When you’re running a business, it’s much more than a full time job. Especially in the early days, when your team is small, you’re not just the founder and CEO. You’re also the head of HR, manager at every level, IT support and janitor into the bargain.
As your company grows and the roster fills out, you can delegate more, and specialists can take on jobs like administering leave, sick days and payroll, while you focus on high level decision making. Of course, many founders find themselves nostalgic for those intense early days and often move on when things become too fixed and corporate to found their next venture.
To make things bearable whether you’re a serial founder or this is your first business, we’re offering a few lifehacks to cut the stress and make your days a little easier.
Getting the Research Done
One of the most important things you can do is research to ensure you’re targeting the right people. Your products, your advertising, your sales pitches all need to be tuned to hit the right audience in order to have the right effect, otherwise you’ll be wasting time and money talking to your customers in a language they don’t understand.
One way to get useful information quickly is to add some questions to an omnibus survey. These are large market research surveys that go out to broad audiences containing demographic questions, and then questions paid for by a multitude of business. Pay to add your questions, and you don’t just get your answers, you get access to the demographic data too, which lets you start building a profile of your audience at the minimum cost!
The Power of Friendship
If you’re a small, local business, you need to start making friends with other local businesses. You don’t have the heft of a large corporation alone, but together you might be able to achieve a lot more.
The benefits of getting together with your fellow business owners are manifold. To begin with, this gives you a much more persuasive voice if you’re lobbying for change – say to mitigate roadworks that would close the high street you trade on.
What it also allows are some great reciprocal marketing ideas. If you partner with local business to refer customers to each other, by offering discounts to a customer who shops with another business in town, you make life better for everyone, and capture new consumers!
