Author: Nibletz Staff

You could have a truly revolutionary business idea, or some of the most creative and innovative marketing in the world, but all of that isn’t going to count for much if it isn’t backed up by a solid, long-term financial strategy. When you’re first getting into the details of your long-term business plan, make sure you’re not making any of these major budgetary blunders…

Inflating your Projections

Far too many businesses have hurt themselves by over-promising and under-delivering. You wouldn’t be the first to make this mistake, and you certainly wouldn’t be the last! It’s pretty easy for investors to get fooled by financial figures in the short-term, but in the end those numbers will always catch up with you. Yes, I know that if you’re brutally honest with your projections, it can take a lot longer to source the kind of funding you need to really take your business places. However, taking your time, and putting more work into the finer points of your pitch is always worth it. When that money does come through, it will be honest money, and will allow you to pursue a business plan that will remain realistic and manageable for years to come.

Not Expecting the Unexpected

While planning for the dependable things that the future holds for your business as nothing else can free up a lot of capital, there are various unexpected mishaps that can creep up on your business, and cause an immediate, urgent need for money. Property damage or loss, an employee being injured, a major security breach can all happen to your firm, just as it happens to countless other businesses on a fairly regular basis. When you’re drawing up your budget for the year ahead, remember to leave an emergency cash buffer which you can tap into if and when you need it. This can be used to cover things like short-term property repairs, graffiti removal, transport hire, outsourcing an unexpected influx of work to freelancers, and so on. Full-blown business emergencies are rare, but you should always have a plan for them.

Poor Management of the Marketing Calendar

Seen as marketing leads to sales, you might think that it’s pretty difficult to mismanage the money you’re investing in it. However, a lot of business budgets treat marketing costs as a percentage of sales in a single sales period. To make sure it’s truly effective, you need to ensure your marketing campaign is initiated at least one period before any big sales can be counted on. When you think about the other out-of-pocket costs that are going to come with a marketing campaign, a well-managed marketing budget is essential for your future success. Fail to budget the necessary costs in a well-thought-out time frame, and you’ll be under-utilizing your finances, holding yourself back from those big sales targets, and increasing the risk for over-spending later in the year.

Moving forward, be sure to keep these mistakes in mind. If you’ve formulated a great vision for your business, don’t let it crumble under a poorly managed budget!

Keeping your startup in strong financial shape during those first few months in business is essential. So many businesses fail early on because they don’t strive for stability, and that leads to mistakes that don’t need to be made. Your focus should always be on selling and bringing money into the company. Without that, your business will go nowhere. But what about the other things? Here are some ways to keep your business stable in the early days and weeks.

Think Carefully About How You Pay Yourself

When you run a business, it’s always tricky knowing how much to pay yourself. You need to make sure that you have enough money to live off. And it’s only right that you get paid for the amount of work that you do. But paying yourself excessively in those first weeks and months in business can be a mistake. You don’t want a massive chunk of the business’s profits to go into your personal accounts because then you’ll be left with less money with which the business can maneuver and grow. To keep the business stable, you’ll have to give this a lot of thought.

Put Checks and Balances in Place

There should be checks and balances in place to ensure that you don’t make unnecessary mistakes in those early days. For a start, you should have control over money and payments. These are things that shouldn’t be trusted to other people when the margins are really tight. On top of that, you should oversee the work that’s done before it’s presented to the public. Molding the brand image of your company needs to be done from day one. Preventative maintenance software can also help because it stops problems from arising with your tech. Try to put as many of these safeguards in place as possible.

Don’t be Tempted to Overreach

Overreaching is common among inexperienced business owners. They have a small amount of success and assume that this means they can push further and expect more. This doesn’t always fail, but it usually does. You need to be realistic about the levels of success your business is going to experience early on. It’s much better to grow slowly in a sustainable kind of way than to take lots of risks and burn out quickly. It’s all about getting your mentality right and ensuring that you don’t try to do more than you’re capable of doing while the business is still very young.

Learn From Every Early Mistake That Gets Made

Finally, you should make sure that every mistake the business makes is learnt from. There is no reason why you can’t see each mistake you make in those early days as a positive. When you take this kind of approach, you can help to make sure that you don’t repeat the mistakes you make allow them to become larger and more problematic for the company. Stability is not achieved through never making a single mistake. That’s just unrealistic. Instead, it’s done by not repeating them.

Everyone wants to run a business but no one wants to learn about how to do it properly. Everyone thinks that you can just go to the bank with an idea, get financed and then start up a company and make millions. Hold your horses, slow it down and take a breather. There aren’t many people that manage to make that dream become a reality and there are even fewer people that manage to make it past the first step: the pitch. Let’s face it, starting up a business is harder than you think and if you go in without any experience or knowledge, you are going to fail.

If you want to take your startup seriously you’re going to have to get your head down and study. To give you an idea of some of the things you’ll need to learn, here are four tips that you should read and study carefully.

The Pitch

If you don’t have a solid business plan you can forget trying to convince the banks that you know what you are doing. You could go to another lender that might even specialise in financing businesses that you want to run, but you’re going to get the same result. If you haven’t properly thought up a plan on how to get your business up and running, how to maintain it and then how to leave the industry, then you won’t get a single dime to start your business.

Financing

Banks and lenders aren’t the only way to get your business started, however. If you want to run something more humble such as YouTube channel or start up an indie development studio, then you can do so in the comfort of your own home with some friends and family members or even by yourself. You can finance this quite easily by just pitching in your own money, or you could even ask people to lend you some money to start. The other option (which is becoming increasingly popular) is to crowdfund it. If you have a great idea you can go to a website such as Kickstarter to gather interest and funds for your project. If you want to finance your content creation, then you can go to a different service like Patreon, where people can subscribe to you for your services and content.

Learning Material

There are hundreds and thousands of blogs out there that will teach you how to run a business and how to market it. This internet marketing blog has a tonne of information about how to expand your reach and grow your brand, and it’s all free information that doesn’t need to be paid for. There are countless online resources both paid and free, so do a thorough Google search and start learning.

You’ll Probably Fail

You’ll be lucky to start up your first business and have it run for longer than a year. Most business owners go into the industry without much experience and as a result, they use their first couple of months to learn. Even if you have a degree in business and you’ve studied under the finest mentors, there’s no telling what will happen when you open your doors to the public. Expect to fail, but don’t take it as a negative thing. When you fail, you should be analyzing why you failed, how you could do better, and future plans to improve.

Investing in property can be a business venture on its own. By owning a few properties you can make a healthy profit – if you know what you’re doing. Here are four of the best ways to make money out of property.

Become a landlord

The preferred method by most, becoming a landlord allows you to cover mortgage costs by renting the property out. This could include one whole building or individual rooms. Paying an agency can sometimes help to ensure property gets filled and that rent is paid on time, although it’s worth weighing up the cost. Rented properties must fit certain specs, so you may have to do a little work to your property first if you were to pursue this avenue. It may be best to keep some money left over to in the event that you may need to make repairs (obviously if this inflicted by the tenants, you can deduct these costs from your tenants’ deposits)

Give properties makeovers

Restoring and renovating property can be another great way of making a profit. If you’re a dab hand at DIY you may be able to do this yourself, but quite often it may pay to hire professionals. There are many companies that can renovate your entire property for you (such as this company owned by Nicolas Livsit). Alternatively, you may be able to save money doing certain jobs yourself and then picking specific handymen for specific tasks such as electricians as plumbers. Getting involved in this kind of property investment requires having some money already behind you and you should always make sure not to get too attached to the properties you renovate – otherwise you may not want to sell them.

Study appreciation rates

Riskier than renting or renovating, you could simply rely on natural appreciation to make a profit. You will have to find a way of paying the mortgage in the meantime, but if you study property price rates enough you may be able to find an up-and-coming location in which prices are sharply on the rise, making it only a couple years before you can make your return. Many property investors will try other methods before moving to this, making money and gaining a knowledge of how the property market works before committing to such a risk. The worst thing you want is to invest in a property, only for it to not increase in value at all and be stuck with it (or worse invest in property that loses it’s value).

Learn to flip

Flipping property is the riskiest venture of all and involves trading a property directly for another with no money involved. Both parties generally have to feel like they’re getting something out of it. If you’re sly enough you may able to exchange your property for one that’s worth more in value, or one that you can easily add value to by making a few adjustments. Get it wrong and you could risk ending up with the worst part of the deal. Property experts should only attempt this.

One of the most important components of any business plan is your relevance. You could have the brightest scientists and engineers working on a life-changing product, but if there is no market for it then you aren’t going to make any money. If people don’t have a use for your product, then no matter how great it is you aren’t going to make a profit on the money you invested in.

This is the key to running a successful manufacturing startup. You can’t be too specialized and you can’t be too broad, but you do need to be flexible and take on as many orders and clients as you possibly can. An industrial startup has to be willing to accept jobs that are outside of their comfort zone, but you need to be professional enough not to overstep your boundaries and overestimate your ability.

Versatile equipment

Image starting a production line. Picture all the machines, gears and computers required for production to run smoothly. Now let’s say your contract is complete and you’re going to take on a new job. As you receive the order, you realize that you now have to change your production line and tweak it so that you can build this new order. If your manufacturing line isn’t ready for change, then you’re going to be slow at meeting orders and your efficiency as a business will plummet.

Whether it’s heavy duty clamps to lock down hoses, robotic arms to do highly detailed work or conveyor belts to move items around your factory, you need to have versatile equipment that can be switched or modified at a moment’s notice so that you can continue working efficiently whenever you receive a new order. There are some obvious limitations to this. For example, you can’t expect to create plastic toys and also manufacture chemicals to be used in cleaning products. You have to set realistic goals and aim to conquer an industry.

Focus on a needed industry

Let’s start with this question: what can you provide? If you want to specialize in a specific industry, then you need to get yourself out there and provide products that resonate with your clients and customers. For instance, if your factory is close to a large lumber yard, then you can specialize in wooden products that could be anything from furniture to disposable chopsticks. Wood is one of the most used raw materials in our everyday lives. We build houses with it, buildings, furniture and it’s even used as fuel.

For something so versatile, you are guaranteed to get regular customers and you might even sign contracts to supply big-name brands assuming you can meet their demands and provide excellent quality and service. If you focus on too many contracts, however, you’re going to spread your resources too thinly and you might not have the right equipment to tackle every job thrown at you. Another example of a needed industry is a chemical plant. Chemicals of all types are used in almost everything from food to cleaning products and bathroom essentials.

It doesn’t matter what size your ecommerce enterprise is, the simple fact is that controlling your stock levels and the way you order and manage your inventory will be critical to your success. There is a lot that can go wrong when you order products, store them, and then sell them to customers – and the only way to control the problems is by investing into practical inventory management systems. Here are some general guidelines for newcomers to the ecommerce world – no matter which industry you are serving.

The ins and outs

The first step is to take a firm grip on what comes in and out of your stores or warehouse. Suppliers will deliver your goods, and you will need to count it in to ensure there are no discrepancies. Bear in mind that somewhere between 1-2% of all packages have missing items – and that can add up to a significant amount of money over a year. It’s also worth thinking that those percentages apply to online retailers, too – in an ideal world, your actual figure for packaging mistakes will be a fraction of this average.

Storage

Storage might not seem like a problem if you are just starting out in ecommerce and working from home. But by the time you start selling in any volume, it will be problematic without the right levels of organisation. First of all, you need to arrange your stock in a way that is sensible – are your best sellers readily available? Are you keeping products that look similar to each other apart to avoid picking and packing mistakes? And are you ensuring that you are rotating stock that has Best Before Dates – such as foods or perishables?

Automate it

With the right system in place, your inventory control processes will become much easier than they are when you have to do everything manually. There are plenty of ERP retail solutions out there, so take a look around and find one that works well for your industry. For example, there are barcode systems and RFID solutions to consider, and they can help you minimise picking areas and get a tighter grip on your stock. It’s also advisable to choose a system that allows you to order automatically. As soon as your stock levels hit a minimum level, the system creates an order, meaning you can ensure your most popular products are never out of stock.

Check it!

Manual stock checks will become something of a bane for you – just as it is in every retail store. But the simple truth is that without them, you will end up in all kinds of trouble. Even with the sharpest, best and brightest piece of software, you should be making regular manual checks. Picking mistakes, employee theft, supplier issues – all of them can lead to discrepancies in your system which will frustrate you in the long-term.

Inventory management isn’t the most glamorous part of the ecommerce trade – but it is one of the most important. It is essential that you have a robust system in place right from the start, so you can analyse all your processes and ensure your business is as accurate as possible.

When starting any business there are many cost issues you need to bear in mind. You’ll plan them all out, just like you should, and allocate cash reserves to each area as needed. But there are things businesses always forget, and as such need to scramble around and find extra cash or risk leaving the business exposed in some way, shape or form. The best way to mitigate this is by planning things out properly beforehand, and knowing exactly what the costs will be before starting the business.

Cyber Security

A sometimes cheap expense, cyber security is a must in a computer rich environment. Often overlooked in the business plan, it can be an irksome add on later on. But it should be planned in because sometimes it can be more expensive. If you run a specific industry, such as financial, you’ll want the best SIEM to defend against internal and external threats. You should include all types of security in your initial business model to limit the disappointment of having to spend out later on. Firms simply cannot function without appropriate spyware these days as the risks are too great. There’s viruses, spyware, malware etc to worry about, so ensure you get it at the earliest opportunity to circumvent all risks involved.

Accountancy

Usually smaller businesses will think that they can do all the number crunching themselves on the side, and many of them can. But only until the business grows and you need to start pulling your time to other areas to keep it operational. The number crunching is time consuming. You should plan in for this down the line and set some cash aside for accountancy or accountant consultation. Your business will really benefit from their expertise and reap the rewards as their advice can help you run for longer and appropriate cost cutting techniques where needed.

Miss Calculation Of Growth

Sometimes growth will be miscalculated and you won’t receive the funds from operation that you expected. Because of this you should always have backup cash reserves. Shave ten percent off your business cash at the beginning of launch and stow it away in a separate business account. This is your money that can see and support you through the bad times. Just remember to top it back up when things start going well again.

SEO

Businesses which operate solely from a website need search engine optimization to ensure people can find their website with ease. It isn’t easy, but many business owners still try to do it themselves, which involves creating lots of quality content for blogs and social media. It is time consuming and should be left to the experts who know exactly what they are doing. Hiring freelancers to write for you or an SEO company can be pricey, but marketing and ensuring your website is visible is a sure fire way to increase sales. You don’t want to be in a position where you are trying to do all of this yourself, set cash aside at the beginning for it for maximum effect.

Some workplace stress is normal, even acceptable. We all come up against challenges that can push us close to our limits. However, if your workplace is an environment where stress is all too common an occurrence, it’s a workplace that is at risk of collapsing at any moment. People will leave, people will burn out entirely, and people will resent the place they work. It’s a good idea to identify the stressors your team are under so you can start tackling the biggest ones.

Lack of agency

If your business is treating any one person as little more than a workhorse, then you better believe that they’re going to feel penned in and used. People like to have some impact and some agency. Empowering them, keeping your door open to creativity and even incentivizing solutions with little rewards doesn’t just make them happier in their job. It means that the people closest to the work can provide solutions that you might not be able to find otherwise. Whether that’s in efficiency, in customer satisfaction, or in improving your ROI.

A workload they can’t handle

Roles evolve and the best employees are able and willing to take on new tasks as they grow. But you have to make sure that you’re not straining them too hard. You can’t always expect them to speak up. Instead, teach them about the value of organizing their workload and time management. Then help them find tools like software that can help do certain things quicker or even automate them.

Their future

The future is uncertain and there’s no way to control it. However, employers are in the position to make the future at least a little more secure for their employees. Monetarily, they can use 401k small companies plans to offer the kind of long-lived financial protection against the kind of worries most people have about their future. But you should also look at their need for some sort of future path in their career, too. Instead of always hiring, think about focusing more on developing people internally to grow them through the company.

Their work-life balance

Naturally, they have needs in the present, as well. One that too few employers really consider is their need for work-life balance. Not everyone is suited to a 9-to-5 in the same office as everyone else. Sometimes, they need more privacy, which could mean remote working or offering a different space in the workplace. Sometimes they need more control over their own schedule, which employers can give by offering flexible paid time off instead of regimenting sick days and holidays.

Fear

This contributes to every point above. If employees are afraid to talk about the issues that matter to them, they will sit on their stressors. They will silently look for jobs that offer 401k plans and flexible hours. They won’t object to being given work that would push them over their limits. Make sure you’re not engendering a workplace of fear. It might offer you a shallow modicum of control over them, but it is your business that suffers in the end.

Operating with a healthy level of challenge is always going to be stressful, so you don’t need the business itself to be causing any more. Remember the needs of your team so they can focus on the needs of the business.

In the midst of starting a company, you will at some point hit a snag. It is nothing that is worth worrying about, these things were made to try us. It is inevitable as the business progresses you will bump into issues along the way. Staffing is one of those issues. When companies start, there is the big question of cost hanging over everything. Can you afford to hire full-time members of staff when you are a primitive startup company? A lot of people bypass this by going for the outsourcing method, where you hire a freelancer to come in and do whatever needs to be done quickly, and exit the process. As a small business owner, this could be an absolutely ideal way to get the tasks you need doing, but at a fraction of the cost. There are pros and cons to having permanent staff and freelancers at any one time.

The communication between an employer and freelancer is something that can be frustrating at points. The freelancer mindset is to swoop in and out. Do the job and leave. If you want to inject a sense of cohesion and transparency in your business, it may be very hard to achieve when you are met with this approach to work. On the other hand, if you are the type of leader that likes to give the order and expect no questions, this is a suitable approach to take. Contact can be minimal if you give a very detailed level of information with a deadline, which gives you more time to get on with the important stuff.

On the other hand, freelancers can give a fresh point of view on your company, maybe in ways that you have never seen it before. Outsourced IT companies can look at your technical infrastructure and tell you where you are falling down. By having another point of view on proceedings, it helps to flag up potential problems before they get worse.

A permanent member of staff is not just someone who clocks in and out. This is a person who is invested in the company and its ethos. At least that’s what you should be looking for when you are doing the hiring process. Having someone work for you on a permanent basis is more of an investment than a freelancer, and you would not need to school them up in the ways of the business and how it is run, as they would already know this. From a perspective of a business owner, time is not wasted in training up someone in the fine details of the company for them to disappear as soon as their work is done.

Looking at both sides of the coin in the freelancer versus permanent worker debate is one that can go on forever. You need to ask yourself, do I need someone to be an investment in my business so I can build a great team, or do I want to go it alone for a bit longer, getting help when I may need it? I hope you find the answer.

Running a business has its perks, there is no denying that. But for everything great in this world, there is another side of the coin, and ensuring the positive’s mean doing your best to combat the negatives. In the case of business management that tends to be the responsibility you have. It oozes out of every department, every floor and every boardroom. You have a responsibility to your employees, to make sure they are appreciated, work in safe conditions and are steered in the right direction. You have a responsibility to your clients, to sell them a high quality service or product worth its money. You have a responsibility to the board and to investors, to deliver them high returns on their investments and ensure each quarter provides increased profits.

Of course, this is all part and parcel of running a business, but that does not mean you have to shoulder all the responsibilities and all the pressures alone, and we are not just talking managerial responsibilities. We live in an era where experts offer their services through outsourcing opportunities, many of which could assist you and your company.

Let’s start with digital agencies

Great marketing strategies have the ability to see your business boom. Poorly executed ones can see you take a hit financial and in terms of your reputation. As such, why not release some of the efforts and resources tied up within your business and work in collaboration with those who have forged award-winning careers on this front, companies that know which market trends are working and will be able to couple strategies to maximise the effect you have. While you may have been concentrating on strategies to boost your SEO, an agency will be able to explain how to successfully integrate this with other tactics, such as CRO and PPC strategies.  

Computers take up resource

A robust and reliable network is likely to be your unsung hero because a well-maintained server is what allows your business to operate smoothly day in and day out. It is what allows employees to work remotely, to share files, to work in collaboration with different departments and sometime different offices. But maintaining computers can be arduous, costly and frustrating, which is why we recommend you consider partnering up with a company that specializes in managed IT services. Not only will they be your software support team, but they will ensure your security is top notch too, installing the latest firewalls and encryption devices as standard.

Look professional

All businesses – whether those established for 65 years or those that are a week old and being run out of a dorm room – want to look professional, and that tends to be nothing more than a matter of perspective. As such, you will want to upgrade your telecommunications services so that you are able to book virtual meeting rooms, host conference calls and hold in WebEx seminars. That is where a solutions company specialising in business phones will be your best friend. Trust us, this will give your business that professionalism it may be lacking.

The success or failure of your startup company often depends on how you get started. If you don’t have the right foundations for success in place, it will be almost impossible for you to get to where you want to be. It really is as simple as that. Of course, there are other matters and challenges that you will have to deal with later. But for now, you will need to think about what you can do to lay the right foundations. Here are those foundations, so don’t ignore any of them.

Contacts in the Industry

It can really help if you have contacts in the industry where you want to work. When you don’t have the right contacts in place, it can be a big hindrance for your company. You will be all alone, and you won’t know where you need to turn. That’s no way to run a business if you don’t have any existing experience in your sector. Try to network, meet people and build contacts before you actually start to get your business off the ground. It could be one of the smartest things you do when you’re just starting out in the world of business.

A Secure Headquarters

Next, you will need a base from which your company can do it’s vital work. If you don’t have this in place, it will lead to you not achieving as much as you know that your business can. You’ll be forced to run your business from home, which is a situation that’s never ideal for serious entrepreneurs. It simply makes things harder for you to manage, and the business will struggle to present itself as professional. When you do have your headquarters in place, you will need to think about security. You can get help with this from Cannon Guards.

A Plan for Reaching Those First Customers

Reaching the very first customers of the business can be really difficult. Remember, you’re going to be starting from absolutely nothing. There will be no existing customers. In fact, no one will even have heard of your business to begin with. This situation can be difficult to contend with because you have to put a strategy in place that results in quick sales. So, think about what you can do to reach out to people and get your name out there. It might mean linking up with bigger companies, creating a launch event or marketing the business aggressively.

Strong Team Ethic

The team ethic present in your business is going to be very important. If you don’t have a strong team ethic, your team will not perform as strongly as it would if everyone was working for one another as a team unit. This is something that you really need to pay attention to if you want to find success. Build your team gradually, and ensure that each and every person you bring into the fold is capable of doing well for the company and pulling it in the right kind of direction.