Efficient financial management lies at the core of every successful business owner. Sure, knowing to find new projects and generate revenues make a difference, but it’s equally important to harness your expenditure.

A large portion of SMB-owners doesn’t make it through the first year of their entrepreneurship. They either bite more than they can chew, or they don’t know how to handle their business finances.

That’s why new business owners need to learn the ropes of financial management before they even register their venture.

That’s the purpose of the following five paragraphs.

#1 Hiring without full commitments

Once you launch your business, it will be almost impossible to manage all its aspects on your own. Since you’ll need to deal with negotiations with clients, project management, and the core tasks, you’ll need one or more extra hands to help you get things done.

In that light, you should work with other people, but without making full commitments. In other words, avoid concluding full-time employment contracts, but rather opt for temporary and part-time contracts.

What’s more, SMB-owners should use the benefits of outsourcing as much as possible. In all these cases, you don’t put the burden of paying your collaborators’ social and health contributions or taxes. While you need to have some sort of legal agreement, it’s up to those outsourcers to sort out their legal and financial obligations to the relevant public bodies.

#2 Reducing overhead expenses

If it’s not necessary for the operability of your business operations, don’t rent an office space in the beginning. You can work from home, go to a coworking space, or work from cafes, restaurants, etc. The latter option is especially practical if you live in a warm climate.

Speaking of which, new SMB-owners can significantly reduce their expenses if they move to one of the outsourcing-friendly countries, i.t. the countries that have adapted their regulations to attract digital nomads. Given that your business tasks are not physically tied to a certain place, this move will let you do your job in an acceptable and affordable way.

Plus, moving to a warmer or at least a milder climate will strip you of some overhead expenses, such as heating.

#3 Opening a savings account

There’s no business progress or further investments without savings.

In line with that, one of the first things you should do as you launch your business is to open a business savings account. Make deal with your bank so that you can’t withdraw the money from that account without a special business purpose.

From every payment made to your regular account by your clients, at least 10% should be transferred to this special-purpose account. You can arrange with your bank that this percentage of every payment is transferred to that account.

By doing so, you won’t have to be thinking about this thing, but assets will keep coming to your savings account. What’s more, you’ll ensure more effective money management for your business and form an emergency fund.

With that money, you can make buy stocks, hire an additional workforce, offer permanent contracts to your core outsourcers or invest in your business equipment.

#4 Relying on affordable marketing

Every business needs to be visible not only to potential clients but to the competition, as well.

In the age of the Internet, it’s not difficult to ensure proper promotion and recognizability for your business.

For starters, launch business pages on the social networks that are relevant for business, i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. If you’re aiming at the youth population, TikTok should also be on your list.

After that, you should register for Google My Business. That way, everybody who finds you on Google will immediately see what you do, where you are, and they will be able to contact you.

Of course, launching a website is a must for every new business these days. As the designers from a digital agency in Houston put it, today it’s not hard to make a practical business website, and it’s affordable, as well.

#5 Accepting handpicked projects

If you want to ensure financial stability at the beginning of your SMB-quest, mind your projects.

In other words, be careful about what kinds of projects you land. Driven by ambition and desire for progress, new SMB-owners often accept too demanding or too complex work tasks.

So, before you accept a project, do your own estimate in terms of the work hours you’ll need to complete it. After that, scan the complexity of the job in question. If you don’t possess the proper skills to do it, find the outsourcers or assistants that will make it possible for you to finish it.

Only when you’ve ensured all the necessary logistics should you accept a project. In other cases, simply turn down the offers that you won’t be able to properly deal with.

This will help you keep focused on things that you can do, which will result in a steady income, plus, you won’t have to pay any penalties for missing deadlines.

If you run your business in a rational and financially efficient manner, you’ll reduce the risk of financial issues to a minimum. And if you save some money along the way, you’ll have a cushion to fall on in case of reduced work volume. Finally, SMB-owners should choose their projects with care and attention, after making proper calculations and estimates regarding the performances. All these methods will help you establish an independent and financially stable business.

Retain Your Employees For Business Success

Your business will never be successful if you are continually recruiting workers to replace employees that have left. High staff turnover is bad news for any business but when you are starting out you need a steady team of loyal employees who are committed to helping your enterprise grow.

In the same way as you need to retain your customers, you also need to retain your staff! Recruiting staff is costly and this is money that could better be spent elsewhere. It is also time-consuming and training up staff only to see them leave is a bad business investment.However, you cannot force your employees to stay. You can only persuade them.

Here are some ways in which you can do just that.

Make sure that you have the right employees to begin with

Employees who fit naturally with the culture and ethos of your brand are more likely to want to stay. They are also more likely to feel as passionately as you about the success of your business. This is something that you need to get right at the selection and recruitment stage. Use the interview process to make sure that the candidates fully appreciate what your business is all about. Satisfy yourself that they truly want to be a part of it moving forward.

Make the work environment as comfortable as you can

Start off with the basics. Make sure that the work environment is at a comfortable temperature and is well lit. Then install some water coolers in several locations around the workplace so that employees can stay hydrated. This will increase productivity and send the message that you care about their welfare.

If your employees are sat at desks for long periods you need to ensure that the office furniture is ergonomically designed to protect their postural health. Chairs need to have height adjustments and preferably moveable lumbar supports. Employees should also be encouraged to take regular breaks when they can stretch and move around.

Offer career progression and training

Employees do not like to be stuck in the same job for several years. Offer a clear career progression within your organization be allocating management responsibilities. Encourage continuing professional development by offering time off for accredited courses. Run some courses yourself. The options for employee training is endless these days and includes computerized training, web-based training, audiotapes mentoring programs and outside seminars and classes.

Listen to what they have to say

The best way in which to make employees feel valued, and to make them want to remain working for you, is to show them that you value what they have to say. Your employees are a valuable resource who know what goes on at the frontline of your business. Ignore their opinions at your peril!

You could organize a series of one to one meetings with all of your employees or arrange an employee feedback questionnaire. You could even organize an away day when groups of employees leave the workplace and spend the day discussing future strategies.

4 Ways Small Businesses Can Save Money

A small business is one that operates on a tiny budget. I have seen small business owners complaining about this. They tried to convince me that there’s hardly any financial leverage for them and it’s hard to operate with an inadequate budget.

I wasn’t convinced. I feel small businesses can grow multifold if they cut down on unwanted expenses. Owners should make it a point to lower operating expenses and identify the mistakes in their operation and management-level stratagem, due to which they are losing money. This article is a handy guide for them. So, those lurking here, keep reading.

Purchasing paid software

Digitization and automation are key to business success. Any business, regardless of their size, scale and the industry they belong, need to digitize their operation and introduce automation to eliminate errors.

Hence, it makes sense for a small business to purchase pricey software, right?

Wrong.

Purchasing licensed software is a thing of the past now, thanks to the availability of open source clones of paid software and secondly, cloud quickly becoming mainstream. You can even host webinars on Cloud. Look at Adobe. Photoshop, their most publicized product was downloadable and paid once. As soon as piracy reached its peak, Adobe made it accessible only via a cloud.

Small companies waste money by purchasing the software license. They’d have to buy the subsequent updates and worse, the software may be replaced by a new and more efficient army of software at a cheaper rate.

A combination of cloud and open source rocks for small businesses. They should only spend money for buying paid plugins of FOSS, not for buying the software itself.

Hiring full-time staff

This is another mistake, a number of small businesses have been making and cutting their chances of success by half. When you hire a full-time employee, you not only have to pay them a sizable amount but also retain them. Sacking them shortly after hiring could land you in legal problems and increase your attrition rate, which is not good for the long-term prospect of your business.

Crowd-sourcing used to be popular. Now, it has given way to gig economy. It’s a cross between crowd-sourcing and full-time freelancing. In gig economy, you hire a freelancer, but for a large project, rather for short-term work.

Gig employees are available everywhere. Find them and assign them the work that you would have assigned to a full-time employee had you hired them. The best thing about gig economy is you can tinker with it. For example, some businesses take a hybrid approach. They recruit in-house staff and have them handle large projects. But for minors works and quick fixes, hire gig professionals.

This way, they ensure the speedy delivery of the work, yet save money. If gig economy was not on your financial resolution list, add it now.

BYOD isn’t bad 

BYOD is an acronym for bringing your own device. It is specifically for small firms. Large companies cannot risk internal data being accessed by third-party devices, so they are not open to BYOD. But small businesses don’t have a compartmentalized work atmosphere and in most cases, a flow of data within the organization is unrestricted.

Businesses hiring a hot desk, which allows for a plug and plays work environment on an ad-hoc basis, have become more and more popular amongst entrepreneurs and new business owners. The flexibility and cost savings are ideal for a new start-up business.

It is specifically for small firms. Large companies cannot risk internal data being accessed by third-party devices, so they are not open to BYOD. But small businesses don’t have a compartmentalized work atmosphere and in most cases, a flow of data within the organization is unrestricted.

The advantages of BYOD are so many to list up. First, they don’t have to purchase individual workstations. That’d save them a lot of cash. Second, they won’t have to ensure the machines as employees will bring their own. Two biggest advantage of BYOD is less strain on IT guys and employees bringing their own Wi-Fi devices.

Alongside benefits, there are some risks. While most of the risks are mitigable, having to buy cyber liability insurance could be a risk. It’s related to data privacy. The business pays the premium and if their data is stolen, they are reimbursed by the insurance company. This type of insurance is offbeat and technical clarifications are often hard to get.

Expensive marketing strategies

Small business owners tend to forget that they cannot adopt the same set of marketing strategies, normally adopted by large businesses. They unnecessarily spend so much money on marketing but end up getting little to no result.

For example, cracking AdWords requires a considerably high budget. Competitive keywords are pricey. And even if they get clicks, turning leads into sales requires a lot of effort and money.

The problem of running a small business is you can’t experiment too much with marketing and advertising because you can’t risk losing money. Hence, the window period for ROI tracking should be as short as it gets. For example, if you are spending on AdWords, but not getting the desired ROI, stop the campaign and invest the money in other platforms.

As a small business, you have to be very dynamic with the marketing strategies you employ and switch between productive strategies. If you are not doing it, you are making a mistake.

How To Boost The Value Of Your Brand – Ways To Increase The Value Of Your Business

Though it may be intangible, your brand is one of the most valuable assets you have. It’s the summary of the way your target market thinks about you and your products or services, and will be an overarching, influential factor to all of your marketing efforts. Almost every brand has room for improvement, so here are a few things you could be doing to add value to your brand.

Emphasise your Areas of Expertise

There are a lot of businesses that manage to turn an admirable profit and grow at a healthy rate, despite not having anything that’s special or disruptive about them. If you really want to inject some value into your brand that will carry its marketing forward, you need to be emphasising the value you can provide to customers in all of your marketing materials. Every business model has something valuable to offer. For example, professional office removalists have specialised expertise in getting furniture and equipment between different commercial spaces. Whatever it is you can offer to your target market that makes it worth the money, this should be a defining point in every little bit of branding work you publish from here on.

Become a Thought Leader

Content marketing, as you’re no doubt aware, is one of the most effective methods businesses can use to communicate what the brand is all about, and boost value in the process. If you can publish content that can set you aside as a thought leader, it will make it more attractive to your customers, and even turn some of them into brand advocates. Making sure your content adds value to your brand is all about providing quality and value to your audience. You can accomplish this through detailed buyer personas: semi-fictional concepts of your ideal customers, including details about their interests, hopes, fears and so on. Weaving buyer stories into your content is also a very smart move, as it makes it more relatable to your target market, and presents your brand as one that genuinely cares about the people who buy from them. Finally, try to keep the language accessible and simple. Unless you’re running a B2B business, all that jargon you use in the boardroom isn’t really appropriate for customer-facing content.

Bump Up Your Standards of Design

The various pieces of graphic design that go into your brand is visual communication. In today’s world, visual content is often seen by the average consumer as much more interesting and valuable than anything text-based. The way you use colours, shapes and layouts on everything from your website to your email letterheads needs to be well thought-out and attractive to the kind of customers you’re fishing for. Remember that graphic design trends are constantly changing, and what seems attractive and professional today may not be next week. This is something you’ll need to be on top of, especially as a small, fledgling business. Think of all your visual materials as the packaging you wrap your business in. Like a product, this packaging can easily make or break a customer’s decision.

Shielding Your Business From Destructive Situations

As profitable or successful as your business might become in the future, there’s no guarantee that it will remain sturdy forever. One of the biggest issues we normally face when running a business is that there’s no safety net. No matter what happens, there’s no way to safely operate a business while retaining some level of growth.

There are ways to grow your business while limiting risks, but they will rarely be as powerful or effective as taking a risk. It’s a double-edged sword that can be beneficial to your business, but it could bite back and come to haunt you in the future. No matter what type of business you run, it’s important to take the occasional risk in order to watch it grow, but what can we do if it all goes wrong?

Shielding your business

The first step to take is to shield your business. In most cases, this will refer to a legal shield that will help you deal with any kind of legal matters involving your company. For instance, engaging reliable public liability insurance brokers can save you time and potentially your business if a member of the public is injured as a result of your business. If you haven’t checked your level of cover recently, then you’d be wise to double check it sooner than later and ensure that you have the right policy to cover your business.

Employee situations

Employees are another disaster waiting to happen if you aren’t managing it correctly. For starters, employees can become emotional, frustrated or distraught as a result of your actions. Unless you want to leave them to their own devices and pray that they continue focusing on their work, you’ll need to actively engage them in order to retain their trust. A disgruntled employee can do far more damage than good, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly they can spread their poison to other members of staff in an attempt to ruin you. However, it’s important to be able to distinguish this behaviour with serious complaints against your company. Sometimes it’s not a disgruntled employee that can ruin your business, but your lack of care and the lack of action you take in order to remedy those problems. Play an active role in your business and make your presence known so you can keep communications open in order to deal with any potential problems with employees.

Digital blunders

The internet is an incredibly useful tool that almost every business makes use of. However, as good as it is for your company, it can also become an extremely problematic tool as well due to the security flaws it presents. Your personal information could be stolen, your staff could accidentally leak information about your company, and your network could be exposed and infected with viruses. It’s important to use business-grade antivirus software in order to protect your business against any kind of digital threat. Without this layer of protection, you’re opening yourself up to being hacked and having sensitive data such as customer information stolen.