Top Knop

Save money

Aspiring businessmen are afraid that if they start saving and haggling with suppliers, no one will cooperate with them. In fact, when you start cutting costs, nothing terrible will happen. Save as much as possible. If you suddenly delete an important expense item, employees will report it.

The best thing about saving in business was told by Robert Fifer in the book "Costs down — sales up". He writes that little things like L'Occitane soap in the office or expensive pens will ruin you faster than it seems. And it is necessary to bargain regularly with contractors and suppliers.

There is either no automation, or there is too much of it.

Clients do not like to constantly communicate with a chatbot, while this reduces the workload for managers. Find a balance between automation and communication with the operator. But first, check how the customers will react to the changes.

Why is content marketing so important for small businesses?

Content marketing for small businesses quickly became a necessity. Retail is a competitive business, especially for brands that are mainly represented in e-commerce. Uniqueness is no longer in product offerings, but in how you formulate your brand vision. So, as an independent retailer, it's likely that you already have some kind of content marketing strategy.

One of the biggest challenges for any growing business is telling a "brand story" (story telling). Finding ways to overcome the information noise to reach your target audience has never been harder than it is now. So, whether you are focused on social media marketing or making informational blog posts for your website, these content creation efforts will give you a vital platform to attract potential customers.

Marketing is a system.
Your marketing efforts will be successful if they are systematic and periodic. To begin with, determine a budget that is comfortable for you and distribute it during the first half of the year, make a plan for advertising outputs to your favorite channels. Do not be interrupted even in difficult months. To evaluate the result, you must "log out" for at least 3 months in a row on the same channel. Eliminate inefficient ones and try new ones. Increase the budget before the month of the planned peak of sales and reduce it before the seasonal failure months.

Track the effectiveness of advertising not only before the application, but also before the final profit
Advertising campaigns can bring you site visits and new registrations. But if you don't know how many leads will eventually become buyers, you won't be able to understand how effective advertising is. When a business receives only applications, it may indicate a wasted budget.

To understand how effectively your advertising works, look at business metrics:

CPO Purchase Price;
The cost of attracting one CAC client;
Return on investment in ROMI marketing;
Average AOV check.
Details about why business metrics of advertising effectiveness are important and how to calculate them were described in the material.

Maintain social connections

The next step is to understand what resources you have. They include not only your knowledge and skills, tangible assets and finances (your own or borrowed), but also connections for business promotion, administrative contacts, acquaintances in case.. " Contacts are your opportunities. More communication means more potential customers, partners, like-minded people, more useful and necessary information. It is very important not only to expand your social circle, but also to support the existing one (for example, congratulations on holidays, friendly business visits, attend relevant events, meetings, be interested in the success of interlocutors, and so on).

Jeff Bezos, American entrepreneur, founder of Amazon

There are two ways to build a successful company. The first is to work very, very hard to convince customers to buy expensive goods. The second is to work very, very hard to allow customers to buy goods at a low price. Both of them work, but we prefer the second one.

Amazon is the world's largest company selling goods and services over the Internet. The web service accounts for almost half of the retail sales made online. The company became so popular thanks to Jeff Bezos' strategy: he did not chase short-term profits, but invested money in development and captured new markets.

To compete with competitors, Amazon introduced free shipping and reduced the price if the customer found the product cheaper. This strategy brought Amazon minimal revenue, but allowed it to increase the number of customers and bankrupt competitors. As a result, Amazon shares have grown almost 30 times in 10 years, and Jeff Bezos has become the richest man in modern history, overtaking Bill Gates.

Feedback develops.
Consultants are constantly evaluated: they undergo evaluation at least after each project and every six months. Beginners may be confused by this, but in fact, evaluation and feedback is extremely useful, because you develop only thanks to it.

"In other areas, you can't always figure out what you're doing well and what you're not. But in consulting everything is simple: you will get feedback, but at the same time you will be able to give feedback yourself. It will be taken into account, and you will see the result," says Robert Berham.

Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦

The main thing in business is love. If you don't win people's sympathy, you won't be able to sell them anything.

IKEA is one of the world's largest chains selling furniture and household goods. The company would not have become so successful if it had not won the love of customers. Perhaps Swedish meatballs, fresh buns, funny toys and unusual product names helped her in this. There are no intrusive sellers in IKEA — the store sells the goods itself. To do this, there are catalogs, a hall in the form of an endless maze and cozy interiors in which you want to stay.

1. Don't rush to give up everything
Do not rush to teach diving or open an early development center just because you are tired of sitting in the office.

2. Do not think that it is a hobby that should become a second career
Often a hobby is not a way to earn money, but a way to spend what you earn with pleasure.

3. Check out the idea
Tell others about it. Find potential customers (it is optimal that they are people who know you as a person with a certain level of expertise in what you are going to offer in the market) and talk to them.

4. Get ready to deal with Impostor syndrome
Even if you have achieved success and recognition in your corporate career, everything is reset when you enter the market in a new capacity.

5. Form a supportive environment
Former colleagues who consider you a strong professional and are sure that you will succeed.

6. Learn to distinguish constructive criticism from cynicism
"Yes, how will you do it, you need connections here" and the like. Turn on the internal filter and do not miss whining, complaining about difficulties and advice to "keep your head down."

7. Develop a financial plan
What financial obligations do you have? How will you be able to fulfill them at a time when a new business will not bring money yet (and most likely will require investment)?

8. Don't forget about the business plan
How much does it cost to start a business, what other expenses will be required in the next stages? When will the business start bringing in the first money? How will it grow?

9. Work in demo mode
If you have come up with what you want to do, do not rush to quit and open a company. Take a vacation or do it in your free time from your main job.

10. When the decision is made, announce it to the world
Make an announcement in the public space, tell your loved ones. Now there is nowhere to retreat, we are working.

Reduce costs

At the beginning of your work, you may have funds that you have specially saved up for starting a business or took out a loan. You have a deceptive feeling that the whole world will be at your feet, it will happen, as it seems to you, very soon, but practice shows that there is a thorny path to go before success. You will have the strength and time, but if you do not have the funds left, then business development will be much slower if development without costs takes place at all. In the first year of life, according to statistics, 4 out of 5 small businesses are closed. Statistics do not indicate the reason, I dare to assume: expenses exceed revenues, the stock of funds is relatively small, there is no way to re-credit, as large companies do.