5 Points to Remember When Growing Your Small Business

When you start a business, what is one of the main things you plan to accomplish? Most likely, your answer is along the lines of growth.

Without growth, many businesses will not survive. Growth is essential to keep you operational, make ends meet, and ensure you have something to work towards. Simply put – growth is part of business success.

If you’re ready to start growing your small business, then Corporate Business Solutions has five points worth remembering.

Quality Customer Service is Key

We’ve likely all experienced it at some point – poor customer service. How does that leave you feeling when the customer service is disappointing? Likely mad, frustrated, and not wanting to go back.

It’s easy to underestimate the power of good customer service because it’s part of their everyday duties for many companies. However, don’t forget how important it is and let it start to slide. Your customer service level could be the key to your growth or the beginning of a downward spiral of your company.

Use Social Media to Your Advantage

If you’re not using social media already, you’re missing out on an excellent growth opportunity. To start, you’ll be hard-pressed to talk to someone who doesn’t use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and now TikTok.

Social media is a way for you to reach a wider audience than other forms of advertisement. Plus, it’s free to use. Just remember – when using social media, interact with your followers and post quality content. Keep your selling to a minimum and show the value of your services.

Show Community Support

Another excellent way to grow your business is by supporting your local community. Doing this does two things: first, it helps develop brand awareness. If you’re sponsoring local events, non-profit organizations, or even small giveaways, it helps get your business out into the community (which means more eyes on you).

Showing community support also helps boost the image of your business. In today’s world, there is a strong push for supporting local initiatives. If people see your brand supporting their local community, it makes your image look even better.

Don’t Skimp on the Hires

Who you hire plays a significant role in the growth of your business. Adding new team members to your team costs money before the person starts to make the business money. So, if you’re frequently hiring new staff members to replace people who have quit or were let go, you’ll get caught in a costly cycle.

Take time during the hiring process. You want to find someone who is the best candidate for the job and is also the right fit for the company culture. Having a solid team to rely on will do wonders for business growth.

Be Flexible

Growing your business is not a straight upward line. It’s a rollercoaster that requires flexibility on your part. Not every plan you have will work. In fact, some ideas may do the opposite of what you had in mind. Being flexible means you can adjust on the go when needed and understand that good growth takes time.

It’s important to remember that trying to grow your business too quickly can hinder what you currently have. Ensure that where your business is at right now is steady enough that growing is the only other option you have now.

5 Tips for Conducting an Interview

Part of running a business for many entrepreneurs involves hiring employees. As your company grows, there’s an increased demand for employee productivity that you won’t necessarily achieve. When that happens, you seek out someone to be an employee.

When hiring, you won’t go for the first person you talk to. There’s a process to finding the best candidate for the position and your company culture. The biggest step in that process is conducting the interview.

Interviewing a potential hire can be intimidating at first. Try the following five tips from CBS-CBS.com to get you prepared and confident for your upcoming interview.

Set the Date, Time, and Appropriate Location

When you’re in an interview, it’s not only polite to give the candidate your full attention. You also need to stay focused to gather all the necessary information. You should conduct the interview somewhere quiet and without interruptions. Once you have that, schedule the date and time that works for both parties.

Spend Time Reading the Resume

Have you ever entered an interview where the interviewer asks questions on the first page of your resume? It can feel like a waste of time and resources handing in the resume.

Part of planning for the interview is to read through the resume. Make a note of what stood out, relevant questions based on the information provided, and anything else that pops into your head. Plus. Reading the resume first can help weed out any candidates that aren’t suited for the position.

Set the Tone Right at the Start

As the interviewer, it’s up to you to set the tone. You’re the boss, and the interviewee must know that.

To set the stage, introduce yourself right away with your name and title. Thank the candidate for coming and explaining right away what to expect over the next bit. It may take a bit of practicing in front of the mirror or with a friend, but it’s essential to practice, so you come across as confident without being too serious.

Start With the Basic Questions

You want the interviewee to feel comfortable throughout the process. One way to do so is by starting with fundamental questions about the person. Ask questions that don’t require much thought – like a few points about themselves, their experience at a previous job, or their schooling.

Once you’ve broken the ice and everyone feels more comfortable, then start asking the more difficult questions. Why are they applying for this position? What makes them a good fit? What does the person have to offer the company that makes them stand out from others? These are the questions that require the interviewee to think a bit more.

Offer a Moment for the Interviewee to Ask Questions

Typically, near the end of the interview, it’s good practice to ask if the interviewee has any questions. This does a few things. To start, it can clarify any confusion or anything missed in the interview. It is also a chance for you to show that you know every aspect of your business and impress the potential employee, making them want to work for you.

Conducting an effective interview allows you to pick the best candidate for the position offered. Take the interview seriously, spend the time preparing and practicing for it, and you’ll breeze through every interview.

Wake Up Refreshed – 5 Sleeping Tips for the Busy Person

You’ve likely heard it over and over again or even said it yourself to someone – make sure you’re getting enough sleep at night. We all know it, yet getting enough sleep isn’t always the easiest task.

How important is sleeping in our daily lives? Well, chronic fatigue due to not enough sleep can lead to many serious physical and mental complications. When you’re sleep-deprived, your mind doesn’t function like it would with a good night’s rest. On the physical side, not catching enough z’s may put you at a higher risk for medical conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease, and obesity.

Ready to get more sleep to work to the best of your abilities? Corporate Business Solutions has five sleep tips that will help you wake up refreshed in the morning.

Set Yourself Boundaries

A significant contributor to poor sleep is not taking a break from work. If you’re waking up thinking about work and crawling into bed, and finishing sending an email, it makes it difficult to turn your mind off so you can sleep.

Your body needs time to relax and unwind. That means no work. So, do yourself a favor and set some boundaries. After a certain hour, disconnect from work so you can focus on yourself.

Have a Regular Sleeping Schedule

Our bodies love a rhythm. We have what’s called our circadian rhythm, which is the physical, mental, and behavioral changes that occur in a 24-hour cycle. Sleeping at night and awake during the day is an example of your circadian rhythm.

Having a regular sleeping schedule helps your circadian rhythm and gets your body (and mind) into a good sleeping routine. So, if you like going to bed at a particular hour, try to do that every evening.

Keep Distractions Away

Although we like to think otherwise, watching television or browsing through our phones while in bed won’t help put you to sleep. Having too many distractions in your bedroom will only make it more difficult for you to fall asleep.

Keep your bedroom peaceful and relaxing by getting rid of distractions. If your phone is an issue, charge it in a different room. Remember, your bedroom is usually meant for only a few activities, and sleeping is one of them.

Limit Caffeine

If there is any tip that could be the hardest to implement, it is limiting your caffeine. If you’re always busy, chances are you love your hot cup of coffee to give you a little boost.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a cup or two in the day. When it does become an issue, though, it is when you’re drinking it later on and closer to the evening. The caffeine is meant to keep you awake, which is counterproductive if you want to head to bed soon.

Speak to Your Doctor

If you still struggle to fall asleep and get a good night’s rest after trying everything out there, it may be time to speak to your doctor. Constant exhaustion and continuous restless nights could be a sign of something medically (both physically and mentally) that needs addressing.

Try implementing the tips above into your daily routine. Sometimes even the smallest of habit changes can have the biggest effect on our sleep.

Customer Satisfaction – How Convenient Is Your Business?

Customer satisfaction is crucial for the success of any business. If your company is continually disappointing the consumer, how long can you expect to keep your doors open? On the other side, if clients leave amazed by the service they received, they’re more likely to refer their friends and family to you.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 global pandemic, businesses were forced to learn and innovate ways to keep operating. As we’ve moved forward, there are several business tactics that will stay long-term, and one of those is convenience.

In a world where strangers try to remain six feet apart from one another, prefer not to shake hands anymore, and limit contact with those outside their bubble, it’s more important than ever that your business is convenient in multiple ways. To help with that, reviews for Corporate Business Solutions have three tips to make your business more convenient.

From Online Booking to Online Payments           

Although this isn’t a new feature, it’s worth reiterating the importance of offering online features. From booking clients to online shopping and receiving payments, giving the customer more power to do things virtually is essential.

Ensure that your company has a website that provides a list of all the services you offer and their prices. Offer an online scheduling and booking system so that people don’t need to visit your store or call to book. Lastly, ensure that you have contactless payment, whether it’s prepaying online or a device for tapping a credit card.

Virtual Chat Options

How you communicate with your customers plays an important role. It’s not just a phone call anymore. Being able to correspond through email and virtual chat options adds to the convenience of your business.

Virtual chat options also include any meetings or assessments you do with clients. Offering the possibility to meet through a video chat rather than in person all the time helps with busy schedules, those who are isolating, not comfortable meeting in person, or for a whole list of reasons.

Be Open for Suggestions

Who better tell you ways to make your business more convenient than from the customers themselves? If you’ve never sent out a survey or asked the question on social media, it may be worth doing. When you give your customers a chance to provide feedback that could make their lives easier, you not only learn a lot, but you also please the consumer.

When you do ask for suggestions, though, ensure that you’re ready for them. Not every suggestion will be something you agree with, nor is it possible for you to accommodate every suggestion. So, keep an open mind and try not to take them too personally.

We live in a world where convenience is critical. We’re used to having access to information right at our fingertips and parcels arriving at our doorsteps the next day. Keeping up with convenience is a crucial step to take with your business.

The three suggestions above are a good starting point if you’re not already doing so.

5 Habits Every Entrepreneur Should Incorporate in Their Day

What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur? It looks different for each person. Some have different situations and circumstances than others that help boost their success. Even though success looks different for each entrepreneur, there are some everyday habits many share that can be helpful.

If you’re an entrepreneur working hard towards a goal, reviews for Corporate Business Solutions have five habits that every entrepreneur should incorporate in their day.

Getting Enough Sleep

One of the most overlooked habits to incorporate into your life that can significantly impact your day is getting enough sleep. Many entrepreneurs face having to hustle almost every hour of the day for them to be successful. That mentality doesn’t leave much room for a good night’s sleep.

If you want to be the most focused, productive, happy, and stress-free, getting seven to nine hours of sleep is essential. Continuously lacking sleep can actually make your day-to-day activities much harder, and it can lead to health issues down the road.

Incorporating Exercise

How do you approach fitness? Is it solely for looks, or does it go deeper? Many successful entrepreneurs make time to exercise daily (or at least a few times a week). They don’t necessarily exercise to look like a model. Instead, they exercise for the physical and mental benefits it provides them.

Research has proven that regular exercise can help mentally by lowering stress, boosting your focus and memory, and releasing endorphins that make you feel fantastic.

Staying Organized

Organization is a vital part of success. As your business grows, so too will your workload and responsibilities. If you’re not keeping yourself organized, everything you have to do in a day becomes overwhelming and stressful.

Staying organized helps keep you on top of the important tasks in your day. When you prioritize as part of your organizational skills, you’ll find that you can efficiently get more work done and realize when it’s time to hire help.

Be Thankful Everyday

Successful entrepreneurs know that the team behind them is what keeps driving their success further forward. That’s because you can only wear every hat in a company for so long before you have to hire employees.

Being thankful for your team, showing support and appreciation to them, and also being grateful for how far you’ve come will keep you in a positive mindset. Plus, when your team knows how much you appreciate them, they’ll be more likely to stay with you and be productive.

Learn to Slow Down

At first, it might seem like you have to be running at full speed every minute of the day to reach success. Although at the start of running a business, this is true to a point, it’s still important to slow down at times and relax.

Ensure that you’re incorporating time for friends, family, and yourself. Whether it’s first thing in the morning when having your coffee or designating the weekends for catching up with people, taking time to slow down and connect with what’s important to you is an essential part of success.

 

When you start looking at successful people’s habits, you’ll notice that not every one of them focuses on just work. Many are about incorporating time for yourself, taking care of your physical and mental wellbeing, and appreciating your surroundings.

4 Productivity Tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know

4 Productivity Tips Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Productivity is a skill that we can constantly improve on. It’s a skill that can take your day from being overwhelming to one of the most efficient days you’ve had in a very long time. Simply put, productivity is one of the main pillars of your success.

How do you become more productive? Keep in mind that it’s not an overnight fix. It takes time, dedication, and practicing new habits and routines that fit your lifestyle. Once you find the perfect mix, though, you’ll see your productivity skyrocket and your life feel less stressful.

Ready to boost your productivity when trying to balance everyday life with your business? CBS-CBS.com has four tips that every entrepreneur (or anyone, really) should know.

Start Your Morning By Planning the Day

A popular trick that successful entrepreneurs often reveal is how they start their day. Waking up to what you’re doing while enjoying your morning coffee can set the mood for your day.

Include a moment to plan out the rest of your day as part of your morning routine. What are the top priority tasks that have to get done today? Organize those first within your working hours. You can then have another list handy with tasks that should get done at some point this week but aren’t a pressing matter today.

Love the List

Lists are an excellent way to stay organized. Have you tried managing your day without writing anything down? You’re relying on your memory to ensure you get everything done? Maybe this works right now. However, at some point, you’re going to forget important tasks and ultimately cause more stress in your life.

Create a few lists that you have readily available throughout the day. Start with your priority list – these are the tasks that you need to complete before anything else. You can then have a list of medium important tasks that you can schedule throughout your week. Basically, you can turn anything into a list.

Incorporate Breaks Into Your Day

Now, this may seem counterintuitive at first glance. The point of productivity is to get work done, not slack off. However, if you’re working every minute of the day without any breaks, you’re actually hurting your productivity levels.

Taking a break is like a quick recharge to your system. It allows you to relax your mind for a moment, stretch the body out, and even prevent stress from creeping in. Adding breaks does wonders for your mental health, which in return helps you become more productive through the rest of the day.

Remember Your Why

Many productivity tips out there often include technology and points above to help give you that boost. However, there are a few tricks that don’t require much from you besides taking a moment to think.

What is your why for what you’re doing? We all have it. From wanting to run a successful business to ensure you have enough family time at the end of the day, reflect on why you’re doing everything. When you remember that, it can give you that quick mental boost to get your work done.

Part of being productive focuses on your overall health. Include a balanced and healthy diet with enough sleep, and a quick workout will all contribute to your productivity levels.

Remember, it takes time to get in the groove and start noticing the benefits. Once you do, though, you’ll be more inclined to continue with those habits.

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.

4 Business Strategies for Female Entrepreneurs

There have been many strides forward in the business world for female entrepreneurs. In fact, four out of every ten businesses in the United States are owned by women. That number continues to grow as more and more opportunities present themselves for female entrepreneurs.

With that said, many female-led businesses still face unique challenges. Many challenges come down to having confidence in what they’re doing and being taken seriously in their field. In today’s world, though, there are various tips and suggestions available to help female entrepreneurs succeed in the business world.

Are you a female entrepreneur? Your Corporate Business Solutions consultants have four business strategies to help with your success.

Advocate for Yourself

Advocating for yourself can be one of the hardest things to do as an entrepreneur, especially for female business owners. As entrepreneurs soon find out, the business world is highly competitive and can be pretty intimidating.

Remember that you’re here for a reason, and you have the skills and knowledge to be successful in the business world. If you find yourself being overshadowed when you know you have the skills, speak up.

Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

With that said, it’s essential to know when it’s time to get help. Entrepreneurs just starting often have to wear all the hats in the business. However, you can only do that for so long until you have to build a team. The tricky part is knowing when’s the right time to start building that team.

Asking for help also comes in other forms too, like your home. When you’re trying to grow your business, it requires much of your time. Women are often still the primary caregiver at home while working, whether employed or the employer. If you find yourself becoming overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to ask for help from your partner at home.

Always Be Learning

There’s never a downfall to continuing with your education and developing your skills. When you know more and have the education to back up what you do and say, you can open up new possibilities for you as an entrepreneur.

Always learning can also come from when mistakes. Every entrepreneur is going to make a mistake at some point. The difference, however, is what you do afterwards. Spend some time reflecting on what happened, what went wrong and how you can overcome the setback. It can help prevent the same mistake in the future, though make sure to not dwell for too long on the past.

Work Hard at Every Opportunity

Sometimes, when an opportunity presents itself, it may not be exactly what you hoped for. You could have planned for option A, only for option B to be what is the most feasible at this moment. No matter what route you take your business, work hard at it and work to the best of your ability. Even better opportunities can present themselves in ways you least expect it.

Female entrepreneurs continue to make strides in the business world. It’s not always easy, but being a business owner can be an enriching experience.

Website Makeover: 5 Tips to Revamp Your Website

From time to time, you may want to give your website a facelift. Why? Because a poorly designed and unattractive website can actually hurt your business.

Potential customers are more inclined to leave your website and go somewhere else if your website is slow to load, poorly designed, and has no contact information. Every website needs many crucial elements, and a well-planned layout that is aesthetically pleasing is one of them.

Take a look at your current website and see how it makes you feel. If you’re not proud of it or happy with how it looks, we have five tips from CBS-CBS.com on how to revamp your website.

Set a Goal

Why do you want to redesign your website? If you’re unsure of that answer, you should determine that before you begin.

There are various reasons why a company revamps its website. It could be to speed up the loading time, a change in branding, or it’s been a decade, and it looks outdated. Having a reason or a goal for your redesign will help keep you on track, and it will also tell you what to spend the most time on to engage your customers (i.e. Reducing photo sizes to improve load times).

Document Your Current Website

First, you want to ensure you have your current website documented if you need to go back to the original site. Having a website record allows you to reference back to check important information (like pricing and product descriptions). Also, it’s not a bad idea to keep track of your website’s progression over the years. It’s a great way to compare and see how far you’ve come in website development.

Be Consistent With Your Brand

Every company has a brand. Within that brand are specific colors that represent the logo and the company. It’s essential that you use the same branding across every page on your website.

Consistency comes in many aspects of your redesign, including font used, what’s bolded or italicized, and the photos. Keep things similar across all pages.

Follow the Less is More Rule

Have you ever loaded a website that bombards you with popups, paragraphs of information, and pictures everywhere? It’s distracting, annoying, and not very pleasing to the eye. Most users would likely leave.

With a website, you need to go straight to the point. Cut out any fluff (you’re not writing a novel). Our attention span to websites continues to shorten, which means you only have a handful of seconds to hook the reader into staying on your website.

Have a Call to Action

Make your website as easy as possible for the user to maneuver through. Don’t send them on a wild journey just to find the vital information they need. Instead, tell them where you want them to go next in the form of a call to action.

A call to action can be a statement to “click here,” “signup now,” or “join our email list today.” The purpose is to tell the user what you want them to do next. Using a call to action is a simple tactic to help guide the user to your end goal (increased exposure, more signups, higher sales).

Enjoy redesigning your website. When you have fun with the process, it’ll show through with the overall results. Remember, a website is crucial to your business’s success. Ensure it gets the time it deserves.

Mental Health and Entrepreneurship: 5 Tips Business Owners Need to Know as a Business Owner

Mental health has been a growing topic in the last year, mainly due to shutdowns and isolation from Covid-19. With many businesses forced to close their doors and families isolated at home for weeks on end, mental health becomes very prominent.

As an entrepreneur, your mental health is a crucial aspect of your overall success and wellbeing. Without taking care of your mental wellbeing, stress can overtake your life and ultimately make you quite unhappy.

Luckily, you can do many simple things in your day that will help boost your mental health. Corporate Business Solutions has five tips for entrepreneurs to help with their mental health.

Get Enough Sleep

For business owners, their company is their entire life. Although you need to put in the work to get the results you want, it shouldn’t come at the cost of other vital aspects in your life – sleep.

Sleep is essential for everyone. Not getting enough can negatively impact all life elements, including how you focus, increase your risk for health issues, and even put you at risk for mental health illnesses. So, make sure you get enough sleep each night so you can tackle the next day with a clear and focused mind.

Write Things Down

Have you had those days when your to-do list is never-ending, but you’re frantically trying to remember what you all need to do? How do you feel in those moments? Likely, stressed, anxious, and frustrated.

Prevent your stress levels from rising too high by staying organized. One way to do so is by writing things down. Whether it’s a notepad with your daily tasks or journaling the night before to clear your mind, getting your thoughts on paper will help you remember them and keep your life more organized.

Ask for Help

Never be afraid to ask for help, even as a business owner. You may wear multiple hats, but if you’re drowning trying to get everything done, your quality of work will likely suffer. Higher employees to take over specific tasks to focus on the essential parts of running a business.

Asking for help isn’t just about hiring employees. It also comes in the form of mental support. Psychologists are trained to help provide the proper tools for an individual to manage their stress and anxiety. If you find you’re always overwhelmed, it may be time to ask for professional help.

Give Yourself Downtime Hours

Working every hour of the day may seem like a good idea, but you must give yourself time to unwind and relax. It could be at the end of the day or taking a lunch break. Whatever the case may be, those downtime hours are meant to disconnect you from work so you can focus on yourself.

Add Meditation to Your Routine

You’ve likely heard of meditation before, but do you include it in your daily routine? If not, you should.

Meditation for entrepreneurs is an excellent way to take a time out, reduce stress and anxiety, help with your sleep and even improve your creativity. Give it a shot one day and see how you feel after taking a moment to center yourself and clear your mind.

Make your mental health a priority this year by adding elements to your routine meant to slow you down and take a moment to think. You may be surprised by how much more productive and happier you are when prioritizing your brain’s health.