Leaving Your Small Business Small Business Small Business Succession Plan Succession: Fill & Download for Free

From an article I wrote for Inc. magazine: Just Starting Out? Avoid These 5 Startup Mistakes. You're Welcome.1. Decide if you want to be a small, independent business or a high-growth startup.This is a binary, critical, fundamental decision that will immediately answer over a dozen other questions. It will determine what type of corporate structure you use, which state you register in, what kind of financing you will be able to receive, how you will compensate your employees, and much more. A good test is to ask yourself, "Will I try to raise money from outside investors?" and "Do I plan to offer stock options to any of my employees?" If the answer to either is yes, you have no choice but to head down the more complicated, high-growth path. Switching from one to the other later is possible, but that can be very expensive.2. Figure out who The Entrepreneur is in the company.It's tempting to say that "anyone can be a founder," and "all founders on the team are equal," but in the real world, that's just not true. While experience has shown that founding teams of two people (what serial founder and venture capitalist Paul Graham describes as "a hustler and a hacker") tend to be more stable and successful, in every case one person is the primary driver. This is the person who is prepared to do anything for the business, give up work-life balance, and be the one to whom investors, employees, and partners look. The buck has to stop somewhere, and if you don't figure that out before you start, you are in for a world of hurt.3. If you have more than one founder, all of them must have vesting schedules for their equity.While it is tempting to assume that "vesting is for everyone else," I have seen far too many startups crash and burn when one founder leaves a company—along with half of that company's equity. Vesting protects everyone, including a startup's founders, so be sure that every employee's options vest, and every founder's stock reverse-vests from the very beginning. (Reverse vesting gives the company the right, decreasing over time, to buy back a founder's stock.) Trying to fix this one down the road will be very costly—and possibly a company killer.4. Whatever you do, do it with a professional.A penny saved on professional advice today is $100,000 lost in cleanup expenses down the road. While there are plenty of books and internet postings claiming that you can incorporate yourself and download forms from the web, you can't! Or, at least, you shouldn't. Every single serial entrepreneur with whom I have spoken has told me, "If only I hadn't tried to do it myself, I would've saved $100,000!" There's a reason lawyers and accountants go to school for this stuff. While starting a company might not be quite as difficult as brain surgery, I guarantee if you try to do it all on your own, you will screw it up—and then pay 10 times as much to get a professional in to clean it up.5. Don't start by raising money.Although it may come as a surprise to a lot of ambitious entrepreneurs, investors do not fund ideas, no matter how good or how potentially profitable they are. A typical angel investor looks at 40 opportunities for every investment made; a typical VC looks at 400. And the investments they make will be in companies, not ideas. Spending months trying to raise funds for an idea is fruitless and dispiriting. Do not even think about raising money from outside investors until you have developed your product and have at least a handful of pilot or beta customers. Other­wise, it's like trying to teach a pig to sing: All it does is waste your time and annoy the pig.

This is an interesting question because at Novatise we’ve helped numerous small businesses scale their digital presence and these are our learnings.Reviews are MoneyIf you have seen Black Mirror, there’s a famous episode where every person is rated in the future based on their behaviour and how they react with other people.We may have not reached a place where people are rated (Except China), but businesses have reached there.Google Review Ratings can make or break a business. It can make you a millionaire or burn you to the ground.Make sure to ask your customers to leave a good review. Incentivize them and get those 4+ ratings. This is easy to implement and costs you nothing!If you are a restaurant, focus on Yelp and other platforms.If you can get offline, get offlineA brand is built when people see you in offline locations. Attend fairs, events and set-up booths whenever you can.People trust offline businesses more. If you are selling a digital service, attend events and build contacts.Online - people forget easily. Offline it’s harder to forget.New or unique product? Run Facebook AdsIf you have a product offering that is unique or interesting? Jump on the Facebook bandwagon quickly. People are always looking for unique products and services.Best way to get in front of them? Facebook and Instagram advertising.Build your personal online reputation - LinkedinYou may not have the big budgets for ads. But what you can do is improve and build on your network.How?LinkedinLinkedin lets anybody post content. Start writing personal stories of your business experience. Document your growth, talk and interact with other people.Connect with influencers and ask them for a cup of coffee.Most businesses grow with contacts. How do you think well-funded companies work?Apart from money, they have access to powerful contacts who can build their business.These are the three main things that are important apart from various other factors. But these 3 strategies should give your small business a big boost.

With the very existence of social networks, spreading your vision about your small business has never been any simpler or less complicated.Social media currently plays a vital role in the development of businesses and their ability to get potential clients is unquestionable. So, no matter whether the nature of your business is big or small, social media is a necessity in driving your business towards success.You may ask, how is that so?The social network has proven to be an effective tool when it comes to growing brand recognition. Beside advertising your local business, social media can help you meet several business goals such as attracting new customers.Social media sites provide an easy platform where your current clients can recommend your services to their loved ones and business partners. Through leaving you favorable reviews and sharing your posts on their feeds, your client’s circle of close friends and fans will ultimately become aware of your brand and are more likely to be interested in trying your services.Social media is truly necessary for small business because it keeps expenses down for marketing purposes. As we all know, uploading on social media sites is free. At some point, you may wish to get some new fans and expand your social circle by placing some money on it. However, as there is no standard amount on the budget of marketing planning, how much you wish to spend is definitely up to you. In addition, it might also help in boosting your sales and getting more customers.Social media will definitely help to boost the search engine ranking because social media sites’ presence can be a considerable aspect to most search engines like Google. Hence, the more you engage with your customers and share content on your social media sites, the greater your SEO ranking will be. With social media, you can get a terrific feedback resource which makes it possible for you to get beneficial insights about your customers’ habits.Hope the explanation helps,OKportal Technology