Category: Tips and Tools

Tony Alter

In the effort to develop and build your own firm, whether that is subcontracting services or providing some form of freelance work to an agency or regular client, you are likely to take as much work on as you can to satisfy the client. You might be tempted to take on repeat business from the same client if the process and transactions are going well.

After a while, you might feel comfortable in your operation, and it can become easy to rest on your laurels. However, as an independent contractor, you cannot afford to make a mistake, and accidentally making one, in any capacity that suggests to your client they have been financially or otherwise misled, damaged or impinged with difficulty, you are in trouble.

Now, it’s likely that if you’re an independent contractor and have developed from success to success so far, you might feel like no error could be made. This form of business confidence is useful, but it can blind you to issues that crop up you might not be expecting. If you have no form of insurance, cover, or even forethought about dealing with these events outside trying to remedy it from a personal level, you will have much difficulty navigating the inevitable sticky issue that can’t be settled as easily.

Without some form of adequate indemnity insurance such as that offered by Kingsbridge, you will be vulnerable to paying out enormous potential costs for work, both past and present, that a customer just might have an issue with. The following list will hopefully help you realise just how, with the best observation in the world, you might be betrayed by a minor missed contingency that you hadn’t planned for.

Yourself

Now, no matter how shrewd you are, and you must be to successfully build a business, you are not impervious to making mistakes. No one is. If this is your first business, you might not be one hundred percent aware of standard business conduct in your firm. If you have operated for some time, you might be unaware of some new legislation or methodology of obtaining work that is now considered the norm.

However, it needn’t be a difficult clerical error that trips you up. Sometimes, a bad week such as going through a difficult, turbulent family event can lead you to performing badly at your work, and understandably so. No matter the issue, you will find that mistakes in your work and proceedings crop up from time to time, even the largest multinational conglomerates do that, and so if you’re not covered for those little moments, you will always live in fear of making one. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you’re not careful.

Staff

Training new staff or apprentices, and generally placing the responsibility your name into the hands of another is a risk no matter how you look at it. You are never 100% realistically responsible for what your staff member does in your name, but you are 100% technically responsible from a legal, financial and insurance standpoint, so you need to plan for this. You should consider hiring employees that you have vetted thoroughly, and only hire family members if they are proven to do the job and are willing to take it with the utmost professionalism. You must also place these staff members on your insurance to protect yourself from any shoddy work they’ve done that might have originally evaded your careful close inspection when it comes to reviewing and signing off on the work done.

Materials

If you’re in some form of construction industry, you are always responsible for the materials you bill and provide for. In an effort to save costs, you might opt for cheaper materials that can still do the same job well, or so you might think at the time. The harrowing feeling you’ll retrieve when you learn from a job undertaken a few years ago that the materials bought then when your business was in its infancy and trying to save money has unfortunately affected the resident it was meant to help.

There’s no way of overcoming this issue apart from making sure that all of your materials are of stellar quality, but also being retroactively covered for jobs undertaken in the past can be of huge benefit when figuring out what insurance policy to apply.

Misunderstanding

People misunderstand each other. This happens in every social avenue you can think of, so you can be certain it happens in business transactions, sometimes even more so than usual. With the knowledge that you have accumulated that allows you to professionally run your firm, you’ll initially realise that the people who hire your services are often unaware of how to do it themselves – this is why they’re hiring you in the first place.

Sometimes, in the effort to communicate with you what they require, they might use sloppy or misleading language that gives you the wrong impression about the task to be completed. You might simply have made a mental error yourself, or even mix job requirements up at its most chaotic.

Misunderstandings happen, and they happen often. Prepare for them financial as best you can to lessen your fear of being involved with them.

Vindictive Clients

Sometimes, clients aren’t the golden prize we believe them to be. Sometimes, in an effort to get out of paying for a satisfactory job that they unfortunately aren’t happy with, or if they feel like work has overran despite you compensating them for this, they might try and take it further through the courts. The best way to overcome these issues is to keep complete, total and clear records about every business communication or transaction you undergo between yourself and  the client, to stay on top of any issues you might be experiencing.

Be forthright about work you have completed and issues you have raised from your own side of the issue. A solid defense will help you get through these problems with minimal financial cost. If you are defined as being in the wrong by a court, having a great insurance policy to help you overcome this can definitely place minimal impact on your finances. It certainly will help you avoid tanking the business thanks to this mistake.

These issues can befall any business, no matter how positive their intention. Stay mindful of these to help you prevent them with a stronger filter, and cover for them appropriately.

Pixabay

In the past fifty years, more farms have gone under due to running costs and debt than they have because of drought, plague and pestilence combined. The reason for this is as simple as it is horrendous; farmers just don’t have it easy when it comes to making a profit. This is because running a farm is tainted by the high costs of equipment, taxes, land and labour. However, there is a reason why farming is the world’s largest industry, and that is because there are ways to succeed. To put it to you bluntly, your best chance of improving profits it to cut your overheads, and all that requires is knowing where you have the most control.

Read on to see our top tips on how you can increase your profits:

freestocks.org

Stop Owning And Start Leasing

The benefits of leasing your agriculture equipment are becoming more and more impossible to ignore, especially in this day and age where technological advancements rapidly improve over a twelve-month period. That is where leasing really becomes attractive; it allows you stay up-to-date with the technology used to run your farm, making your operations far more efficient, timely and cost-effective. Another benefit worth mentioning is to do with working capital. Having such a large chunk of change tied up in equipment is a risk and one that massively limits your options and your ability to react to the market. The final thing worth mentioning is the additional costs surrounding ownership of farm machinery, of which there are many; storage, maintenance, tax, fuel, payment-plans and labour. These can add up real quick.

Storage Poses An Opportunity

A huge amount of profitability in agriculture comes from storage abilities. This isn’t just because satisfactory storage goes a long way in protecting expensive machinery but also plays an important role in keeping crops and produce in prime condition so that it commands a higher price at market. Of course, there are three main things to concern yourself with when it comes to storage and they are all solved by the use of steel, as you will see by reading Armstrong steel reviews. You see, my using pre-engineered steel storage barns, not only are are you saving yourself money, you are also going with a material that is durable, meaning the longevity of your structure is better. Not only that, but steel is stronger than the alternatives, meaning there is no need for support columns, maximising the space you have.

stokpick.com

Use Tax Section 179 To Your Advantage

They say you can’t leverage taxes in your favour, but that isn’t quite the case within the agriculture industry, especially if you are leasing your equipment. This is because Section 179 of the tax code states that you can write off 100% of your leasing expenditure on their taxes as a deduction. Thanks to the fact you don’t own leased equipment, which means it cannot be viewed as an asset of your business, the Alternative Minimum Tax Rule won’t affect your tax filings either. It is well known that some tax benefits allow businesses to significantly reduce the amount of tax they owe, which is why the Tax Man has created a threshold for how much you can actually write off, but the whole leasing of equipment move simply goes around this. So, yeah, by decreasing what you owe you can easily reduce your overhead.

Photo: India 7

Link building is one of the best strategies if you want boost the level of interest in your business, increase traffic or expand the reach of your company. Through link building online, you will connect with companies and websites, hopefully earning the interest of their clients and encourage them to visit your own site. There are various ways to link build online so let’s look at a few of the best tactics and perhaps a few of the worst.

Can You Buy Links?

While it is possible to buy links for your sites and essentially pay companies of websites to link to your site, it’s dangerous. Google claim it is a breach of their policies, and if you are caught doing this, you will most likely earn your site a Google penalty. You can read all the Google policies on https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/ Ultimately, this could bring your business crashing down in the rankings, and it might take you a while to recover. If you are able to recover at all…

Instead of buying links you should try and attract people to link to your site naturally. To do this, you need to focus on adding high-quality content to your website. There are various ways to approach this. You can create the content yourself, or you can hire a company to create it for you. Ultimately, hiring a professional company might be the best option here. With a pro, you can make sure you have high-quality content that is specifically written to target clients and websites for link building purposes.

What About Guest Posts?

Guest posts are a great way to link build online. Your first step is finding the right sites to target for guest posting purposes. There are a variety for you to choose from, so it’s important that you make the right decision. Resources like https://www.guestposttracker.com/blogs.php are great for this because it means that you can search for blogs that allow guest posts by category or even domain authority. Don’t forget, sites with greater domains are going to be more valuable for you.

If you want to search for blogs yourself for guest posts, you are essentially looking for a ‘work with me’ page. Work with me pages encourage the options of sponsored content, paid for marketing and mutually beneficial partnerships.

Joining In The Convo

You might find that there are sites online where there are discussions in comment sections packed full of potential customers for your business. Immediately, you should be thinking about ways to use this as a link building opportunity. But you have to be careful here. Most sites simply spam links to there websites in the comments with vague suggestions about how the site could benefit the users in the discussion.

You need to be more subtle than this if you want your link building tactic to be effective. Instead of simply posting a link, join in on the discussion make relevant points and connect a link to your site with a solution to the issue that they could be discussing. Do this, and you’ll have an excellent chance at users clicking on the link.

We hope you find these link building tactics beneficial and use them to boost your marketing campaign.

wsyperek

 

Dion Hinchcliffe

As a business woman, attending conferences is part of the job, or at least it should be if you want to maximize your exposure, gain new clients and network with the kinds of people who can help you do and be more.

Unfortunately, a lot of people just hate conferences. They find them boring and uncomfortable, and they just don’t know what to do to maximize the potential of their attendance. If you’re one of those people, here are some conference tips to help you ace your next event, and hopefully even enjoy it!

Set a Goal

For every conference you attend, you should have a goal in mind. If you know why you’re going to the conference and what you hope to achieve by being there, it will be a lot easier for you to focus and get things done. Goals could be as simple as increasing your brand’s visibility or networking with successful people in your industry – they don’t have to be complicated – but you should always have them.

Stay at the Venue

If the conference is being held at a hotel, you might be tempted to stay elsewhere, so that you can escape from the event at the end of the day and just relax, but it’s a much better idea to stay at the venue. By doing so, you will run into a lot of the speakers and attendees in the corridors, and these chance meetings could lead to very lucrative conversations. You’d be surprised how often deals are struck in the corridors after events have wound down for the day!

Create Marketing Materials

Before you head to a conference, you should have a range of marketing materials printed. Lanyards from this company, business cards from this company, brochures, and catalogs, and even small items you can giveaway like reusable coffee cups and stationery will all help you to increase your visibility during the event and get more people interested in buying from you. Just make sure that you work out a sensible budget for marketing before you start printing, otherwise, you might blow your whole conference budget on cards and pencils.

Announce Your Attendance

Before the event, it’s also a very good idea to announce your attendance. Let your customers, clients, suppliers and anyone else who may be interested, know that you will be attending the conference via email. Encourage them to come and visit you at your company’s booth (if you have one), invite important contacts to lunch and generally try to get people excited about the event, so that they will actually show up!

Do Your Homework

If there are particular speakers or guests you’d like to connect with at a conference, for goodness sake, do your homework! Read their books, bios, business sites and anything else you can get your hands that will tell you a bit more about them. That way, you can impress them with your knowledge and, with a bit of charm, ensure that they enjoy talking to you.

Choose Events Wisely

If you’ve ever attended a conference before, you will know that there are dozens of panel discussions, talks and demonstrations on offer. You can’t attend them all, so you need to, ahead of time, sit down with the schedule and work out which events are most worthy of your time. These might be events that you know a supplier you’re interested in working with is going to attend or a talk by someone who’s advice you would like. Work your schedule around attending these events, and you will be able to maximize your gains at the event.

Be Professional

This should go without saying, but a business conference isn’t a mini vacation. It might be being held in a beautiful location at the weekend, but it is still work. So, although you can still have some fun while you’re there, you must maintain a professional demeanour. Dress appropriately for your brand, be polite and avoid doing anything that could show you in a negative light and put other attendees off doing business with you in the future, such as getting drunk and doing something stupid.

Act Like You Want to Be There

Even if the conference you’re attending is the most boring event you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to participate in, it pays to put a smile on your face, fill your voice with enthusiasm and avoid acting like a grouch. No one will want to talk to you if you look bored, annoyed and like you’d rather be anywhere else. Happiness is infectious, and if you can stay happy, you will attract a lot more interest than the other business people who are obviously counting down the hours until they can get home.

Know Your Stuff

When you’re at a conference, you really do need to know your stuff. You’re likely to be asked a lot of questions about your work, your business and your brand and if you can’t answer them easily, you probably won’t convince any new clients to jump on board. So, brush up on those areas of your business that you perhaps don’t deal with day to day before you go and you’ll be even more impressive.

Be Confident

So many people attend conferences within the aim of connecting to a specific person/people, but once they get within few feet of them, they chicken out and give up on the approach. If you want to make connections, do deals and grow your business via conferences, you can’t do this. You need to put all of your fears aside and be confident. I mean, what’s the worse that can happen? They might politely brush you off after a few moments of conversation. So, what?

Turn It Off

Finally, when you’re at a conference, the only screens you should be looking at are the ones being used to broadcast talks and presentations. If you’re forever looking at your phone or checking your emails, you will not appear to be engaged or approachable and will make far fewer connections as a result.

Are you a regular conference attendee? What tips do you have to make events work for you?

Aside from profit, there are a number of features that a thriving business will have. If you’re considering purchasing one whether it’s a bar, a café or a childcare centre for sale, there are a few tell-tale indicators that you should keep an eye out for. Read below for the signs you should look for when you are trying to spot a successful business.

Prosperous businesses are not accidents. Even if there is a sense of a company striking it lucky with an ingenious product or opportunity, they well seldom remain so buoyant unless they’re managed properly and sufficiently plan for the future. A big part of this process is the ability to self-reflect and review current ways of doing things to foster a continuous cycle of improvement. This can refer to change as a response to an issue or situation, but can also include the willingness of a business to engage in proactive renewal.

An indicator of this is an ability to deal with failure. In reality, failures of varying degrees with be inevitable in business, but rather than simply trying to rectify an often innocent mistake, a well-run business will have the ability and framework in place to dissect ‘what went wrong.’ This need not be a hugely formal process, but at the least it should mean that the workplace is able to identify the conditions that lead to the failure and determine if there’s an area of incompetency that may need addressing.

A successful business will often has a strong online following and user friendly website. Some smaller businesses may not have the IT infrastructure that corporations enjoy, but in general you should still be able to find some mentions of them online in forums, reviews, or marketplaces such as Etsy, Ebay or other sales platforms. Simple things like spelling mistakes or clunky websites that don’t quite calibrate to all screen sizes may not indicate that a business is unsuccessful, but are a window into the ability of staff, or more importantly, the ability of the management who would ultimately sign off on public communications.

Of course, depending on the industry and also their location, thriving businesses may not have a website at all, and in this instance it can pay to do some word of mouth research or begin an online thread on a local community page or Facebook group for people’s opinions of a specific company.

A final way to get an indication of a business’s success is to refer to the basic principles of supply and demand. There is a degree of risk taking when predicting whether something will resonate with potential customers, but a company with a sound risk management plan in place should have ways to mitigate exposure. If a business is providing a niche product or service which the market does not sufficiently cater to, chances are that it’s a winner. However, the caveat on this is whether or not there is adequate demand for the item or service in question.

Image credit: PourquoiPas