Author: Nibletz Staff

When you are starting up a business, it’s all about your idea. You might do some market research, and begin to realize that your business model might just have a shot of success – so you get on with business, put your head down, and get that product or service out there.

But once you launch, if you still carry on thinking that your idea is going to clean up, you are, sadly, mistaken. Because if you want to enjoy success, you will need to start listening to your customers, not forge ahead with your own ideas, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Here are some ideas to ensure your business is listening – and acting on – your customer’s needs.

Acquire and retain

Finding new customers is difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. It makes more financial sense to start looking after your current clients, and stop leaking them to the competition. The average company loses around 10% of its clients every year, so if you can start thinking about beating that figure, you will go some way to ensuring a bright future. It’s also important to understand that if you can retain just 2% more of your current clients, it has the same impact as cutting 10% of your costs.

Be passionate about it

It’s no good just giving customer service lip service – you have to have a thorough understanding of it and also put your knowledge into action. Believe in the old adage that the client comes first, and you will retain them. See the world – and your product – through your customer’s eyes and you will understand what they need – and how to provide it to them.

Talk in their language

Once you understand your customer’s needs, talk to them in a way that helps them understand you have, or are, part of the solution. Your tone of voice is critical, here, and it is a vital part of the customer strategy you will need to form to achieve some success.

Develop relationships

It’s important to understand the impact of customer centric companies on their audience. If you can prove to your clients that you are solely focused on addressing their needs, you will find you start to build high levels of loyalty that can last for years. So, start using data and analytics to find out what your customers are asking you – and don’t be afraid to use surveys or after sales calls. The more information you can gather, the easier it will be to speak to your customers and provide a first-class experience.  

Develop your products and ideas

Finally, ensure you are tweaking, changing, or even ripping up products that your customers aren’t buying. Your original idea might have got you to the ball game, but unless you are adapting products and services to their needs, you won’t get to see any action. Commit to focusing on your customers, and provide them, wherever possible, with the services they want to see.

Do you have any tips for keeping your focus with customers? Feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

As a business owner, you want to get the best out of every member of your team. But how do you do this? If you feel like people could give you and the company more, here are some hints, which may enable you to eek out that extra bit of effort.

Respect is a two-way street

As the boss, you expect to be treated with respect, but this shouldn’t be a one-way street. As a manager, you must also show your employees the respect they deserve. This doesn’t just mean taking the time to talk to them if they approach you for advice. It also means ensuring that you provide them with the support they need, and the safe and inspirational working environment they need to succeed. Every employee has a right to go to work every day without worrying about coming home with an injury. It’s your duty to ensure that you comply with health and safety regulations and to enable your team to work safely and efficiently. If you run a warehouse, for example, no worker should be expected to lift items that are too heavy without the use of specialist lifting equipment. It’s also essential to provide the relevant training. As Work Active states, Manual Handling Training can help to increase productivity and reduce the risk of injuries.

Rewarding commitment to the cause

How would you feel if you worked day and night without any reward or recognition? When you put a lot of effort in, you expect to get something back. If you’re managing a team, and you want maximum effort from every person, they need to know that it’s going to be worth their while at the end. If you’re asking people to work extra hours or to increase their workload, reward them for their commitment to the cause. You don’t have to go crazy and hand out bonuses left, right, and center. But show that you’re grateful in some way. Treat your team to dinner out, or put some money behind the bar at the annual office party.

Making work more fun

It’s well-documented that if you enjoy your job, you’re going to make more of an effort. If you dread every Monday morning or you spend your days watching the hands of the clock tick by at an alarmingly slow pace, it’s highly likely that you’re going to do the minimum to get by and claim your wages. If you can make the working day more fun, you’re going to get more out of your team, and the morale will be a lot higher. You don’t need to fit slides in the office or book a comedian to come and put on a show at lunchtime. However, making more of an effort will pay dividends. Try and organize social events and encourage group work. Make meetings more collaborative, or host themed days for charity.

If you’re managing a team, you don’t want them to do the bare minimum. It’s important that you value and respect your employees and make the workplace a safe and fun place to be.

You might think that marketing a business is easy. After all, it’s just a case of finding the customer and then selling them the product, right? Well, while this is technically true it’s a rather simplistic view of promotion. Let’s face it, there’s a lot more to take into consideration rather than just finding the customer and selling. As such, this is one of the first mistakes that business owners make. They make things too simple and in doing so miss out key details. For instance, imagine if you only understood the simplest version of SEO. In that case, that would be adding keywords and links to a website. We know that SEO involves a lot more than that and these two tools won’t get you very far at all. The same can be true for marketing. If you make things too simple, you will be limiting how much you could achieve.

Of course, the other possibility is that you over-complicate things. For instance, you might be working using social media. It’s important that any posts on networks like Twitter are simple, easy to follow and succinct. Obviously, Twitter actually helps you to do this due to the nature of the network. But, this should be your goal across every network. Remember, customers won’t spend that long looking at online content. They’ll move on quite quickly, and that’s true even if it doesn’t appeal to them. Let’s look at some of the other mistakes and errors business owners often make with marketing.

No Help Needed

Is it possible to DIY a marketing campaign for a business? Yes, it is, but that doesn’t mean it’s advisable. In fact, it’s likely that business owners will struggle to make any kind of impression if they run a campaign by themselves. For instance, you might think that you can complete your own content promotion. Fair enough, but for content to be successful and effective at boosting your reach, it needs to be constant. You need to be releasing content like clockwork through the day, paying particular attention to hotspot times. There will be certain points through the day when your target audience is going to be online. You need to focus your campaign during these points.

It’s not just content where you’ll need help and expertise either. It might be worth investing in SEO consulting. As we have already discussed, on the basic level, SEO is quite simple. But that’s not the whole picture. You need to think about potential penalties. A penalty for your business site could cripple your company. If you use an SEO consultant, you can make sure tactics are not being used that could result in a penalty like this.

No Branding

A brand is one of the most effective weapons in your arsenal. If you have a brand, you can even ease off on your level of marketing. You won’t need to constantly push marketing for a new product. The fact that it’s linked to an existing brand could mean that it sells without your input. That’s exactly what you want, but how can you achieve it? When marketing your company, you have to make sure that everything is consistent. For instance, you should have different tones on various profiles online. Instead, you need to make sure that it all feels like little pieces of a bigger puzzle. This will help customers recognize your business as one entity rather than multiple purchases. Do this, and you can make sure that your brand is strong enough to guarantee a sale.

If you want to boost your brand, you should invest in visual cues such as a logo. Customers will find it easier to remember a logo compared with a name. Particularly, if you spend time and money on making sure the design of that logo is memorable.

No Patience

Finally, it’s understandable that you want your business to reach a fantastic level of success as quickly as possible. But, it’s not a brilliant idea to try and rush the process of marketing. Indeed, it’s fair to say that if you do see high levels of success in marketing straight away, you have probably used the wrong solution. It could be that your business has been pushed forward by black hat marketing techniques. If that’s the case, your success will be short-lived. Instead, you should work with a company that builds up your business marketing gradually. It may take more time but the effects will be long lasting. This is exactly what you want for the future of your company.

In can be tough when you own your own business. The feeling to keep your hand in every aspect of it is overwhelming, and it is fair enough, you want your business to succeed and the worry about it failing in any of these areas can be enough to drive you mad. But the worst thing that can happen to your business is you burning out. If you get ill and need excessive down time then your business could fail. The best way to mitigate this is by letting people take over certain parts of the business so you can focus on the areas in which you excel.

Stop Answering The Phone

Answering your phone takes huge chunks of times out of your usual tasks, and if these tasks are critical to your business then you are hampering its success. Sure, the calls may be booking in new clients which is of an equal importance, but you don’t need to be doing it. Have one of your employees trained up to do this, hire a receptionist or use a virtual receptionist such as ruby receptionist. Having someone else answer the calls mean you avoid the unnecessary and are only bothered by things you really need to have a hand in. It gives your business a professional feel and you can divert the time into other needed areas of your business.

Don’t Overwork

Overworking is a step to downfall. Sure, you can do it for a short while, but then it will soon become untenable as you realise you’re gradually becoming less productive. The decision to employ someone shouldn’t be taken lightly, however it is a sign of expansion so you shouldn’t shy away from it. You may be nervous about recruiting someone, and that’s fair because you are essentially trusting someone else with something you have spent years trying to build. Train them up, and keep an eye on them. Having someone else work with you means the load is significantly reduced. Make sure you know how to employ someone and do it legally, you don’t want to run into trouble down the line. Recruitment also means expansion, you can only do so much, and having an additional body or two means you can take on more clients and grow.

Accounting

Accounting, and everything that goes with it can take huge amounts of time and is usually something the business owner does at home after work. This is a huge mistake. That time should be viciously protected. Sure, you might want to make sure it is all done properly or even not want to pay for help, but the truth of the matter is, you can’t do as good a job as a trained accountant. They can sort it all out for you, leaving you with more time to devote to business and family. You can even get accountancy software to help you do it properly if you really want to do it yourself, but for the best results hire someone. You’ll benefit from their expertise and your accounts will be in great shape.

By now, you should have carefully planned out your company’s marketing strategies and campaigns for the whole of the common year. However, one thing that you should be careful of is that you don’t make any of the same mistakes that you did back in 2016. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake, but you need to use it as a learning curve. Repeating a mistake is a lot worse than making one in the first place! So, which marketing mistakes should you have left well behind in 2016? Here are some of the main ones to watch out for.

Not Including Bing

So far, lots of companies have been completely focused on trying to get their website up to the top of Google’s search results. By doing so, they will then be found by lots more potential customers who use Google. There are various ways of improving your business’s presence on Google, including sponsored ads and PPC. However, paid adverts and PPC in 2017 are all about looking at search engines other than Google. In fact, Bing is now quickly sneaking up behind Google, so many companies are now trying to target its users to further widen their business’s online presence.

Not Going Mobile

Did you know that mobile devices are now more widely used than laptops and desktops? These days the majority of Internet users are now viewing web pages on smaller screens, which means that companies now need to ensure that their site is mobile ready. This isn’t too difficult to do and, more often than not, just requires the design and layout of the site adjusted so that it is all visible on a small mobile screen. If you fail to do this, you will quickly lose potential customers, as they might not be able to view or navigate around your website.

Not Tracking Results

Everything that you try in your marketing campaigns and strategies will have some kind of impact on your business. And there are plenty of results that you can use to analyze all these impacts. However, even though this is an excellent way to find out what does and doesn’t work for your business, there are still lots of small businesses out there who don’t track their results. By looking at your website’s analytics, you can see where the most traffic is coming from. That lets you focus in on these areas to try and increase the traffic even further.

Not Watching Competitors

Another great way to find out what works and what doesn’t in the world of small business marketing is to look at the things your competitors are doing. What is working well for them? Once you find out, you should take inspiration and ideas from this, and try to utilize them in your company. Not only that, though, but you will also be able to learn from the mistakes that they make.

So don’t repeat 2016’s marking mistakes, and keep these well and truly buried in the past!

When you are setting up a business, there is a lot to consider in one go. One of the major things that most business owners are looking for is a quick branding that effectively sets the business up in a good position right from the start. As long as your business can be said to be promoting itself in the right way straight away, then you know you are off to the right start. One of the most important elements in getting that right is the website. Don’t go thinking that you can start up a business and not give it a website; today, all businesses need websites to help sell what they are doing. And you need to make sure that those websites are doing everything they can to sell the business upfront. With that in mind, let’s discuss what your website needs to make sure that it puts forward the right image of your business.

Tagline

This is something that you really can’t do without, as having a tagline ensures that your business is taken much more seriously by the likes of customers, clients and other businesses, both rival and potential partners. Your tagline should be strung alongside the title at the top of the browser, as well as being displayed somewhere prominent on the front page. Spend some time thinking up the best tagline you can, as you might be surprised at what a difference it really can make. The right tagline can completely give your business an overhaul in terms of its popularity and how it is received, so think of a good one.

Smooth Design

The design of a website says a lot about the business itself. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. A website which is designed sloppily is unlikely to bode well for the business behind it, and on the other hand one with a strong, sleek design says great things about the business behind it. Use a professional firm like Geeks Chicago and ensure that your web design is as flawless as possible. It really does make a world of difference to how people receive your business and your brand.

Interesting Content

It is helpful if your website actually provides some purpose, rather than just existing as a front page for the business. One of the best things you can do in this regard is to have a blog on there which you frequently update with fascinating material. If you can get your website to the point where it is positively received by many visitors, then you should find that it acts as a much more effective marketing tool for the business. With any luck, you will draw in genuine customers this way – all without having to pay a penny, if you don’t want to. There is nothing better for a growing business than free commerce, so make the most of your website and your business should be very happy indeed.

Whether it’s a long-time investor that has believed in your business for a long time and helped you from when you were a startup or a new business client that could potentially lift your company to a global stage, there are plenty of reasons to treat your clients to a spectacular service to make them feel comfortable, welcome and respected.

So let’s discuss a few ways to pamper your important business clients to make your deals go smoother and to make your business thrive.

Make Their Experience Stress-Free

If you have a business client flying in from another location, then offer to prepare everything for them. For example, find a hotel within driving distance of your business and make sure the services are top-notch. Don’t book your client a room within walking distance that doesn’t have at least five stars. If they are as important as you think, then the small investment you pay to treat them to a great service will go a long way.

Make sure that you book their travel as well, and make sure it’s stylish. A private jet is relatively standard if you are a wealthy company, but a modern limousine service is just as good if you plan to travel on the road. You can get an online instant quote & reservation at most limousine services, and you’ll be surprised at how affordable it is compared to the potential profits you’ll make with a new business client on board with your business.

Plan some entertainment as well, such as a business dinner, a crawl through different clubs, or even a relaxing day of golfing while you talk about your business deals. Whatever it is, make sure your client isn’t too distracted and that the entertainment suits them.

Prepare Your Office

Much of your negotiations will take place in your board meeting room and other similar rooms. Ensure that your employees are on their best behavior and give your office a spring clean with the help of a cleaning service. You want your business premises looking spotless if you want to impress new potential clients, so spare no expense and ensure that your boardroom and reception areas are spotless, modern and well-presented to impress your new clients.

Ensure that all of your computer systems are ready when you showcase your product or start your slideshow, and prepare all of your materials beforehand. Ensure that your presentation is solid and that you’ve reviewed it several times, and practice your speech and how you’ll pitch your ideas so that you don’t fumble and get stage fright. You never want to screw up a very expensive deal with an influential client, so make sure you’re looking smart, confident and you have the will to succeed.

Summary

For the small investment you put into pampering a business client, you need to remember that everything you pay for will go a long way if the client enjoyed your hospitality and accepts your deal. Not only will your deal be good for your business, but you’ll also get plenty of good comments from your business client and, with some luck, they’ll also recommend your company to their friends and family members who are most likely equally as influential.

Are you interested in opening a tech start-up? Then you need to know about the trends that are currently shaping the modern IT industry. Technology in the world of business is changing every day. But if you know the direction it’s headed, you can get ahead of the curve and make sure your new company is on the road to riches. Here are a few of the trends you need to keep in mind when opening your new tech company.

Mobile Is Magic

If you look at the world today, you will see that the majority of the general public no longer spend hours on computers and laptops. Instead, they complete most of their processes on their phones or tablets. They buy products on their phones, they play games on their tablets, they work on their tablets, and they interact with each other using these devices. In a few years, we wouldn’t be surprised if major tech companies started to phase out mass computer production. Right now, they are still important, but it’s clear that the future is mobile. Google know this because they have recently implemented a new penalty specifically for poor mobile responsiveness. Therefore, you should make sure that any tech you’re producing is related to mobile devices. Or, that the software you’re creating can operate on these devices.

Rapid and Ready

One of the worst things that you can do in the tech industry is release a product or piece of software that isn’t as fast or as advanced as the competition. If you do this, your business is already behind, and we’ve seen this happen a lot with the tech industry before. Even major brands have made this mistake. Several years ago, Nintendo released the Wii-U. This games console was already at least one generation behind the current competition based on processing ability and graphics. The Wii-U was an incredible failure, but it provides an essential lesson that tech companies need to know. Even if it drives up the costs, you must keep up with the other companies on the market.

If you’re creating software, you should make sure that it is operating at its maximum potential before you start selling it to customers. To do this, you can use something like JIRA testing to ensure that your software does not fail upon use.

Automated World

If you want your new software or technology to be successful, make sure it is automated. What this means, is that it does not require any human interaction to operate. This tech is going to be part of the future for every industry in the world today. From manufacturing to word processing to customer service, tech and software will take over the jobs businesses used to need employees for. As such, it only makes sense that new start-ups should be based around this idea. Imagine if you created one of the pieces of software that passes the Turing test. It would ensure that your software was on the wish list of hundreds of companies around the globe.

If you understand these trends, there is nothing stopping your tech startup from being a huge success in 2017 and the years to come.

Whether it’s the result of programs like The Apprentice or the prominence given to startup hubs like Silicon Valley, entrepreneurialism is a hot topic right now. Starting a businesses is undoubtedly an attractive prospect, particularly when it relates to a personal passion, but many of the other so-called advantages of starting a company from scratch are accompanied by huge challenges.

Before you decide to quit your nine-to-five job and start your own business, make sure you know exactly what you’re getting yourself into. Here are five common misconceptions to be aware of.

That you’re in charge

It is true that if you start your own business you are technically your own boss, but in practical terms this doesn’t mean that you have no one to answer to. If you sought out investors, for example, you’ll certainly need to explain your decisions to them, particularly if they don’t go to plan.

Similarly, if you’ve co-founded a business with other individuals, there may be plenty of times where differences of opinion occur and you need to come to some sort of compromise. Although starting your own business probably affords you more autonomy than you would have as an employee, you can’t do whatever you want, whenever you want.

That everything has to be digital

It’s true that the digital economy has grown hugely in recent years and now underpins many businesses, but that doesn’t mean that it is the be all and end all. There are many startup organisations that, although they may have a digital presence, are not digital businesses per se.

So, your new business could see you working from a laptop in a coffee shop somewhere, or it could see you holed away in a job site trailer on a construction site. Don’t limit your business ideas to the digital sphere, there’s still room for more traditional industries to flourish.

You can buy your way to the top

Although having strong financial backing, either personally or from investors, will prove helpful, there are many examples of businesses that have succeeded through sheer hard work and determination, rather than a swollen bank account. You’d be surprised how far bootstrapping can take your business.

All you need is a good idea

Good ideas are often the starting point for successful businesses, but that doesn’t mean that they guarantee success. There have been plenty of instances of fantastic business ideas that have faltered for a multitude of other reasons, be it poor financial planning or disappointing marketing campaigns.

Some of the factors that undermine good ideas are also completely out of your control. Sometimes, the wider audience simply aren’t ready for the kinds of developments your business is offering and sometimes, the technology is not in place to implement your ideas. For example, there were video streaming sites before YouTube and mp3 players before the iPod, but, for whatever reason, they have not stood the test of time.

Starting a business should fill you with excitement, but don’t get fooled into thinking it’s an all-expenses paid ticket to the big time.

It’s easy to be swept away by the technicalities of the business world as an entrepreneur, and this is no bad thing. It’s better than you push your business to grow internally, through mediums such as online marketing and other technologically-geared solutions in an advancing and ever-evolving world.

Still, it helps to pull your head out of the virtual world of business now and then, especially if you’re running a business which is still based, in some sense, in the physical world and operated by physical people. Neglecting either of these aspects can lead productivity and efficiency to drop, meaning you’ll start to notice the effects within your virtual operations. Here’s some guidance for those business owners neglecting the important of the office space.

A better office means better workers.

If your business runs a lot of its operations online, it can be easy to forget the world around you. I’m not saying you don’t have to make connections with real-life people in real-life situations, but when business operations take place through a screen, the office-space in which you work can start to fall off into an unimportant backdrop. Yet, for many of your workers, the environment in which they work is still vitally important to their mindset.

If you want to ensure your business’ productivity stays at a high level, and your overall efficiency or reputation doesn’t falter, then you need to start thinking about your office design. Yes, you need to impress customers in the external world, but you also need to keep your employees happy on an internal basis. Dull colours, stuffy cubicles and uninspired layouts in office spaces are the butt of many jokes because they are a joke. People don’t want to feel like rats in a cage; they want to feel like people.

Improving lighting, colours, open spaces and even installing quirky features in the break room like an ice cream machine or a pool table, for example, could entirely transform your workplace. Employees might work harder when they’re actually looking forward to their breaks and they don’t have to work in such a dull, uninspiring environment. You’ll also impress guests (whether they’re potential business partners or clients) when they visit your office. This all helps to build the company image.

It’s what lies on the outside that counts.

I know. That goes against everything your mother told you as a child, but the business world isn’t like the playground. It’s a vicious, competitive and impatient game. People and businesses don’t have the time to get to know your business brand, what you truly stand for or how good your workers truly are, especially if you’re new to the playing field. That’s why you’ve got to make an impression from the word “go”, and this means your business needs to be making a rather shallow first impression through glitzy branding and an impressive exterior.

Of course, when your business reaches the point at which its ready to have its own premises, the building is very important. This is the physical symbol of your company, so you might as well make it count. There can be no half-measures in business, and this is a requirement which definitely applies to the aesthetic quality of your premises. Companies such as Armstrong Steel can offer you better guidance when it comes to creating the perfect office building.

The key to creating the perfect office on the inside and outside is to think about your business’ core values, your market, and what impression you might want to make; whether you want to be tall and intimidating or cozy and approachable, there’s a right and a wrong way to put together your business premises.

Relaying information to your customers is something that you definitely need to do when you run a business. But getting it done in a concise, professional and clear way is not always easy. One of the most important things to do is keep it simple. If you try to over-complicate matters when you want to get your message across, you will simply ruin your chances of getting it across successfully. When a message is complicated and messy, it doesn’t hit home.

Use Digital Displays

If you are looking for a way to get information across to customers when they’re in your store, digital displays can be good solutions. They are attractive and clean. Those things matter because information that is presented in that way is much easier to digest and understand for you customers. That’s what’s most important. Digital signage monitors are widely available, so make sure you browse the options. Another good thing about them is that they stand out and grab attention more than ordinary in-store signs do. That means customers will be less likely to miss them.

Emphasize the Important Things

There are some things that are always important when you are trying to promote a sale or sell a new product. These are the things that should be focused on and highlighted repeatedly when you are formulating your business’s messaging strategy. Keep it simple and focus on just two or three things that you want the customer to take away with them. Think about how many adverts people see each day. There is no way in which they can remember everything they are bombarded with. So, you will have more chance of making your messages stay in people’s minds if it’s simple and concise.

Ditch the Information That Doesn’t Matter

You will simply overwhelm your customers if you throw too much unnecessary information in their faces. Rather than allowing them to take more away with them, which I’m sure is your aim, you will cause them to remember nothing about what was said. It will just merge into one big messy dialogue that they forget within a few minutes. You should always ditch the information that is extraneous. If the customers don’t 100% need to know about it and if it won’t matter much to them, leave it out. It’s not about hiding things from them; it’s about hitting them with the important stuff first.

Keep Customers Informed Via Newsletters

However, there are ways to deliver more information to customers. This is away from the ordinary marketing and advertising methods that your company employs. Email newsletters are easy to send out and they help to keep customers informed with regards to what the business is up to. This is useful because it can be read by the recipient in their own time and at leisure. It can also deliver long-form information that is broken up into different sections. So, if that sounds appealing to you, start compiling an emailing list and send out email newsletters each week.

The market is more crowded than ever. Thanks to the internet it’s never been easier for people to set up their own startup companies and push forward with something they’re truly passionate about. This is, undoubtedly, a good thing. Startups are often some of the most innovative and exciting companies around. That is, of course, if they can actually succeed at all. The sad fact of the business world is that, for every business that succeeds, a dozen or more are left behind. But why does that happen? The sheer level of competition is definitely a factor, but it’s far from the only, or even the most important one. So why do so many startups fall at the first hurdle? And how can you avoid suffering the same fate?

Failing to move with the markets

One of the most classic mistakes that people make when starting their own business is not being ale to accurately see where the market is going. The world is constantly changing, and it’s the responsibility of every business to not only change with it but to guide those changes as well. The problem with a lot of startups is that they assume that the market they first appear in is the way things are always going to be. So when things inevitably do change, they’re completely unprepared. To prevent this, you and your business need to be ready to roll with the punches and move alongside the market. Entrepreneurs like https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimtsokanos have made their entire careers out of keeping businesses right on the cutting edge of the current climate. There are more than a few lessons that you can learn from people like Jim Tsokanos about how to, not only survive but thrive, in an ever-changing world.

Ambition

Ambition is important; there’s no doubt about that. You should always be driven to push your business forward. But the problem with many startups is that they don’t know how to keep that growth manageable. It might seem like a good idea to grow your business as fast as you can in order to compete in an increasingly cutthroat market but, in the end, that causes more problems than it solves. A larger business comes with more demands and bigger expectations from investors. If you’re not growing your business carefully in a manageable way, then you’re inevitably going to find that pressure becoming too much. It’s a much better idea to keep your business at a level where all of the expectations on it can be met. As your experience, bottom line and abilities increase, then you’ll be in a position to push your business on to bigger and better things.

Ego

It takes a certain type of person to strike out on their own with an idea that they’re totally passionate about. You need to be driven, talented and confident. All of these are undoubtedly positive attributes, but if left unchecked, they can cause problems. There is no room in a successful business for rampant egos. Business is a team effort and behaving as though you’re above everyone else is a surefire way to lose talented and dedicated members of that team.

With all the advancements that research into digital tech has brought, there is no surprise that are many problems emerging with each discovery. These issues can vary from simple storage issues to cyber-crimes and hacking.

In business? Problems can present much more than a simple headache. A simple problem can open a chasm. You need to nip it in the bud and prepare for the eventuality that problems and issues will come to the doorstep of your business.

There are plenty of things that can hurt a business and among one of the biggest issues for businesses right now is the threat of cyber-crime. Your business doesn’t need to have a physical presence to become a tasty target for criminals.

Criminals, hackers, terrorists, and thieves use the Internet as a tool to commit a crime. This threat, known as cyber-crime is a serious danger, and it’s a growing industry. Intrusions into the personal files and data of people and the servers that businesses store data on are becoming common. Why? Because some make it far too easy to be robbed over the internet. It can be easy money, and your data can be sold without a trace. As time goes on, this threat can only get worse.

The impact of these types of crime across the world is absolutely mind-blowing. A huge amount of money is spent repairing and maintaining systems that have been cracked wide open by Internet-based criminals. It’s an amazingly enormous risk to leave a business open to the threat of cyber-criminals.

As mentioned earlier, it’s your data they are after. Your data can be stolen and passed on. Why? Because legitimate companies will buy phone numbers and email addresses, so they have more people to market to without going through the work of generating leads. It can be passed on without a trace and criminals can make a lot of money from you. Protect yourself and your business so that you can prevent all of this from happening in the first place.

Solid anti-virus software is your first port of call. Update it frequently and scan your computers thoroughly. This is the first step and sometimes, the only step you need to take as it will remove malware and viruses from your system.

As for your data? Ensure all the data that your business holds is backed up. Sensitive data should be erased when your business has no need for it. If it doesn’t exist, criminals won’t be tempted.

In the event of a true disaster – a system outage or so, you need to get back on track as soon as possible. Any delay will result in your data and systems being vulnerable. Speak to a secure data recovery specialist, protect your data and work on preventing the situation from occurring again.

Whether it’s a power-cut, or cyber-crime – you, as a business owner, need to be proactive about the solution. Prevent and deter threats so that if the worst does happen – there’s no additional criminal activity going on that you need to worry about.