions that matter will make a huge difference. Make sure you know which qualifications are essential, and the experience necessary too. Sometimes, it’s better to hire somebody who is completely new to the role if they have the right personality, and other times, you have to hire somebody with the right skills.
Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. For standard ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses, a major key is getting customers to come to your store. Generating this traffic will likely increase your profits. The following contributed post is entitled, Ideas to Boot Your Retail Business and Get Customers Through the Door.
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If you work in retail, or have a store as part of your business, then what are the ways that you need to improve it? One of the first things that you need to think about is about the curb appeal of the frontage. It gives people walking past an idea about what your business is about, and can quickly make their mind up about whether they should come into the store or not. So have you considered how important curb appeal is for your store? In fact, a huge 95% of customers have been reported to say that the appearance of a store, especially on the outside, will be one of the main things that they base their decision on, and will help them decide whether to enter the shop or not; that is a huge number of people. So with all of that in mind, here are some ways to make sure that any store frontage is looking good, and ready to welcome in customers.
From the windows to the sidewalk, the front of the store needs to be kept clean. It might mean that you are out there cleaning first thing before the store opens, but a quick sweep of the paving, sidewalk, and checking things like the door and windows are clean, is a must. It is something that is really simple but often gets forgotten about. It doesn’t have to take long, but will make a difference with people’s perceptions of your business.
Make Repairs
Like having a clean and tidy frontage, you also need to make sure that things are repaired as and when the problems arise. If you have paving out front that is cracked and looking a little worse for wear, how about getting in touch with a commercial paving company to get a quote? Things like that should be fixed as soon as possible, as it can look tacky and cheap otherwise, which isn’t something that you want perspective customers to be thinking about.
Change Your Window Display
No matter what your retail business is, you need to make sure that you draw new customers in by using things like your windows and window displays to draw people in. If people are regularly passing by but never make it in, the change in window displays could show them something that are interested in, meaning that they will be likely to pop in. As for regular customers, it just helps to show them variety, and gives them another reason to keep coming back to you.
Advertise Sales and Special Offers
One of the main goals in retail is to simply get customers through the door. When you are able to do so, it means that you can get talking to them, getting to know them, and get selling to them. So one of the best ways to get customers through the door is to offer deals and bargains, and make sure that they are clearly advertised. If someone was thinking of popping in, they are much more likely too if they see there is money off or a sale on.
