Many business owners can find a line from a band Faces song, ‘I wish I knew what I know now’ relatable. Running and operating a small business for a long time might have given owners enough lessons to remember that they want to share with others.
Hence, here are the 7 business tips that are worth paying attention to when you are done with company registration in India.
– Construct a support network.
According to Laura Kelly, being a business owner can be an isolated experience at many times. ‘Especially, when you are a sole business owner, you can often lose touch with other owners,’ says Kelly, who had fifteen years ago initiated the Handwork Studio, a Narberth (Pennsylvania-based) company that operates needlework camps and tuitions for kids in ten states on the East coast.
For her, the vital part is to stay connected to a larger business community. That means catching up with her business coach for 1 hour every four weeks. The coach helps her figure out the solutions to the problems while making the business’s tough decision. She is also active on LinkedIn and Facebook.
‘She walked me through some visualization exertions,’ Kelly said. ‘Such mental exercise of taking out myself from business and focusing on it helped me to see the problems that were bugging me, within one hour, I came out with clarity and precision in mind and action plan to proceed.’
Kelly and her fellow women service business owners conduct a live conference. ‘We dwell on problems and solutions, and we engage with each other to reach the solution.’
As a business owner, you would be swamped with work, but it is crucial to take some time out for networking to yield some fruits in the future.
– Be precise with your ambition.
Another lesson she has to offer is, slicing the big ambitions into smaller ones. She said, ‘I have 10-year ambitions, I have 3-year ambition, I have 1-year ambition and I have quarterly ambitions for my business’. Also, she says, ‘while talking about revenues, I would slice them into smaller ones so they are easier to acquire. If I know I require to make couple hundred thousand revenue in the 1st quarter, I say, what does it mean when it comes to camp sales? How many campers are needed? If I know I would require eight hundred campers to meet the revenue ambition, it becomes easier to fathom how to obtain it. Such type specific ambitions can push your actions.
The Handwork studio’s every employee has a dashboard with their ambitions and goals that portray their progress towards achieving these goals. It keeps every employee on their toes, alert and concentrated. She later adds, ‘I can say that at any specific moment how much revenue we possess, the traffic of our website & how many Facebook likes we have received’.
Constructing a performance-driven culture begins with being very precise about your goals and ambitions for yourself and your employees. When your employees are mentally happy, they will give their best performance and customer service.
– Delegating as and when possible.
When technology consultancy, Marks group, was initiated in 1994, Gene Marks and his father were all about it. ‘He was making sales, and I was doing service,’ Marks said. After his father’s demise, he took it over and realized he could not do it all alone and hired some new employees. ‘I have learned that you can earn a lot of money you have other folks doing it for you,’ Marks said.
He recruited more people; he realized that he was doing something that he was not good at. The business’s revenue spiked after new people’s injunction because he employed people who were useful than him at specific tasks. He said, ‘concentrate on what is capable for you and delegate the rest to others who are capable of doing it.’
– Keeping your expenses low.
Eight years ago, Marks was sitting in his expensive rental office costing $30k per year, while his employees worked in the ground with clients. Hence, he decided to abandon his Philadelphia office and made his workforce virtual. Additionally, he shifted to an internet-based phone from landline connection, which costs around $10/month, and also adopted cloud over computer servers.
This allowed him to rest for a while in a time of recession. He later said, ‘when things go awry, you do not have to panic because you can always make the cut in the revenue in your hands’ also, he says, ‘In the times of recession, we never lost money. Slicing down the costs would give you peace of mind as you know all about company registration in India. Moreover, you can then move to lower costs that can make better price decisions that you will not be able to make otherwise’.
– Search out your niche and stick to it.
While trying to do too much for your clients, diversifying is not the appropriate strategy. If you have something that works, then it is good to replicate it. As it has turned out to be Ace Apparel’s strategy, said Marc Mathios, who is running the old-family business with his two brothers.
Mathios says, ‘one of the industry silos that is our forte in parking garage operators, they like to work with us because we produce our line of jacket that is very suitable for parking garage companies. We have replicated that success with thirty distinct parking garage operators along with North America’. Hence, searching out your niche and sticking to it would give you success.
– Stretch your day-job.
Generally, people get excited about the business idea and abandon their jobs quickly. Sara Blakely, the Spanx founder, says that she kept her job as an office equipment salesperson for 2 years. She even did not get enough time to sleep. According to Forbes, she did not want to abandon her job until and unless she knew that her small business idea would pan out successfully.
When she resigned in 2000, she gathered knowledge about existing patents and pantyhose design. She used to drive from her home (Atlanta) to North Carolina, where she found out a hosiery mill interested in making the product. Later she said, ‘in those days, I would be in Danka throughout the day and semi-trucks would drop Spanx boxes outside of my house. I resigned on the 14th of October in 2000. I left Danka and after 18 days, I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show’.
– Stay away from the distractions.
Content marketing company located in Seattle, AudienceBloom, was doing good. Its CEO and founder, Jayson DeMers, determined that he could initiate another start-up, which he would regret later.
Demers said, ‘entrepreneur’s job is not operating a company smoothly, but rather successful entrepreneurs would work persistently to evolve it, grow it, and prep it for the foreseeable future. Because I chose to divide my team betwixt two start-ups, my second start-up did not get the expected growth as I could not devote enough time to a new start-up to make it successful’. And eventually, the second one collapsed. AudienceBloom again flourished when he got back at the stint and full devotion. He later said, ‘successful venture needs 100% focus, attention, and efforts. Secondary ventures require the full-time manager to operate it or else it would be a distraction for you and would eventually lead to failure for the existing one’.
Keep your schedule straight and precise and avoid distractions. As Marks said, ‘I know when I am clever and when I am not,’ I allot big tasks for the morning and monotonous ones in the latter part of the day.’ Keeping yourself organized is the key to get success.
