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What Are The Best Ways To Protect Your Business?

The environment is good for business, it’s true, but there’s no avoiding the fact that there are threats. When you’re in such a competitive landscape, it’ll always be that way. Even though everything might seem like it’s going well, you could find that you find yourself in a difficult position that takes you by surprise from time to time. While you can’t always prevent these things from happening, there are things you can do that’ll reduce the likelihood or provide a safety cushion if they do. Below, we take a look at some of the best ways to protect your business. 

What Are The Best Ways To Protect Your Business? - whats the true business climate image
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Find Your Weaknesses

People — and thus companies — generally focus the spotlight on their strengths and overlook their weaknesses. It makes sense. But in some cases, your weaknesses could prove to be a real threat to your business. The only way to minimise the threats these could cause to your company is to be aware of them. So take a look, a real strong look, at your business, and it’s flaws. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, then there are outside experts that can help you.

Get Covered

A company could be doing absolutely everything right, and yet still end up in dire straits, if they’re not careful or they’re unlucky. You never know what might happen at your business: there could be a weather-related disaster, or a member of your team could be injured while they’re on the job. If that happens, then you might face a big bill. As such, it’s important that you’re working with an insurance broker to get the insurance that’s right for your business. It’s one of those things that you hope you’ll never need, but which you’ll be supremely grateful that you have if you do.

Be Mindful of Who You’re Hiring

Your employees should, in an ideal world, take your business from strength to strength. But that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, they’ll have limited positive impact (which is in effect a negative impact, since you’re paying them). At others, they may cause serious harm — for example, if they break the law and steal from you, or cause a public relations disaster. The good news is that this threat can nearly always be nullified by hiring correctly. There’ll usually be pretty big red flags around a potential employee during the interview process. Make sure you pay attention to them!

See What’s Up Ahead

Everything may be going well right now, but the present won’t be around for too long. The future is coming up, and that business landscape may look a little different. The good news is that what’ll happen five years down the line usually isn’t a big surprise: all the signs point to it. It’s just up to you to be aware of what they are. Reading trade magazines and generally keeping up with the goings-on in your industry can provide a pretty clear view of what the future will be like. From there, you can position your company for future success

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3 diagrams that can change your life

That’s a bold claim, but by studying these diagrams and reading their meaning you main gain some new ideas or distinctions which may influence your choices, which will change your outcome and ultimately change you life.

3 diagrams that can change your life - passion competence and demand image

Diagram 1 considers the possibility that Passion alone is not enough. We can be passionate about art or music or being a sportsperson but if we lack the competence to make it as a professional in these areas then we need to consider other options.

A football mad teenager with a competence in Maths could become a data analyst for a sports team. Or someone with a passion for music but a talent for tech could end up as a producer.

The third sphere to consider is whether there is a demand for your skill and talent. Is that sufficient to become a full time career? A passion and talent for poetry may not be sufficient to make a successful career, but can still be a fulfilling hobby and creative outlet.

Think about what you love, what you are good at (or willing to develop) and then see how that can also earn a good living.

3 diagrams that can change your life - happiness in the now vs vision for the future image

Diagram two. This one came courtesy of Vishen Lakhiani, founder of MindValley. On one axis is Happiness in the Now from low to high, and on the other is Vision for the Future, again from low to high. So if you were to score yourself out of 10, how happy are you in this moment and what is your strength of vision for the future?

If you find yourself in the bottom left hand box, with a low score for each, you’re in what he calls the negative spiral. So you’re unhappy now, you don’t have much of a vision for the future, you’re just going to stay stuck and feel pretty down about things.

If you’re finding yourself quite happy now, but again, with no vision for the future, I’ve coloured that one pink because of rose tinted glasses. You might think everything’s okay, but unfortunately things external to us can change, which is going to affect how we feel. So that might be loss of a partner, it might be illness, it might be losing your job or a global pandemic. So, being happy now but with no vision for the future while it might feel ok short term is not necessarily a safe place to be.

So, what about a strong vision for the future but not very happy in the moment? Well, that way leads to stress and anxiety. You set goals, you have visions, you’re ambitious for the future, but you’re discontent in the moment. And that negativity you experience now is not going to help in fulfilling that vision for the future. So what it means is you suffer from stress and anxiety in the present time. Which is why expressing gratitude is such an important aspect of many self development teachings.

So where would we like to be? We’d like to be happy now, grateful and accepting of our situation, but also have a very strong vision of the future to pull us forward. And that Vishen calls bending reality. Other people call it the flow. This is where you’re able to draw the people, the circumstances, the resources you need to you. You are happy in the moment and even happier when the reality comes to fruition to change your life.

3 diagrams that can change your life - cashflow quadrant Robert Kiyosaki

And finally, diagram number three. This one comes from Rich Dad, Poor Dad author, Robert Kiyosaki. He looked at different ways in which people earn money. So to begin with, in the top left, we’ve got the employee. That’s people who spend their time at work and they’re swapping their time for money. Their conditions and their pay is largely controlled by somebody else.

Then, bottom left, we’ve got those that are self-employed. They run their own business, they work for themselves. And that covers a whole spectrum. That could include trades people or it could be self-employed sports stars earning a lot of money. Regardless in this category they’re still effectively swapping their time for money even though they’re their own boss.

Over the other side, in the top right we’ve got the business owner. That’s different from being self-employed because they’re leveraging other people’s time, other people’s skill, other people’s resources to run a business. And that business may exist with or without them. So they’re in a stronger financial position as they are not restricted to swapping their time for money.

But ultimately, the investor in the fourth quadrant is where the wealth gets made. Here these people are not limited to owning one business. They may have stakes in multiple businesses. They may invest in property or real estate. They may have stock market investments. They may have other investments, which all bring them money from different sources.

So there you have it, three of my favourite diagrams, which can change your life by making a big impact on how you feel about money and your choices about being successful in life.

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Personal Finance Tips for Business Owners

Being a business owner means balancing your business’s finances and your personal finances. As well as making sure your business is bringing in enough money, you need to keep your own finances healthy. If you’re not personally doing well financially, it will make it difficult for you to continue running your business. Entrepreneurs can face some unique challenges because they take on a lot of risk, and they don’t have any support from an employer. If you’re trying to run a business while also fulfilling your own financial goals, there are a few key moves that you can make.

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Have an Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is the savings that you can rely on when you have unexpected expenses. Everyone should have one to help cover costs, such as home repairs or medical expenses. It’s even more important for entrepreneurs to have an emergency fund if they rely on income from their business. If your business has a slow month or anything starts to go wrong, you might be unable to pay yourself your usual salary. An emergency fund will help to keep you afloat. Building a fund worth at least three to six months’ expenses will give you a strong safety net.

Be Careful with Credit

It’s important to manage your business credit, but you also have to pay attention to your personal credit. It’s best to stay out of debt if you can and to balance any credit that you do have to make sure you’re not borrowing too much. Keeping your credit utilization ratio below 30% is smart. You should try to maintain a clean and solid credit record, so keep up with any payments and avoid missing any, even if you can only pay the minimum payment. This will help you if you want to secure any long-term debt, such as a mortgage, which can be tricky if you’re a business owner.

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Prepare for Your Future

Many entrepreneurs don’t think enough about their financial future. They might feel they can’t afford to save for the future or simply don’t consider it because they don’t have the benefits they might get from an employer. But by accessing some advice on retirement planning for entrepreneurs, you can start getting set up for your future. You can still be prepared for your future and ensure you will be able to retire, even if you don’t have help from an employer.

Give Yourself a Pay Raise

As your business grows, you can consider whether you can afford to pay yourself more. At certain times, it could be the right moment to give yourself a pay raise. Of course, you don’t want to do this too soon, when it’s also important to have money to invest back into your business. However, as your business grows, make sure that you are rewarding yourself for your hard work too. You deserve to benefit from the growth of your company.

Although you need to spend a lot of time working on your business, don’t forget about your personal finances. It’s important to pay attention to them too.

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Building Your Brand On A Budget

When you are launching a business, you want to launch it as cheaply as possible. You already have a lot to spend out, and when it comes to your branding, you need to think of ways to have it slick and powerful – without a massive spend, or instead of spending just in the right places.

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Let’s talk… 

Use What You Have

There is a big temptation when you are starting a business to buy new things to use. Of course, you want new notebooks, branded pens, and glow in the dark ink… things that you feel will put the fire under you and will give you the big juice on the branding and your business. But, resist temptation. Hold back. 

Use what you have at your disposal right now. If you have a mobile phone, you can take photos and make videos. If you have access to the internet, you can create logos and color palettes. Heck, you can even build a virtual team this way too. A limited budget forces you to get creative to go with it. 

Templates Make The World Go Around

So use them! For sure, you want to be a unique and individual company, and you can’t do that with a template… or can you? Wix, Squarespace, Canva, PicMonkey, and https://www.templafy.com/ have some of the most customizable templates on the market. Meaning that you have simple and practical tools and can create a website, social media posts, and all of your business documents in minutes. Small spend, big perks. 

If you are, however, blessed with excellent technical skills, coding, or the affinity for graphic design, then consider this a way to speed up your own process and something that can be tweaked and molded to exactly what you need. 

Exclusive

If people don’t think they can get something, it becomes something they NEED. FOMO will almost always work in your favor. If you can create a sense of need or even one of curiosity, you are going to do better than 99% of other start-ups. 

The option for early adoption, critical access, a waiting list – all entices people. Not showing all of your cards straight away can be a big deal. 

Collaboration

Who you do business with, will dictate who does business with you. For example, if you are a make-up brand, and you are currently working with companies that test on animals – you’re going to feel the force of losing credibility pretty quickly. 

And, will miss out on being endorsed by millions. However, partner with the right animal charity for the right reasons – and you’ll cement your position in the area you really want to be in. 

When you collaborate, you can maximize your brand awareness and your research pretty quickly. Look for a person or a company that has the same ethos and vision as you to maximize the chances of working well together. 

When you don’t have a big budget, that can actually be a more powerful motivator than being able to pay for everything to be done. So use it. 

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How Employee Happiness Can Boost Your Company’s Profits

Should you run your own business, the welfare of your employees should be your priority anyway. What kind of a boss would you be if you didn’t care about their happiness levels? Not a very nice one, we are guessing. On both a moral and an ethical level, you need to treat your employees well. 

However, ensuring your employee happiness will also bring about a boost to your company’s profits. How? Well, consider the following. 

How Employee Happiness Can Boost Your Company's Profits - satisfaction survey image
Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

#1: They will stick around for longer

The employee turnover rate is high in some businesses. Many people leave within six months of joining a company, and this is often because of an unorganized and poorly handled onboarding process. Others leave because they don’t feel valued. And some employees leave because little is being done in the way of support for any problems they might be having. 

Should you lose an employee, you will have to suffer the expense of the hiring process again. This will obviously dent your profit margin. You also run the risk of losing your best employees, and this could affect your company profits. 

By ensuring your employee happiness, however, you won’t have to suffer losses associated with employee turnover. To care for them, you should:

  • Treat your employees like human beings and not mindless worker drones.
  • Pay attention to any problems they are having and support them accordingly.

#2: Your employees will be more productive

Low morale is the reason why many employees become unproductive. They might turn up to work late, leave work early, and work less efficiently within the working day. These behaviours are often born through resentment for their employer, but they are also caused by the stressed-out state that can interfere with their daily performance. 

When an employee is unproductive, your business will suffer as a consequence. If work isn’t being done, you won’t meet your targets, your customers and clients won’t be happy, and your bottom line will be affected. On the other hand, the happier they are, the more productive they will become. You will then be happier because of the profits they are making for you. 

To ensure your employees are productive, you should:

  • Give them more break times to ensure tiredness doesn’t set in.
  • Support them in their work, so they are able to carry out their jobs efficiently.

#3: The reputation of your business will be positively affected

With a poor reputation, fewer customers will head to your business, the best candidates will look elsewhere for work, and your business won’t have the opportunity to grow. As a result of all of these factors, your business could fail

And what could cause a poor reputation? Your employees! 

  • They might contribute to business review sites after leaving your company and criticize your business.
  • Their poor performance could cause your customers to use those very same review sites.
  • They might complain about your business to their friends and family face-to-face or on social media, and word might then get around about your company.

To secure your business reputation, treat your employees well, as the only word-of-mouth about you that follows should be a positive one! Your profits will surely rise as a reflection of this.

Today then, consider your employees. Are they happy? To ensure your business succeeds, you might want to check in with them to find out more and take the necessary next steps if they are unhappy in any way. Your business will profit if you do. 

Thanks for reading.

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