Business Plus Baby

If you have only just started a new business, you could be excused for making only tentative steps as you steer the company towards growth. To that end, you could endeavour to limit your corporate premises to a home office, at least for now, as part of bootstrapping.

Indeed, keeping the business home-bound allows you to “try it and see”, but you still need to be careful to have the following measures and amenities in place when you want to take on new staff.

Health and safety measures

Keeping your business within your home’s walls wouldn’t relieve you of your responsibility to carry out a health and safety risk assessment for the benefit and comfort of your staff. This is also good practice in anticipation of customers or contacts paying visits to the building.

The Health and Safety Executive can help you to conduct a health and safety check, says the GOV.UK website. Also, don’t overlook that protection for your own staff can include insurance…

Employer’s liability insurance

There are various categories of insurance which you ought to think about as you assemble all of the administrative infrastructure for your business. These insurances include public liability if clients often visit – but, for your workers, more relevant would be employer’s liability insurance.

This is applicable if you have any employees, and can help to cushion the impact on your business if any of your workers suffer an injury resulting from their employment.

Lightness – in both illumination and colours

It’s a good idea to dedicate a specific space of your home to work purposes. That would make it easier for you to mentally switch into “business mode” when required.

Allow natural light to enter the room in sufficient amounts to perk up your workers. Meanwhile, light colours on the walls will visually increase the space’s size and so could hold off feelings of claustrophobia among your personnel.

Hired office space for meetings with clients

One risk of holding off expanding out of the home office can be that of blighting your firm’s image. The Guardian highlights one example of a commodities research firm’s directors winning a crucial contract with an overseas client after meeting up with them in hired office space.

Were you to follow suit with hiring such space, clients who meet up with you there wouldn’t need to know that you work from home, as might be typical for a small, unprofessional business.

External working space as the firm grows

If you find yourself seeking to hire office space surprisingly regularly, it might be beneficial for you to take up something more permanent outside of the home. It wouldn’t have to mean entirely leaving the house behind, either; you could consider incubation centres and membership clubs.

As you move into new spaces, you could adjust your health and safety policies accordingly. As reported by the Daily Mail, you could allow vaping – for example – on the premises, and perhaps even supply your workers with vaping products like the Innokin Proton 235W mod.

How do you manage your customer’s contact details and communications? Many small businesses do this using their email inbox and an Excel spreadsheet, but there are far more effective tools out there. These are known as customer management software or CRMs (customer relationship management tools).

Do you dig through your email inbox to remind yourself of what you need to do for your client next?  Customer management software will allow you to save your email and phone conversations, so all you need to do is search for the person’s name and you’ll have their entire history- both email and phone call conversations – right in front of you. That’s a huge time saver.

With a CRM you can schedule tasks to remind you when you’re due to follow up with a lead. This way you won’t forget to make those important calls that nudge your customers towards a purchase. Even better, you can set up your sales process or pipeline so you can track your progress towards the making a sale.

If you’re not sure what a sales process is, it’s the journey a customer takes that leads up to a sale. So they may become aware of you, contact you to arrange a call, go away and research alternatives, come back for a second call and finally buy. You can set up this journey in your customer management software and track your lead’s progress along it. You can also run reports that tell you how many leads each stage and your percentage close rate, which then tells you how many prospects you need at the beginning of the pipeline to give you the number of sales you want at the end.

If there are one or more people sharing the same customer data, such as you and a business partner or a virtual assistant, a CRM will allow you to store data in one place so you won’t have the errors associated with passing an Excel file between you, and you’ll reduce the number of emails in your inbox.

There is a huge range of CRM software to choose from, some even have a free plan such as Zoho CRM and Hubspot. So there’s no excuse not to give them a try! All of these can be used for any small business and Zoho in particular is very configurable to the needs of your individual business. But there are plenty that are designed for specific types of business including AccountancyManager for accountants and pest control software Pocomos. If there is a custom CRM available for your business, it’s well worth checking this first as it will save you a lot of configuration time. The specialist systems often go beyond the features of a CRM (ie mainly sales, marketing and sometimes customer service) and allow you to manage your entire business including billing and finance.

So if you’ve never considered going beyond an Excel spreadsheet for managing your customers, then give it a try because a whole new world awaits you!

Photo: JanBaby

What pops into your mind when you hear the word ‘entrepreneur’? Perhaps you think of driven, competitive people with fast, expensive cars and lots of money. Or maybe famous entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson and the entrepreneurs on Dragon’s Den. It can be hard to think of ourselves as entrepreneurial because most of us lead very different lives to these people.

While there definitely are entrepreneurs with fast cars and lots of money, it’s possible to have an entrepreneurial mindset without the lifestyle that we associate with entrepreneurs. So what is an entrepreneur? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an entrepreneur is ‘a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.’   The difference between an entrepreneur and a business owner is that an entrepreneur usually starts a business with the intention of growing it and selling it. In other words, the business IS the entrepreneur’s product.

The qualities an entrepreneur needs include resilience and determination, as well as a willingness to take risks. There can be many failed businesses on the road to selling a successful one for profit, so self-belief is also a must.

Many entrepreneurs are portrayed as living extravagant lifestyles, but they can be very generous, too. For example, Matt Redhawk is an entrepreneur who is giving back in several ways, including helping families become self-sufficient. Bill Gates has taken the billionaires’ pledge to give at least half of his wealth to philanthropy.

There’s an entire category of entrepreneurs who start businesses with the purpose of doing good, known as social entrepreneurs. A social enterprise makes a profit like any business but reinvests or donates those profits to create positive social change.

As you can see, the entrepreneurial mindset is about being able to spot an opportunity and take action on it; resilience, determination and self-belief plus generosity and wanting to give something back. Realising that you have many of the facets of an entrepreneurial mindset will help you take action towards your goals and could ultimately lead to you making a huge positive difference to your own life, your family and friends or your community.

So if you feel you may be a budding entrepreneur avoid comparing yourself the entrepreneurs in sharp suits and fast cars on TV and think about the opportunities you could pursue instead. Where could you make a difference? What product could you make better? Sniff around for opportunities and don’t be afraid to be a nosey parker!

If you see an opportunity but feel you don’t have all the entrepreneurial qualities you need, don’t be put off. Getting to know other entrepreneurs can be great for building self-belief as well as offering practical advice. If you have a great business idea and can prove it by getting some good initial sales, you may be in a position to get funding to grow your business. Having clear goals and a long-term vision helps keep you on track when things get tough. You don’t have to rely entirely on your own willpower, although you will need to be pretty determined to succeed!

Running a home business is something that many of us dream of. We spend days sitting at our desk or behind a till, dreaming of leaving it all behind. Of going it alone and launching our own business. Of working from a home office, around our other commitments and responsibilities. We see ourselves learning from the mistakes that we’ve seen others make. Doing it right. We daydream about the products that we’ll sell and the money that we will make. It’ll be easy, it’ll be fun, and we’ll make it a success.

Image: Rawpixel

Managing your own home business can be great. It certainly takes a leap to get started. But, once you take it, you get the chance to follow all of those dreams. You can do everything that you want, and make your business what you want it to be. But, the realities aren’t often as easy as our dreams made them seem.

You might find that in the early days you are working on a very low budget. That you can’t afford to employ staff and that you need to do a lot of the work alone. You need to learn about all areas of business. Even if you are making money as a blogger, with a blog that you’ve had for years, you can suddenly find that you need to know more. You need to learn about accounting and marketing. You have to be able to research the market, prepare business plans and financial forecasts. You need to make contacts through networking. There’s a lot to do and more to think about. Many home business owners find that they work seven days a week, for many hours a day. That they actually get less time off, and less time with their families. But at the same time that they can’t ever give their business their full focus with so many home distractions.

This can lead to burnout. Many small home business owners find themselves becoming stressed out, tired and overworked. They can become ill or depressed and find that they are unable to give their business their all. Many become upset, and even give up because they just can’t find the time to do it all. Here are some ways that you can avoid home business burnout.

Start Outsourcing

Running a home business often means that you can’t afford to hire staff. Or that you haven’t got the space for a team of employees. But, that doesn’t mean that you have to do everything on your own. Outsourcing work to a virtual headquarters means that you always have someone to help you when you need it. They can answer phones, make calls, reply to emails, arrange your schedule and take on other tasks, giving you more time to do more important things. Or even to take a break.

You can also outsource social media management, content creation, marketing, design, accounting and more. Think about the jobs that you don’t enjoy or don’t feel you are very good at, and ask yourself if it would be worth paying someone else to do them for you.

Take a Day Off

Many self-employed people rarely take days off. They work from early in the morning to late at night, every day. If they do schedule a day off, they find themselves updating the business website, posting to social media and replying to emails. That’s really not a day off.

Give yourself at least one day a week off. Completely off. What’s the worst that could happen? Then, when you can, book a holiday. Leave your business behind for a week, either closing your doors or hiring someone to help out for a few days. It’s good for you and allows you to come back to the business feeling refreshed and filled with good ideas.

Work Set Hours

Image: ThoughtCatalog

One of the many advantages of working for yourself is the flexibility. But, it’s still a good idea to try to sit to a schedule. It doesn’t have to be 9-5, nor does it have to be the same every day. But, get dressed for work, sit in your office, and stop work at a particular time. Once you’ve stopped, leave the office, and your phone behind for the night.

Talk About It

Running a home business can be lonely. If you are used to working with, or around other people, suddenly spending your days alone can be a shock to the system. This is made worse by the feeling that no one else understands. You might not know anyone else that works at home, and your friends and family might think that you’ve got it easy. Talk to them about your day. Tell them what it’s like. Then, try to make friends with other homeworkers online or at networking events.