What do you need to start a business? Drive. A great work ethic. An amazing idea. Skills and knowledge. Yes! But are you financially ready to start a business? This is something you truly need to know. Don’t jump into business ownership, quit your job then wonder how you will keep the lights on.
You need to be practical as well as a dreamer when you become a business owner. The dreamer in you is what will keep you moving forward and climbing mountains and overcoming other obstacles. The practical side needs to know how you will pay the bills, find clients and be and/or remain viable.
Are You Financially Ready To Start A Business?
What are you worth? Not you, personally, but what is your business idea worth? What can you charge for your services? What will it cost you to make your products and what do you need to make to break even? What will you need to make to turn a profit?
What do you need to earn to be viable? Write down ALL of your expenses. Write down all of your income from other sources. Write down what you will need to earn in your business to pay your expenses and have some money left over for future growth.
Have a business plan written and follow it. Don’t “wing it” when you’re starting out. Your business plan is a well-thought-out document that you will spend time with and explore all the positives and negatives about your business idea.
Do you need help? Can you run your business on your own or will you need help? If you need help, what kind do you need and what will it cost? If you have talent in XYZ — great — that’s what you need. That’s the core competency you need to focus on. If you need a website and a social media presence — and you do — who will build it and manage it? If you think you will do that AND run your business you’re giving yourself too much credit. Don’t spread yourself so thin that every aspect of your business suffers. You will also want to budget for a financial advisor and a lawyer.
Track your successes and your failures. Don’t leave a failed business experiment to chance. Learn from your mistakes and implement changes to help assure they don’t pop up again.
It’s usually recommended that new entrepreneurs have six months of living expense money in the bank before he or she quit a job to focus on their business. Are you financially ready?
Millions of people work from home. If you’re one of those people, is your home office working for you? What this means, is do you feel productive and relaxed and creative in your space? Even if you’re not involved in a truly creative field, you still want to have an office space that lets you work without adding to your stress.
Is Your Home Office Working For You?
Before you go to work in the morning, or before you leave your office tonight, look at your office space and ask yourself:
Does the color work? When is the last time you painted the space in which you’re working? If you grabbed the corner of a room or cleared out a closet, does it need a fresh coat of paint? Probably. Look for a paint color in the blue or yellow family will breathe new life into the office space. Blue is said to enhance productivity, yellows are know to invigorate the senses and inspire creativity.
How well lit is the space? Will you be on video calls? If so, you want to be seen in a good light, not looking like you’re in a dark forest with a flashlight under your chin.
How distracting is the space? Is it cluttered? Is there a television within eye sight that you will be watching during the day and not getting your work done? If you’re going to be on the phone or on video chats a lot, make sure the background behind you isn’t distracting to those you’re talking with. Hang curtains and offer yourself a great view out the window.
Is your desk and keyboard and chair ergonomic? You don’t want to have a backache or give yourself carpal tunnel because your desk, chair and keyboard set up are causing you strain.
When you’re working from home can you close the door if you need to? Does your family respect your office hours?
Take time today to give your office space a once over and plan a cleaning and reorganization if necessary t get it in work-from-home shape.
What is your social media strategy? Have you ever wondered how to have an effective social media strategy? Posting without a strategy is like throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. Whether it sticks or not, it’s still a mess, right?
You don’t have to be a wizard to get the most out of the social media posts you’re sharing on your pages, but you do need to have a strategy.
Who is your audience
Why do they come to you? What’s your niche?
What do they want? Not what do you want to share, but what do they want… truly want?
How To Have An Effective Social Media Strategy
Once you’ve narrowed down what social media platform your ideal clients interacts on, you can put together an effective strategy to interact with them, connect with them and grow your business.
Here are a few different types of posts you will want to consider to up your social media engagement.
What would you do? Ask for advice.
Who could you refer for XYZ issue?
Share content from your blog
Make a graphic to highlight individual tips from a blog post
Ask for a referral for a friend or colleague
Fill in the blank questions, “The best day in my business was…” “The worst bit of business advice I received was…” “What’s your favorite ice cream…”
Share breaking industry news
Share an inspirational quote
Share a funny meme
Share “insider” information — something you’re only sharing with your followers. Offer a coupon or a beta test of a product.
Be authentic.
What kind of content do you gravitate toward when you’re on social media? Share that content with your followers. What kind of content do your followers interact with the most on your page? Share more of that. Ask them, “What would you like to see, or know or hear more about?”
There are as many ways to solve problems as there are problems and people to solve them! If you’re looking for how to problem-solve effectively and you just haven’t hit on the solution that is a great fit for you and your personality, here are ten steps I have found to be effective.
I urge you to check them out, try them on for size and see how they work, or don’t, for you. I’d also love to hear how you problem solve, what works and what hasn’t. Let’s share our secrets for success!
How To Problem-Solve Effectively
Every day we are faced with problems. We have to walk our way through challenges and find the light of a solution. You don’t have to struggle alone — and you shouldn’t. Find an accountability partner, a friend or colleague with whom you can connect and move from problem to solution.
Here are ten steps I have found to be effective for me.
Look at the problem from various angles. Walk around it. Think about it. Write down what you believe the problem is then expand your definition of the problem. Expand your view and ask yourself, “is there something more to this problem?” Oftentimes there is.
Put a precise definition to the problem. Do not be vague or your solution will likely be vague and not fully address the issue.
What is causing the problem? When did it start? Did something lead to its raising its head?
Write down every solution you can think of that may solve the problem. Don’t discard any potential solution even if you think it is not going to work.
Now that you have pinpointed the problem, you can get to work on its solution.
Assemble a team to help address the issue
Come up with tactics and strategic approaches to solve it
Give the solution a deadline
Implement the potential solutions you’ve come up with. Have a back up plan in case the original plan doesn’t fully solve the issue.
Circle back to the original problem. Write down the tactics you used to address it. Keep these notes in case the problem comes up again.
Always have a plan B
Don’t let problems linger. They will sap your mental and physical energy. An unsolved or unresolved problem will lead to stress, unhappiness and general dissatisfaction. Achieving inner peace will lead to serenity; this will help you face challenges head on and your experiences at having solved problems before will help you address the new ones head on.
