Michael Levitt's Blog, page 124

Taking An Idea And Making It A Success

The photo was taken by Free-Photos from Pixabay

When it comes to having a business idea, it can often consume you to the point that you just have to take action. It might mean working on it when you have spare time, it might mean leaving your job and taking that leap of faith. Acting on a business idea is scary and overwhelming, but it can also be extremely exciting and rewarding. But what next? How can you take your idea to the next level? Here are some ideas to help you get started and to hopefully give you the confidence to succeed. 

Think about the idea and what you could do

One of the first things to do is to consider the idea that you have and build upon it as much as you can. This might be working out where and how you can make the idea a reality. From looking at business models like taking on a home care franchise, to deciding whether you will be an online retailer or even be able to open up your own coffee bar or restaurant. Work out all the kinks, decipher what could stop you and iron out the details. 

Networking at events

It might be time to start heading to events and doing what you can to increase the awareness of your business and brand. This can be quite overwhelming, but while you may already explore the options of marketing and advertising, this is often a method that isn’t utilised enough. Speaking with like minded people can be very inspiring and give you a fresh lease of motivation towards your business. 

Your marketing strategy

One the subject of spreading awareness of your business, do you do all that you can to take your business to the next level with your marketing strategy? When was the last time you checked how well your current marketing was doing? It might be time to refocus on this area and look at some of the changes that can be made. It may be worth thinking about focusing on social media, being consistent with updates and also making the content varied. 

Your website and brand

Your website and your brand are your chance to make a decent first impression with customers and clients. So much is done online these days, that your website might often be the first port of call before any other business or purchases are made. Take the time to update your website, and ensure that it is easy to use and speedy. Your brand also may need a refresh, in terms of colours and how your message is received. 

It starts with you

Finally, it is worth remembering that your business starts and ends with you. You will be the driving force for the next steps, you are the person that makes that decision. It can be hard to have that overall confidence in your ability, especially after the effort of starting out and making the business the success it is today. But use those results to motivate and fuel your decision for the next step. 

Let’s hope this has given you some ideas on what you can do to help your business take that next step. 

Tips For Growing Your Small Business

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

In the days before you start your company, there will be a lot of planning that happens. You will probably talk about where you will get your finance from, how much you can afford to spend on traditional marketing like flyers and leaflets. You’ll perhaps discuss the best tactics to grow your Facebook, and find plenty of ways and tips and tricks online to help you.

But there should be a section that you will focus on growth.

And while it is essential that you dream big and think about what your business could be, you should also make space to write this down - and talk practically. Growth should be part and parcel of your business plan.

Many small businesses actually reach a point where they need to expand, hire people, and look for better technology, without even noticing. There isn’t always a big flag that lets you know that you have reached the point where you need to look for better broadband like lingo.com, to think about expanding your CRM software, or begin hiring a range of freelancers.

When that point does arise, you need to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to tackle it. As your business changes, so will your clients. You will be at bigger pitches for more prominent clients. And you’re going to need more people to manage these projects.

But how do you know that your business is ready for these more important things, and how do you manage them?

Some businesses push hard for growth, and others wait for it to happen organically. What is important is that it's not always about how much you spend to make these changes occur, it often comes down to the time put in effort instead.

People

One of the most significant and most important changes you will have is hiring new people. If your small team has been working closely together for years, bringing a new person will change the team dynamics. And sometimes they are not the right person for the job, or they don’t fit with the culture. As not all businesses are office-based, the whole team can be managed and arranged remotely. And if this is the case for your business, then you do, you have some advantages if not all of the group seem to have personalities that work well together.

If you intend to have people in your office, then you will need to look at the culture within the team and make hires based on personality and skills. 

Not only that, but you should be prepared to make sure that everybody has everything they need. From desks and phone lines to access to drinking water and somewhere to eat.

Competition

Unless you are a market leader or you have created a whole new market, or a new product, most industries will have some kind of competition. And as you grow and expand, your competition will change. Your competitors will then come with more bite. They will be more fierce with their marketing tactics, put more money into their campaigns, and the chances are they are big enough to have whole teams on one project, and multiple projects at a time.

But you can spend time researching your competitors. This gives you an advantage because you understand them and how they work. Similar Web can offer you a range of statistics about your competitors, you can then use to make the right decisions for your business. It’s not enough to know that you have competition, you need to understand how they work, and if you are pitching for the same clients and they seem to be ahead on sales or are reaching a wider audience, you can find out why.

Technology

When your business grows, your numbers can often push you out of using the technology that you currently have. Smaller email management software is usually only suited for 1000 or less individual emails, and you’ll need to size up when you get more signups. Look at platforms that can help you and your team communicate quickly and effectively, for example, Dynamics 365. Look at things like social media management, you have access to real-time data, as well as past data, and you can make decisions on future campaigns based on the success and engagement of your previous ones. Technology and tools are essential when it comes to building and growing your business. So you need to be aware of your options before you need to upgrade your software so that you do not make a rash decision.

Email List

Almost all of the communication you’re going to have with your customers is going to be online. Unless you are a traditional brick and mortar store. And even then, your online presence needs to be worked on. Your email list is going to be the most direct option for reaching out to your customers. That is, of course, aside from face-to-face.

You can use your historical data, past progress, and discuss the strategy you used to grow your email list. Look closely at which email has got a response and those that did not. Use the one that had the most positive response as a template for your next email marketing campaign. It is also essential to run to different variations of that template with a separate copy and styling. 

Use the information you have about your customers and the customers of your competitors to create A/B testing.

The lead magnets that you use will need to be scrutinized and potentially strengthened. This means it will also need to be tested. Pop-ups are more enticing, or do you think that simple subscribe box in the corner of your website going to do the trick? Many small businesses make the terrible mistake of a gentle approach. And offers a single ‘subscribe to the email’ option on the website. But you actually need to be more dynamic and push your email list if you’re going to have an email list worth talking about. 

Pop-ups, when visitors are displaying leave behavior on your website, an enticing discount for signing up like 10% off often does the trick. Have your newsletter and your email list as something that people need to be on for exclusive, for access, for free things, because they need it.

If up until now with your newsletters have been random, rather than fully curated campaigns-that needs to change. You’re going to have to try a better approach. Delivering valuable content to your email list, tailored to where they signed up, and past purchases will keep people coming back. Combine a sales funnel with your email list to maximize your opportunities for sales.

These areas take effort, time, and knowledge. We don’t all get into business understanding how to create a successful sales funnel. But we are in business because we have a passion for what we do. Planning and learning for growth are essentials. This growth over time will be what takes a freelancer from the kitchen table, to a small business with a team, and a small business eventually to a global corporation. The growth of the company comes with new challenges, both personal and for your business. There are often steep learning curves, crashes, and things you can’t foresee. But the ultimate goal is to deliver value to your customers, continuously working on the user experience, working on innovative products, and using the information and knowledge that you already have to move forward.

Is Promoting Your Employee's Personal Growth Key To Success In Your Business?

Image Credit Pixabay.com License CC0

There is no denying the fact that training and development in the workplace benefit both the employer and the employee. If you ask any successful business leader about development and training, the majority of them will say the same thing: that you need to invest in providing opportunities for your team member’s personal growth.

Personal growth will transfer to business growth. 

But how do you get this type of culture within your workplace? 

In this article, we’ll examine the key ways that you can promote personal growth 

Make Sure That Your Development Interests Are Aligned 

If you want to get your employees engaged with their own personal training and development, the courses and training that you offer them should not just benefit you. Make sure that there are clear benefits for your employees too. 

For instance, the electrician training course offered by Abcksmo.org will benefit you, but the skills and knowledge are transferable and could benefit your employees in their future careers. Once they have this knowledge, they can do a lot with it. 

Lead By Example

As a business leader, you should demonstrate to your employees that you are fully invested in your own personal development too. Show them that you are trying to develop your skills as a business leader by letting them know about the courses that you’re taking. 

Culture change regarding development needs to be something that comes from the top and trickles down. 

Make sure that all opportunities for development are open to everyone and that you are transparent with what is on offer and the steps that may be required to unlocking all of the development opportunities. Having a structure in place where employees can work up will benefit your business. 

Set Up Coaching and Mentoring 

Make sure that your employees feel supported in their training. You can do this by assigning a mentor to everyone in your organization. Having a more experienced or senior member of staff that your employees can all turn to will be very beneficial. It will also be a good experience for the mentors. 

Reward Success

Make sure that all of your teams successes are recognized and rewarded. Motivation is an important factor in development and training, and providing praise and using other forms of reward will motivate your employees to push themselves to achieve their goals. 

Encourage Collaboration 

Passing on knowledge, skills, and experience are all essential elements of the development process and they should be encouraged. 

Encourage your employees to sit down with others who are involved in the same training program. By sharing their experiences and by talking about what they are enjoying and what they are struggling with, you will find that your team will naturally start to help to support each other. They will start to explain the elements that their fellow employees find challenging and in doing so will arrive at a deeper understanding of these concepts themselves. This natural collaboration is an essential part of any development culture. 

How Your Business Can Rise Above The Competition

The picture was taken by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

For long-term success in the business world, you do need to keep a close eye on your competition. If they outperform you, in any way, you might quickly get left in the dust if customers favor them over you, and your business might struggle as a result. 

To ensure you always have a competitive advantage, you should focus on the following. 

#1: Find new and innovative ways to market your business

You will understand the importance of marketing, of course. But within your marketing strategy, don't fall into the trap of reusing old ideas on a permanent basis, as your business might be seen as outdated by the people you are trying to reach. Instead, find new ways to appeal to your potential customer, using innovative marketing strategies that might be more appealing to them. So, you might create funny sales videos and post them on YouTube. You could have giveaway contests on social media. And you might use any one of these creative marketing ideas, as they all designed to promote your brand to today's modern audiences. 

#2: Build a better product

This is a no-brainer because if your competitors build a better product than you, it is understandable that your customers might turn their attention to what they are offering. So, look at what your competitors are doing. Consider the products they are manufacturing. And then sit down with your designers and brainstorm ways in which your product could far exceed what your rivals are offering. With greater functionality and enhanced durability, (alongside a concerted marketing effort), you might beat your competitors in the sales race. 

#3: Be the first to market

When it comes to your product, quality counts. However, being the first out of the gate is important too, because if you can innovate with something that isn't already available, you will have the opportunity to gain new customers before your competitors catch up to you. So, never stop planning for the next big thing. Survey your customers to learn more about the types of products that will be useful to them. Commit to other forms of market research to find out what niches haven't been filled. And then, with quality in mind, sit down with your design team to work on something new. It's at this point that we recommend the services of Rapidpsi.com. Through their 3D printing service, you will be able to speed up the development process to make sure your product makes it out onto the market before anybody else's. 

#4: Look to the future

With reference to the last point, you need to make sure that you're not the one playing catch up with your competitors. While you don't have a crystal ball to determine what might be the next big thing on the market, you can still keep an eye on trends within your industry. By attending conferences and trade shows, and by reading industry journals, you will begin to understand how your business might need to adapt to keep up with consumer needs and trends. You will then have the opportunity to future-proof your business before your competitors do something that makes your business appear outdated and irrelevant. 

The business world is cutthroat so don't become complacent. The more you can do to beat your competitors, the better, so follow our suggestions to ensure your business is always ahead of your nearest competition. 

Why Logistics Can Save Lives

Photo by John Walter Baybay from Pexels

As a rule of thumb, logistics is the planned and detailed organization of any business operation that manages the flow of elements between a starting point – their origin – and the endpoint of consumption. Logistics is designed to reduce time loss and save money to the company while ensuring that customers, B2B or B2C, remain satisfied. 

However, due to the nature of the work, logistics can serve multiple purposes. Complex organization and its implementation toward consumer-facing delivery are the primary functions of business logistics. But scheduled logistics can also help keep your team safe in the long term. Indeed, a company trying to manage health and safety policies and risks related to all work operations would need to improve its logistics strategy. Here is how logistics can be a crucial factor in saving lives and avoiding work-related or business-caused injuries. 

Continually improving to reduce mistakes

It is fair to say that while logistics services aim to eliminate errors that cost time and money, it is a constantly evolving process. The introduction of new machinery or extended services could lead to potential issues that logistics planning had not foreseen. But, it is precisely where logistics can make a difference. The logistics manager needs to record mistakes and problems and learn from these. In other words, just because a logistics strategy is not flawless at first, it is part of a constant improvement movement. By embarrassing further learning through mishaps and errors, and introducing room for experimentation and best practice trials, logistics can make business operations smooth and frictionless for all. The process of dissecting mistakes is time-demanding, but it can ensure the safety of individuals on-site. 

Keep your team schedules organized

Good logistics services ensure complex operations can be delivered quickly, efficiently, and safely. As such, a logistics manager needs to set time and space for each process in the organization in the right order. Without adequate planning, the risk of overworked individuals in the delivery system can increase dramatically. More often than not, accidents happen when your staff is stretched out through fast delivery and operation planning, as revealed by countless truck accident legal cases. Organized schedules that provide enough rest time for employees can maximize team safety. 

Work hand-in-hand with maintenance schedule

While logistics services don’t actively organize maintenance checks and repairs, the role of a logistics planner is to gain an overview of all business operations that could affect the delivery or process of goods and services. As a result, keeping track of maintenance appointments throughout the year and repairing needs becomes an essential addition to the logistics schedule. Indeed, staying up to date with vehicle and machinery maintenance schedules is detrimental to avoiding injuries and accidents. However, when logistics services and maintenance operations don’t cooperate effectively, time pressure can lead to skipping essential checks and repairs. Did you know, for example, that the cost of accidents caused by unperformed vehicle maintenance records a whopping $2 billion every single year? Effective logistics make time for quality maintenance in the operation flow. 

In conclusion, businesses can deploy a variety of services to keep their employees safe. Structured and strategic logistics planning can provide a template to identity mistakes, keep team work schedule organized, and manage maintenance. Needless to say, good logistics doesn’t replace professional risk assessment audits. But it can complement risk assessment and health & safety regulations. 

What To Do When Your Business Is Struggling

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Running a business is a hard enough job. It becomes even more challenging of a role when your business is struggling. It’s essential that as soon as you notice this reality that you take action to reverse the situation.

If you do nothing and sit back and wait, it may snowball into more significant setbacks, and it might be too late to turn your circumstances around. Review a few ideas for how you can be proactive and hopefully get back on the right track. Stay motivated to want to change by remembering how far you’ve come and how much work you’ve already put into your business and career thus far. There’s no reason to give up on yourself now.

Ask Questions & Re-Evaluate Your Goals

When your business is struggling, you should ask a lot of questions. You need to work on getting to the bottom of what’s causing your greatest obstacles and how you can rectify the situation quickly. Take the time to re-evaluate your goals and make changes based on what you find isn’t working or bringing you the results you had hoped.

Invest in Marketing

One reason your business may be struggling is that you’re not succeeding at attracting customers and retaining the clients you do have. Therefore, it’s a wise time to invest in your marketing efforts and tweak your approach so that you’re getting your message across to the right people at the right time. It may be in your best interest to enlist help for doing a better job at advertising online and increasing your leads and brand awareness. These days, it’s necessary you grow your online presence and use creative tactics to cut through all the noise.

Find A Business Mentor

It may also help you to bounce ideas off of a business mentor when your company is struggling. Find someone who’s been in your shoes before and has been able to build a successful brand. Use their tips and advice as a roadmap for how you can dig yourself out of a hole and build more trust with your employees and customers. Listen to what mistakes they made so you can avoid doing the same at your workplace.

Seek Input from Customers

Your customers likely have a lot to say and can be very useful in your type of situation. When your business is struggling, you may feel compelled to make assumptions about the causes. However, guessing will likely only create more what-ifs and setbacks for you. Therefore, seek input from your customers about what they do and don’t like about your products and working with you. Their insights can help you make impactful changes that will help to draw people back to your business and get people talking about you in a positive light.

Conclusion

What you want to avoid is giving in or giving up when your business is struggling. Instead, prepare yourself to put your head down and work hard to find solutions to your most pressing problems. You’ll likely become a better leader and person for having to overcome such challenging obstacles which will only make you more successful in the long run. 

6 Innovative Marketing Strategies To Grow Your Business

Whether you are selling products online or offering some special services, a huge determinant of your business's success will have to do with the kind of marketing strategies you employ. Identifying the right marketing strategies can be very difficult, especially for new business owners. Questions about how to reach the right audience without spending too much and the most effective marketing tools need to be answered. So, let's consider some of the best marketing strategies which you can use to boost your own business.

 

1. Social Media

The photo was taken by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

97% of digital consumers either have social media accounts or actively use social media. This offers such a huge opportunity for business owners that it is impossible to ignore. For the modern-day business owner, social media is where almost all the magic happens when it comes to marketing and driving sales. Indeed, a lot of businesses have been built purely on the backs of social media. 

Popular platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer companies a pool of millions of potential customers to reach out to. Yet the prospects can be quite intimidating in the beginning, especially for new business owners. But once you are able to create your pages and get over the hurdle of posting your first couple of content, it gets easier with time. In order to make the social media experience less stressful and time-consuming, take time to figure out which platform offers the best channel to your target audience, and start from there. It can get a bit overwhelming if you create and try to manage so many social media pages right from the start.

 

2. Blogging

Blogging probably offers one of the most untapped platforms for marketing. It is a much cheaper alternative to websites if you're now starting your business. Moreover, blogs have evolved over the years to be more engaging. Most hosting platforms, such as WordPress and Blogspot, offer services that can easily be used, like websites. Another advantage that blogs have is the fact that most of them are free to use. 

The only downside to this is that the free versions come with some restrictions. However, you can access full features that include making a profit from your blogs when you sign up for the enterprise or paid versions. Blogging offers you the chance to not only market your products, but to also market other businesses and services for extra revenue. Think about your target audience when you blog. And create engaging content that will help to promote your brand.

 

3. Website

Your website can easily be the soul of your business online. Website marketing is one of the best ways to reach potential clients across the world, with close to two billion websites and over four billion active internet users. One of the best ways to take advantage of a website's potential power is by using it side-by-side with your social media platforms. The best way to do this is by linking all your social media marketing content to your website. This will help increase traffic to your website and potentially boost sales. Your website content should contain every information that a potential customer needs to know. These include your contacts, location, products, and services, etc. 

Take advantage of optimization tools to improve user experience as well as the kind of feedback you receive. There are several types of web analytic tools you can use to monitor the number of visitors to your website, the kind of pages they visit on your website, the nature of services they look for, the amount of time they spend there, and so much more. Such information can help you to better plan your content and marketing strategy to help increase your sales.

 

4. Mobile Phone Marketing

 96% of Americans own either a smartphone or another mobile phone device. This presents a huge marketing platform for businesses to take advantage of. Plus, other statistics show that about 70% of searches done on the mobile phone trigger an action in less than an hour. This is why mobile phone marketing is something that no company should ignore. Make sure you have a mobile-friendly version of your website. For example, display the content and menus in a way that mobile users can easily view it. Also, be sure to enlist your brand on all local business directories. This is because most people who do searches on their mobile phones usually look for businesses or services close to them. Google makes this very easy with Google My Business platform. Another side of mobile phone marketing involves the use of text messaging. Most successful businesses prefer this instead of, say, emails. You can use text messages to announce promotions, new services, etc., more efficiently than other channels. You can employ service providers such as Drop Cowboy to provide engaging text messages as well as voicemail marketing to your target audience.

 

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This area of marketing is quite frightening to most new business owners. However, there are some very simple tips to employ to help increase traffic to your website and possibly boost sales.

Create quality educational content that will target your target customers and resonate with them. Doing this improves your search engine optimization naturally.

Create some content on a regular basis. Blogging tends to be the most effective way to increase SEO as it gives you the chance to provide detailed material that can be found on your website.

Take advantage of external links. External links come in the form of social media pages, other websites, blogs, etc. and anything that allows you to link your content to your website is an external link.

 

6. Brand Influencers

One of the rising channels when it comes to marketing strategies has to do with using brand influencers. This marketing strategy is growing in popularity among most businesses as it offers a comparatively shorter time to boost company visibility without needing to take years to build an audience. When it comes to leveraging influencers, the key lies in finding the right influencer for your business. This does not mean you should necessarily look for the ones with a large number of following, although it is very important. But the most important thing here is to find the right influencer that can reach out to your target audience. In short, not quantity, but quality. You may be able to reach more people if the influencer has millions of followers. But that will not necessarily translate into sales. Instead, engage an influencer that directly reaches your target audience to not only help to spread the word but also increase purchases.

7. Email Marketing

The photo was taken by Muhammad Ribkhan from Pixabay

Email marketing offers one of the most effective marketing solutions at very low costs. However, most businesses do not place a lot of emphasis on this, unfortunately. When you want to communicate some important information about your company or brand, then email marketing offers a very good and cost-effective channel to use. 

One of the best ways of getting good returns on investment in email marketing is by building and maintaining an engaging subscriber list. Your subscriber list will be made up of people opted in on purpose to receive your messages and updates. You can do this by creating a signup link on your website. You can also use social media platforms to drive your signups. Alternatively, there are several email marketing service providers to choose from. These providers usually come with additional services like analytic tools that will help you track and monitor the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy.

 

Improving Online Security For Your Business

Your online security as a business is something you want to take very seriously as more cybersecurity threats and methods pop up every day to try and catch individuals and businesses out. Whether it’s their data that’s stolen or confidential customer data, it’s important to avoid it at all costs. Here are some tips for improving online safety for your business.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

Strong Passwords Are Essential

Strong passwords are definitely important to maintain when you’re operating a business where various staff members might be accessing data or using payment methods on online accounts on behalf of the business. It can be very easy to make up passwords, but it’s remembering them that’s difficult. It’s good to educate your staff to make sure that they’re not thinking up passwords that are relatable to them or the business in any way. There are programs and software that you can get nowadays though that can certainly help with password security and strength, so it’s worth exploring these and seeing if it’s a better option than letting your staff pick and choose when they update their passwords. 

Outsource Additional Security 

There are plenty of additional security options that you can add to help strengthen your security. Outsourcing IT services can certainly help to monitor any issues or weak points in your online systems that could lead to potential cyber-attacks. There are solutions like Privileged Access Management which are also worth exploring. The more security you can add onto your business, the better.

Make Use Of Two-Step Verification

When it comes to adding additional security, it’s important to take full advantage of whatever is available to you to add those extra layers. There are many platforms online that allow you to add two-step verification. This means you add your phone number to the login process and it sends a code straight to your phone to type in before accessing your account. It means that if a password ever gets stolen, you’ve got a second layer of security to hopefully prevent them from gaining access. It’s certainly worth using, especially as these can often be good for protecting email accounts and online banking where necessary. 

Train Your Employees

Your employees are an important part of your security, and it’s essential to train your employees where you can. Not every employee is going to be clued up on how to operate online, regardless of age. There are some things about cybersecurity and protecting yourself online that even the most qualified and experienced might not know. It’s something that changes regularly and being up to date can certainly help your business when staff are using the online world on behalf of the business. Train your employees where you can and address any weak points that your staff tell you about.

Improving online security is something that your business should be doing on a regular basis, so use these tips to help improve it as and when you can. Outsource extra security help and keep your data protected.

Make A Great Impression With Your Customers

The photo was taken by aiiapromogifts from Pixabay

Creating a good impression as a company is a skill that is required for success. When you are in charge of a brand it is important that the customer always sees the best in you and this can make a huge impact on the success you see. 

Today we want to take a look and how you as a company can make a good impression with your audience and create a lasting impression in the years to come. 

Don’t get political 

As a company you may feel strongly about certain things in the media, but you should never allow yourself to be clouded by these things online. As a company you should stay neutral in political and religious issues to ensure you don’t alienate your customers. A good example of the dangers of getting involved in politics and social issues is CrossFit. After the launch of the #BlackLivesMatter campaign this year the CEO of CrossFit made some controversial comments, leading to Reebok cutting ties with the brand and leading CrossFit athletes to leave the sport. Don’t get political! 

Create branded gifts 

To make a great impression with your audience a good thing to do is send them gifts or offer freebies at trade shows. Things such as a badge holder, pen, bag, stress ball and mug are good choices and everyone loves a free product. By sending your customers branded gifts like this you can gain free marketing and make a good impression. 

Be engaged on social media 

Social media is a crucial part of online marketing in this day and age, and as a company you need to have an active online voice. Being engaged on social media channels is important because you can answer questions, get to know your customers, and build a relationship with them. By answering comments on social media often you show your customers that you care about them and their ideas, and this will bring your company a great reputation. 

Fight for a cause 

One way to win the hearts of followers is to fight for a good cause and perform charity work. As a business owner you have a unique advantage and power to change the world. By supporting a charity or a cause you believe in, you can make a difference and also gain the support of your followers. 

Host an event 

If you are a relatively new company and you are looking to gain a following fast, hosting an event is a great idea. For a restaurant this may be a tasting party; for a store it could be an open evening with drinks and snacks; and for an online company you could rent out a venue and present your vision and views. Inviting members of the public in your local area to join you in an event is a great idea, and it will give you the opportunity to share your ideas and gain a real following that can last. 

Try these tips today to make a great impression with your audience and gain success in business this year.

5 Ways to Stay Motivated in Your Career

In October 2018, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimated that about 3.5 million Americans quit their jobs. In the private sector, the rate at which people leave is still on record highs. So, why are more people quitting their jobs every month? Stress and burnout are part of the answers. It takes several years of training to master a career, but only one day to quit it. Burnout is a psychological condition where some workers experience long-term exhaustion and diminished interest in their work. The good news is that you can avoid it with proper planning, so here are five ways to stay motivated in your career. 

1. Set Your Goals Wisely

The photo was taken by Darwin Laganzon from Pixabay

Setting your career goals right from day one is very important. If you don't define your career path right in the beginning, despair may characterize every day of your future job. Therefore, weigh the career options, and try to settle on one that will fit into your lifestyle. For example, a person who likes parties may want to choose a career in the entertainment industry, not healthcare. By setting a smart career goal, you are more likely to stay committed to your future job. 

2. Understand your purpose

Find out the purpose of every goal you set. Are you hoping to enter into a career because of the big paycheck, or the prestige attached to it? Now and then, people pursue prestigious careers without actually understanding the work demands. Unfortunately, they will later realize that the work is too stressful for them. Make sure to choose a career from the bottom of your heart.This way, it's easier for you to achieve self-actualization.

3. Reflect on your success

Are you stuck in a rut? How about you reflect on your success, instead of failure. Maybe you have come a long way to stop. Take a sober reflection on your past achievements, and try to see if you can replicate your previous successes. It's normal to hear little voices in your head about how you messed things up before. Nevertheless, you shouldn't lose your focus when you're up to a long-term career goal. 

4. Move with Positive People

They say birds of a feather flock together, and indeed, a positive colleague who mingles with naysayers will find it hard to stay motivated at work. More often than not, when a worker struggles to love their job, peer pressure plays a role. Highly motivated and supportive co-workers can help you boost your level of hope; likewise negative colleagues will discourage you from taking your career to the next level. Good friends will gladly celebrate with you when you make it to the peak of your job.

5. Ask for Feedback

Since no one is perfect, and so you should be humble in your career. One way to do that is to ask for feedback on your performance. You can get it from your employers, as well as your customers. Your boss will gladly welcome a chance to criticize you constructively if you open up your doors to them. It's better to ask to be corrected than to stay mute and get fired for non-performance. Both positive and negative feedback can assist you in improving your current output and decreasing your risks of burnout.

6. Learn a new skill

The photo was taken by Free-Photos from Pixabay

When you are fed up with your career, it feels like a punishment. But did you know that promotion can revive your interest in a job? Yes, it does. But without adequate skills, your superior may feel reluctant to promote you. Studies have shown that employees who utilize their skills to the maximum are 15% less likely to leave their jobs. On the other hand, a lack of skills can also plunge your career into turmoil. 

The human brain is capable of rewiring itself to learn new things. Pick out something new yet closely related to your field to master.  For instance, if you work in marketing, you can learn how to use different video marketing methods. For example, tri-state video production services from ASL Productions have a wide range of techniques from corporate and green screen video to animated and branded video content.. The acquisition of other skills will add more weight to your curriculum vitae (resumé). You'll then stand an excellent chance to be promoted since your upgraded skills will put you a step ahead of others. 

To summarize, employees are quitting their jobs at alarming rates, partly due to stress issues. But if you really plan well from the beginning, and stay motivated, you can avoid burnout.