The idea of starting a business is overwhelming. Doing a few approachable things will make the overall process easier for budding entrepreneurs one step at a time. Shifting your perspective from failure to the great opportunities that lie in front of you is important. Below are some ways you can try to achieve better growth at the start of your business journey.
Eric Dalius Explains How to Market Your Business Effectively
A business’s success contributes to the continuous effort of building, attracting, and educating the target audience. Understanding the prime factors of search engine optimization is essential to attract the right target audience on the basis of search results. You can also use social media by promoting your offerings. You can leverage various social media sites, including Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, among others. You can engage in content marketing by investing in guest articles for similar websites. Also, issue press releases for the significant events in your company. In conclusion, the network continually achieves results.
Another aspect of marketing a business effectively includes profiling the right target market. Segmenting the potential customers based on specific market characteristics will aid in focused marketing efforts.
Supplementing the Team
Early stages of a startup call for restricted income and expenses. Spending correctly is crucial at this stage. A small employee team is better to minimize the costs. However, startups initially have much work in progress and need ample employees to complete work in time. In light of this, you can supplement your team by hiring part-time freelancers and consultants. Such a strategy will avoid pressure on your employees and lower any employee benefits payments.
Getting Hold of the Right Business Lawyer
Startups usually hire inexperienced lawyers to save on expenses. Instead of spending on reputed and reliable legal counsel, budding entrepreneurs will mostly choose those with low fees or large discounts. Doing this, the entrepreneur denies themselves the professional lawyer’s advice. An experienced attorney can help to solve the legal issues effectively. Consider researching for many competent lawyers before you settle for one. Determine their experience in the field of corporate law. Several areas of legalities that you can ask the lawyer include:
- The corporation or commercial law.
- Securities law.
- Employment law.
- Tax laws.
- Contract law.
- Franchise laws.
- Intellectual property laws.
- Legal norms related to venture capitals and angel investors.
All such areas relate to businesses. However, the lawyer does not need to have thorough experience in all these fields as individual subjects farm to the specialized lawyer and law firms. Nevertheless, choosing a law firm that can provide you advice related to all legal subjects’ sub-types is a wise choice.
Eric Dalius suggests you can fetch for a competent lawyer or law firm by seeking business acquaintances and friends’ recommendations. Also, one reliable way is to use the services of a state bar office. They mostly have referral services, and you get to know all the necessary details of the certified lawyers in your locality. With advancements in technology, you can also conduct an online search.
Paying Attention to Taxes
The critical tax issues that an entrepreneur needs to consider are as follows:
- The choice of the legal entity is vital. You can choose a flow-through entity that allows businesses to flow through to the shareholders to use their tax returns.
- Collecting sales tax on the sale of the products is es sential as failure to do so can attract legal consequences.
- Stock option problems.
- Tax incentives.
- Qualified business stock.
Your Employees are Assets
Employees are assets to the business, which is why hiring the staff is of paramount importance. Before you recruit the team, consider the following elements:
- Analyze their previous experience and relevancy to your business.
- A proper background search.
- Make sure all the cofounders interview the candidates. Also, if you have a management team ready, you can conduct a panel interview to understand if the candidate will culturally fit into your organization.
- Check their academic credentials.
- Seek references from previous companies and ask for the conduct of the candidate. Also, inquire about the strengths, weaknesses, and any issues related to the applicant’s absenteeism or punctuality. Moreover, it is vital that you conduct reference checks with people who are not on the applicant’s reference list.
- Ensure that the employee signs a well-drafted employment-at-will letter.
- Clarity regarding the job titles and the expectations of the employee.
- Verification of the starting and ending salaries.
- A thorough inquiry about the reason the applicant left the prior job.
Confidentiality and Invention Assignment Agreements
To protect the company’s proprietary data, one has to make sure that the consultants and the employees sign a confidentiality agreement. The invention assignment agreements also deal with the ideas, inventions, and work products belonging to the business and not the consultants and employees.
Investors and venture capitalists mostly expect startups to see that the employees and other such stakeholders have signed such agreements. If your startup decided to merge in the future, the opposite party’s diligence team would look for such contracts.
Get Ready for Challenges
As you commence your business, you will face immense challenges. The key is to stay calm and face challenges with expertise, knowledge, and logic. Some of the well-known areas entrepreneurs face problems include:
- Developing an ideal product or service.
- Creating a healthy business plan.
- Lack of cash flow and capital.
- Not employing resourceful employees.
- Continuous rejections by customers and partners, leading to disappointment to the whole company.
- Managing the time effectively to complete all tasks within a deadline.
- Uphold a reasonable work-life balance.
- Possessing a strategy but not knowing when to pivot it.
Bridging the gap between planning and executing is essential to obtain excellent results. Whether you plan to start a side hustle or dive into the business wholly, intentionality matters a great deal to get positive results. When you start a business to gain long term success from the start, you will align your mindset to get-go and achieve your vision. Continuous efforts and internal strategy modification will lead you faster towards your goals.
The post Eric Dalius’ Guide on Critical Business Elements an Entrepreneur Must Know appeared first on Evertise.