Becoming an entrepreneur can be a difficult task in an intensely competitive marketplace. While market intelligence and consultation can point you in the right direction, it takes strategic use of your time and resources to make an impact. For new entrepreneurs, try these strategies to ensure your time is spent wisely in your first venture.
Don’t Quit Your Day Job Just Yet
We’re living in the Great Resignation. If you’re starting a new business, it can be tempting to leave your day job in the dust. However, it’s important to remember your business will likely operate at a loss in the beginning.
If you don’t have investors, keeping that day job can be a crucial source of revenue that covers your core personal expenses, so you can put all your revenue back in until you reach profitability.
Pick a Suitable Niche
New business owners often start going down the path of diversifying their company by offering multiple services to attract more clients. However, as tempting as it might sound, early diversification will reduce focus. This makes it harder to not only perfect your offerings, but also market yourself to potential clients.
Instead, boil your business down to a core product or service and carve out market share from there. Make sure your niche is something you can best tackle; a need in your target market that the big guys don’t meet.
Make SMART Goals
Setting goals is a necessary task to ensure your business is progressing the way you want it to. New business owners often make the mistake of setting nebulous, ineffective goals. When you’re writing your goals, make sure they’re SMART: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-Sensitive.
- Specific: Clear and focused, so you can easily tell if they’ve been met or not.
- Measurable: Can be backed by data, rather than subjective opinion.
- Actionable: Goals that you can take action towards, that aren’t subject to the whims of the environment around you.
- Realistic: Can be achieved if your business progresses the way you anticipate it to.
- Time-Sensitive: Goals need a deadline for accountability. Without a time barrier, you can always push a goal back, and lack the parameters to set a plan in motion.
For example, if you want to increase revenue, set a goal to earn a specific average monthly gross by the end of the year. Along with setting the goal, decide on tactics to boost monthly revenue, such as customer acquisition, online marketing campaigns, or floor decals in your retail store. Finally, formulate a plan with reasonable action steps to integrate these tactics over the year.
Outsource Maintenance Tasks
When you have a small team, it’s important to keep your staff focused on the core of your business. If your employees devote most of their time to maintenance tasks, you waste human resources.
If you have the resources, time-consuming tasks such as marketing and bookkeeping can be easily outsourced to a reliable company. This ensures a professional result while keeping your team focused on the heart of your company. Need a quick solution to marketing materials? Check out our listing of custom banners.
Be Careful Hiring Friends and Family
When starting a new business, it’s tempting to hire friends and family who’ll have a personal connection to your venture. However, personal connections can cause perceptions of favoritism from other hires and bring business troubles back home with you.
Therefore, make sure you evaluate the qualifications of any personal connections the same as you would any other candidate. Delineate that, when everyone clocks in, they’ll be treated the same as everyone else. And only hire individuals who can handle that professional attitude.
Utilize Productivity Tools
Time is money, and time is limited. Invest in tools that will help you boost productivity and maximize the time you’re investing in your business. Along with organizers and planning software, department focused tools such as Hootsuite can give clear platforms for managing specific areas of your business.
When investing in any productivity tool, make sure you have a plan for integration and on-boarding, so your tools don’t become a pile of wasted resources.
Stay Focused and Avoid Distractions
New business owners often have high expectations, but have trouble taking on the new responsibilities a business requires. Being your own boss comes with freedom, but it also requires policing your own work and holding yourself accountable.
An important step is to create a focused work environment to take those personal distractions out of the picture. Work from an area where you can make sure your office hours are honored. Set blocks of time for your office hours to utilize your own time more effectively. Likewise, find your best workflow through the day; starting the day with your hardest tasks and ending with the most automatic.
It’s A Marathon, Not A Sprint
While maintaining focus on your business is key to success, being an effective business owner also requires time to recharge and destress. Don’t be afraid to say no to a meeting or project that won’t move your needle. Likewise, make sure you budget time for yourself. Burning out as an employee requires a vacation; burning out as a business owner can threaten the whole operation.
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