The Secret Life of Small Business Owners – What Small Business Owners Wish They Knew at the Start-Up

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What small business owners wish they knew offers insights about what they learned in the early days of their startups and what they would have done differently if they could.

What Small Business Owners Wish They Knew as Startups

Reversing a downward trend that started in 2009, the 2015 Kauffman Report on Main Street Entrepreneurship shows that, while the rate of entrepreneurship still remains below that of pre-recession levels, it’s finally on the upward swing.

For instance, in 2009 there were 188.3 businesses in the U.S. for every 100,000 people. In 2014, there were 130.6 businesses for every 100,000 people. Let’s take a closer look at the makeup of the American entrepreneur from these 2014 statistics:

  • 310 out of every 100,000 U.S. adults started a new business each month (up from 280 in 2014)
  • More than half were started by people aged 45 – 64
  • Fewer than half were started by people aged 20 – 34
  • Immigrant entrepreneurs were 2x as likely to start a business as native-born entrepreneurs
  • 5% of entrepreneurs were immigrants, up from 13.3% in the 1997 index
  • 2% of 2014 startups were male-owned vs. women-owned businesses – putting the percentage of women-owned startups barely above the two-decade low

Statistically speaking, coming up on two years in business, more than 70% of these 2014 startups are likely still in business (Washington Post), and according to U.S. census data about small business published by sba.gov, the small business landscape in general is made up of the following business types for small employer firms:

  • 44% – S Corporations
  • 22% – C Corporations
  • 16% – Sole Proprietorships
  • 11% – Partnerships
  • 7% – Nonprofits

Among nonemployer small business, 86% are sole proprietorships, 7% are corporations and 7% are partnerships. Hindsight is 20/20!  With two years of business ownership behind them, studies show that what small business owners wish they knew before launching their startups would lead to some things they would have done differently.

10 Things Small Business Owners Wish They Knew as Startups

1. What Small Business Owners Wish They Knew Most of All: How to Handle Finances

68% of small business owners say their #1 biggest regret is that they didn’t spend more time learning about financial management before they launched their business. For instance, three out of ten small business owners used the same bank accounts for personal and business transactions, which can be a big problem for many reasons. Whether your business is a corporation, partnership, nonprofit or sole proprietorship, it’s imperative that you keep personal and business finances separate.

2. How to Understand Finances, Financial Statements and Taxes

3 out of ten small business owners say they wish they had hired an accountant from the beginning, and 42% actively work with accountants for advice and financial management help. When it comes to small business finances, few areas are as complex, intimidating and potentially problematic than small business taxes. There are more than 2,000 items in the IRS.gov list of current forms and publications related to business taxes. While the IRS website can help answer your questions about small business taxes, having professional help or advice from an experienced tax preparer is a must!

3. They Needed More Money

Most U.S. startups – 64% – were launched with $10,000 or less in funding; only 13% had more than $50,000. Writing on businessnewsdaily.com, Wayne Connors, managing partner of 401kInvestor.com said that entrepreneurs are overly-optimistic when projecting sales, don’t know the cost of customer acquisition and underestimate how much startup capital they’re going to need. Business coach Tom Perkins recommends that entrepreneurs have at least 6 months of working capital on hand when they launch.

While we offer startup funding, if your startup small business has been in operation for even just a few months it might qualify for one of our small business loans or a business line of credit. If your small business sells directly to other businesses, you may also be able to speed up cash flow by factoring customer invoices instead of waiting for them to pay. We would be happy to talk about small business loans and financing programs with you – contact us for more information or to get a free, no-obligation quote for business financing.

4. Had More Information About Payment and Card Processors

One of the most important decisions a new small business owner will make is deciding what type of payments to accept and finding the right payment processor. We specialize in helping our clients both in terms of the cost of merchant services and payment processing and in outfitting their organization with the most appropriate payment processing equipment, software and systems. 

5. How Hard the First Year Was Going to Be

Most aspiring entrepreneurs can’t wait for the day that they can open the doors of their new business; however, 68% of small business owners say that the first year is the hardest (quickbooks.intuit.com’s $10,000 Strong and Growing).  When they needed help, they turned to these sources for external guidance during the first year:

  • 38% – Online search
  • 23% – Friends who are also business owners
  • 17% – Formal education or training
  • 12% – The Small Business Administration (SBA.gov)

6. Had Written a Better Business Plan

Taking the time to write a good business plan isn’t just an exercise in business ownership. Thinking through each of the components that make up a business plan can help ensure that you have anticipated the challenges you will face in financing, opening, operating, and growing your business. The detail that goes into your plan tells employees, investors, lenders and other interested parties what your dream is and how you plan to get there.

7. Spent More Time and Money on Marketing

Even if a lot of people you know have expressed interest in your startup business concept or how convinced you are that “if you build it, customers will come,” the truth is that many small business owners over-estimate how quickly they can land customers and grow. Don’t wait until your business opens to start investing in marketing and advertising; the sooner you can begin to build brand awareness, the more likely your business is to enjoy a successful grand opening and grow to the point that revenue makes the enterprise sustainable.

Your start up marketing plan might be simple or complex. Here are some of the must-have’s and most commonly used marketing tactics you should plan to deploy from the earliest days of your business (and even before it opens its doors):

  • A vision statement (what your business will look like when it’s all grown up)
  • A mission statement (how you’ll make the vision a reality, often references customer types, employee culture and organizational values)
  • Market research that demonstrates demand for your business – can also help you refine your offerings so they align with market place demand
  • Identify target markets and ideal buyer types (or buyer personas)
  • Identification of direct and indirect competitors – competitive analysis
  • Differentiation – positioning of your business vs. competitors
  • Marketing strategy and tactics
    • Strategies; e.g.: find and attract likely buyers, produce repeat sales, increase retention, develop customer loyalty, produce referrals, etc.
    • Tactics; e.g.: website, blog, email, direct mail, flyers, events, trade shows, social media, sales pros, customer service, loyalty program details, webinars, seminars, whitepapers, coupons, sales, etc.
  • A marketing budget – it should never be “zero” because at a minimum your business must have a web domain, website, and probably business cards, flyers and other startup supplies
  • Goals, measures and reporting

8. Had Found a Mentor

Half of all small business owners said they wish they had found a mentor who could advise them during the pre-launch and early days of running their business. Check out our article about how you can improve your small business by setting up your own small business advisory board, which can act as your personal business “Dear Abby,” giving you people who you can turn to with questions and problems during the early days of running your startup.

9. Knew When to Say Yes and When to Say No

Many small business owners wish they had more management and leadership experience. They would have known better when to say “No” in refusing outside work or being distracted from their core business products and services to pursue tangents. Others say they would have delegated more to employees, worked harder to make sure that employees felt like they were an important part of the team, and trusted staff to get work done without feeling like they had to micromanage every aspect of their startup business.

10. Didn’t Try So Hard to Be Perfect

There’s a saying in business that goes, “You win some, you learn some.” All failures are not fatal and making mistakes can be an important part of the process for new business owners. Not only can mistakes reveal how to do better, sometimes mistakes can even reveal opportunities you might have otherwise missed. Sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination. Take the advice of what small business owners wish they knew before they started their business to heart and use their experience to become better prepared for your own business launch.

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Measure Business Ideas Against 3 Core Financial Management Strategies

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You can use the three core goals of financial management to determine which business ideas are most likely to help your business grow.

Hit 3 Goals with All Your Financial Management Strategies for the Win

Few entrepreneurs suffer from a lack of ideas, but knowing which ones should get the green light isn’t always apparent. Pursuing the wrong financial management strategies can result in wasted business resources, slowing or even stalling your business growth.

It’s important for every business owner to choose goals and values by which they can measure new ideas and initiatives, to be sure they will contribute to company growth. The three core goals of financial management can do just that. You may be surprised when you realize that these three core goals are about a lot more than just managing finances, demonstrating clearly how inter-dependent seemingly disparate business ideas really are.

Use these 3 Financial Management Strategies to Guide All Your Business Decisions

1. Will It Maximize Profits

It doesn’t take long for most new business owners to realize that more sales don’t always equate to more profits, and profit it what a business needs to reinvest in itself and grow more quickly. You should take the time to calculate profit relative to your business as a whole, and to each of the individual products and services you sell so that you understand:

  1. Gross profit margin (Formula: sales – cost of goods sold / sales)
  2. Operating profit margin (Formula: EBIT / sales)
  3. Net profit margin (Formula: net profits after taxes / sales)

Gross profit margin reveals the amount of profit your company earns after the cost of goods sold is deducted. The cost of goods sold might include the money paid to a manufacturer or distributor, cost of raw ingredients, cost of marketing and advertising, staff-related expenses and any other inputs. This shows how efficiently your company is using labor and supplies relative to the amount sold.

Operating profit margin compares earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to sales. High operating profits is an indication that the company is getting a good return on the cost of goods sold; conversely, low profits might indicate a need to reduce input costs or manage operations more efficiently.

Net profit margin shows what the company has after everyone has been paid, including the government. Net profits are ultimately the money your business has to invest toward growth, since all other revenues are eclipsed by the cost of goods sold and taxes.

Though many business owners think they have to increase prices in order to maximize profits, price isn’t the only factor contributing to profitability, as the formulas above illustrate. In fact, sometimes raising prices is the wrong way to maximize profits, if a price increase makes your business less competitive and you lose volume of sales which, at a lower price, actually result in the maximum profit your business can earn on a given item.

2. Will It Minimize Costs

It’s obvious from our discussion of cost of goods sold that minimizing business expenses can have a positive impact on your profit margins. The lower the cost of inputs and operating expenses needed to produce sales, the more money is left as gross profit (and ultimately net profit). However, just as raising prices isn’t always the best way to maximize profits, lowering costs isn’t always the best decision for your business.

For instance, what if you change suppliers based on your costs for the raw ingredients you need to produce one of the items your company sales, but your new supplier provides faulty or sub-standard quality materials? You may have temporarily decreased the cost of goods sold but may have increased expenses and reduced profits in the long term as your business has to handle returns, exchanges, customer complaints, bad reviews and customer defections.

As you can see, what seems to be the most obvious answer isn’t always the most accurate one. Let’s say you need to free up working capital in order to buy inventory and equipment to launch a new product or service. On the face of it, the ‘cheapest’ way to pay for the growth initiative seems to be to wait until you have the money saved up; however, this could be a costly decision. Competitors may outmaneuver you or new rivals could emerge and establish themselves in the market while you wait on the sidelines. In the long run, taking potential sales and profits into account, the less costly decision might actually be to take advantage of a merchant cash advance or business line of credit to grow more quickly.

3. Will It Maximize Market Share

Formula: Company sales / total sales in its industry (by geography, if applicable) over a certain period of time; in other words, of the sales possible during a given time period, what percentage did your business earn?

So far we have talked a lot about areas pertaining to finance and accounting; however, marketing concerns affect each of these three goals as well, and is obviously relevant to maximizing market share. Marketing (price, product, promotion, and distribution) decisions affect the cost of goods sold as well as company costs.

It’s worth noting that of all the reasons cited by entrepreneurs whose startups failed, poor marketing was actually the biggest reason startups failed. Yet for many business owners, marketing seems an afterthought; a topic they quickly try to master when projections don’t match up with results after opening their business or launching new product lines.

Maximizing market share is one of the core goals of financial management strategies for an obvious reason; more customers and less sales lost to competitors creates more opportunity to realize a profit. In addition, more sales often translate into lower cost of goods sold as inventory can be ordered in larger quantities at a lower price.

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25 Places to Find Money to Grow Your Business More Quickly

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Sometimes money is hiding in plain sight, other times you’ll really have to hunt; here are twenty-five places to look when you need to find money to grow your business more quickly.

Find Money to Grow Your Business Hiding in 25 Places

You don’t necessarily have to sell more to find money to grow your business; sometimes it’s a matter of finding the money, not making it. Other times it’s about maximizing use of resources or finding creative ways to work with other businesses.

We’ve come up with a list of more than two dozen ways you might be able to find money to grow your business. These tactics have nothing to do with raising prices or increasing sales, but they can significantly impact your bottom line nonetheless.

25 Places to Find Money to Grow Your Business More Quickly

Salaries and Benefits

Salaries and benefits are often one of if not the biggest costs in a business. Make sure that you’re getting good value for every dollar spent on salaries, benefits and employee perks; where you aren’t getting the most bang for your buck, make a change.  For instance:

  1. Review benefits providers annually (like you would any other vendor) to be sure your employees are getting the best plans at the best prices. If you have a great deal on something, try to lock it in for a longer time period, to preclude automatic annual increases.
  2. Compare the costs, pros and cons of outsourcing both core and non-core business functions (bookkeeping, accounting, taxes, marketing, cleaning, etc.)
  3. Re-evaluate duties and decide whether redistribution of responsibilities could preclude the need to hire or allow you to hire a more junior candidate when filling a new position or replacing a departing employee.
  4. Hire candidates for “added value” skills that you can use now or in the future.
  5. Use staffing agencies to cut employee screening costs and bring in newbies on a temp-to-hire basis to cut down on hiring mistakes or ensure a good fit for hard-to-fill or high turnover positions.

Financing Tools

Sometimes bringing working capital in from the outside makes more sense than depleting reserves or selling off assets to fund growth. When a business idea is likely to increase revenues, additional income could more than offset the loan or cost of financing. Using this as a go-by can help you decide whether it’s better to wait until you have saved up the money to fund a new business idea or pursue business financing; such as:

  1. Bank loans
  2. Specialty financing tools:
    • Business line of credit
    • Equipment lease finance
  3. Business or merchant advance
  4. Invoice Factoring

In addition to business financing tools that provide a lump sum of working capital, if you sell on terms to other companies, you can also use invoice factoring to speed up cash flow. Expediting cash flow by factoring could help you grow more quickly and could help you find savings in other areas of your business, such as taking advantage of quick-pay discounts and reducing overhead related to accounting.

Cutting Overhead

  1. If you rent or lease space, your mortgage or rent payment could be one of your biggest expenses. In a buyer’s market, you might be able to renegotiate the terms of your lease to get a price decrease or lock in a low rate for a long period of time.
  2. If you need additional equipment or furnishings, consider buying used or leasing what you need instead of buying it outright. Preserving working capital means you retain more ready money to grow your business.
  3. Turning the thermostat up or down even a degree or two could make a visible difference in your utilities cost. Likewise, turning off lights in unused areas or setting lights on timers with motion detectors could save you hundreds over the course of a year. Reducing consumption of electricity, water, natural gas, data and other utilities can add up to big savings over time.
  4. Don’t skip the maintenance! Having vents cleaned, screens changed and other maintenance done on time keeps your equipment running at optimum efficiency.
  5. Replace aging equipment with newer, more efficient models can bring significant utility cost savings and might even earn your business tax credits.
  6. Have space you aren’t using? Rent it out!
  7. Reduce the cost of financing by consolidating high interest credit cards and other revolving debt into one account.

Streamline Purchasing

  1. Once upon a time having a petty cash or slush fund for incidentals could save your business in check cashing costs and time spent running to the bank for funds. Today it costs more than it saves, since digital payments are universally accepted and allow you to account for every dollar your business spends. When you need money to grow your business, slush funds should be the first to go.
  2. Stock up and save works. Better forecasting can show you where buying in bulk can save your business money.
  3. Vendor and supplier quick-pay discounts can be sizeable, significantly reducing expenses and the cost of goods sold. Even if a vendor doesn’t advertise a cash or fast-pay discount, they might be open to negotiation.

Cooperative and Co-Working Arrangements

  1. Cooperative marketing has been a tactic small business owners have used over the years. Not only does it reduce expenses for everyone participating, it often amplifies effectiveness as campaigns reach shared contact groups and presentation formats can be bigger, louder or otherwise more impressive.
  2. Cooperative buying arrangements also allow participants to reduce costs by purchasing in larger quantities, eliminating separate shipping charges and gaining other advantages. Likewise, your business could benefit from joining associations and buying clubs that provide members with discounts and special pricing. For instance, joining Amazon Prime costs members $119 per year but gives them free shipping and deal privileges that may more than offset the cost of membership. Business owners can also register for an Amazon Business account that provides free shipping on orders of $49 or more as well as tax-exempt purchasing, special pricing and access to additional business services. Savings like these may also save resources, negating the time you might have otherwise spent looking for lower-priced items, since program savings might exceed potential price differentials.
  3. Like cooperative buying, some of the services your business needs might also be cooperatively outsourced. For instance, if you’re in a retail or manufacturing space adjacent to others, hiring one cleaning service to serve the whole facility might be less expensive than for each business to hire one for themselves.
  4. Renting or buying office space can be formidable, or even a barrier to entry. Opting for co-working space or sharing facilities with other businesses can bring your cost per square foot of space way, way down.
  5. You probably work with vendors that you recommend to other business owners all the time! Inquire to see if any offer (or would be willing to offer) a referral bonus in exchange for sending business their way. Referral bonuses are often based not only on a new customer’s first purchase, but some are even based on a customer’s lifetime value, giving your business a significant return in exchange for your recommendation.
  6. Many online e-commerce sellers (like Amazon) and business services (like web hosting, email marketing, web development, and others) offer affiliate commissions in return for the web traffic you send to them that converts into sales. Like other bonus programs, these dollar amounts might seem small but they can add up over time. Setting this revenue aside for a couple of years could give you a significant amount of working capital for a future project.

No matter how carefully you watch every penny spent in your business or evaluate potential opportunities to increase profits, you’ll probably miss something. We put together this checklist with twenty-five ways you can find money to grow your business either by trimming expenses or boosting revenues – we’d love for you to add your 2 cents with ideas you think we missed in the comments below.

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5 Places to Find Good Startup Ideas

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Not every entrepreneur comes pre-programmed with good startup ideas. Some have the dream but don’t know what to build. Here are five resources that could help you decide what kind of business to start.

Good startup ideas are everywhere – if you know where to look

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You Can Identify Good Startup Ideas From Gaps, Evolution and Failures

1. Consumer Trends and Forecasts

Research, studies and articles sharing stats on consumer and business trends and forecasts are available for nearly every industry. This type of data can help you identify emerging markets which are forming in response to:

  • Demographic and population changes  
  • New or advancing technology
  • Changing consumer preferences or generational preferences

Census data and data analysis can give you insight into population and demographic changes. You can also find similar data available in the real estate industry as well as reports about housing, jobs and similar content. This content can tell you where to look for up and coming markets that are not yet saturated with businesses like the one you envision.

Technology changes pervade virtually every industry. Trade and industry organizations publish information about new and emerging technology all the time. CB Insights published an amazing infographic noting that there are more than 150 Startups whose innovations are transforming brick-and-mortar retail.

We see this every day in our industry. Innovations in merchant services, payment processing, virtual, mobile and brick-and-mortar point-of-sale, gift cards and loyalty programs are constant. Knowing which to implement, and implementing technology effectively is one of the ways we add value so our clients can create competitive advantages and compete to win in their marketplace.

2. Education

What do you know? Your areas of expertise and experience could translate into a business where you teach others, test products, write technical specs, provide expert reviews, etc. This could be especially rewarding if you are able to identify an area of expertise that really lights you up, where you can invest not only knowledge but passion to educate others.

3. Under-served Markets or Market Segments

In most industries, there are lots of medium-to-large players already on the field. The good news for you as an entrepreneur is that good startup ideas can still translate into success, because those big players are all competing for the same customers or buyers. By identifying markets or sub-market niche audiences who are being underserved (or aren’t being served at all), you can carve out a target audience that few direct competitors will be going after.

4. Ideas other Entrepreneurs Threw Away – or Failed At

Even good startup ideas can fail, for a variety of reasons.  CB Insight’s latest data as to the top 10-ish reasons that even good startup ideas fail includes:

  • 42% – Inadequate market need
  • 29% – Inadequate funding
  • 23% – Inept team
  • 19% – Inability to compete
  • 18% – Pricing / cost issues
  • 17% – User un-friendly
  • 17% – Inadequate business model
  • 14% – Inadequate marketing
  • 14% – Poor customer care
  • 13% – (Tie) Poor market timing, lost focus, unhappy investors)

Looking at that list, note that none of the respondents said their idea wasn’t good. In every case, startup failure is attributed to poor execution, not poor ideas. Bad timing for one entrepreneur might make an idea perfectly timed for you. Changes in the market might mean that an idea that wasn’t sustainable last year is now viable. Accurately projecting costs (and setting pricing), ensuring funding, building a sound business model or assembling a competent team could enable you to succeed with good startup ideas that others were unable to accomplish.

5. Pain Points

Underserved markets point to gaps in the marketplace. Pain in the customer or buying journey show you where a better business model could mean a competitive advantage. Your own pain points as a consumer or in business could even show you where to start. Additionally, you can look at social media and online reviews to see where companies are failing to deliver product or service quality, or the quality of experience the customer expects.

Good startup ideas deserve good payment processing solutions:

If you’d like to learn more about how you can save money on payment processing or use point-of-sale and other merchant services technology to your competitive advantage, let us know! Complete the form below and we’ll be in touch.

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6 Musts for Any Small Business Year-End Checklist

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As we near the end of the year, it’s important to tie up all the loose ends of your business so it can start rocking and rolling when the New Year arrives. Here are six things to add to your year-end checklist.

A Year-End Checklist Can Prepare Your Small Business for a Fast Start in the New Year

How you choose to close out the current year may determine how fast your small business grows in the New Year. Make sure these six tasks are part of your year-end checklist to ensure your company is ready to hit the ground running next year.

1. Revisit your goals from this year

In order to make progress as a small business owner, it’s critical to review your progress on the goals you set for this year as part of your year-end checklist. Not only will you see the progress you’ve made, you’ll discover valuable insights that will benefit goal-setting for the coming year.

Say one of your goals was to increase your customer service satisfaction rating by 5 percent year over year by observing/coaching/documenting employees weekly to see if they greeted each customer on arrival to begin the customer experience and ended each customer experience with a specific procedure, such as:

  • walking the customer to the door
  • promoting add-on sales at the point-of-sale
  • offering guarantee or warranty services
  • signing the customer up for your store’s loyalty and rewards program
  • and so on.

Assuming you kept weekly documentation of these actions, it will be straightforward to see the customer service review trend year over year. Build a chart, if you don’t already have a system in place, and evaluate your weekly/monthly/yearly trends.

Where your team failed to hit your customer service rating goals, find out what happened during a given time period that might have caused your customer service rating to drop. Was it an isolated occurrence? Does the dip continue to occur throughout the month? Review customer comments and be sure to identify the reason for the lower customer service rating and create a specific plan to improve in that area over the next year. Revisiting specific goals will take some time but it’s extremely important to understand where your business is in order to move forward from there.

2. Assess the books

Bookkeeping is one of the most important preventative measures you can take as a small business. It’s a good best practice to keep all documents in hard and soft copy form. This way you have a backup in case of emergency. Keeping financial forms is also very important as you prepare for tax season. 40 percent of small business owners hate tax season, are you among them? If you are, it may be a smart move to outsource to a tax professional, so you can spend your time in other areas and still be confident that the monetary section of your small business is under control.

3. Backup all digital files

Backing up your files is time well spent. If your phone, cash register, POS equipment or computer got stolen today, what important documents would be lost? You would not only be losing your documents and folders, but also your business contacts. As a small business owner you rely heavily on your portable devices, so do yourself a favor and prevent yourself from wondering “what would happen if my things were stolen.” Make sure you are backing all of your important data up on a regular basis so that you can quickly get back to business in the event that any of your equipment is stolen, lost or damaged.

4. Audit your website

While you should be doing this on a regular basis, the end of year is a good time to make sure all website links work, phone numbers are accurate, hours of operation are up to date and that your website looks New Year ready. With percentage of time on mobile (51 percent) surpassing the time on desktop (42 percent) it’s crucial that your website is mobile friendly and your site is aesthetically pleasing (both on desktop and mobile). Cleaning up your website may take some time if it’s not regularly monitored, but having a strong website will drive more customers to your business.

5. Communicate

If your business is thriving and booming, let your team know! Schedule a team meeting where you can call out accomplishments for this year as well as discuss the goals set for next year. It takes a team to run a successful operation and they will appreciate you taking time to thank them for their contributions. You may also have a few goals that they can help add measures to track those goals. This boosts the team moral and generates a positive progress note going into the new year.

6. Set goals for the New Year

Let’s say you want to make a goal to sell more of a specific item, such as appetizers or cocktails (for a restaurant) or service agreements or accessories or something else this year. It’s hard to measure if you’re making progress if you don’t explain how you are going to reach this goal, when you’re tracking this goal, or what accessories you’re even talking about. Consider using the SMART goals format.

  • S – Is your goal specific? What kind of accessory would you like to sell more of?
  • M – Is your goal measurable? How will you measure if you are selling these accessories?
  • A – Is your goal agreed upon? Are all stake holders in your business ok with this goal?
  • R – Is your goal realistic? Set the bar too low and it’s meaningless, set it too high and it’s outrageous. In either case, it can lead to your team not taking your future goals seriously.
  • T – What is the timeline? When do you plan to achieve your accessory goal?

After inputting SMART format into your original accessory goal it turns into “sell # more a month until December of next year by observing/coaching/documenting our employees weekly to see if they promote the item appropriately to customers.” Ensuring your goals are specific and reachable will help you track your business progress.

Incorporating these six tasks into your company’s year-end checklist will help you move faster than your competitors going into the new year.

Not every year is going to be the best year for your business, so even more reason to make sure you identify and understand areas which need improvement. A year-end checklist can be invaluable in helping you see what needs to change next year. Maintaining organization and keeping your eye on the prize will help you reach your yearly goals, and ultimately reach your business goals.

 

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5 Questions Business Owners Should Ask Themselves

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The questions business owners should ask themselves can tell them all they need to know about whether their organization is healthy and prepared for growth, or whether they need to make changes to remove obstacles that are standing in their way.

Slow – or Grow? 5 Key Questions Business Owners Should Be Able to Answer

In a world where companies need to stay one step ahead of the competition to succeed, it’s important to ask yourself as a business owner “Am I obstructing or nurturing my business?” Here are five questions business owners should ask themselves, to find out whether they are helping or hurting their chances of business growth.

1. Does my business foster effective, open lines of customer communication?

Current and potential clients need more than just an option to comment on a social media post to voice their needs. Whether you’re a start-up or an established business, it’s important to both open up for discussion and listen to the conversations. Often times businesses fail because they do not listen to the needs of the customers not because they choose to ignore it, but because they never give themselves a chance to hear it.

A quote from the book Nail It then Scale It: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Creating and Managing Breakthrough Innovation, written by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom, asks: “Which would you rather do – talk to customers now and find out you were wrong, or talk to customers a year and thousands of dollars down the road and still find out you were wrong?”

2. Where are we headed next?

Complacency is something you can’t afford. In an ever-changing market place, no matter what your business is, anticipation is the key to success. As Helen Keller once said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”

Knowing where you want to go and knowing how to get there are two very different things. Certainly, without preparing for growth and setting goals you’re unlikely to reach your intended destination.

As a business owner, you certainly hope demand for your product and business will go up. It’s imperative to understand the projected need for your products as well as to answer the question ahead of time, “How will we meet this need?” Failure can sneak up on you quickly if you don’t have a plan. Depending on your business the plan will vary, but the basic idea to have in place is to set a goal, and draft out how to reach it.

You might also like: 6 Musts for a Business Year-End Checklist

3. Are we the Flintstones or the Jetsons?

Ok, so obviously no one is out there clocking into work using the tail of a colorful parrot after driving to work in their foot-pedaled stone age car, and certainly no one is flying in to work and dropping down through a tube into their desk chair. When deciding whether your company is more like the Flintstones or the Jetsons, the idea is to ask yourself, am I keeping up with the times to stay ahead, or am I making things painful for my clients and customers?

This is inclusive of all aspects of business including software programs, ways of communication, and most importantly technology. Not only does old technology drive people away (and not to mention sometimes insane), but it also leaves your business susceptible to viruses and being hacked. Keeping up with, or better yet, ahead of the times not only keeps your current clients stay satisfied, but also attracts new clients to your business.

One of the most important areas of technology to assess is your business’s POS (point of sale) process, whether this occurs online or off. Today’s customers anticipate seamless point of sale transactions that enable them to enroll in loyalty and rewards programs, set up or change account settings, automate payments for future purchases, generate automated responses such as downloads, send receipts directly to their email or mobile phone, and much more. A slow, complicated or clunky point of sale process can can dampen a customer’s enthusiasm for returning to your business in the future, cause them to abandon their cart before completing their purchase and even create sufficient frustration to result in a bad review for your business. 

4. Are we connecting with our audience?

If you were a comedian, would you bust out a political commentary type of joke set about taking rifles away from cowboys for performances in the heart of Texas? Probably not. Plain and simple, the thing to remember in business is you can never forget who your audience is.

When asking yourself this question, make sure to evaluate if your message is too broad, too narrow, or just right. Yes, a broad message might reach more people, but it won’t resonate or be as effective as a narrow, targeted messaged that focuses on your main clientele. Especially if you have limited resources, focusing on getting your messages across in a streamlined fashion is a non-negotiable.

5. Is our ignorance really bliss?

They say if a tree falls in the forest it really does still make a sound. Well, as a business owner, you can’t really afford to test out that theory.

Listening to the pains of your customers might sound like a task easy to avoid, especially if business is booming. However, before you know it that boom could turn to bust if the needs of your clients are not addressed.

Understanding the needs and pains of your customers will help you reinvent your marketing and product strategy to ensure you are always making it happen for your clients, sometimes even before they even know they need it.

Is your company speeding up or slowing down? Status quo is a fallacy; you’re either gaining ground or losing it, every time you flip your sign from “Closed” to “Open” to start the day. Make sure you understand your goals and keep them in the forefront of even day to day operations.

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Survival of the Fittest – 5 Keys to Growing a Startup

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Startup Darwinism says that as new startups get funded, others go the way of the do-do bird. Here are five keys for growing a startup to make sure your new business survives.

5 Ways to Overcome Startup Darwinism and Turn Your Startup into a Success Story

An interesting report suggests that as more and more startups get funding, more will have to die. While we are not so sure that it’s a zero sum game, we have five tips for growing a startup to help you strengthen your new business.

A day seldom passes that business media sites don’t announce the launch of a new startup or the demise of others. Happily for entrepreneurs today, there are many private and public investors standing at the ready to provide funding for a wide variety of different types of promising new startups.

Lest you think that startup failure is something that only happens to other entrepreneurs, consider these words from Forbes contributor Neil Patel cofounder of some little startups you might have heard of called Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics.  In an article titled 90% Of Startups Fail: Here’s What You Need To Know About The 10%, Patel says, “Nine out of ten startups will fail. This is a hard and bleak truth, but one that you’d do well to meditate on. Entrepreneurs may even want to write their failure post-mortem before they launch their business.”  Bleak, indeed.

If startup funding were enough to ensure success, the failure rate would be much lower. So given adequate funding and – presumably – a business plan worth pursuing, why is it that so many startups fail?  The short answer is: Burn.

Burn refers to the speed at which a startup exhausts its resources. Most startups that fail do so because they burn through their resources faster than they replenish them through sales or additional capital put in by investors. Even fast-growing startups can suffer from burn, when high sales still do not translate into adequate cash flow.

So what is a growth-seeking startup to do? 

5 Keys to Growing a Startup Without the Burn

  1. Stay focused.

Before a startup actually starts up, entrepreneurs are burning the midnight oil. Working with intensity and single-minded focus, they are building the business model, writing the marketing plan and selling their idea to investors.  Once the startup actually launches, and there are a thousand different directions the startup could grow, it’s easy to lose focus and try to move in too many directions at once. Stay focused; work the business plan you sold to investors.

  1. Plan for contingencies.

The road to success is rarely a straight line or a smooth road. Your business plan should have contingencies and triggers built in that will prompt you to shore up areas that are slipping, reduce expenses, expand marketing – whatever the best course correction for the situation. Without contingency plans based on thinking through possible scenarios, when trouble strikes you might not have enough time to come up with a solution on the fly.

  1. Milk your cash cow.

Most businesses, and even most startups, don’t come out of the gate offering just one product or service. Before you open your doors or launch your ecommerce site, you should have a good idea of which products or services are likely to be your cash cows, your most popular entry points for customers, and your most profit-generating offers. These are the products and services that you should spend most of your time and resources in promoting during the startup phase to be sure that you get your business off the ground.  Save pet projects and harder-sells for later on in the game.

  1. Set Aside Money for Marketing

You know you need money for equipment, inventory, staffing and a long list of other items, but if you don’t purposefully set aside money for marketing your startup you may find that you build it and no one comes – because no one knows about your business! Some of the marketing costs you may want to plan for include:

  • Point of sale (POS) merchant services with loyalty and rewards programs built in
  • Direct mailer or door hanger campaign in targeted neighborhoods
  • An attractive website that produces conversions (sales, reservations, bookings, form submission for lead generation, etc.
  • A “soft opening” to spark interest in your business, get early reviews and test your staffing and systems
  • A PR event such as getting local celebrities to try your products or services, or attend your soft open or launch
  • YouTube reviews
  • Videos that explain your products/services, include early testimonials, etc.
  • Social media account set up, sponsored posts, paid ads and boosted events
  • Email marketing – and so on

The more interest you can generate in your business before the doors even open, the faster you can go from launch to profits sufficient to sustain and grow your business.

  1. Don’t go it alone.

Many entrepreneurs are independent by nature. They have had dreams and ideas that they had to pursue on their own, they’ve had to write their own plans, build their own websites, design their own business cards and clean their own bathrooms. They are used to going it alone. Before you launch your startup, get a mentor on board who has business (and preferably startup) experience who can give you good advice and help you shorten the learning curve when it comes to business tasks like bookkeeping and accounting, taxes, marketing, merchant services, human resources and more. The less time you have to spend on administrative tasks and busy work, the more you have to focus on activities that will grow your startup more quickly.

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