Whilst this blog will assist new owners, I believe existing business owners may benefit from the blog, depending on what stage your business is at, remembering SGH Business works with businesses who have been in operation 1-5 years.
I want to suggest to business owners that during their business times, they consider becoming a Proactive Business Owner rather than a Reactive Business owner. What do I mean?
A Reactive Business owner will wait until something goes wrong, they will wait until they experience problems, e.g. a late payer, machinery breaks down, before they seek help, or find information about who can help them, a reactive Business owner, will have a list of people who can assist them should something go from , before it goes wrong. they may have spoken with a good Accountant, Bookkeeper, Mentor/ Coach about what to do should they have a late payer etc.
My tip is, although this should be considered already, however, if you have not then now is the time to consider speaking with a Mentor, Coach, Advisor, maybe your Accountant or someone who you can sit down with to find out what support assistance is out there which can help your Business, for example, do you know the term Virtual Assistant, do you understand the difference between an Australian Virtual Assistant ( VA) and a offshore VA?
Possibly speak with your trusted person, and ask them what sort of problems have they ever experienced within their Business, or you can consult with someone to come in and perform a Holistic approach Risk Assessment of your business, learning more about your Business and understanding what can go wrong with your business.
Once you understand the type of issues which can occur within a Business, and some you would not have thought about, you can then work out to deal with the issues, or how to minimize each of the issues actually happening in your business.
For example, at times you have late payers, because of your lack of terms and conditions, eg. do they give payment terms, do they ensure everyone understands who is responsible for what, do they mention penalties for late payment, it might be as simple as ensuring your Terms and Conditions are adequate- at times you might get the odd late payer, and some of this is just with the client you choose to do business with. In the early days, it is difficult to say no to too many potential clients as you need the money.
Another example is if you offer online purchasing for your business, and therefore you need to rely on a postal/courier service to ensure your items arrive at your customer in time and in good order. If during the set up of your Business, you research the couriers in the area, and then you can choose the most suitable one, however, it also allows you to keep a list of others in the area, so if your chosen one did not work out there is another one to go to, as you already know about them. Although you might choose to try out a couple of Courier services, to ensure your products arrive on time.
The important thing is to set your business up adequately either from the start, or as soon you possibly can, the better your Business is set up for success, the better your business will be. However, it does not have to cost you a fortune, as you can do a lot of work yourself with some support from a mentor, coach, advisor who can guide you through the process.
Remembering starting a business with basically nothing in the bank is a very difficult thing to do, whilst some people have done it, and at times it might relate to your current assets, and what industry you start in, however the majority of times you will need money in the bank to start with, whether it is for the support you need, licenses, business/company name registration, marketing, networking, website, facebook advertising etc, always going to be a small cost to get your name out there the quicker the better.
Having good policy, Procedures, Processes, structures, systems in place as early as possible can only help your business to succeed, and can help with reducing the chances of something going wrong, or at least the chances of something going wrong has been minimized to reduce the impact on your business, remember not every risk can be eliminated so it never happens, but the quicker you can react to it the better.
Remember better to be Proactive than Reactive- don’t wait until you have a problem to have the solution on your mind already.
