How To Turn Your Business From Stress To Success

Starting your own business is an exciting but stressful time. This is a time where you will learn a lot. You may fail and you may succeed, but if you remain persistent, you will eventually set your business up for success.

While that is nice to know, it doesn’t help the stress you may be experiencing today. Your business is important to you, and so, to help business owners, like you, we have developed a list of things you can do now to turn your business from stress to success.

Have a plan

Having goals and a plan on how to reach those goals will do so much for reducing your stress levels and putting your business onto the path of success. Goals will outline your vision for your business and plans will help you get there.

Figure out what you need to do to achieve your goals. Create a checklist or to-do list on tasks you need to complete daily to achieve these goals. Be organised, look for any efficient ways that you can organise yourself and your workflow to achieve these goals.

Keep detailed records

Keeping records regarding your business will work wonders for keeping your business flexible. You will be able to analyse trends within your business, easily identifying any new challenges your business may face. Your business’ financial situation will also be readily available to you, allowing you to see quickly whether you have the funds to complete some of your goals sooner.

These reports will provide you with enough time to plan and restructure your goals to avoid or overcome any potential challenges your business may face in the future.

Research your competition

Keeping an eye on your competition can allow you to keep an edge on them. Don’t be afraid to look into their products, understanding what their competitive advantage is, so you can find where your business sits in the market. You don’t want to find out too late that their products or services have skipped lightyears ahead of your own.

Having competition is excellent for ensuring that your business always keeps on its toes, providing the best services and products for your customers. Keeping up with market and competitor research will ensure that you stay in that competition, making running your business a little bit less stressful.

Be Creative and professional

Don’t be afraid to get creative, no matter your industry. Standing out from the crowd means more attention, which could lead to more sales. Even in traditional industries you will find a strong niche filled with clients who wish things were done a little differently. So, think outside the box and get a little creative to make your business stand out a little more.

Be careful though, you want to stand out in a positive way. Negative attention can cause backlash or result in a loss of customers. Maintaining a strong balance between creativity and professionalism is important. Test your ideas, get feedback, before you launch anything to your customers.  

Keep your finances accurate and up to date

This is where a professional bookkeeper or accountant will come in handy. Up to date finances will help immensely in running your business. You will be able to see where your cashflow is at, allowing you to determine when and where you should invest your business’ finances.

Having a professional look after your finances will reduce stress immensely. You will have someone you can trust, with professional knowledge and experience, advising you and steering you clear of any accounting headaches.

Hire employees you can trust

Hiring employees that you cannot trust is not only bad for the growth of your business but will cause unnecessary levels of stress. It is vital that you rigorously vet any potential employee to ensure that they are aligned with the goals of your business. A great employee is motivated, brings new ideas, and is ready to help you grow your business. They will be someone who you can trust to do their job, reducing your workload and personal stress.  

Conclusion

Taking the steps to reduce your stress by improving your businesses processes will work wonders. Not only will you feel happier running your business, but you may find that these efficiencies cause your business to grow faster than before.

The biggest step to helping your business is to get a good bookkeeper on your side. Bookkeeping can cause a lot of stress if you are currently going it alone. Talk to the experts at Link Strategies and take the weight off your shoulders.

8 Things You Must Know Before Starting Your Business

It is difficult to fully prepare yourself for the twists and turns you will experience starting your own business. No matter the industry there will be unforeseen obstacles that all the business management classes in the world couldn’t properly prepare you for. Fortunately, there is help and advise for those who go looking for it.

For those starting their first business, here are 8 things you must know.

Starting your own business is a marathon, not a sprint

The focus for entrepreneurs or business owners is how to make big bucks from their business as quickly as possible. Things rarely work out how you initially planned. Technology changes, societal changes, market changes will all impact your business, potentially veering it in a different direction.

Instead of looking to make some fast money, look to building a great company that is stable in the long-term. By remembering that entrepreneurship is a marathon you will create businesses that have a greater impact, and ultimately make you more money.

Ensure there is demand for your product or service

Before you start your business, you should conduct extensive market research to ensure that the market exists and there is demand for your product or service. With strong demand you can find profitability, if your product meets or exceeds the market’s expectations.

By making a profit on your products or services you will be able to afford to hire great people to help you focus on the work you want to do while growing your business. Companies that focus on being consistently profitable tend to withstand unforeseen events.  

Be patient and ensure you have enough funding

Surviving the start-up phase can be tough. Nearly half of businesses miscalculate the time it will take to reach profitability and fail due to inadequate funding. The trick is to plan for it. Understand that it will take time to grow the business, plan on making a profit taking later than expected.

Every business works on a different timeline. Some find profitability faster than others. Ensure that you have adequate funding and a backup funding source in case the path to profitability takes longer than expected.

Know that you won’t get it right the first time

When starting your own business, it is important to be nimble and quick on your feet. You will need to analyse results fast and then make changes, be prepared to need to pivot quickly. More than likely you will not get it right the first, second or third time. But that is ok as long as you learn quickly and change course just as fast.

When you fail, use it as feedback. So, take action, take calculated risks. Test your theories and use the feedback you receive to improve yourself and your business. You only truly fail when you give up.

Forget about what you are selling

Stop focusing on the product and focus on your customers. Know your customers better than you know yourself. Then you can sell something that offers value, impact, and results that your customers will love and buy.

The trick is to always listen and learn. Never assume you have the answers. Understand your audiences’ problems deeply, learn what they want. By knowing your audience, you can pivot your products to match their desires and demand.

Listen to your customers

Look for ways in which you can receive immediate customer feedback. Use this feedback to improve your product or service and react to changing demand. It is very easy, now more than ever, to look for customer feedback with little to no cost. Take advantage of social media platforms, run polls, create feedback posts, provide small incentives. Surveys are also great options. Simply asking your customer to quickly rate your product out of 5 stars will give you heaps of feedback.

Be prepared to change

No matter how great your business plan is there will always be something that turns it on its head. While simple, well executed plans are fantastic, it is important to be prepared to change at a moment’s notice, no matter your attachment to the business plan. The market always has something unexpected up its sleeve, by listening you can pivot in a new direction when the market and its needs change.

Solve a problem

You should always challenge yourself on what need or problem your product or service is the answer to. If there is no need or problem then the market may not be interested, and so, you should change your idea.

Look first at the problems your target market faces and look to solve these. You will find more demand for your product and a more receptive market, giving you an easier time to sell your product.

Conclusion

With these tips in mind your business will be on a much stronger footing when it begins. Remember to look into the long-term, and focus on your customers, these will lead your business to success.

Another key to successful business’ is an excellent bookkeeper. They are able to manage your business’ finances, setting it up for success. For the best bookkeepers look to Link Strategies. Contact us today.

How To Build An Emergency Fund For Your Business

Your business is booming. You are consistently hitting your growth targets and things are going better than you could have hoped. What would happen if everything suddenly turned against you? Market trends falling, the national economy grinding to a halt. All the gains you made could disappear simply because of factors beyond your control.

That’s where emergency funds come in to save the day. As a business owner it is important to prepare for the worst even if your business is booming. In fact, a booming business offers the best time to prepare. Building an emergency fund will give you access to resources right away to help your business weather through tougher times.

So how do you go about setting up an emergency fund?

1. Set a target

Begin by setting realistic targets for your emergency fund. You need to decide how much each month your business can put aside into this fund. You should ensure that you calculate any normal fluctuations your business experiences regularly.

You should also set a savings target for your emergency fund. This amount will be calculated based on what your business will need in order to operate during a worst-case scenario. You may also want extra, depending on your industry, in order to change up your business’ products or services to match any changing market trends.

It may be tempting to set the savings targets higher to save more, faster. However, you may risk trapping resources that could be used to grow your business. Talk to your bookkeeper about these goals in order to find a balance that will give you the emergency fund you need without slowing business growth.

2. Outline how you will reach your goals

Now that you have a target you will need to outline what you are going to do to reach it. There are many ways that you can build an emergency fund. You could cut into your profits; however, this is not the only solution.

Consider tweaking some of your business processes, streamlining them to eliminate wastage. Improve your invoicing processes and reduce some unnecessary expenses. If you find a large portion of your expenses going on unused programs, subscriptions or entertainment, consider reducing these expenses.

Another area you could look at is your existing contracts. Are you getting the best deal possible? There may be wiggle room for you to renegotiate these contracts or you could shop around for better contracts that increase your cashflow.

3. Don’t touch the fund

Now that you have your emergency fund don’t touch it. One common mistake business owners make is keeping all of their funds in a single account. This means that they keep their emergency funds in the same account they spend from. It becomes really easy to lose track of how much you have saved and then accidentally spend it.

Even if you do create a separate account you will still be tempted to use your emergency funds. The trick here is to maintain self-control. Use an entirely separate bank for your savings account if you need to. Make it more difficult to transfer money across to your spending account, except when you really need it.

4. Check the account regularly

Now that you are building your emergency fund you are well on your way to creating a pillow for your business to sit on when times are tough. It is important that you check regularly that your business can meet the monthly payments to the fund. Ensure that your business can sustain the current monthly cost and look at any changes you may need to make to meet it or revisit your goals.

You should also regularly check the fund to ensure that you are on track to hit your savings goal and that the fund has not been touched. A monthly check will put you at ease and ensure that you know what is happening with the account.

Conclusion

The best way to ensure that you are setting your emergency account up to make a real positive impact on your business talk to your bookkeeper. They have all the tools and knowledge to help you build an excellent emergency fund. If you need a professional bookkeeper you need to talk to Link Strategies today.