Starting a business can be a very exhaustive process. You may have to learn skills you’ve never learned before—you may make mistakes, sometimes even big ones. And it can be very lonely, eating at your time for family and friends. Going alone is possible—and many have done it, but there are many benefits to working with someone else. Here’s how you can start a business without going it alone.

Find a Partner

According to Grasshopper, finding a business partner is a great way to have someone else help you in creating your own business. With the two of you, you can feed off of each other’s enthusiasm and you can divide the tasks. If one of you likes marketing better while the other likes sales, you can divide and conquer. A partner will have your back, and he/she will help you focus on your goals. Finding a partner to help you with your business has many benefits, but one of the biggest is that you won’t be on this adventure alone.

Start a Franchise

You can also start a franchise. By being part of a franchise, you are given the materials directly from the company. While you do have to worry about the hiring details and other local details, you know that you’re part of a brand name and that they are already established. Being a part of a franchise eases the burden of marketing your business by yourself. You have to follow corporate decisions, but you’re not left on your own to flounder. Now may be the perfect time to start a franchise, because according to Franchise Gator, many franchises are offering financial incentives to investors during COVID-19.

Find a Mentor

According to EU-Startups, you can also find a mentor to help you start your business. You can learn under someone who’s already established their own business, and work with them to gain the skills and knowhow, so that when you do branch off on your own, you feel more confident. You can always ask your mentor questions about what they did in their business if you get stuck. A mentor is a wonderful resource to help you when you’re starting your own business.

Starting a business can be a lonely road, but it doesn’t have to be. By finding a partner, starting a franchise or working with a mentor, you can find your own footing as you start your journey to your own business.

Need help figuring out how to best run your business? Schedule some coaching sessions with us today!

As businesses reopen storefronts under what’s being termed a “new normal” and employees return to the workplace, it’s becoming increasingly evident that there have been changes. Many are requiring social distancing, masks, and taking employee temperatures daily. What hasn’t changed is the need for leaders to lead by example as everyone returns to work.

Stabilizing Morale

During times of high stress and uncertainty, it’s easy for employee morale to take a pretty serious hit. This can cause more problems for businesses who may already be struggling due to the economic impact the pandemic has had on a global scale. Fortunately, one of the things that can be done to help stabilize, or even improve, company morale is for leaders to lead by example. Employees will see leading by example as a step that brings you closer to them and their level. This builds greater feelings of connection and loyalty within a company, which can only serve to strengthen it at a time when low morale may have a crippling impact.

Employees Look to You

Employees look to their leaders for cues on how to behave. This means that as you lead by example you will help them understand what behaviors are acceptable and encouraged, and, by omission, what behaviors are unacceptable and should be avoided. For example, if you’re using floor markings to help with social distancing they should be six feet apart at a minimum. And you should be respecting those markings so that your employees know that they should be doing the same. It’s a lot of responsibility, but that’s why you’re the leader. Hopefully you’ve been prepared to take that responsibility for a while, because while the context may have altered, the responsibility has always been there.

Creating Consistency

Because employees look to you as their leader for guidance, you can create consistency in your business by leading by example as everyone returns to work. The new rules, policies, and procedures need to apply to business leaders just as much as they do to entry level employees. If your company has decided that everyone needs to wear masks to work, take their temperature daily, and stay home when ill, so do you. This consistency is what makes policies effective, as they will only really work as long as everyone abides by them.

Leaders are chosen for a reason, and hopefully part of the reasoning is because they are good at leading employees. One of the best ways to do this is by leading by example. Leading by example can help stabilize employee morale, making employees feel better about being led by you, and creating consistency within the company.

For more tips, schedule some coaching sessions with me so I can help your business succeed!

Leads are the lifeline for many businesses. In a competitive business environment, you can bet that several companies are vying for the same leads. Because of this fact, it’s important to do everything in your power to avoid letting those precious leads fall through the cracks. Here are three tips that can help.

Respond in a Timely Manner

Slow response times are one of the biggest causes of lost leads. Every hour a lead sits without response decreases the chances that the lead will be converted into revenue. In this case, time is money. Cultivate a sense of urgency and accountability within your workplace. Consider putting a service-level agreement, or SLA, in place in order to keep your employees accountable.

While you prioritize fast response times, you should also remember that it will take patience to convert your leads into revenue. Marketing Donut shows that 80% of sales require at least 5 follow-up calls after the initial meeting.  They recommend that you maintain contact with your leads until they have said “no,” or “not yet,” at least 5 times.

Capture Leads After Hours

Since time is money, you should take advantage of every moment by capturing leads even when you have no employees working. One of the best ways to do this is by utilizing technologies such as webchat. Webchat lets customers share information with your company even after hours.

If you don’t have a way for potential leads to leave their questions and information with your company 24/7, you could be losing valuable customers. Try using webchat or another website technology so you don’t lose track of any of your leads that find your business outside normal working hours.

Personalize Your Communication

One of the fastest ways to lose a lead is by generalizing your interactions with potential customers through sending generic communications. It’s essential to remember that every customer is an individual with unique needs who is seeking a specific benefit from a product. Show your customers that you recognize their unique needs by personalizing all your outgoing communications with them. CRM and marketing automation are cost and time-effective ways to segment your email lists so that you’re sending the right emails to the right people.

Retaining and converting leads will cost a significant amount of your time and energy, especially early on. However, your efforts will be worth it as you maximize every lead and grow your business. Remember to respond to leads in a timely manner, capture leads after hours, and personalize your communication; these three tips will be invaluable tools in your lead-gathering efforts.

Want more business advice? Schedule some coaching sessions with me so I can help you to achieve your goals.

COVID-19 has resulted in many businesses going remote. It can be quite a process to adjust to a predominantly online workspace, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. These ideas can help you improve your remote experience and the remote experience of your team-members.

Goal Setting

Running a business remotely can present unique challenges so it is essential to set specific goals for yourself and with your team-members. Even though it may seem like a dream to be able to work from home on the regular, working remotely can mean that you have more distractions than you would have had on-site. By setting daily goals for yourself, you can help yourself stay on track even when you have to run your child to a piano lesson in-between Zoom calls. Setting clear goals with team-members can also help your team-members be on the same page, understand their specific assignments, and be more efficient in the long-run.

Team Collaboration

Without the ability to meet in person, it can initially be frustrating trying to optimize your team’s efforts while remote. Effective team collaboration requires seamless communication. In order to facilitate effective communication, you need to first find a good system that works for everyone. Group chats, scheduled virtual meetings, and frequent reassessing and updating can be ways of doing this. Identifying a streamlined system helps team-members quickly voice questions, concerns, and confusion they may have. Being able to quickly respond and readjust in moments like these will help your team by successful even when they are physically distanced.

Focus on Results not Methods

Going remote affects team-members’ lives in unexpected ways. With families and other responsibilities, it may be difficult to continue to maintain previous schedules and meeting times. Choosing to emphasize the importance of project completion over the process of completing that project will help your team-members feel better equipped for success. One team-member may finish their work in the morning before their kids even wake up, another may start their tasks right after dinner. This level of flexibility will enable your team to perform at their best ability without experiencing unnecessary stress.

Going remote physically distances you from the rest of your team. Initially, this adjustment can be difficult—finding a balance that works for everyone can involve a process of successes and failure. But with simple goal setting, streamlined team communication, and added flexibility for team-members, your business can continue to grow even amidst interesting circumstances.

For more great tips, sign up for some coaching!

Starting up a business is exciting, but also incredibly stressful. You have many decisions to make on a day-to-day basis. You may also be constantly worried about how to keep your business surviving and thriving. The good news is that you can ensure that your business startup will survive. Here are three ways you can make sure your startup business will survive.

Create a Solid Business Plan

Creating a business plan is one way that you can ensure the survival of your business startup. When you create a business plan, you account for risks, contingencies, and emergencies. You know where you’re going to allocate your money and what your business focus will be. Creating a solid business plan will give you confidence and credibility when you go and ask for a loan for your business. A solid business plan can save your business in times of crisis.

Insulate it From Personal Finances

Your business should be separate and distinct from your personal finances, which is something that actually doesn’t take very long. Figuring out the fees to register your business is the most time-consuming part. Insulating your business from personal finances includes creating a business structure, such as an LLC or an S corp that allows you to distance yourself from the business. This can also provide protection because the LLC or the S corp will help your business be held accountable for things the business has done while not holding you personally liable.

Avoid Debt

Another thing that you can do to ensure the survival of your business startup is to avoid going into debt as much as possible. Debt adds unnecessary pressure on your business because your energies are focused on paying off the loan. Instead of going into debt to buy a building for your business, see if you can rent it until you can buy it. If that’s not an option, see if you can move your business all online, limiting the expenses you’ll need to worry about for your business. Avoiding debt will take some hard work and perseverance, but it will be worth it when your business is successful and completely debt-free.

Your startup can survive and thrive for decades, but only if you take the prior proper planning required to do so. Having a plan, reducing risk and liability, and avoiding debt are all ways that you can secure the future of your business.

For help reaching your business goals, schedule some coaching sessions with us!

For most consumers, your website will be their first interaction with your business. It will also be where they make most of their purchases. It is crucial that you be able to convert as many visitors as possible into clients. That much is obvious, but how do you do it? Try the following.

Abandon Clunky Designs

The fastest way to lose a customer is with a bad website design. A bad design will make your website feel unprofessional. This will make customers uneasy about doing business with you. A bad design can include multiple things. Color scheme can affect where a visitor’s eyes go. It can evoke positive or negative feelings. Website organization can determine whether things are easy to find, or hard. Even how you format text on a page is important. You need to use easy to read fonts. They should also follow the F format.

Source: https://uxplanet.org/f-shaped-pattern-for-reading-content-80af79cd3394?gi=3edb65c3d751

Make It More Accessible

Novice web designers don’t think about smartphones. However, mobile makes up 52% of all website visits. If you aren’t designing your website for mobile, you are going to lose over half of your hits on the web.

There are other important factors to accessibility as well. You need to make sure that people can find your website. You need to have all your apps and social media accounts connected to your website. You should also do what you can to move up on search engine rankings. You can do that by paying for the top spot, or you can employ search engine optimization. Search engine optimization involves regularly adding new content to your website and including special keywords that are commonly searched.

Source: https://www.podium.com/local-marketing/auto-repair-marketing/

Track Data

One of the best ways to achieve a conversion through your website is by offering custom content. You can do this with data tracking and AI. AI or artificial intelligence allows you to modify a program based on data updates. By tracking a user’s activity on your website, you can learn a lot about their likes and dislikes. You can then customize your website to match their preferences. You can use this to affect search results, special offers, and even the color scheme of your page. It all comes down to knowing who your customer is and providing them with the experience that best suits their personality and needs.

Source: https://zapier.com/learn/forms-surveys/best-data-collection-apps/

If you aren’t seeing a good conversion rate through your website, you need to improve it. Your website should be your greatest tool for obtaining new clients. Taking the time to get it right is going to pay dividends in the future.

Need more advice on how to improve your business? Schedule some business consultation sessions with us today!

Even as you open your office, you should continue to implement health and safety guidelines to protect you and your employees. The reality of the situation is that COVID is still out there—and everyone must be just as vigilant, even during the transitional process, so that there isn’t a second peak break out. Here are three ways you can protect your employees while reopening your office.

Follow Health Guidelines

You should follow CDC guidelines for cleaning and disinfecting your workplace. Make sure that each employee has hand sanitizer on their desk and uses it frequently. Furthermore, make sure bathrooms and desks are cleaned more regularly than normal. Continue to practice social distancing, even within the workplace. You may want to even take all your employees’ temperatures at the door with a medical, non-touch thermometer to ensure that no one enters who shows symptoms. In fewer words, make sure that you don’t take reopening to mean that everything is back to normal—because it isn’t.

Continue Using Remote Employees

Where possible, you should continue using remote employees to reduce crowding in the workplace. In fact, most companies are realizing that many employees don’t have to come to work at the physical location and that they can work just as well (if not better) from the comforts of their own home office space. This is not only considered an environmentally friendly option, but it could also save your company money in the long run since using remote employees decreases travel costs and need for more rented office space. But for now, continuing to keep employees at home will help prevent the spread of COVID.  

Update Sick Leave Policies

Even if you are taking temperatures at the door, your employees may be showing up to work with other types of symptoms. Given the economic downturn of late, many employees worry about making enough to take care of themselves or their families. If there isn’t a good sick leave policy in place, there is greater risk that your employees will show up to the office sick—and get everyone else sick in return. If this is a risk for your employees, you may want to take another look at your sick leave policies and make things a bit more lenient so to better protect everyone coming into the office.

As a business leader, you have a duty and responsibility (both legal and moral) to protect your employees during these unprecedented times. Even though the economy is reopening, that does not mean you shouldn’t be taking extra precautions to keep everyone safe and mitigate exposure to COVID. Follow these three principles so you can lead your company to a safe reopening.

If you are struggling to figure out a good marketing strategy as you start to open back up, don’t worry! We can help. Contact us to schedule an appointment for coaching!

There is no question about it, the world has entered a deeply turbulent economic moment, as the COVID-19 pandemic has decimated commerce and the world’s economy. There is no question that this has created a massive disruption of many businesses and has even been forcing some to close. However, though this moment has been incredibly challenging, there are still ways your business can move forward. Here are three specific tips on how you can make that happen as a business owner.

Create Live Videos for Your Social Media

Social media use has skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people rely more and more on technology to stay connected with the rest of the world. This has created an amazing opportunity for small businesses to connect with their customers and potential new ones. Indeed, many social networks have algorithms that favor live posts. To that end, create a live video. Use it to discuss your challenges, services and how you are serving your customers during this pandemic. If you are becoming active in a charitable cause or tying your business to charitable activities make sure to discuss that in your live videos, as it can help give you a leg up.

Offer Special Deals

There are many benefits of offering free trials to your customers and potential customers during difficult times. Many people are stuck in their homes and looking for new things to do, and if you can shift your service model to allow for business to operate, take advantage of this lull in service. Examine what sorts of promotions can work for your business and still allow you to serve your customers during this pandemic.

Shift Your Service Delivery Model

Stay at home or business shutdowns have hit virtually every place in the United States. However, many businesses have found ways to continue to legally operate during this time. They have done so by shifting their service models. For example, many businesses are becoming take-out only, delivering products digitally, delivering to someone’s home, and more. To that end, ask yourself, how can you shift your service model. Are there different products or services that you can offer that will provide you a chance to continue to connect with your already existing customers, and maybe even expand to new markets?

Remember, every crisis presents an opportunity. Use this difficult moment in world history to examine how you can continue to provide value to your customers and potentially cut costs at the same time. This can be an opportunity for you and your business if you are able to pivot accordingly.

Are you in need of a great business and marketing consultant? Contact me so we can discuss how I can help you and your business!