The first year of business is often the hardest, and often the time when you discover if you’re going to sink or swim.
However, if you do swim and start to grown, the challenges don’t go away. They just become different, and most importantly, bigger. For example, you might spend your first couple of years worrying about not getting enough orders. But then, after things start to take off, this worry might be replaced with “we’re getting too many orders to cope!”
So what does this mean? It means you’re going to need some help.
Nobody can run a successful business single-handedly. Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t managed it, and neither did Steve Jobs. Rather, both of them learned the value of delegating and outsourcing.
Being in a position to do this, and do it effectively, is crucial for every business owner. But it’s arguably even more crucial if you have a life outside of your business. Some people live to work; more power to them! But what about if you have a family waiting for you at home or a new baby? If this is the case, you’re going to need to manage your team, budgets, time and resources even more carefully.
First, let’s look at your premises expanding. Say you’ve moved from a home office to a 1-room city office to a full floor, for example. Expecting that you’re still going to be able to keep the place clean and tidy is unrealistic. If your premises have grown, it is a poor waste of your and your staff’s time to be cleaning. Instead, click here for commercial cleaning services. Yes, it will cost you money, but if you can afford a bigger office you can find the budget for this too. It’s a waste of the talents of you and your staff otherwise.
Secondly, we all know the customers are key to a blossoming business. As word about your company gets out there, you can’t be disappointing potential buyers once they research you. Yes, it’s time to upgrade that basic website you’ve had since you began! In an age of ever-increasingly dynamic and interactive sites, you can’t compete with a basic WordPress site anymore. In fact, a poorly designed website is no longer ‘a bit of a negative’. Now it can totally turn a consumer off; some believe that a bad website equals a bad company. This isn’t necessarily true, of course, but you shouldn’t hold out hope that everyone else believes this. Call in a professional web design company to give your site an overhaul. You might want to hire somewhere with digital marketing skills while you’re at it. They can get your site ranking on search engines. This means that if a potential customer does search for you, they will actually be able to find you. There’s no point in having the fanciest website of all time if nobody ever sees it!
Finally, let’s look at your home life. Juggling children, running a home and managing a business is challenging for any mother or father. Consider hiring a babysitter or a nanny. It could be great for your kids to get used to another person. It also allows to focus on work while you’re there and make the best life possible for both you and your whole family.
Photo by NEC Corporation of America with Creative Commons license.