Issue 33

I s s ue33•Ma r c h/ Apr i l 2019

bus i ne s spa r t ne r t hema ga z i nef ors ma l l bus i ne s sowne r s

www. bus i ne s s pa r t ne r ma ga z i ne . c om

Cont e nt s 0 2 MessagefromtheEditor 0 3 TopReasonstoBringonaBusinessPartnerin2019 0 5 TheRealCostofITDoneBadly 0 7 PreparingtoSucceedwithaYogaBusiness 0 9 HowDoYouStayRelevantasaBusinessin2019?

1 1 6TypesofPresentaonStyles:WhichOneDoYouFallInto?

1 3 4StrategiestoBalanceEfficiencyandEmployeeSasfacon 1 7 MarkengStrategiesforBusinessesThatNeverFail

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Wi t hs oma nyf a c t or sbe i nga tpl a yi nt he s ebus i ne s sf a i l ur e s , y ou ha v et ok e e pa s k i ng“ Howdoy ous t a yr e l e v a nta sabus i ne s s ? ” S houl dy oubr i ngonabus i ne s spa r t ne r ?I si t met or e v i e wy our ma r k e ngs t r a t e g i e s ?Ar epr oc e s s e se ffic i e nt ?Ar ey our e mpl oy e e sha ppy ?I st het e c hnol og yy oua r eus i ngoutofda t e ?

Y ouc a nfinda ns we r st ot he s eque sonsi nt hi si s s ue .

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T hev i e wsr e fle c t e ddonot ne c e s s a r i l yr e fle c tt hev i e ws a ndopi ni onsoft hee di t or .

Whi l s ti ti st e mp ngt ohol doffi mpl e me n ngc ha ng e sun l we k nowwha ti sha ppe ni ngwi t hBr e x i tt ha ti sada ng e r oust hi ngt o do.

I tma yt he nbet ool a t e .

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T oy ours uc c e s s , S a ndr a

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Top Reasons to Bring on a Business Partner in 2019 Starting a business seems to be on everyone’s mind, especially with a new year just starting. Being a business owner represents possibility and adventure, the chance to get to know oneself and build something of value. But a burning question that always seems to come up for aspiring entrepreneurs is whether they should go into business by themselves or start a company with someone else. And for those who have already taken the plunge into entrepreneurship, wondering whether they should add to the executive

team is always a question in the back of their minds, especially when things get hard. We’ve put together some things to consider when thinking about whether or not to take on a business partner in 2019.

You Lack Skills, Even if You Don’t Want to Admit It Here’s the thing, no matter how good you are at running your business, or how good you think you might be if you are just starting out, there is always room for improvement. So whether you want to

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admit it or not, having someone to bounce ideas off of and to bring other skills to the table is worth your time and energy to find. Having a business partner means you can focus on the tasks that you are good at and don’t have to be bogged down by the ones that are a struggle for you. Interview potential business partners like you were trying to fill a particular role in your company - because you are! - and look for people who are able to fill in the gaps in your skillset. So often aspiring entrepreneurs want to start businesses with friends or family members but if those friends or family members don’t have the required skill set, well, frankly, you’ll always be behind the curve.

Your Business Partner Can Expand Your Vision for the Business Bringing on a business partner means you don’t have to figure out the details of your business alone. This can be very beneficial because you don’t have to do all the brainstorming and thinking all of the time.

What’s more, a business partner can frankly shoot holes in your ideas without getting offended by them - hopefully! and you can benefit from the opportunity to have the other side of the argument presented to you at all times. What’s more, it’s great to have someone who truly believes in what you are doing and is willing to invest time and money into it.

It’s a real boost for morale when you have someone in your corner and can share the wins with them on a regular basis. A business partner might also be able to see opportunity where you don’t or can’t.

Sometimes, business owners are so blinded by the task at hand that they can’t see what is right in front of them.

You Can Split the Costs of Doing Business Bringing on a business partner can help you reduce the costs of doing business from the start. Your business partner should be willing to invest cash or in-kind time and equipment into the startup venture and they can tap into their network for additional funding assistance as well. If you are just starting out, splitting the cost of an office or even a co-working space is a lot easier on the bottom line than trying to take on the expenses of running a business on your own. And if you’ve never run a business before, we can tell you that the expenses add up quickly. You’ll spend money on things you never thought you’d spend money on. So having someone in your corner, and who can help fill your pockets with money to start your venture is not a bad thing at all. Have frank and open discussions about how to spend the money and where to invest it in the business and ensure you have lawyers draw up contracts to make it all legal and you’ll be good to go.

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The Real Cost of IT Done Badly The successes and failures of day-to-day work depends much less on the productivity of the individual employee, nowadays, and a lot more on the tech tools they have at hand. Businesses that go “bare bones” with their IT often find themselves paying the cost for not investing in more effective, efficient solutions. Here, we’re going to look at where that cost can come from.

Time lost to tech troubles You think you might be saving money by refusing to invest in new technology equipment for your team, but that’s not likely to be the case. The older a machine and the more wear and tear it has suffered, the more likely it is to lag, freeze, or break down entirely. Not only will you eventually have to end up paying to replace it, but

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you’re also paying for the hours lost to downtime over the year. Not only are you paying in the money you’re paying an employee that is no longer able to work, you’re paying in the frustration that will build amongst the team, too.

Overpaid and underworked staff Solid IT support is needed for teams of all sizes. If they’re using digital technology, they need support to help streamline the systems, fix the problems that pop up, and build infrastructure that makes for better resource sharing and communication. But if you don’t have a large enough team, hiring a team in-house can cost you a lot more.

Firms like this IT consulting company called Mustard IT help improve your ROI due to their as-you-need-it services. By hiring inhouse, you could be paying more to employ a person (or people) who spend the majority of the day not working, simply because they’re not needed (until they are), while outsourced IT services cost less in order to be there when you need them but to not drain your finances when you don’t.

Losing a lot more than your data If you look at some of the most infamous data breaches from Tech World, a common recurring theme is how much trouble the businesses got into following those

breaches. Not only does it cost money to plug up the hole, but it costs the trust of your customer base, and potentially legal fees if you were found to be negligent in protecting customer data. Most businesses that suffer a breach go down within 2 years, so security is not something to skimp on.

Take out the tech you don’t need Just as bad as paying too little for the tools you do need is paying too much for the tools you don’t need (as much). If they are not critical to the most common work processes of the team, instead of signing up for expensive enterprise packages, you should look at using more free and opensource software to help reduce the costs, that you can then invest into better software tools for those processes that matter most.

If you want to make sure that you’re getting a good ROI out of your tech investments, you need to look at what your team needs specifically from the tools that they’re provided. Whether it’s the infrastructure to support a larger team, or the outsourced support to ensure you don’t have to hire overworked and underpaid employees.

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Preparing to Succeed with a Yoga Business When coming up with a solid idea for starting a business, there are two considerations you should make in tandem.

Firstly, are you equipped to run the business in a particular field and, secondly, can you make money from it? A yoga business, for example, can be incredibly lucrative if you know what you’re doing when it comes to running it. You’ll need a head for yoga and a firm grasp of the techniques and manoeuvres involved. But you’ll also need to know how to run a business and how to make the most of the boom in yoga. In fact, the statistics show that the number of yoga practitioners grew by 50% between 2012 and 2016 – and, while one in three has tried yoga, we are spending $16 billion on classes, clothing, and equipment per year.

So, you have a concept and you have the necessary abilities to lead a yoga practice but what else do you need to consider?

Marketing Most people know what marketing is but not everyone can do it. From your website and digital presence to lead generation through traditional advertising, online ads, PR stories, and exhibitions, marketing involves any activity that tries to drum up business. You might have a yoga studio and a well-planned class but, without a good marketing front, you might not have any customers. Word of mouth marketing is one of the best ways in which yoga companies can bring in new customers.

Simple activities such as promotions that involve bringing a friend for a discount or sharing a post about keeping fit on social media can pay dividends. Integrating yourself into the lifestyle of a busy group – such as a gaggle of parents – could end up creating a snowball effect to spin your business into gold.

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Insurance Yoga may be a business that is easy to get off the ground, provided you have the premises to conduct classes or one-on-one sessions and prior knowledge of the moves, but there are stumbling blocks that could put you out of action. While yoga is largely sedentary, there are elements that can cause injury or accidents, which could land you, as a business practitioner, in hot water.

Ensuring you have the correct yoga insurance for running such a business can give you peace of mind and provide a safety net should anything go awry. This is especially important for early businesses who may have invested a greater amount of money into the business than you would have been paid out yet.

Growth One issue that some face with an exercisebased business is that there is little room for growth. Aside from franchising or moving to bigger premises, you are often

held down by the fact that you have a set number of hours and a set place of business, making fast growth difficult.

Instead, growth comes from the supplementary activities you present. Most gyms, for instance, also feature protein supplements, exercise clothing, and the latest classes on offer. As a yoga expert, you should be on the cusp of anything supplementary that you could upsell to turn your yoga business into a healthy lifestyle business. For example, the growing rise in veganism pairs well with the theories of yoga.

A yoga business can be a wonderful way to flex your business knowledge while doing something you’re passionate about. The lightweight nature of setting the business up means that you have more time and energy to focus on marketing your business, getting the right insurances in place, and also having a future plan for growth ready.

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How Do You Stay Relevant as a Business in 2019?

By Malik Muhammad One of the major reasons why Sears, the US Company, filed for bankruptcy in October 2018 was that people no longer wanted to shop there. After 125 years it became clear that times and shopping habits had changed and reducing sales of $53billion to $16.7billion between 2006 and 2017 (paywall) confirmed this change.

Small to medium sized businesses do not generate such sales figures but the need to maintain and improve market share is certainly relatable. Reducing your cost

price and improving your profit margin impacts your business growth in the long term. Awareness of trends that influence legislation may also affect the relevance of your business.

An example of this is a growing concern in the UK over childhood obesity that resulted in the government imposing a tax on soft drinks which came into effect from April 6, 2018. The tax was announced as far back as March 2016 and has resulted in over 50% of manufacturers reducing the sugar

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content of their drinks equating to an estimated 45 million kilograms of sugar on a yearly basis (gov.uk).

An estimated £240million per year will be collected from soft drink manufacturers who fail to reformulate. The trend toward healthier living as seen in television cookery programmes, online advertising and on talk shows encourages people to seek healthier options. Seeking healthier options includes soft drinks so UK manufacturers are best advised to adapt if they want to stay connected to a more informed (potential) customer base.

Three of the largest online websites are Alibaba (since 2003) eBay (since 1995) and Amazon (also since 1995). Between them they are revolutionising how people shop. It’s difficult to be in business without offering an opportunity for customers to enjoy the online shopping experience.

The bankruptcy filing by Sears supports the notion that you can never become complacent with your level of growth or market share. The UK ‘sugar tax’ is an example of why you must respond to governmental detectives based on lifestyle changes by those who may choose to use your product or service. Online shopping

gives people options. They don’t have to come to you, they choose to come to you and each time they come should be a pleasurable interaction with any complaints handled in swift and reasonable manner.

You can stay relevant by: 1. Reviewing your entire online presence.

2. Be in tune with current affairs, market

trends and government legislation.

3. Invest in your personal development

and that of each member of your team 4. Assess your unit costs and profit

margin. Scrutinise the figures on a regular basis.

5. Analyse your mission statement to

remember why you are in business.

Celebrate the ‘small wins’ and remain committed to your process.

6. Anticipate, monitor and immediately

respond to shifts in your industry or market.

7. Be aware of your competitors and any

new comers in your field of selling.

Develop strategies that highlight your brand and emphasise the benefit to the customer of engaging with your business.

About the Author Malik Muhammad was raised and educated in Jamaica, read law in London and the author of ‘Empower Yourself to Succeed’. He created The Empowerment Mastery System to influence, help and inspire businesses to cultivate their visions in a specific time frame. Malik enjoys vegan cooking and quad biking. He is an after dinner speaker, event host and convenes empowerment seminars internationally.

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6 Types of Presentation Styles: Which One Do You Fall Into?

Knowing which kind of presentation style you resonate with is an important asset to your career. It will dictate how you impress others along with how you can effectively convey your objectives to your audience.

When trying to ascertain which presentation style is the ideal fit for you, consider the popular choices below:

6 Useful Presentation Styles to Learn From

When selecting your ideal presentation style, be sure to consider which kind of supporting materials or mediums you will utilize to effectively get your point across.

Using pre-designed template solutions such as Beautiful.AI’s presentation software can help you to enhance your presentation skills with incredibly designed visual aids.

Bear this in mind when deciding which presentation style is ideal for you.

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THE STORYTELLER

VISUAL STYLE

An individual that uses the Storyteller type of presenting shares a former anecdote related to their presentation subject to connect with their audience. If you do have a great story to share, then do so, but make sure that it is genuine to have the most impact on your audience.

Some presenters are visual in that they will use pictures, charts or anything to stimulate their audience’s imagination to enhance the presentation. Make sure you have a healthy balance of text and images when you are this sort of presenter to leave a professional impression that is still a productive use of time for your audience.

THE DIRECTOR A Director is an individual that likes order.

They like outlines and slideshows. If this describes you, integrate this into your presentation and plan in advance. It will greatly enhance the message you are trying to convey to your audience.

THE CLOSER Sometimes, you will be presenting to a group that doesn’t have time to listen to you. A Closer is someone that gets straight to the point. Every presenter should have a dose of this in them somewhere, which will help them know when to tell an anecdote and when to get to the bottom line to please their audience.

DATA STATISTICIAN Data is useful when trying to show trends.

Data statisticians are always trying to throw that extra chart into their presentation. If this is you, make sure your graphs and calculations are clean and polished. This will leave a positive impression on your audience.

FREEFORM STYLE Freeform is a type of presenter where the individual doesn’t need slides and they focus on short stories about their experiences. This type of presentation is the most useful when the individual has a great deal of experience about their subject matter. Use this presentation style with caution to have the best possible delivery.

FINAL REMARKS Knowing which kind of presentation style is ideal for you is very important. At times, it is useful to combine more than one style of presentation to have the most successful impact. Carefully assess what your strengths are and choose presentation aids that enhance your strengths. Once you do so, you will notice a great deal of improvement of your presentation skills along with increased confidence in your abilities.

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4 Strategies to Balance Efficiency and Employee Satisfaction Running a small business is, more often than not, an eternal balancing act. At the start you’re just trying to keep your ship afloat, and afterward you need to be able to know where to allocate your money, time, and energy. It’s not easy. And too many of us might fall into the pitfall of asking too much of our employees without paying attention to their needs.

And this is a major problem because the best employees are usually the ones that

can find a new job more easily if they were to quit.

If you’re worried about this balance, we have you covered. You may think you need to drive employees hard to get the best work, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s all about the approach and the working environment you create. Read onward, and you might find that with these strategies you can get rid of a few problems with one decision.

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1

Reconsider the Use of Technology and Additional Help

A lot of the things your employees are spending time on might not even need to be done by an employee. If you hired them right, they should be either engaging with the customers or coming up with creative ideas to help improve the business, or performing the main task for which they are hired. An employee whose time is constantly divided is probably not a happy employee, and you likely aren’t getting the most out of someone who performs menial tasks all day.

If you haven’t checked in a while, consider investing in software or equipment that lets employees get their job done more easily and more effectively. The cost will usually make itself up quickly with the wages better spent elsewhere and your employees will be more satisfied with not wasting their time. Alternatively, considering hiring freelancers or specialists when needed instead of relying on non-expert employees who probably will become frustrated with tasks they have no experience or interest in.

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Actively Engage Your Employees and Check in on Them

No matter your industry, you can always check in on employees to see if all their needs are being

met and if they have any suggestions to make their working experience better. You don’t need to approve every suggestion you hear, just the ones that make sense for all parties involved.

Also, not every way of making your employees more engaged and satisfied with their work must be an expense item.

Instead, you can consider trying to do other things and build a better general workplace community. There will always be some employees you can never please, and in time they can be replaced if need be. Don’t let them poison the batch of employees you can develop a better working relationship with.

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Emphasize Work-Life Balance

As much as you might want to give your best workers a lot of overtime and keep that as the status quo, such an effort is ultimately unsustainable for both your business and your employees. It’s now well known that consistently working over a certain number of hours (it varies a bit from person to person) will ultimately result in negative productivity. Similarly, a consistent or selfdefined schedule is a necessity for many employee’s lives, especially those with other responsibilities such as children.

This might mean you need to rearrange some schedules or get some more help, but t’s a necessary step in the long run. A bit of flex time can go a long way as well, so don’t

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think reducing or extending working hours is your only option.

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Don’t Punish Creativity, and Reward Results

The best situation you can have is a workforce that actively tries to improve the business you build and constantly seeks to better either the product, customer service, or otherwise cut unnecessary costs. But too often do business owners respond to these thoughts with measures that only serve to dissuade future work, piling more work onto the most immediately productive employees and cramming in additional busywork when someone manages to save fifteen minutes on a shift. Focus on the total work done and not on how busy everyone looks.

Instead, reward creative thinking with paid time-off (even just telling someone who’s done early they can have the rest of the afternoon), bonuses, or other things that

your business can afford that you know your employees would be interested in. Yes, you might cut into short term profits by rewarding these types of ideas, but in the long term you will be creating a better, results-oriented, workplace that will seek to become more efficient on its own.

Conclusion The nature of running a business is naturally going to change over time, but human relationships and human needs will stay consistent over the lifetime of your small business. Stick to the above principles, and you’ll find that you will have a better workplace and happier employees.

Do you have any additional ideas on how to balance your employee’s needs with the requirements of running an effective business? How do you handle things? We would love to hear your thoughts on this complicated subject, so please leave a comment below.

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J us twhent he cat er pi l l ar t houghtt he wor l dwas over ,i t becamea but t er f l y. www. s andr ahi ns hel wood. com

Marketing Strategies for Businesses That Never Fail

by Lara Douglas There is no question that digital marketing is effective for most businesses. Digital marketing has made it easier to access broad audiences across geographic boundaries with a simple click of a button.

However, when it comes to competing at a local/regional level and maximizing your visibility, businesses still need to implement specific traditional marketing strategies that are always good at providing maximum brand exposure.

In many local communities, businesses still make it a point to use traditional methods of marketing because their customers prefer them and can relate to them better.

Also, some of these methods are more personal and can help businesses use a localized/customized marketing strategy.

Here are a few traditional marketing methods that have withstood the test of time: 1. Newspapers are still read in many communities where people still check out the weekly ads. The best time to place an ad is in the weekend newspaper. Putting a newspaper ad is recommended because the return on investment is still high considering that advertising costs for publications have dropped significantly.

2. Networking is best done in person and not online. Meeting face to face with your customers or clients or representing yourself at a trade show or a convention is how you build relationships. When you run a business, and you want to maximize your local visibility, you need to get out into the community and meet your neighbors and other business owners. As you build a good network, word of mouth advertising will really help spread the word about your business and your brand. Moreover, by one -on-one interaction with key opinion leaders and big markets, you can build long -lasting and trusting relationships.

3. Press releases are still an essential marketing tool for businesses. The best thing about a press release is that you can use multiple mediums to distribute it. No matter how advanced technology has become and no matter how many platforms we now have to promote our business, press releases are one of the most basic and the most commonly used marketing tool in the business world.

4. Flyers and banners may have taken a back-seat during the initial days of digital marketing, but the fact is that there is really no substitute for on-the-spot, highly visible

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marketing. Flyers and banners fit that purpose just right – a good banner can stop people in their tracks. Flyers are also very useful. People still browse through them, cut out coupons and make it a point to identify any sales and/or clearance.

5. Brochures can quickly send a marketing message and have been known to drive sales. Every business might have a website, but dentists, lawyers, real estate agents, and most other professionals also use brochures to promote their services, location, and cost.

6. Direct mail is making a comeback.

However, to succeed at direct mail, the ad must be targeted. In many areas, the local postal service also offers mass direct mail packages at meager rates. Direct mail marketing has become very popular with new corner stores, pizzerias, fast food joints, and handy workers.

7.Leaflets: One of the easiest, fastest and cost-effective ways to market a business is to through leaflets, business cards, and flyers. For example, if you run a retail pharmacy, the best way to engage the community is to deliver leaflets and business cards at nursing homes, the local hospital and doctor’s clinics.

8. Lights and colors: A very effective way of marketing that has been around for decades is the use of custom neon signs.

Many businesses use lights of different colors, flashing lights and neon lights to attract customers to their business. This works great for fast food restaurants, pizza stores, bars, clubs, dance parlors, etc. The great thing about neon lights is that this marketing tool continues to work during the

night. Neon lights require little work except for the routine maintenance.

The fact is that traditional marketing strategies and digital marketing strategies go hand-in-hand. There is no doubt that digital marketing has greater penetration and reach, but if you really want brand visibility at a local and regional level and if you want to maximize brand exposure at a specific event or occasion, there is really no substitute for banners, flyers, leaflets, neon lights and face to face interaction.

If you look at real estate agents, pharmaceutical sales reps, energy company sales reps, and other similar professions, you will see the importance they place on one-on-one interaction. Whenever they connect and meet their clients, they make it a point to hand brochures, flyers and information material. It is all about creating a story and using multiple strategies to communicate that story to your target market. Websites and blogs are also important but so are traditional marketing methods that are more effective in forming long-term relationships with your customers.

About the Author Lara Douglas is a young woman who loves interior designing and home decor. She is passionate about new trends and fashion forward home dĂŠcor ideas. She regularly posts at Neon Signs Depot.

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