Owning a business can be great. There are many businesses in the market, doing admirably great. But do you know that, without the correct information about start-up business, you would end up regretting why you invested in it? However, there is a lot of information about smart business investments that will save you money in the future. Let’s have a look at 10 start up business solutions.
Improving the Business
As a start-up business, you will get excited by the profits you make. The excitement of consistent profits may make you forget some of the most crucial steps to take.
This entails seizing the opportunity and making great improvements to your business. Improve things like the infrastructure of your business, purchase new and better equipment, train staff on good customer care, and train other staff to excel in their duties. Improvement, even on one item,that the small business it support, is a great improvement.
One of the best start up business solutions is hiring services that can improve the durability of the workspace. A good working space helps in improving the morale and good mood of your employees. You can improve the workspace by ensuring ventilation is good, making the office comfortable, and having good communication with employees. Some of the services you can hire include:
- Painting of the office or workspace. This would cost you $55- 65 per hour
- Declutters who help in organizing the workspace and removing unwanted items. They would cost $35- 85 per hour
- Gardener, to help in planting and trimming plants around the workspace. Plants help in providing a good atmosphere, and a good natural smell. This would cost $150 per visit
- Constructors/builders, to help in ensuring good ventilation for sufficient light. They would even do window replacements if need be so that there is good lighting in the workspace. They would cost $85- 150 per hour
Marketing Your Business
For any business to thrive well, it needs an increased customer base, besides retaining the usual ones. One of the most common methods of increasing your customer base is making your business known to many. This calls for marketing.
This simply means advertising your products or services out there. The more your business is known by many people, the more leads you are likely to get, consequently making sales.
Even a one-man skill full job, like a small business electrician, still needs proper marketing.
Most business owners tend to avoid marketing, viewing it as an unnecessary expense. This may be so for a start-up business that seems to be doing well.
Marketing is one of the frugal business decisions you need to make. Avoiding a cost does not mean lessening expenses. What is key here is avoiding overspending. You can market your business, using much cheaper and easier methods. For example, you can create a social media page on which you can advertise your business, organize events in which you promote your business, and make sales. These are examples of cheap but effective start up business solutions. Some other frugal business decisions include;
- Insurance; besides insuring your business against calamities and loss, you can insure against illness, injury
- Keenly choosing a workspace that is less costly and fits your business size
- Plan well ahead for your business
Build a Great Business Team
This is your working staff. They come with different expertise, but you need not contend with that. Seek various ways of improving your team. As a start-up, you may be satisfied with the services your team provides, and see no need to improve them. A good investment is made in human resources.
You need to make them more efficient and up to the task, to assure customer satisfaction.
You can do that by regular training on the job, motivational acts like bonuses or talks, and employing experts in a given specific field. These are some of the start up business solutions that will help you build a team of skillful employees.
For instance, if your business is providing financial assistance for farmers, your team needs to be up to date on all available financial services your business offers, the right offer for a particular type of farming, etc
This continuous job training has the long-run effect of reducing turnover because employing new staff is normally expensive. With that kind of regular training, the team gets to know the spirit of the business and strives as a team to make work easy.
One such case is the issue of taxes. All companies are required to file tax returns by a given date. A team, in the relevant department of accounts, will know the importance of accurately completing taxes on time. They will therefore submit at a good time because they know, the sooner it is paid, then the less is owed. The importance of accurately completing taxes on time gives the business an easy time for submission.
Invest in Yourself
As stated earlier, the best investment is one made on human resources. As the owner of a business, don’t assume you don’t need any formal or informal training on your business. That would be a big lie.
One of the best start up business solutions is for entrepreneurs to invest in themselves. You can go for business management courses, human resource training, customer relationship, financial literacy, etc. For example, when you want to take loans for business, you need to be well informed before that, lest the business ends up misusing the loan, and has a hard time repaying it. This would make your business default on the loan. The effect of this is damaging the reputation of your business.
When a business has an unfavorable reputation, the effect it has on its finances is huge. Possible consequences include;
- An unfavorable reputation makes customers lose trust, and the business loses them
- Due to the loss of customers, sales will eventually decline. This is dangerous to any business because huge sales are the ‘oxygen’ for business
- As a result of that image damage, employee retention is not guaranteed. Most may exit. This in the long run will be costly to the business when searching for new ones
- Another consequence of the unfavorable reputation is financial losses due to the fall in sales. In adverse cases, it may lead to bankruptcy
Seek Professionals
An owner of a start-up business may sometimes view himself as one who knows it all. Some staff may as well deem themselves so. In most cases, they do this to avoid outside costs.
It is recommended that when in need of start up business solutions, seek the service of the relevant professionals or experts.
Most businesses in the course of their work will end up with garbage or rubbish. Professionals on business waste solutions would come in to offer their services in such cases, ensuring you have a clean and decent business premise.
Another case is hiring a legal representative for the integrity of your company. Legal representatives hired by companies act as the ‘legal face’ of the company. Normally, it is provided for in the company’s bylaws.
In cases where the company fails to meet the required legal obligation, like tax, the legal representative may be sued. A legal representative must be a local, or a foreigner with the right to work where the company is situated.
Outsource Some Services
A business has a lot of tasks that need to be executed. As the owner of the business, you would mostly have your hands on most of those tasks. That’s a good gesture. But there could be other tasks that you don’t like, and having your hands on them may do more damage than good. This will be costly for you because you may need someone to repair the damage.
To avoid such awkward cases, hire such services for the tasks you least like, from outside your business. A good example is getting Office 365 resellers to install productivity software for your business. This is one of the best start up business solutions to improve the efficiency of your operations.
Get SEO Services
The initials SEO stand for search engine optimization. Your business needs to be easily and readily found online by customers, and anyone else searching for the services or products you offer. In an era when the internet is the first stop for information, getting your business searchable online is one of the best start up business solutions you can think of.
To effectively achieve this, engage good SEO experts. These experts will create a website for your business, and feed it with all the important information about your business. A business website is like your online business card, where all your information is found by your customers, business associates, and other people.
All the services you provide online need to be found there too. As a start-up business that seeks to strategically place itself in the market, ensure you go online, meaning, target both the online customers and those that come physically to your business location. Try to initiate various ways of payment, more paperless ones, like the use of credit cards and debit cards.
Liquid Cash
Liquid cash refers to money that is readily available for use. As a start-up business, avoid turning all cash into intangible assets. Make sure there is sufficient cash for use. This helps in ensuring business does not fall in the first year.
With good liquid cash, your cash flow will be superb, and making purchases will be conveniently easy. This reduces purchase-related costs if otherwise. Ready cash also makes it easy for you to pay for urgent start up business solutions. Furthermore, liquid cash helps in paying out when there is irs tax relief offered.
Don’t Open More Start-ups
Start-ups are the businesses you open up or start. When your initial business is doing fine, making good profits, you might get into the temptation of opening up more. This may sound like a good deal to you, and indeed it is.
But before that, rather than rushing into opening more, you should put more time, energy, focus, and finance into investing more in that initial business. Do a lot of improvements to it to make it more efficient. Channel all the resources and reliable start up business solutions you can think of in the business.
Opening up more businesses may sometimes backfire, especially if all the money is pumped into those businesses, leaving you with no financial muscle to stand.
This may leave you unable to pay your suppliers, and your debtors may go for a bankruptcy attorney to file for bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy happens when a person or business is unable to pay debts or other obligations. It’s a legal proceeding, and it’s a court that issues or decrees a person or business bankrupt.
The best ways to avoid being declared bankrupt include;
- Knowing your debt; go through the list of your debts, dates of repayments, interests, and balances. This will help in ascertaining them and devising a way forward in advance
- Work on your business budget, meet the important expenses, and avoid the non-essential ones. This would help a lot to free up more cash which can be used to pay debts.
- Merge all debt balances into one. This helps in reducing interest and makes it both easier and cheaper
- Seek advice from finance experts, and credit counselors, who would help in advising how best not to end up bankrupt.
There are plenty of effective start up business solutions that you can implement to make your business successful. As a start-up business owner, use the above list of smart business investments, and they will save you money in the future.
