There’s no shortage of advice, counseling and recommendations for small business owners. It’s everywhere—and much of it is worth paying attention to. Small business owners say they become sponge-like, soaking up any and all information they can get their hands on to incorporate into mental storage, filed under “running the business.” A lot of advice is specific to certain aspects of business ownership: HR, sales and marketing are always-popular topics; everything financial is huge; and then there’s everything technology-related. It’s all valuable, but the sheer volume can be a bit overwhelming.
So wouldn’t it be helpful if somebody could cull through all these gems on behalf of over-worked business owners, and pull out a few, more general “must-do’s” to be explored—and ideally, acted upon? We thought so, too, and embarked on a search for just that. And we did come up with a few.
Fox Business’s Small Business Center says that, in view of today’s rapid pace of change, small business owners can’t rely just on what they’ve done in years past. Instead, they need to continually revise and update their general knowledge base, their core practices and tools and their overall outlook on the competitive landscape. To help you get going in the right direction, Fox suggests five things every business owner should do now.
- Join Google+. Being social media-active is a must. Google+ is good because you get the double action of improved SEO search results on Google. Many see Google+ as a top social media marketing trend in 2014 and Facebook and Twitter alone as too limiting.
- Update your disaster plan. With SuperStorm Sandy and other disasters barely in the rearview mirror, every business needs a disaster plan that addresses employees, vendors, assets, IT and insurance, among others.
- Re-think training. It’s not surprising that training isn’t usually a small business priority; there’s just too much to do, with too little time and resources. But skills, knowledge and certifications need refreshing—and some learning, at least, can be as easy as joining some webinars.
- Bone up on health care. Speaking of webinars, tap into SBA resources for helping small business owners with all things health care, including the Affordable Care Act.
- Learn everything cash-flow related. Small business fortunes and survival pivot on cash flow. So if you’re not reviewing financial statements more than monthly, reach out to your accountant for help.
But that’s not the last word in small business advice. The New Jersey Small Business Development Center (NJSBD) at Brookdale Community College, which offers all kinds of information and programs to help small business owners, suggests 10 things a business can do to be successful. Click the link to read the list in detail, but here’s a quick look (Spoiler: There’s some overlap with Fox’s look, so we must be on the right track!):
- Make everything Google friendly
- Become a cash flow expert
- Don’t stop educating yourself
- Find your niche or micro-community and be as weird or different as you need to be!
- Give hiring its due
- Build profitability into your business by making minor changes
- Mobile, mobile, mobile
- Push through the fear. (Notice that it doesn’t say ‘Be fearless.’)
- Become an expert in your niche and build your community by sharing information and advice
- Plan and strategize. There’s no substitution for articulating (and writing down) well-thought-out objectives and strategies.
There you have it—a couple of ready-made to-do lists, with do-able tasks you can start implementing now!
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