Tag: small business

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Entrepreneurs

Tips for Moving Your Startup From Home to an Office

startup-office

When you started your company you had dreams of growth, but couldn’t actually picture them coming true. Then, they did. You experienced growth, and you brought on a few team members. You experienced more growth and saw profits start to grow. Soon, you were excited; you realized that this was it: Your startup was becoming a legitimate company.

Along with that growth and opportunity came another potentially exciting – yet stressful – endeavor: the need for office space. Suddenly your home office wasn’t cutting it; you needed a physical location with a sign out front to announce that you’ve made it. If you’re at that point, congratulations; you’ve accomplished something great. Follow the tips below to move your startup from your home to an office.

  1. Make a Plan

Like any other big step you’ve taken for your startup, moving to a physical office requires a plan. A plan ensures that you take the right steps from the beginning, that you find what you’re looking for and that everything runs smoothly, with as few surprises as possible. Your plan should include:

  • An evaluation that confirms that moving is the right decision in the first place.
  • A list of needs separated by essentials and desires.
  • Location options: Which areas would be the best fit for what you’re looking for? What do you need to be close to? How visible would you like your new office to be to the public?
  • A budget. Just because an office has everything you need doesn’t mean that you can afford it. You don’t want to stretch your budget and put your business at risk. Remember to include office necessities in your budget like furniture, new equipment and others.
  • A timeframe. When do you need to be in your new space?

Once your plan is in place, it’s time to move forward.

  1. Consider Any and All Alternatives

Even though your plan is in place, it’s best to evaluate all alternatives before making a decision and deciding it was the wrong one. In some cases, a virtual office – a location that provides a physical address through a reputable company but doesn’t actually host office space – might be a more cost-effective alternative to the more traditional office. Remove all doubt by evaluating all options from the start.

  1. Have the Right Team in Place from Day One

Even if you make 100 percent of the decisions for your company and how it moves forward, picking out office space is not a solo endeavor. Having a team in place ensures that you make the right decisions and that you can rely on the support of others to make your dream a reality. Your team members might include:

  • A Realtor. Find a Realtor that understands what you’re looking for that is familiar with office spaces.
  • A financial planner. Your planner should know where you stand and should be able to advise on your best options for finding a new space.
  • A project manager. If you need to spend the majority of your time managing your company, it’s good to have a point person to make smaller decisions and to bring larger ones to you, instead of fielding all calls alone.

Make sure that each team member provides the support you’re looking for and has a personality that you are compatible with for best results.

  1. Consider Your Goals for the Space

Today, not all offices match the “Office Space” ideal. Cubicles and corner offices are great, but that might not be what you’re looking for. Today, ideas like open concept offices are taking over, with good reason. Think about the atmosphere you hope to create in your new space and evaluate whether each office you check out has the potential to bring this to life.

  1. Make a Decision, Then Stop Looking

There’s nothing quite like a heavy dose of self-doubt. As the creator of a startup, you’re probably familiar with this concept. It’s easy to make a decision, then wonder whether or not it was truly the right one, or if you should have evaluated other options.

Your new office space is no different. It’s a big decision. Once you pick your location, it could be easy to wonder if it’s a good fit or whether you should have kept looking for something better. Put those thoughts behind you and move forward confidently. If your new space aligns with your plan and meets your budget, it’s time to look ahead.

  1. Focus on Furniture

One of the best parts of selecting a new office space is filling it with the furniture and equipment needed to take your business to the next level. Take the time to walk through your new space and to picture what each room, corner or area will be best suited for.

Need a conference room? Think about how you’d like to fill it. Going with cubicles or desks? What options will meet the needs of your employees? What about your entryway? What do you want your office guests to encounter during their first visit? Walk through all possibilities, then, equip your space accordingly. Consider working with local craftsmen to help the economy and to come up with unique, handmade options.

  1. Add Some Comfort

No one wants to work in a space that’s cold, unwelcoming or distracting. Coming up with something in between is important. Consider some of the following ways to add comfort to your office space:

  • White is no longer the go-to for office spaces. Do a little research on what each color promotes and go with the feel you’re looking for.
  • Common areas. Create a common area – near a kitchen or in a kitchen perhaps – that allows for casual conversation, coffee meetings and a true water-cooler atmosphere.
  • Quiet space. This is especially important for open offices. Giving employees a place to break away or to take private calls is critical.
  • A sound system provides a way to break up the quiet by adding music to the background of your office. This could promote focus and productivity, according to some studies.
  1. Pick Your Date

Decide when the best time to move into your space would be. Consider your current workload and schedule and plan accordingly. In most situations, it’s best to move during the evening or over a weekend to ensure that productivity isn’t negatively affected.

  1. Get Your Team Involved

Whether you currently have one employee or five, it’s important that they be involved in the move. Keep them posted with regular updates. Once you’ve chosen a space, ask for their input and allow them to make decorating decisions – within reason. The more involved your team is, the more likely they are to be as excited about the move as you are.

  1. Outline Expectations for Your New Space

A new space generally comes with new expectations. This is especially true for startups going from remote working environments to a physical location. Some of these expectations may include:

  • New schedules. When are employees expected to be at work?
  • Will you maintain a certain level of flexibility? What will that look like?
  • Will you be bringing on cleaning teams or is each employee responsible for his or her space? What other duties might be required that weren’t a question when working from home?

Moving from a home to an office is a big move for any startup. Make your move a success by implementing the tips listed above.

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Technology

Five Steps to Become a More Efficient Small Business

Technology can be a lifesaver for a small business owner, but only if you know how to use today’s top tools to spark efficiency. Communication is one area that is fast becoming critical to the success of small businesses. These suggestions are good reminders on how communication technology can shave unnecessary expenses while streamlining employee workflow:

1. Improve employee satisfaction.

Aging phone systems and slow networks can frustrate your employees and annoy your customers. In some cases, an employee might become burned out and decide to move on. To help ensure that employees are productive and satisfied, your business needs a secure, reliable, and fast network.

2. Reduce unproductive travel time.

All too often, time spent on the road is time lost. A networked phone solution that offers video calls and Web conferencing can help reduce the time and expense of traveling to offsite meetings and training sessions. Instead of spending time traveling, you can use the time to get work done with technology.

3. Make it easy to work together.

Smooth collaboration between employees, partners, suppliers, and customers is a sure-fire way to boost efficiency while also reducing costs. An intelligent network lets your business take advantage of interactive calendaring, videoconferencing, unified communications, and other technologies for easy collaboration. In fact, through May 31, small business owners can take advantage of a free trial of the Verizon Collaboration Center, which gives easy access to all of these features. Companies can register for the free trial at: http://business.verizon.net/betterway/challenge.php

4. Streamline customer communications.

Delivering fast, knowledgeable service is the best way to keep customers satisfied. Linking your network phone system to a customer relationship management (CRM) solution is a great way to enhance customer communications. When a customer calls, a pop-up window with their records appears on an employee’s IP phone screen, computer screen, or both.

5. Develop a long-term technology plan.

The process of replacing obsolete hardware can interrupt your employees and bring the office to a standstill. You can minimize such disruptions by carefully determining short- and long-term business objectives and working with your network vendor or IT professional to deploy technology that matches them.

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Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship Starting Up

Small Business Success –Avoid Letting Your Big Customer Sink Your Business

Image provided by www.2-small-business.com

Article Contributed by Jim DeLapa

A huge customer for a new small business can be both a blessing and a curse.  The positive side is more obvious—the business establishes an early recurring source of revenue. Since revenue is the lifeblood of any business, what could be wrong with that?  Nothing, if you don’t stop there.

Any new small business owner will tell you that there is never enough time to do everything he or she knows they need to do to grow their business.  In addition to fulfilling customer orders, there are personnel issues, the website and other marketing activities, and an unbelievable number of administrative tasks that must be done even if they don’t help to grow the business.

It seems perfectly logical to focus on just that one big customer when keeping up with that customer’s orders is taking all of your time.  After all, you have too much work to do now.  Why go out and look for new customers?   Wouldn’t it be better to just take care of the business you have?  The answer is ‘absolutely not.’ Don’t fall into that trap.

Of course you want to take care of your big customer.  But you cannot stop there even for a short time.  Doing so becomes a habit and a way of life for too many small business owners.  Remember, if you only have one customer, no matter how big, you don’t have a business, you have a job. Eventually it will become clear that you have no leverage and no control even over the fate of your own company.

To drive this point home, imagine that your new business gets off to a great start.  You land that big customer that everyone would want and you take care of them like no other.  Your business grows, you’re hiring people, taking on more office space, profits are strong and you’re living the American dream.  Then, after three years, they still account for 80% of your business and suddenly something changes. For any of a hundred reasons, you’re notified that your number one customer will be your customer no more.

Within 90 days, you lay off more than half your staff, take a pay cut and are negotiating with an unsympathetic landlord to take back some of the office space.  As you sit in your office alone at night with your head in your hands, you say to yourself, ‘If only we had gone after other customers when we had the chance.’   This story and this pattern are far too common among small business owners.  It leaves previously successful small business leaders feeling betrayed, humiliated and defeated.

Regardless of your success with any given customer, it is essential that you build a broad base of customers as if your business depends on it—because it does.   To ensure that your team gets behind this goal include “number of new customers” as a metric in your incentive compensation or bonus plans.  As the business owner, delegate less important tasks and stay involved in both the ‘big’ customer account and the effort to bring in new customers.

Building a small business on a diversified base of customers is a winning long term strategy.  In doing so, you’ll even out the ups and downs in revenue and profitability.  This will serve you well if you ever seek a small business loan or line of credit.  You’ll be creating a business with a higher valuation and one that delivers stability and peace of mind to its employees and owners.  Make sure your small business plan includes a commitment to building a broad base of customers.

About the Author:

Jim DeLapa is the founder of GreatBusinessPlans.com, a leading provider of small business plan assistance for current and future small business owners.  DeLapa has launched and invested in numerous successful startups and played an active role in nurturing two of those from inception through being acquired by publicly traded firms.

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Business Trends

iPhone Based Businesses for Entrepreneurs

Technology is an entrepreneur’s best friend. Today’s gadgets make it easier to stay in touch and manage your business than ever before. As e-commerce reinterprets the brick-and-mortar business as a virtual storefront, Smart phones like iPhone and Blackberry reinterpret the office as a mobile communication center. Make your smart phone a virtual office, and run your business from wherever you are.
Your Smart Phone
Think of how much more business you could get done with a personal assistant. Smart Phones can do even more. Small business owners rely on their iPhone to:
• Stay in touch with customers, anytime and anywhere using business networking tools
• Connect and collaborate with business partners. Smart Phones let you find, communicate, and share data with business partners and service providers.
• Keep an appointment calendar. Automated alerts make sure you’re on time for appointments with potential customers and sales leads. Some smart phones offer more robust apps for prioritizing and managing your tasks and to-do lists.
• Manage customer contacts. Your handheld rolodex keeps client and business colleague contact information at hand at all times.
• Manage your money online. Access Web-based interfaces to pay your bills or transfer funds among accounts. Some iPhone apps also offer expense-tracking applications to “track money in real time”: record business purchases and update financial reports instantly. This is an especially useful feature if multiple users are drawing funds from the same account.
• Manage PPC campaigns. Pay-per-click advertising campaigns call for constant oversight. Make instant adjustments to your PPC campaign via your iPhone.
• Track time spent on different projects. If you bill by the hour, this feature helps you track the time you spend on each client’s project, and create invoices and reports.
With these features right at hand, it’s easier than ever to build a profitable business with little overhead and lots of flexibility.
iPhone-Friendly Business Plans
For a business you can manage from the palm of your hand, consider these ideas:
1. Wedding Planner. Staying in touch is ninety percent of any event planner’s job. Wedding planners coordinate an army of service providers: caterers, invitation and program printers, graphic design companies, florists, entertainers, venues, and so on. An iPhone helps wedding planners act as a liaison between these players and the client.
2. Massage Therapist. Your massage therapy skills and your iPhone adds up to a business as a massage therapist. Rely on your iPhone for managing appointments and marketing your business online.
Clients can reach you anytime to set up an appointment. An automated calendar makes sure you’re in the right place at the right time.
You can reach clients by managing your online marketing services from your palm. Work with Website design and SEO services to set up a Web site for your massage business. PPC management can help get the word out to local clients searching on terms such as “Portland Oregon Shiatsu” or “Hot Stone Massage Honolulu.” Adjust your campaign via your iPhone’s wireless access.
3. Electronic Components Broker. As an independent sales broker of used computer and electronics parts, you’re a liaison between buyer and seller. You need to be in touch to locate buyers and sellers and negotiate a deal between the two parties. iPhone-Based Business Idea: Take your electronics brokerage business an extra mile by establishing a virtual marketplace. Once you set up the infrastructure for trades, this business can easily be managed via your iPhone. A Web design service can help you build a robust marketplace where sellers and buyers can connect and trade components. Armed with point-of-sale (POS) and credit card processing capability, your online marketplace offers a forum for your clients to negotiate prices and complete transactions directly.
4. Personal Financial Advisor. The financial markets won’t pause and wait for you to reach the office and log in. To keep your eye on your client’s investments, rely on your smart phone. Today’s smart phones offer more than a continuous ticker-tape report with real-time data from Wall Street. Customized reporting on investments lets you manage multiple clients’ portfolios on the go. The ability to stay connected helps you:
Respond to opportunities instantly, reaching out to investors and completing the transaction on the go.
Respond to clients instantly, providing them with real-time account information or making adjustments to their portfolio.
Your iPhone also lets you take care of administrative functions on the go, such as recording billable hours per client.
Your iPhone may prove to be your most valuable business partner. In today’s virtual world, the three pillars of a successful business are “communication, communication, communication.” Stay connected with clients, with business leads, and with information, and you’ve got a winning foundation for any business plan.

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Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship People & Relationships Starting Up

Could You Succeed as an Entrepreneur? Look for These Signs

Entrepreneurs have a knack for seeing opportunities where others don’t. If you see 2010 as a good time to start a business despite the recession, then you may have an entrepreneurial perspective. Now you need to know if you have some of the other characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.
What helps entrepreneurs these days is that virtual business models put more emphasis on talent and less on administration and infrastructure. After all, e-commerce solutions can give you an instant storefront presence and credit card processing services can handle your receivables, and SEO can give you access to online customers with a minimal up front investment.
So now all you need is the right set of skills and characteristics. Consider whether you have the following ingredients of successful entrepreneurship:
1. Talent.
You should be able to identify at least one area of ability that makes you stand out from the crowd. This can be anything: technical expertise, sales skill, marketing insight, or logistical know-how. Since small businesses are talent-driven, you have to start out with the belief that you have the raw material with which to compete and succeed. It helps if your skills happen to be in areas with growing demand, such as health care or computer technology. If you have medical knowledge or a skill such as Web design, you may have a little wind at your back.
2. A new or different perspective.
“Me-too” businesses have a tough time making a mark, especially during a weak economy. Your business should be founded on the idea that there is a better way to do things. Ideally, you should have enough experience in your chosen industry to be familiar with the normal way business is done, and to have developed some unique insights as to how that can be improved. Being able to clearly articulate a differing perspective should be central to your business plan. In turn, it should also become the vision you communicate to everyone you hire, and the selling proposition you use to pitch potential customers.
3. A business network of connections and affiliations
Experience is valuable not only for knowing how other companies do things, but also for helping you form a business network that will get your new company up and running more quickly. Remember, people–especially business-to-business customers–can be reluctant to do business with a start-up. You should have some contacts who respect you enough personally to take a chance on your new business. Of course a network of contacts can also help you identify potential investors, suppliers, and talented employees. If you need to build your network think about joining a business community of interest.
4. A war chest.
Don’t start your business venture unless you have identified sufficient funding to not only get started, but to keep your business running through the inevitable lean months at the beginning. Many businesses are forced to go under just as they would be starting to gain some momentum, simply because they underestimated the amount of time it would take for profits to start rolling in. Funding can be from your own savings, outside investors, or loans. Of course, external sources of funding are harder to come by in a recession, but you can use techniques such as virtual offices to reduce the need for this type of funding.
5. Ability to take risk.
You should start any new business with a commitment to succeed, but an acceptance of the risk involved. Entrepreneurs are often people who are willing to trade a sure thing working for someone else for even a risky chance at running their own show.
6. An eye for complementary talent.
Once you start hiring people, you should think in terms of rounding out the team rather than looking for people just like yourself. It can be a mistake to have too many would-be leaders in one organization. If you have an independent and visionary outlook, you might do well to complement that with a strong administrator who can take care of the details.
7. Persistence.
Not only does it take a long time for a new business to gain traction, but entrepreneurs often don’t succeed on their first try. As long as you have confidence in the first two items on this list–your talent and your unique perspective on the business–you should be willing to keep trying.