The Emotional Challenges Of Business Management

by | Blog, Contributed Post

Business management is stressful, especially if you’re new to the management world. When you’re in the process of launching your own company, you face a long and twisted path of self-doubt, anxiety, and mood swings. It is the journey of every entrepreneur. While you’ve – hopefully – prepared a strategic plan to guide you through your progress, the strategy is no help to your mental health. Indeed, building your first company is an emotional rollercoaster that can make you feel inappropriate. Creating the foundation for your business is a labor of love that takes a lot of dedication and effort. But, more importantly, it’s a path that exposes your vulnerabilities. As an entrepreneur, you have no choice but to go through and try to keep a cool head. Thankfully, you don’t need to let emotional challenges distract you. There is plenty of practical support available to take your worries away.

You wish you had more time at hand
As a solo entrepreneur or the owner of a business with a small team, time is your most valuable asset. It is also the asset that is the most likely to slip in between your fingers. Indeed, you can’t afford to waste your time. However, the resource is limited. You need to prioritize income-generating operations over other time-demanding tasks. As a result, you are likely to fall into the habit of working long hours to catch up with your to-do list. Working against deadlines is stressful, but it’s a lot worse when you try to do everything simultaneously. Outsourcing is the best solution to maintain your sanity: You can’t keep your productivity and concentration for an extended period. More importantly, you are not a superhero. Your days have only 24 hours, and no, regardless of how hard you try, you can’t do everything. Accept your limitations and find an outsourced partner for support.

You wish you were more creative
Bringing a new brand to the market is demanding. Getting noticed doesn’t happen overnight. More importantly, unless you are a professional marketer who understands the challenges of creative visibility strategies, you’re unlikely to make it work. Indeed, as an entrepreneur, you can feel you have to be the creative force within your business. However, unless you are specially trained, you are likely to build unimaginative campaigns that won’t appeal to your audience. There’s an essential question about in-house vs. agency: When should you outsource your marketing? As a rule of thumb, outsourcing is the best solution for companies that struggle to attract their audience.

You wish you knew what to do next
Things change all the time. The market is a moving force that doesn’t stay still for long. In other words, the observations that have driven your strategy may not be accurate anymore. Entrepreneurs need to inject flexibility and adaptability in their day-to-day routines. However, when you’re new to the business world, making sense of a constantly evolving environment is not easy. But don’t let your fear of the unknown handicap your movements. When planning doesn’t show the way forward, knowing, and understanding your audience offers support. You can keep in touch with industry data through Google stats and Census data information to figure out your next move. Additionally, a supportive network of contacts can prove helpful in times of doubt!

Anxiety and stress can drive you to extreme mood swings when you’re launching your company. Nothing can preserve your sanity more than surrounding yourself with dedicated professional support on your way to success.

This is a contributed post

Mastering The Issue Of Productivity

by | Blog, Contributed Post

***Contributed Post***

In any startup, there is always going to be the very important issue of ensuring that the necessary work gets done, and that it gets done as easily and smoothly as possible. If this is your first business, you might well find yourself a little at a loss as to how you can ensure that you are going to be able to keep productivity high, and the truth is that many employers and business owners in your position know that feeling all too well. However, it is going to be essential that you try to find a way to master the issue of productivity, and in this article, we are going to try and make this a little simpler for you. As long as you consider the following, you should find that you are able to much more effectively master productivity in your business, and so hope for the brighter future your startup deserves.

Valuing Employees
One of the most essential things that you will want to look into here is making sure that you are actively making a point of valuing your employees. As long as your employees feel valued, they are going to find it much easier, and a much more natural thing, to be able to do the work they need to do when they need to do it. This is because they will understand much more effectively and deeply what it is that they are doing, and why they are doing it. It is therefore hugely powerful to take some time aside to speak to each employee directly, one-on-one, and ensure that they are well versed on why their job is important and what they are doing in the grand scheme of things.

When your employees understand in this way where they stand within the whole framework, you will absolutely find that their productivity goes through the roof. It is a lack of this feeling that mostly produces lack of work, and this is one of the major things that you should focus on if you are keen to try and increase and improve productivity in your workplace. You will also find that actively going out of your way to value your employees more openly will result in a happier, easier workplace and that everyone is going to be considerably more satisfied as a result.

Strong Policies
In a sense, you do need to make sure that you are policing the work that goes on in the office, although you of course don’t want to go too far with this either. However, you can strike a balance and make it clear to your employees that you need them to behave in a certain way, which will in turn mean that productivity is going to always be on the up. The best way to make sure that you are doing this properly is to look into developing some clear and strong policies which your employees need to follow. Having policies will mean that you are clear on what you expect in the workplace, and that level of strictness is often exactly what is needed for a much better way of promoting productivity.

There are plenty of types of policies you might want to adopt, many of them relating directly to ensuring that you are getting the most out of your employees that you can. Having a strong mobile phone policy such as that found at this link will ensure that your employees are not distracted by those devices too much, as will developing a policy around break times. The more that you have these in place, that you make sure you are going to enforce them and train your staff on them, the more likely it is that your employees will be as productive as you would hope, and that is certainly something to think about.

The Power Of Deadlines
Most people find that they work harder and more effectively when they have a deadline in place, and for the majority it also produces much stronger work too. You should consider making full use of this in your business to ensure that your employees are fully aware of when their deadlines are and what they need to do by when in order to achieve them. However, you should not consider deadlines to be the be all and end all. Instead, it is a good idea to focus on them as a means of encouragement, rather than possible punishment. You should make sure that any deadlines you give are entirely fair and that they are not expecting too much, and that you can allow some flexibility. That will mean, for instance, that you need to give longer deadlines for work, which is going to obviously take longer, rather than having a single, top-down deadline which everyone needs to work to. In any case, having deadlines and being fairly strong on them will ensure that your employees get much more work done, and that will benefit your business hugely in a number of ways.

Delegation
A good manager knows that it is important and wise to delegate, so you should make sure that you are doing this as much as you can too if you want the productivity to really be as high as possible. With good delegation, you can be sure that the work is going to get done, but you need to make sure that you know who to delegate what work to, and that you are not merely giving it out willy-nilly. If you can be sure of that, you will find that delegating is much more effective, both easing your own workload and also ensuring that the office as a whole is going to be much more productive. Bear in mind too that people will resent it if you give them too much work to do or that which is too above their pay grade, so you need to exercise caution here. But if you make a point of prioritizing and promoting those who take on this work regularly, then there is a decent incentive here which will only further improve the rate of production in the office. As you can see, delegating your work can indeed be a very powerful thing that you might want to consider doing.

Tools & Equipment
Any job needs specific tools, and the more aware you are of the kinds of tools and equipment your teams and individuals need, the more likely it is that you can help them to do their work as effectively as possible. Finding the right tools and equipment is something which can take a long time, and which you need to think about in order to make sure that you are getting it right, but it is a vital thing which you will want to make sure you are putting a lot of effort into for that very reason. When your employees have all the tools they need, their work will flow much more easily, and you will be able to ensure that your productivity is certainly being looked after well for that reason alone. Make sure you listen to them, as they might know better than you what kind of equipment they need, and you will want to make sure that you give them what they really do need. Do that, and your business will be very thankful on the whole for being provided for in that essential way.

As you can see, there are a lot of things you might want to consider in order to master productivity in your business, and as long as you have thought of these you will find that it is much easier to do just that.

Common Reasons Your Business Isn’t As Productive As It Could Be

Common Reasons Your Business Isn’t As Productive As It Could Be

by | Blog, Contributed Post

Any business owner will tell you that they want their business to be as productive and successful as possible. However, it’s an unfortunate fact that the majority of businesses fail these days. This can be down to a few things. One of the most common reasons businesses fail is because they just aren’t productive – and this means they aren’t moving forward and growing the way that they should be.

If you feel like this could be the reason your business is lagging, read on to find out why your business may not be as productive as it could be.

1. You Haven’t Got A Business Plan

A business plan isn’t compulsory, and there are businesses out there who have found success without one. However, it’s a rare occurrence. If you really want your business to succeed and remain productive, a business plan is vital. Creating a business plan can help you to secure funding if you need it, and it can help to keep you focused. In your plan you’ll lay out back up plans for when an approach doesn’t work, your projected profits and other numbers, and where you’d like your business to be in a few years. It’s not only beneficial if you want to get funding, but if you tend to lose sight of why you’re doing something. 

Use a template to create your business plan ASAP, and take your time! 

2. The Workplace Is Unsuitable

Working in a suitable environment is key for you and any employees you may have. It should be clean and tidy, and you should have enough space and the right equipment to get things done. Here are a few ways you can make the workplace better: 

  • Hire a cleaner
  • Let in natural light
  • Include plants
  • Make the company culture clear
  • Aim to inspire
  • Have an open door policy
  • Let employees customize their work space
  • Make sure it’s safe and free from hazards
  • Get insurance

3. You’re Not Automating Certain Tasks

Automation will save you both time and money in the long run. If there are tasks that you complete every day, chances are, they can be automated in one way or another. You can look at software, for instance, that posts to social media for you. You could even look at a place like Mills CNC that creates equipment to automate the quality control process. Your goal should be to save as much time as possible so you can use this on other things effectively. 

4. Your Staff Are Feeling Unmotivated

Good leadership is the key to motivated staff. Below are a few ways to keep your staff motivated: 

  • Work on your leadership skills, e.g. your listening and communication skills
  • Learn how to praise and recognize your staff for their hard work
  • Reward staff
  • Create a great environment and company culture
  • Don’t micromanage 

5. You Haven’t Got A Solid Marketing Plan

A solid marketing plan will help your business to gain custom and grow at a steady pace. Ideally, you won’t be doing it yourself; you’ll be allocating a portion of your budget to marketing and working with an experienced marketing team.