Business 101 – How to Properly Manage A Small Business

It’s thrilling yet risky to start or manage a new small business in the cutthroat business world. Every day, small businesses are launched by an entrepreneur with a burning desire to tackle a particular need.

Running a business requires more than just having a solid idea. Every company, regardless of size, is constantly worried about management. Every business must have an effective management system to survive.

To make their enterprise a success story, small business owners must be well-equipped with managerial skills and talents. Keep reading to discover helpful techniques for effectively managing a small business.

1.  Proper Time Management Is the Key

You should be aware that time is your most valuable resource as a small business owner. Money can be lost and then recovered. However, you cannot recover time.

Every day, keep a proper record of the activities you spend your time on and aim to eliminate any that are not producing or contributing significantly to your organization. This can help you identify your biggest time wasters.

The 80/20 Pareto Principle rule is a good technique for deciding where to invest more time. The 80/20 rule essentially states that only 20% of your efforts will provide 80% of your results.

2.  Have a To-Do List and Be Organized

You must maintain extreme organization as a small business owner. To help you stay on track, develop the practice of making a to-do list. It’s pretty simple to manage and keep track of daily activities, including those of your staff, with a To-Do list.

Three categories should be considered while creating your to-do list: one for tasks you must complete today, another for things that require your attention but can wait. Create a final category for quick chores and commitments you can complete when you have extra time.

3.  Hire Based On Attitude and Train for New Skills

We live and operate in a world where a company’s ability to thrive depends on hiring staff members who will stop at nothing to keep prices down and quality up and constantly be on the hunt for fresh opportunities to provide value for the company’s clients.

Even in the most technically demanding positions, skills alone are only one component. Many companies have made the error of selecting employees based more on competence than attitude because they believe they can re-engineer any negative attitudes through advanced training programs.

Don’t misunderstand this point; if you need to hire a technically trained person, ensure they have the fundamental technical abilities needed for the position. However, you also need to make sure the person has the correct attitude and fits the company’s culture.

4.  Assign Tasks When It Is Necessary

Business management experts like Corporate Business Solutions always recommend that business owners give up control of the things they’re not good at. Do what you do best and ask for help with the things you don’t enjoy doing.

The desire to outsource some of your tasks so you can concentrate on expanding your business is the first step towards effective delegation. Many small business owners struggle with delegation. It’s a complete departure from what most business entrepreneurs do when their companies are just starting out.

5.  Make Adequate Marketing Investments

While expensive to maintain, marketing is also unquestionably vital. However, you must invest in marketing your company if you want it to expand in any way.

What if you don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing? You can utilize a lot of marketing strategies that won’t break your tight budget, so don’t panic.

Word-of-mouth marketing is effective if you have a quality product or service, but it’s frequently insufficient on its own. Other proven and effective digital marketing techniques can strengthen it, such as Search Engine Marketing, Content Writing, Media Marketing, and many others.

Conclusion

Nothing is more frustrating than a manager or business owner who lacks management skills. Managing a small business requires you to wear multiple hats and maintain your attention on a variety of tasks. These techniques would assist you in maintaining your attention on the most crucial elements of your small business and keep you moving in the right direction.

 

 

Important Business Management Skills You Need As a Small Business Owner

Running a small business is a tough and occasionally exhausting job. The satisfaction of eventually seeing your own business succeed makes the struggle worthwhile.

For a business to succeed, you must keep in mind that you will be in control of your team. This indicates that you will need to have management skills. Even though you will require various abilities to manage your business and team, there are six crucial ones you should start developing immediately.

Decision-making, motivation and delegating, communication skills, conflict management skills, emotional intelligence, customer service, etc., are some examples of managerial skills you need as a small business owner. Keep reading to find out why we highlighted these skills.

1.  Decision Making

Decision-making is one of the most crucial managerial skills you need to learn to operate a successful business. The capacity to act quickly under pressure and, more crucially, to act correctly will make a difference.

You must also understand the effects of your choices. You must explain to your team the potential effects of your choice on the business and all parties concerned.

2.  Motivation and Delegation

Delegating responsibilities and motivating your team is another important managerial skill you must master. This necessitates a thorough comprehension of the weaknesses and strengths of each and every member of your team. Without this understanding, you can end up giving the wrong individual responsibility for essential tasks. Delegating tasks will enable you to optimize their capabilities and outputs effectively.

Team motivation goes hand in hand with effective delegation. It can be challenging to encourage your staff to maintain focus and advance the company’s objective. Each person’s innate drive to accomplish their goals serves as their source of motivation.

However, this drive must come from team leaders and business owners. The greatest strategy to guarantee that your personnel will contribute to the business’s aim is to operate with clear performance standards.

3.  Effective Communication Skills

Effective communication is a skill that is necessary for life as well as in business. It is important to remember that communication involves more than just sending messages. Effective communication requires careful attention to one’s tone of voice, body language, and facial expressions.

Additionally, a component of this management skill is actively listening to your team members, clients, and collaborators’ thoughts and suggestions. Effective communication skills can influence your small business’s success.

4.  Conflict Management Skills

Conflict management is a management skill that is frequently grossly underrated. You are responsible for handling and resolving any internal conflicts as well as those with your clients or partners. You also need to acquire conflict managerial skills to recognize and understand possible disputes.

Doing this can avert a dispute that might interfere with corporate operations. Additionally, the effectiveness of your team will be improved by effectively dealing with and resolving conflicts.

5.  Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

Any business owner needs to have high emotional intelligence. You will be interacting with people all day, whether with partners, suppliers, or clients. You can develop closer relationships by being able to read their emotions.

Being a business owner is not an easy task, so you must also be able to understand and control your own emotions. Making decisions will be simpler if you are confident in who you are and conscious of your position, especially under pressure.

6.  Customer Service

A thriving business depends on providing excellent customer service. If your company doesn’t offer exceptional customer service, no matter how many clients you attract, they won’t stick around. Business management service providers like Corporate Business Solutions Inc. will always tell you that compared to keeping current customers, gaining new ones is far more expensive.

Every small business owner ought to be able to deliver excellent customer service. This entails discovering appropriate ways to handle angry clients and critical feedback and how to pay attention and react quickly.

Conclusion

That wraps up important business management skills you need as a small business owner. While there are other management skills to discuss, these are the fundamental ones every small business owner must have to thrive and succeed in business.

 

Is Income Protection Worth having if you are Self-Employed?

For the self-employed in the US, you are the business. Every day you feel unwell and can’t go to work is a day when no income is generated.

Of course, that isn’t true for every self-employed individual. You may have staff who can continue working and generating income without you, so a day or two absences won’t matter too much.

But what if your illness or injury is more significant, and the period you will be unable to work could be several weeks or even months!

It won’t happen to me

Maybe you’ve always maintained good health so a scenario like that will never happen to you?

Maybe.

And maybe not. Up to a third of US, workers have a period during their working life when they are unable to work for three months or more.

How would three months of no income affect you and your family?

This takes us back to the question of whether Income Protection is worth having if you are self-employed.

What is Income Protection Insurance?

If you suffer from any illness or injury that stops you from working, you will receive a monthly payment until you are able to return to work.

There will be a stand-down period before you can claim, e.g., 4 weeks. A waiting period of 13 weeks may halve the cost of the insurance, but if you are off work for 12 weeks only, you would receive nothing.

On the other hand, most policies will keep paying right through to age 65. Although you can choose shorter payment periods, as little as two years. Again, that could almost halve the cost). Some policies may even pay for longer periods, beyond 65, recognizing that many intend to work longer these days.

Another key benefit of Income Protection insurance is around when payments stop.

If you are considered well enough to return to work, payments will cease.

However, most policies have an ‘own occupation’ definition.

Let’s assume you are a builder and spend 80% of your time doing physical building work, and 20% of your time doing paperwork or marketing duties.

If you suffer a back injury that permanently prevents you from ever doing physical work again, then even though you could return to work and do 100% just paperwork, the insurance company can’t make you. You can continue to receive your monthly payments until age 65 or whatever your payment period is.

You can choose to return to work part-time or even full-time and just do administration work, but that is your choice. If you earn the same amount as your monthly benefit or more, your payments will stop. But if you earned less, perhaps because you aren’t working full hours, the insurance may still pay you a pro-rata payment to top up your earnings.

How much will I get paid?

The amount you are paid may also be increased each year to keep pace with inflation.

The amount you can typically cover varies between a maximum of 50% to 75% of your income.

If self-employed, you may need to be able to show your three most recent years of income and ensure a percentage of the average income across those years.

If you take advantage of various tax deductions to reduce your taxable income, this does not help you with Income Protection, as you can only insure your taxable income.

Like all insurance, Income Protection is worth it if you become eligible to claim. You need to understand your policy and find the right balance between cost, what you would get paid at claim time, and for how long.

If you can ensure a suitable income, and you do suffer some illness or injury that has you off work long-term, then Income Protection guarantees ongoing income that could keep your business going until you can return to work. Alternatively, it enables you to close down the business, but still, receive a suitable ongoing income to pay your everyday ongoing family living expenses.

Corporate Business Solutions provides business analytical, consulting services and strategic tax planning to the owners of small and medium-size business throughout the United States.

College Graduates Must Find the Business and Role that is their Best Match

Every year a new group of graduates enters the job search market armed with resumes of varying quality and a brand-new shiny certificate saying they have an appropriate qualification to work in your business. Filled with excitement and anticipation of their first ‘real’ job, graduates are tempted to take any job in their career field with any company.

But have they thought about the work environment that best suits their working style? To get the best value out of any new graduate employee, you need to make sure they are aware of how your business and the role being offered are a good match for them. A graduate might see your advertised job as their dream job, based solely on the job title. But if you are a small business, a start-up, or a long-established company with hundreds of staff, their experience will potentially be vastly different.

You need to understand what aspect of their career field they want to specialize in, and what are their long-term career goals. A start-up company might be exciting and mostly employ people in their age group. That could have some advantages for their social life. But will that environment provide the experience to help them grow within their career field and gain greater experience to enable them to get where they want to get in their career?

Can the new graduate be assured the business will still be thriving a year from now? Starting a business during the current pandemic, or any time when the economy is struggling is always going to be challenging.

In a business with many staff, what sort of professional development and mentoring is provided? Will the new graduate feel just like a number, left with little support to grow? Perhaps most staff are much older, and they might struggle to develop workplace relationships. Other factors a graduate need to consider when seeking their first job after graduation include:

  • Where do they want to live?

A business in a bigger city might mean higher living costs. It might mean moving away from family, friends, and partners.

  • What type of industry do they want to work in?

They might want to work in sales, but do they want to sell items like alcohol, tobacco, firearms, etc.? Or does the business have a bad reputation for some reason? Do they want to work for a company that has structured training programs, or would they prefer to learn on the job from more experienced colleagues?

  • Work-life balance.

Are they happy working long hours and weekends, or do they value being able to get to that evening exercise class? Are they working in one location all the time, or do you often have to travel around the country spending many nights away from home? Or will they work from home? How would that affect their personal life?

Are they after the highest pay rate possible to live a luxurious lifestyle or pay off that student debt as quickly as possible? Or are you comfortable making less money knowing they will be doing meaningful work?

If you can uncover the answers to these questions, you will increase the likelihood of finding a new graduate who will stay with your business for the long term.

Viewing the Corporate Business Solutions Reviews you will find help with recruiting new graduates.

3 Ways to Create Time for Your Side Hustle 

Even if only for a short time, every person in this world has had a business idea. There are a plethora of people out there who have great business ideas that are destined to be good. You could even be one of those people. However, very few people continue the process to see their business succeed.

Perhaps they have been talked out of it, or maybe they just didn’t have the time. Whatever the reason is, every business deserves a decent chance at success. So, what is it that is keeping you from taking the next step? If it is time, we have you covered.

If a lack of time is to blame, check out these 3 tips from your Corporate Business Solutions Consultants that will help you create time for your side hustle.

Join groups

There is no better way to create time for your business than to find a group of like-minded people to discuss it with. Even meeting up once a month to discuss strategies and encourage each other will help to create valuable time for your side hustle. This works well because it holds you accountable to other people and that can give you the extra push you need.

It can be hard to gain and keep motivation if the only person holding you accountable is you.

Outsource

Many successful people outsource work to get help with their side hustle. For example, reaching out to platforms with freelancers or simply automating most of your social media can help drastically. Usually, it will cost you money, but it isn’t the worst when it comes to saving time.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed, outsourcing work is completely okay. There is nothing to be ashamed of, so don’t be hard on yourself.

Make appointments

By making appointments, it doesn’t mean you should book appointments and lose even more time. What it means is that you should consider the time you work on your side hustle as an appointment. That way, you have a set start and finish time that you have to be held accountable for.

Try to make the most of this time. Emails, messages, and returning phone calls can wait. This is the time you want to spend working on your side hustle alone. How you prioritize your time will make all of the difference in the long run. Creating a list of tasks is also incredibly helpful.

With these three helpful ways to create more time for your side hustle, you will also have more time for friends, family, and play. Just a few hours every week to work on your side hustle will bring results and soon enough, everything will begin to fall into place for you. Even if you only have five free hours every week, that calculates to 260 hours per year that you spent wisely.

Your dream life isn’t too far away, so keep up the hard work.

Growing a Business and a Family? 4 Tips for Balancing Your Work and Life

A common question entrepreneurs face is balancing their work life and home life in a day. When do you know it’s time to put the computer down and spend time with your loved ones? What do you do to even get to the point that you can have a balance between the two?

Learning to balance your business and a family isn’t always easy. Depending on how the day goes, one will often be a higher priority than the other. Which one goes first in your day often comes down to what’s most important in your life.

For entrepreneurs who want to manage a healthy balance between growing their business and growing their family, we have four tips from CBS-CBS.com that can help.

Use Your Family As Daily Motivation

Finding the motivation to get work done throughout the day can be challenging. We often get used to the idea that we need to wait for motivation and inspiration to strike before getting the ball rolling. However, motivation often comes from within and outside influences.

If you struggle with taking work home, late nights, and not being fully present with your family, use them as your fuel throughout your day. Remind yourself that you need to get your work done to be fully present at the supper table and into the evenings with your family. It can help you stay focused and determined to complete your to-do list for the day.

Prioritize Your Day

Speaking of to-do lists, if you don’t use them already, you’ll want to start. A daily to-do list is an excellent way to organize what you need to accomplish right now and what can’t wait until later in the week.

A good tip is to start each morning making a list of what you need to achieve in your working hours. Start with the essential tasks that absolutely need to get done. That way, if something takes you longer and you have a few more tasks left, they’re likely not as high of a priority and could even wait until the next working day.

Don’t Shut Your Family Out

There’s a difference between separating your work and family life versus balancing the two together. Unless you and your partner both agree it’s best to keep any work talk at the office and not at the house, keep your family involved in your day-to-day activities with the business.

For starters, your partner can be your biggest supporter and cheerleader for your business (and the motivation we mentioned in our first point). Communicating with your partner about the company can also help solve problems that are frustrating you that could help make your next workday a little less stressful.

Learn to Delegate

When you’re first starting a business, you may not have the luxury to delegate tasks as you’ll likely be the only person involved in the business. As you grow, though, and work becomes more demanding, you’ll need to start delegating tasks to employees and managers. Learn the signs of when it’s time to hire support, especially if it’s cutting into your precious family time.

The above four tips can help you find some balance between growing your family and growing your business. Many of the ideas come from simple changes like how you start your day in the morning. It’ll be trial and error to find what works best for you.

How to Start A Business From Home

With all the changes we went through in 2020, you may be wondering how you can make a business work that can withstand a global shutdown. Many home-based businesses were still able to operate in some capacity (with some not affected at all).

Home-based businesses are an excellent way to make an additional income or use it as your career option altogether. You may be interested in working from home for many reasons, so why not get one started?

Reviews for Corporate Business Solutions has five tips to help get your home-based business started and on the path to success.

Make a Note of Your Talents

Before beginning, it’s a good idea to jot down you’re talents. What are you good at?

When going into business, working on a path that uses your talents can help in many ways. For one, you’re more likely to enjoy the job if it’s something you’re good at, and it will show you if you’re suited for running a business.

Brainstorm Business Ideas

Next, spend some time brainstorming ideas that you could turn into a business. Start with ideas that use your talents already listed. Next, move onto any hobbies you have that you could sell as a product or service. Many home-based businesses begin from someone’s hobby.

Create a Business Plan Draft

Once you have an idea, you’ll need to ensure you can turn it into a business. Do that by starting your first draft of your business plan. Your business plan is something you’ll refer back to as your business grows and use it for any financing you may need.

When writing your business plan, start with a summary of what your company would look like. How would you operate and make a profit? What would your target audience look like and the competition in your field? As the business grows, you can start to include growth goals to move forward.

Do a Test Run

So, you have a plan in place and ready to open the doors. However, it’s a good idea to do a test run of your business with friends and family. Ask for their honest opinion about your plan, if they think the public would like it and if it’s something you can make a living from.

If you get positive feedback from that test run, you can then take your business idea into the public world as a beta. Beta is when you’re testing what your business sells to the public to get honest feedback. You can do this by creating a social media account and asking for a select amount of people to do a test run on what you’re offering. Provide them with a discount to entice customers.

Legalize Your Business

After you’ve gone through everything above and feel confident that you have a solid business idea, it’s time to legalize your business. That means applying for a business name, creating tax accounts, and getting any required licenses.

Upon legalizing your business, you can then create your website and social media accounts to promote your new home business.

Starting a home business has its challenges but can very rewarding when it takes off. Stay dedicated, work hard, and enjoy the journey of starting a home-based business.

Organization 101: 5 Tips for Daily Planning

How do you start your day? Do you hit the snooze button multiple times before rushing to get ready? Maybe you get upright when you’re alarm goes off and jump right in the shower before enjoying your morning coffee. Whatever it may be, it’s worth considering adding daily planning to your routine.

Daily planning can help you with many aspects of your life, not just with the organization. You’ll be more prepared for upcoming obstacles and deadlines, reduce your stress, knowing you have a plan, and will help hold you accountable for the task at hand.

If you’re ready to take a few extra minutes each morning for daily planning, the following five tips from CBS-CBS.com will help.

Physically Write Out Your Daily Plan

Daily planning doesn’t mean you take a few moments to think about everything you need to accomplish today. Chances are, you will forget lots of it halfway through. To be successful at the daily plan, you need to physically write it out. Having a calendar with space to write out each day will help.

Set a Time for Planning

Why should you plan your day at the same time, whether it be the night before or while having your morning coffee? It will help you create a habit. Once-daily planning becomes a habit, your chances of forgetting to do it will significantly decrease.

Have an Ongoing Task List

If you struggle to think of all the things you need to accomplish in a day, create an ongoing task list. Whether you make it a weekly or monthly list that you have on hand, you can refer back to it while you’re planning your day. That way, you always know what tasks are coming up.

Not only that but having that list will help you prioritize what’s most essential and what can wait for another day. Prioritizing is an excellent organizational trick that will keep you on track of everything you need to do.

Give Yourself More Time Than You Think

A trick you’ll quickly start to realize is that tasks often take longer than you expect. Distractions occur at any given moment that can throw you off schedule. If you give yourself some flexibility in your daily plan, you’re less likely to fall behind and get stressed and more likely to achieve everything on your list.

Reflect on Your Day and Carry Over Tasks

You’ll have days when you don’t accomplish everything in your plan, and that’s okay. Try not to stress over what you couldn’t get done. Instead, reflect on your day and carry over any tasks to the next day.

Taking a moment to reflect on your day can help you in a few ways. First, you can see if you overscheduled yourself or if you had too many distractions that took away your attention. Reflecting can also boost your confidence when you see everything you did achieve in the day.

Incorporate daily planning into your morning or nighttime routine. It will help you stay organized, prioritize what is most important right now, and will likely help prevent you from feeling overwhelmed with what to do.

Ready to Boost Security? 5 Cybersecurity Tips to Keep Your Business Safe

Cybersecurity is crucial for all businesses, and small companies are no exception. In fact, a 2018 report (The 2018 State of Cybersecurity in Small and Medium Size Businesses) found that almost 70 percent of businesses in the study had fallen victim to a cyber attack. Unfortunately, nearly half of the respondents didn’t know how to protect their organization against threats.

Don’t let your business be another statistic of cybersecurity threats against a small business. Take action today to protect yourself tomorrow. Reviews for Corporate Business Solutions has five cybersecurity tips to keep your business safe.

Always Create Backups

Backups are your best friend if you save a lot of important information on a computer. Not doing so leaves all of that critical data vulnerable. If you have all your personal belongings stored in one garage that has minimal protection and it catches fire, you’ll lose everything.

Get in the habit of doing daily backups of your main devices. Most computers, tablets and even phones connected to cloud service or external hard drive allow you to set a backup schedule, so you don’t have to remember each day.

Use Strong Passwords

A password is your first line of defense for your device and any accounts you have access to. Slacking on creating a password puts everything at risk. A strong password is something not easily guessed and includes numbers and special characters.

For devices and accounts that hold critical information (think of customer info that could expose banking information), you may want to add extra authentication steps. Multi-factor authentication is when you need to input a number code sent to you via email, text or having to scan a thumbprint or your face to gain access.

Train Your Employees

If you’re a small business with a few employees, then cybersecurity is vital to everyone, not just you as the owner. That is why you should spend time investing in training for everyone related to your business.

Ensure that all your staff know how to create strong passwords for all devices, red flags of phishing scams or websites that look suspicious, and even how to protect their devices when they take them home for the day.

Keep All Devices Updated

Regular updates are a crucial step to security. Ever wonder what happens when your device does it’s the tenth update of the month? The chances are that quick update contains valuable coding that is filling gaps in its security.

Hackers and threats are continually evolving, so that means your device’s security abilities also need to evolve. Each time your device updates, it’s likely providing a solution to a potential security exposure due to the latest threat evolution.

Download Security Software

You’re not alone when it comes to cybersecurity. Many companies provide top-notch cybersecurity software for individual and personal use. If you’re new to security or not overly interested in it, downloading one of these programs is necessary.

Browse through the available security programs to find one that best suits your needs. Look for ones that include firewall protection and password management. They’ll all come in handy.

Small businesses don’t need to take drastic steps to protect their company from cyber threats. Even small actions, like updating your device and regularly changing your passwords, can provide valuable protection to all of your important data.

5 Goals Every Entrepreneur Should Strive For

Goals are an excellent tactic to keep you on track. They help you achieve something bigger you’ve been working on for a while. Everyone can benefit from goals, especially if you’re an entrepreneur.

Sometimes, though, it can be challenging to determine what kind of goal to make. Maybe right now, your goal is to create a good plan for the future. Try not to stress over this part. Your Corporate Business Solutions consultants have five goals that every entrepreneur should strive for.

Personal Development Goals

Entrepreneurial goals shouldn’t be limited to strictly about your business. You need to have some personal development plans mixed in as well. As you progress forward personally, you’ll learn new tricks and methods to help you improve all aspects of your life.

Some reasonable personal development goals to consider include starting a journal, read a new book (self-help, business learning, finances), take a new course, or learning to manage your work and life balance. These goals are there to make life a bit easier for you.

Relationship Goals

As an entrepreneur, you likely have many relationships on the go, and we’re talking more than your significant other relationship. Maintaining healthy relationships is crucial for everyone, and an entrepreneur is no exception.

Set goals that help develop your current relationships and branch out to create new ones. It could be something as simple as phoning a friend once a week, to something bigger like attending a conference in person. Networking is a significant portion of operating a business.

Health Goals

It’s essential that entrepreneurs take care of their health, both physical and mental. If you’re running on fumes each day, it’s only a matter of time before you burn out. Setting health goals allows you to focus on essential things that improve your overall well-being. When you’re in top health, you perform at your best.

There are many health goals you can set. A few examples would be eating more fruits and vegetables each day, getting in a short walk in the morning, meditating to help ease stress, or going for regular checkup appointments.

Business Goals

Of course, every entrepreneur needs to set themselves business goals (if you haven’t done so already). Business goals are what help drive your company forward towards success. You have many options available for setting business goals. Just ensure you’re selecting realistic ones for your company.

Need a few ideas? Your business goal could include rebranding your company, setting up a social media plan, developing partnerships with other local businesses, or launching a new product or service.

Financial Goals

Lastly, it’s a good idea to set financial goals. It could be either personal or business-related or maybe both. Financial goals are an excellent way to stay on top of your money to ensure you bring in more than you spend.

Keep financial goals small, measurable and attainable. If you’re a newer company, setting a financial goal like earning a million dollars in revenue may not be realistic. However, changing the timeline to five years with small milestones each year could keep you on the path to earning a million dollars.

Ready to set goals? Use the above five goal categories to get you started. Each category serves a purpose in your life that deserves some attention.