Owning a business places a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. You have customers to serve, employees to support, and vendors to pay. While running a business is often a hideously complex job, there are some essentials that will help you both manage and protect your business.
Good Communication
It’s difficult to overestimate the importance of communication in your business. Effective communication minimizes misunderstandings, which accounts for an untold number of wasted work hours every year. It keeps people focused on strategic goals, at the organizational level, and project or tactical goals at the individual level. Good communication also encourages good team building. Good teams lead to improved productivity, which is good for overall business performance.
Don’t Under-Insure
Insurance isn’t sexy. It’s usually expensive. It’s also the last thing to cut corners on. An estimated 40% of businesses simply don’t reopen after some form of disaster, often due to under-insuring in one or more areas. After all, it isn’t just the equipment or property damage, but the lost revenue from being closed. You actively lose money until you reopen, and even then there is lost momentum to overcome. Insurance is your safety net against all these problems, as well as the very real possibility of a lawsuit.
Finances
Money is the lifeblood of a business. If it’s poorly managed, or managed by people with a checkered background, it places the entire enterprise at risk. All finance staff should be vetted to ensure they’re on stable financial ground and have no significant criminal history. This limits the likelihood of employees committing fraud from the outset. A sound financial foundation is built on flawless bookkeeping, tight controls, tenant screening, and sterling accounting practices. When your finance department gives you a number, you should never have reason to doubt it.
Pick Your Niche
The temptation to try to serve everyone is almost overpowering, but you need to avoid it. No business, not even Amazon, can be everything to everyone. A successful business solves a specific problem for a specific market, at least at first. Diversification is a time-honored tradition, but learning to give superior service to a niche market teaches your business how to provide superior service to other markets.
Business owners confront pitfalls all the time, but they can avoid some of them. Good communication keeps employees on task and more productive. Sufficient insurance protects your business from disaster. The careful hiring of finance employees protects your cash flow. Picking a niche lets you focus on solving a specific problem very well. All of which serve to keep your business alive and profitable.
I hope you enjoyed this article about how to protect and mange your business with optimal effectiveness.
Interested in more articles about business management?
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Published by Michael J Schiemer
Owner of Bootstrap Business
Money - Marketing - Motivation
Digital Marketing | SEO | Social Media
Mike Schiemer Builds Better Business
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