Ch. 15 of the Comprehensive Checklist for Growing Your Business: Take time off

You’ve gotten this far into your business - congrats! Let’s take a moment to reflect where it all began. Remember when you thought, “If I start a business, I could avoid the 9 to 5 typical job!” But then, you quickly realized that it was a 24-hour job and you had to stretch your expertise in areas you never thought you needed? During those *precious* moments of scarfing down food in the car, or putting on the same clothes as yesterday because you don’t have time to do laundry, did you ever feel a glimpse of hope that this madness would calm itself down? You can stop the hamster wheel and achieve the freedom you deserve.

Let go of control and put the systems, processes, and people in place that you can trust to run your business without you. Always consider upgrades you can do in your business’ operations that will save time and money. Is it automating your processes? Shifting responsibilities to people with strength in that particular area or perhaps utilizing technology that saves countless labor hours and dollars? These are critical questions and a state of mind that a skilled business owner would always consider. What if something happened to you? Would your business still survive?

Write down your goals for 2016. What do you want your business and more importantly, your life, to look like? Life is short. Do everything you can to make the most out of it now. It may not happen in one night, but take the necessary steps to put your business on autopilot so that you can take a vacation and get paid while you’re not working. You may be burned out, but keep dreaming big and keep taking the steps to move towards your ultimate goal.

By now, if you've read every chapter of the comprehensive checklist, your business should be in a place where you can sit back and watch it run itself. If you’ve signed up to use Handlr, you can have a bird’s eye view of your business in action from anywhere in the world. Book that plane ticket, and experience life that you’ve worked so hard for. And give yourself a pat on the back! It takes guts, will, and fierce determination to be an entrepreneur. Here's to a bigger, better business!

Ch. 14 of the Comprehensive Checklist for Growing Your Business: Preparing the Army

Putting your business in the forefront of your network will give you the exposure your business needs to reach its potential. If you’re a mobile business ready to scale, Handlr will do that and more. However, some questions must be answered before you make the jump. Are you mentally ready for growth? Do you have enough team members to support all of these new customers? Here are some great starting points if you’re looking to bulk up the size of your company.

Hiring a Bigger Team

• Ask for referrals. Sometimes, the best workers come from a friend of a friend that knows the person on a closer level. These referrals can vouch for a person’s character and give you more insight to what he/she is like versus sifting through a stack of applications.

• Use your resources. If your referrals don’t seem promising, it’s okay to turn to Craigslist, Indeed, LinkedIn or ZipRecruiter to find new team members. Some best practices include asking specific questions relevant to the job responsibilities and requiring a cover letter to discover the perfect candidates.

• Dig deeper. Once you weed out a majority of the candidates, ask for more detailed information in an email and then seal it in by scheduling a phone interview. Once they have passed the phone interview, meet in-person. Just remember, it’s good to have options so don’t be in a rush to hire the first good candidate you come across. Go through all the possible candidates, take your time in getting to know them and invest in a highly skilled team member who’s willing to stay long-term.

• The nitty gritty. Run a background check on your new hire. It’s a necessity now these days with the job market. Too many candidates make false claims of themselves that could backfire against your business. Depending on your business type, if the team member is required to drive a car for their duties, it’s wise to get a driving record check to make sure that you are hiring someone with a clean record. We like using Checkr to perform all of these tasks.

Now, what?

Paperwork first! If they are an employee, make sure that they read and agree to your Employee Handbook and don’t forget to give them their W-4 form. If they are an independent contractor, be sure to give them their Independent Contractor Agreement and a W-9 Form to fill out.

Update your bookkeeper about your new hires and add them to payroll. You can also use platforms like Zenefits to keep hiring streamlined and easy.

“The most important thing you can do to make your new team member feel welcome is to have them build authentic, personal relationships with other members of your team.”

— Matt Stjernholm, ReWork Blog

When hiring a new person to join your team, invest a great amount of time to fully train them. Ride along with them for at least one week and then have them ride along with a few of your other team members. This ensures that they get a fully immersive training experience. Setting up a buddy system is setting up them up for success. New hires need resources to turn to when they don’t know what to do or if they have questions.

Ch. 8 of the Comprehensive Guideline for Growing Your Business: Marketing & CRM

It’s a challenging game of choosing which avenues will work best for your business but as a general rule of thumb, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Marketing should be an integrated mix of efforts that will eventually increase your brand recognition and customer awareness.

The 7 touch theory states that your consumer should hear or see your marketing efforts at least 7 times before they make a purchasing decision. This means that your marketing message should be consistent and repetitive across all your chosen platforms. Here are 7 suggested touches to keep in touch with your audience.

1. Direct Mail campaigns – make your content engaging and most importantly, relevant to your customer. It’s a complete waste of time to construct an email full of content to have it go straight into spam.

2. Email Campaigns – keep in touch with regular newsletters with what’s going on with your business and news from your industry. Let your customers know that you are knowledgeable and trustworthy. And as a best practice tip, create a simple call-to-action. Do you want your customer to call, sign-up, download, or come in? Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want!

3. Social media – research and find out where your customers are online. It’s also a game of fine-tuning what works best for your business. For example, Facebook and LinkedIn are platforms that are information oriented and article driven. On the other hand, Instagram is all about dreamy pictures and visually strong images that quickly capture your audience’s attention. So, if your business is selling medical equipment, using Instagram is a platform.

4. Telephone follow-up – Cold calling is one hard task to check off. Often times, people don’t answer the phone, you’re mostly spending your time talking to a voicemail, or you’re getting a straight up hang up. Give context to your prospects. They are more than likely to respond to your calls when they know what you’re talking about or can recall your brand! Sending them literature via e-mail, or handing out marketing materials at events are great actions to take before going straight to the phone.

5. Community Outreach – get out there, build connections and get noticed! Sponsor a local baseball game, organize a beach clean up, or host a networking event with other strong and like minded organizations in your area.

6. Speaking engagements – speaking at workshops or industry related events builds credibility and trust with your customers.

7. Print Materials - build on top of your face-to-face contact within your community and leave a stronger impression by giving them take away content. Whether it's a brochure or a simple business card, your prospects can refer to these later on when they need more information. You can hand these out at local fairs, expos, and business/industry events. 

For the full 2016 Comprehensive Checklist, visit here.

Ch. 3 of the Comprehensive Guide for Growing Your Business: Guidelines

Why Guidelines?

Guidelines are crucial to maintaining consistency and excellence in your business. McDonald’s and every other franchise of the world have detailed guidelines and protocols in place to ensure that services are performed the same way, every time. Employee Handbooks and Business Guidelines (even if it’s just for yourself) are important to make sure that your business can run without you and that quality is guaranteed every time.

Guidelines are there to set the company’s tone that you see perfect for your business. It explains the core mission/standards of your business and covers all aspects of your business you can dream of, going beyond the protocols. From team member benefits, team member work behavior, or the specific conditions of what constitutes an absence, tardy, write-up, citation, or termination. It’s a great resource/reference to have for you and your team in uncertain situations.

Read the E-Myth and the 4-Hour Work Week to change your life as a business owner.

Gerber offers insightful strategies and tactics to conquer having your dream business. He walks you through the cycle of a business, from, “entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective” (Amazon). The E-Myth is considered mandatory reading from us for anyone looking to start a small business.

4-Hour Work Week

From an entrepreneur himself, Timothy Ferriss shares a common problem all entrepreneur encounters. The work overload and no life balance what so ever. He introduces a new acronym, (also the names of the chapters): DEAL (Definition, Elimination, Automation, and Liberation). It’s so easy to get caught up on the hamster wheel and before you know it, running a business means working day in and out endlessly. Read the 4-hour workweek and seek the balance you want in your live/work life.

It’s a Bonsai Tree Thing

If you already have your guidelines in place, be sure to revisit them and update/edit any changes once in awhile. Owning a business is a constant learning process and as you grow, your guidelines should become more detailed and fine-tuned as your business changes.