As a young entrepreneur, you have it all. Energy, ideas and determination are all it takes to get things moving along. There is a potential flaw in this make-up though. There can be a tendency to rush ahead to get things done quickly and efficiently. While this is to be applauded, there are one or two areas of your business that you do not want to push along at light speed. Taking a more considered approach may save you a fortune in the future.
Taking your time in business is usually something we cannot afford to do. If we stop to smell the flowers, someone else in the race to the top will overtake us. Time is money to us, and we must make every second count. Maximizing opportunities usually requires us to jump in feet first and work our backsides off to make it happen for us. We are forever aware of our competitors breathing down our necks and the clock ticking on our industry before the next big change happens.
Have you ever heard the term ‘sleep on it’ before? It refers to decision making. When we have a big decision to make, and our hearts and minds cannot entirely agree with each other, we sleep on it. Sleep allows the brain to analyse everything our ears heard, and our eyes saw that maybe we weren’t even fully aware of. It files it away appropriately and allows you to come up with the best action based on a fuller understanding of the facts. If you do not sleep well, this process cannot happen. The trouble for most entrepreneurs is that our brains are constantly buzzing twenty-four hours a day with ideas and solutions we want to explore. Good sleep rarely happens for us.
With no quality sleep allowing our natural decision-making facilities to work in our favor, we may need to enlist the advice of someone else. For example, if you need to commit to the design and layout of your new office space, it affects too many people for you to make a snap decision. Pick the wrong design and you will have to correct it in the future, at cost to the business. Fail to think of how the needs of the business will change every year, and you may well outgrow your space, wasting everything you are investing right now.
Interior design for your office, like so many other parts of your business, is something you must delegate. Talk to a third party specialist or look at having a Saracen office fit out to get the changes right for the long haul. The impression your office gives to your clients, your staff and your business partners will affect the success or failure of your business. You must give the impression of success and professionalism, and the facilities must be comfortable and effective.
Other areas of your business that you may choose to allow others to help you with may include marketing and advertising. This crucial area of your business has never been so vast, or so highly specialised. Most entrepreneurs understand very well how to market their business. But the daily grind of campaign management and reporting can interfere with your ability to brainstorm the next big idea. Social media in particular require careful monitoring, tweaking and adjusting. You want to get the right response, results and effects you are looking for. This is incredibly time-consuming, and should be outsourced to a company who are effective in marketing management and top level reporting.
Recruitment and staff management is another area that requires a gentle hand with lots of time and patience that is rare to find in an entrepreneur. Pick an HR officer or outsource to a recruitment agency. They should be responsible for writing up job specifications. Managing job advertisements and recruitment compliance is a long-winded administrative task. It requires someone who is very knowledgeable and formally trained in employment law to manage. Interviewing and testing candidates is also time consuming and should be done by more than one person to ensure a balanced view. If you like to get involved with this part of the recruitment process, try sitting in on the interview rather than participating. This frees up your thinking time when it comes to considering a candidate.
Sometimes it is necessary to upgrade IT or communications facilities within your business. The technologies of today may be a far cry from when you first started out. If this isn’t your area of expertise, it is highly advisable to contact a specialist firm to help you choose the systems you require and manage its installation. You will also need somebody on site trained to deal with every little hiccup from jammed printers to computer viruses.
An IT policy is common in today’s workplaces. This policy determines what is and isn’t acceptable for your employees to do on your computer system. If you are keen to reduce wasted man-hours, you may impose a complete ban on FaceBook and other social media. Other employers suggest it is OK during breaks. How are you going to monitor what your employees are viewing? If they are using your system to participate in illegal activities, could you be liable?
Stock control is another area of the business that requires some time-consuming and in-depth analysis. You may be the kind of person that excels at improving efficiencies and coming up with great ideas. Staring at sheets of data can crush your imagination and it can feel quite soul destroying. You need to have the right people around you how can interpret data and understand the general marketplace of your industry. These people are not easy to find, so this too may be a role you wish to outsource. Alternatively, you may offer the position as a work-from-home opportunity to cast a wider net on the country’s human resources.
There are lots of roles within any business that specialists may be required to fulfill. Recruiting from farther afield may help you find the right people at the right price.
