Nibletz Staff
Starting a new business is like doing anything for the first time: there are a lot of unknowns. First, you can never be sure that your idea is any good until you go out into the world and find out. Consumers will not have any problem letting you know if you have something that they’re not interested in. Secondly, and especially if you haven’t run your own business before, you will not know how you will perform in that role. Shakespeare was right four hundred years ago when he said ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’. You will quickly have to learn how to improve on all the things that you aren’t great at. Thirdly, and as strange as it sounds, you will not be aware of all of the things that you don’t know yet. It is one thing to work on the faults you recognize in yourself but quite another to try and fix things that you don’t even realise are going wrong. Running a startup is going to be stressful.
It is not until you are actually in the thick of your business that you start to appreciate just how many costs are associated with running it. Everything will cost something, whether it is your time or your money. You will find that things break and need repairing or that a law will change that means you have to pay your employees more. Whatever it is, you will want to save as much money as possible. Here a few tips for trying to keep everything as under control as you can:
Organisation is key to any business and it can save you a lot more money than you expect. To get off to a great start, you should implement good practice from your first day. For some people that means investing in a way of labeling everything so you can always know its place (check out Dial A Label) but for others it could mean that the office is a complete mess but the person who runs it knows exactly where everything is. As long as you have a system that works for you, it will be cheaper than getting everything mixed up and being stymied by it.
Since your business will likely start small and hopefully grow, in the first few years, you will probably know everyone who works for you. You’ll work alongside them on a day to day basis and that can present challenges of its own. If there is a problem, you will not have an entire HR department to help you. That is why you should be completely clear and honest about every aspect of your business. You do not want anyone to have any feelings of resentment or antipathy towards you. Remember: happy employees are more effective employees.
Finally, work hard but remember to have fun sometimes as well. To be at your fighting weight, making the best decisions for you and your business, you need to be relaxed and feeling good. Working too hard will not always produce better results. Besides, life is too short to spend at the office all day.
