How to Bring Your Business to Life

Read on to discover  ways to bring your business to life. You have a project and the time has come to make it happen. Only 1 out of 2 companies crosses the milestone of 5 years of activity, which shows the importance of a successful launch!

Ways how to bring your business to life and to revitalize your business

Initiate and begin to give meaning to your professional life?

Frantic pace of work and unfinished tasks due to lack of time, intensifying hierarchical pressure, lack of support or recognition, disappointing employee experiences, uncertainty about his ability to continue like this for a long time…

These feelings can lead you to want to create your own business to finally find meaning in your professional life! But the reality of the daily life of a business leader can turn out to be far from what you imagined.

So that the creation of your business rhymes with well-being at work, here are some tips!

1. Take a close look at your business model

If your business is not built on a viable model, you will struggle to make it competitive. If you haven’t spent enough time validating your business model before launching your business, or if your model isn’t working according to your calculations, it may be time to think twice. Take the time to sit down with your books and use business model validation techniques to determine if your business model is truly viable or not. Don’t forget to factor in the new information you’ve learned about your market, your customers, and your product from the beginning.

Read also: Business Model Examples for Your Inspiration

Forge your motivation

Starting a business can be like an obstacle course. A strong motivation and a great confidence in you and your concept will give you the necessary resources to overcome all the hassles that will inevitably arise, often where you do not expect them. Strong motivation is needed!

Clearly define the added value of your project

Whatever your project, failing to offer a radically new concept, it must bring something extra that stands out from the existing offer. Clearly identify this added value and highlight it. It is the keystone of your entrepreneurial building.

2. Focus on your strengths

Many companies struggle because they try to do too much. Narrowing down your options can help you focus on what you do best and build a strong foundation before taking more risks. When Steve Jobs took over the reins of a struggling Apple company in 1997, he ended dozens of ongoing projects and narrowed the company’s offering to a few basic products. Through its willingness to take the bull by the horns, Apple turned a $1 billion loss one year into a $300 million profit the next. Like a tree, your business sometimes needs to have the extra branches pruned in order to grow in the healthiest way.

What is an innovative company?

Many people talk about innovative companies but do not know what these terms cover. Its characteristics are clearly issued by the Ministry of the Economy: innovative companies must justify R&D expenses incurred during the previous financial year. These must represent at least 15% of the tax-deductible expenses for the current financial year. This rate is reduced by 1% for so-called innovative industrial companies. However, any innovative company must justify its innovative nature by highlighting the economic prospects and the financing needs of the products, processes or techniques created. Generally these companies are unlisted, or listed, in particular on the Alternext market. They have to somehow build their roadmap for a promising future.

3. Consider pivoting (rotate, turn, revolve, spin)

Of course, there are always times when your strengths really aren’t that strong. If your original idea isn’t taking off, you may be in the wrong geographic market or there may be insufficient demand for your product or service. If there’s a secondary product or service that your customers love or if a demographic that you didn’t intend to target has become interested in your business, do some research and find out why they love it. This will help you know what elements your business is missing and what directions it would be profitable to follow in the future. (Of course, you’ll want to take the key steps first to prepare a pivot and rigorously validate the new business model.)

Know how to delegate and trust

As an entrepreneur, you need time. Know how to delegate to focus on the essentials!

Take risks

Entrepreneurship is never a long calm river. Be prepared to make risky but potentially winning choices.

Keep your commitments

Be professional. Never fail your partners, your customers or your employees.

Be methodical

Advance step by step to develop your business in the most pragmatic way possible. Establish a development plan!

Surround yourself!

Do not start this journey alone. Many consultants, chambers of trades and crafts, management shops and incubators provide you with follow-up and sometimes decisive tutoring. Joining forces can also be a good idea!

Make yourself known

Finding partners, funding and attracting attention to your concept involves being known. Use all available springs. Social networks, competitions for young creators, the press… Everything is good for making your brand known!

4. Control your cash flow

Keeping sufficient cash in a business is a common problem, so it’s essential that cash management becomes a priority if your business is struggling. Start with a cash flow analysis to get a good idea of ​​how cash flows in and out of your business, then move forward using cash flow management best practices. This may include the use of automated accounting software (see the history of flexybeauty software for management in particular), maximizing cash inflows through models such as security deposits and subscription services and working to anticipate future cash needs rather than react to them.

Read also: Cash Management: Maximizing Financial Stability through Effective Cash Flow Management

Take care of your accounting

You don’t run a business blindly. Your accounting must be precise and provide you with reliable navigation indicators.

Dose your expenses

Find the right balance between development, equipment and marketing expenses.

Protect your heritage

Opt for a legal status that limits your liability in the event of difficulty (LLC in particular).

Assess your financing needs

Know how to estimate foreseeable launch expenses. Don’t expect to live off your business for a while. Excluding micro-enterprises, 35% of creators start with more than € 16,000 euros, 20% with less than €2,000 . Think about it!

Find funding

Know how to seduce a banker and maintain a real partnership with him. Also aim for Business Angels able to understand your field of activity.

Look for existing aids

The business creator can benefit from aid to start his business and from reductions in social security contributions.

5. Change your marketing strategies and branding

Ever seen how a beat-up old car can look downright stylish with a few details and a fresh coat of paint? This is what marketing can do for your business. If you’re doing your marketing in-house, consider hiring a marketing company (know everything about SME companies in particular) that’s expert in your industry if you have the resources, but remember that there are plenty of do-it-yourself strategies interesting if you don’t have one. Learning the basics of social media, PPC, and email marketing is easier than you think, and these techniques can make a big difference in attracting new business and creating a memorable brand.

Skillfully combine technical, commercial and marketing

Refine your product or your concept on a technical level without ever losing sight of its commercialization and the marketing component.

6. Take steps to build customer trust

When customers like and trust your business, they can become “brand ambassadors” – giving you repeat business, recommending your business to friends and family, and writing positive reviews. To overcome the initial trust hurdle, it’s a good idea to take steps such as offering a money-back guarantee or purchasing trade service bonds to protect your customers’ assets. (In some industries, license bonds such as contractor bonds are even required by law.)

You are building your company for so many years… but you can destroy it within a minute! Take care of it…

Honor your commitments

The key to a relationship based on trust is honesty coupled with an ability to honor your words and commitments. Thing promised, thing due, never venture to promise something that you are not able to deliver. From the first contacts, you should listen and try to clearly understand what your customer is looking for above all. If the needs expressed do not correspond exactly to the service you can provide, it is better to be frank and transparent through your words and actions.

Take care of your image

Taking care of your image is not just about having a well-presented resume or looking good. Your image translates into your speech. For trust to be established, demonstrate through what you say that you master your field and that it is your core business. The slightest doubt could cost you dearly and scare away your customers.

Submit references

Knowing that you have already worked with other structures similar to theirs or with people they might know allows your clients to trust you better. Do not hesitate to put yourself forward, to talk about your references, the projects you have already carried out and which correspond or are close to what we wish to entrust to you. If you have articles that talk about you or if you have participated in seminars or conferences, this is the opportunity to talk about it.

Prove yourself

A relationship established between a consultant and his client can be likened to a couple relationship. Even if trust strengthens, problems can still arise and weaken it. If you are having difficulty and your customers are not happy or are beginning to doubt your reliability, take this opportunity to prove yourself and show your ability to overcome obstacles or complications. It is not advisable to seek at all costs to justify yourself, but on the contrary to understand the expectations of your customers and reassure them. This attitude will not make you more vulnerable, but more human and can only strengthen the relationship you have with them.

Reassure your customers

Even if they already know you a little, it is never superfluous to provide your customers with diversified means of communication to contact you. The establishment of a close relationship enriches the trust of your customers in you. Also in this spirit, take the time to personalize your relationship. Make them feel unique and benefit from personalized care, in perfect harmony with their needs.

7. Reach out to create partnerships

Sometimes joining forces can create a whole greater than its parts. Whether recruiting a new investor or partnering with another local business to offer joint promotions, fresh eyes and new resources can help and contribute to reviving the company. Recruiting new blood can be particularly useful if the partners or employees you recruit have expertise in areas that you are concerned about. And even when your business is doing well, you should still network to build relationships long before you need to call in a favor.

Share common goals

Before knowing how to create a commercial partnership, it is advisable to wonder about the reasons which motivate this bringing together between your company and the envisaged partner.

Pooling one’s resources, one’s contact list or even one’s talents is an important moment in the life of a company. It is therefore essential to make sure that you share the same objectives with your future partner.

Define the added value of each partner

How do you create a business partnership without first establishing what makes your business strong? This inventory of your assets will allow you to assess the relevance of the partnership, and to promote your company to the future partner. The objective here is to convince the person in front of your added value.
The quality of your argument depends on the terms of the future partnership. What will you bring to your partner? It can be your marketing strike force, your network of influence, your ability to be a business provider.

Once this inventory has been completed, you will be able to determine together how to create a profitable business partnership for both parties.

Write the partnership proposal

That’s it, you are ready to begin the crucial phase of writing your partnership proposal. At this stage, nothing is decided yet! Your document must highlight the win-win aspect of the partnership to come.

Anticipate objections

This step is essential in building the final version of your business partnership.

Many questions may arise before concluding and signing a collaboration: what will happen to the customers of both parties? How to communicate with two? How to promote the rapprochement with stakeholders? What will be the distribution of daily tasks? This is when you will need to unfold the business model that will make your business partnership successful.

8. Don’t be afraid to start over

Sometimes the strongest and most successful businesses emerge from the ashes of those that failed. If the numbers just aren’t there, it might be time to cut your losses and pull out. If you are losing assets, if the market for your product or service does not exist, or if the business weighs too heavily on you psychologically, it may be more important to live to fight another day. You’ll have time later to apply the lessons you’ve learned when you’re ready to try again.

Hire only when the time is right

Hiring must bring value! Recruit well and at the right time.

Do not be discouraged

Certainly, if the adventure does not take off, sometimes you have to know how to give up. But as long as the situation is not hopeless, hang in there and give yourself time to convince and grow your turnover!

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How to Build an Enterprise and How to start a business? The steps to follow

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Photo credit: geralt via Pixabay

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