Starting a business is challenging, with lots of pitfalls along the way. It takes a little luck and a lot of skill. You have to take a few chances and make a few guesses. May all your guesses be right. Another thing you are going to have to get right is a proper workflow. Sometimes, you can do all the right things but in the wrong way. Over the course of the day, you lose a lot of efficiencies that will cost you a lot of time. And as everyone knows, time is money.
It is also true that money is money. You can waste a lot of it in the name of doing business. Companies often charge a lot more for things that are marketed for business because they know you care about your business. They are counting on the idea that you will not realize that you are spending a lot more money for the business thing when you could just buy the consumer equivalent for a lot less. Over the course of getting your business up and running, you are going to make a few mistakes. Don’t worry. Everyone does. That said, consider these handy shortcuts that will help you avoid some of the more costly errors:
Hold Better Meetings
Everyone agrees that work meetings are a necessary evil. Well, there is doubt about whether they are necessary. There is no doubt about the other. People who are doing something productive will make any excuse to get out of a meeting. That is because meetings take up too much time. They are boring. And they tend to cover a lot of irrelevancies that could have been covered better in an email. Come to think of it, no one is particularly fond of email, either.
However, you can improve those meetings by taking better meeting notes. If you don’t already have one, find a good meeting minutes template. This will not only help you stay on track, it will provide a good summary of everything that was said. First, when you see that summary for yourself, you will realize how much of it could have been cut out. Second, you will have a great way to catch the people up who found a clever way to get out of the meeting. The best thing you can do is hold shorter, cleaner, tighter meetings with better minutes. Once you do that, you will find that fewer people will want to ditch them.
Use a Website Builder
Do not farm out your website creation to your 16-year-old nephew who is just learning to code. It is not about the code. Lots of people can do that. It is about the skill, insight, and attention to detail that goes into building a website people will not only want to visit, but will want to spend money on while they are there. It makes more sense to use a website builder and skip the guesswork.
The key is to find the right website builder for your business. If you are not doing e-commerce, there will be plenty of features you will not need. So don’t throw money at features you might want to use later. With a website builder, you can start with something basic and add to it as your needs grow. Spend your time building and tweaking your business, not your HTML.
Business Cards
Here’s something you don’t hear every day: Go get some business cards. Some people will try to convince you that business cards are old and busted. Have you ever tried to share your contact information with a person you just met only using smartphones? That is what is old and busted. There is nothing faster and more efficient than handing a nicely designed business card. Of course they are going to lose it. But someone else will find it. And they only need to keep it long enough to call you or visit your site. That is money well spent.
Relax. It’s okay to make a few mistakes when getting your business off the ground. Everyone does. Overcome those mistakes by having better meetings, using a website builder, and handing out those business cards like it was 1999.
