Amazon warehouse workers are monitored by tracking systems that measure each employee’s productivity, issue warnings for workers that lag and fire those consistently behind, according to documents obtained by The Verge.
Amazon Automated Firing System
Amazon offers a base $15 an hour wage and its warehouses, called fulfillment centers, are often competitive to work at. The company is continuously replacing slow performing employees with new hires. An automated system tracks employees and gives pink slips to consistent underperformers, The Verge reported. An Amazon spokesperson told The Daily Caller News Foundation that no employee is fired without meeting with a supervisor.
Employee oversight is largely automated, though supervisors can always override the system as the need arises, Amazon told The Verge.
“Amazon’s system tracks the rates of each individual associate’s productivity, and automatically generates any warnings or terminations regarding quality or productivity without input from supervisors,” documents obtained by The Verge say.
From August 2017 to September 2018, roughly 300 workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Baltimore lost their jobs because of low productivity. The facility employs about 2,500 full-time employees, putting the turnover rate at about 10 percent annually.
If those numbers are similar across Amazon’s 75 North American fulfillment centers employing more than 125,000 workers, the company is replacing thousands of workers every year through their system of automated tracking.
“Who needs real human beings when you have Amazon? It’s one thing for Jeff Bezos and Amazon to use a ruthless business model to destroy jobs for profit, but it is surreal to think that any company could fire their own workers without any human involvement,” Perrone said Friday.
Amazon contested Perrone’s characterization of its business operations.
“It is absolutely not true that employees are terminated through an automatic system. We would never dismiss an employee without first ensuring that they had received our fullest support, including dedicated coaching to help them improve and additional training,” an Amazon spokesperson told TheDCNF in an email.
“Since we’re a company that continues to grow, it’s our business objective to ensure long-term career development opportunities for our employees. Similar to many companies, we have performance expectations regardless of whether they are corporate or fulfillment center employees. We support people who do not perform to the levels expected of them with dedicated coaching to help them improve and be successful in their career at Amazon,” Amazon said.
How you respond to your customers is a good indicator of the long-term success of your business. And as more people shop online, this will entail addressing issues with eCommerce. This means making as many communication options as possible.
According to a report from Sykes, only 26% of eCommerce sites provide an email address. But almost half or 46% of consumers in the U.S. want to use email to resolve issues they might have. This data highlights the pain points customers face in resolving problems quickly.
If you don’t make yourself readily available on your site, customers will not enjoy their experience. And as data after data has shown, they will take their business elsewhere. In the U.S. 82% of consumers stop doing business with a brand because of customer service.
The report provides insights into the importance of offering options users prefer for communicating. Providing more options and making them available is critically important because more consumers are using them, and they now expect it.
So, What Customer Service Channels are Sites Offering?
Better to ask, how many communication channels are there, and how many clicks away are they from the home page?
The report says 98% of eCommerce sites have a phone number listed, but it is 1.23 clicks away from the homepage. The number of clicks goes up to 1.4 for the 26% of sites who have an email address. This is followed by 2.05 clicks for 73% of sites with a live web chat, and 2.44 clicks for 64% who use a web form.
The graph shows the number of clicks for each communication channel.
When it comes to using social media, 91% of sites have their Facebook and Twitter links on the home page. But the amount of time it takes for a business to respond on Facebook varies greatly.
Close to 10% respond instantly on Facebook and less than 5% said within minutes. Another 8% said within an hour, followed by 28% within hours and a little over 30% said within a day.
What do Consumers Want?
Sykes asked over 2,000 U.S. consumers which communication channel they would use if they have an issue while shopping online.
Phone and email took the top two spots with 51.7% and 46.2% respectively. The respondents said live web chat at 26.8%, web form at 27.2%, Facebook at 8.3%, and Twitter at 4.6%.
Here is what consumers prefer.
The demographics which responded to this question revealed older users prefer the phone and younger users like social media.
Another obvious question is, why are eCommerce sites not making their communications channels readily available?
The good news is the technologies are affordable and easy to deploy. And for small business owners, it is yet another way digital technology makes it possible to compete with large brands.
If you have an eCommerce site, ask your web developer about these communications options and make them easily accessible.
Research and Survey Methodology
Sykes researched the top 100 US eCommerce sites compiled from Similar Web’s 2018 Q1 Index and Alexa’s Top Shopping Sites. It then surveyed U.S. residents via Google Surveys in December 2018 and January 2019.
They were asked, “If you encountered a problem when shopping online, what methods of communication would you use to contact the store or retailer?”
The sites received a score based on each type of communication along with the response time.
For years, experts (myself included) often advised startups and small businesses to consider the Limited Liability Company (LLC). The alternative C Corporation possessed less flexibility, ease of administration and tax advantages. However, changes in the tax law from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act now create a new potential for big tax savings. And they make the C Corporation a strong option for businesses of all sizes.
A full tax season has passed since the Tax Cuts and Job Act was enacted. So it’s time to take a new look at corporate structure. And to determine if the C Corporation structure is right for your business.
C Corporations, S Corporations, and LLCs – a brief overview
Let’s look at the new tax implications. Start with some of the basics of a C Corporation. Then continue with S Corporations and LLC.
A C Corporation exists as a type of company owned by shareholders. And an elected board of directors run it. But from a legal perspective, corporations are separate entities. And they can get sued and sue. Consider this important point. The corporation becomes responsible for legal and financial liability. And owners are often shielded from personal liability.
In addition, corporations become separate tax payers. And they pay taxes at a corporate tax rate. But this leads to the commonly known “double taxation” issue with C Corporations. The IRS taxes income first at the corporate tax rate. And then taxes come out at the individual tax rate when dividends are distributed to shareholders.
Individual tax rates were cut in the 1980s. And the C Corporation structure hasn’t made much sense for smaller businesses since. So savvy business owners often created pass-through entities like S Corporations and LLCs where business income passes through to the individual’s tax return. In fact, the C Corporation offered little advantage to smaller businesses who weren’t going public or looking for venture capital funding.
The two common pass-through entities are the S Corporation and LLC. An S Corporation is a C Corporation that has elected pass-through tax treatment with the IRS. Like the C Corporation, an S Corporation is owned by shareholders and run by a board of directors.
An LLC is a different kind of entity. As the name implies, it helps shield owners from personal liability with the business (like a corporation). But, an LLC is much less complex to run and manage. With the corporation, you need to appoint a board of directors, hold an annual shareholders’ meeting and directors’ meetings, document key shareholder and director decisions, and file a separate corporate income tax return. For an LLC, you typically just need to file an Annual Report with the state.
Tax Law Changes Make the C Corporation more Attractive
A major reduction in the C Corporation tax rate remains one of the big goals of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It dropped from 35% to 21%. This lower corporate tax rate combines with additional benefits of IRC 1202 to make the C Corporation particularly attractive for some businesses.
Haven’t heard of IRC 1202? You’re probably not alone. It’s a generous capital gains tax exemption that was championed by President Obama. But it didn’t receive much attention until the corporate tax rate was lowered. In essence, if you qualify for IRC 1202, you might be able to exclude 100% of the gain up to $10 million or 10 times your original investment. You need to hold the stock for five years and there are many other requirements too. To learn more about IRC 1202 here, I recommend this post, as well as talking to your tax advisor.
With the lower corporate tax rate and IRC 1202, the C Corporation can now be extremely advantageous for the following scenario: you launch a business, expect to start smart small, make profits and plan to keep earnings within the company, and then cash out after holding the stock for five years or more.
What Business Structure is Right for Me?
Without factoring in all the specifics of your individual situation, it’s impossible for an article to provide a definitive answer on which business structure is right for you. With that said, there are a few things to consider…
Do you need to live off your business’ profits each year? If so, taking money out of the corporation will trigger dividend taxes – and therefore, business profits will essentially be taxed twice. If you are planning to put the business profits in your own pocket each year, a pass-through entity, like the S Corporation or LLC, might be better.
Are you planning on keeping your business “forever”? Keep in mind that capital gains taxes are erased at death, so if you’re never planning to sell your business, you may not need to bother with a C Corporation/IRC 1202.
Are you looking to keep things as simple as possible? As I mentioned before, running a C Corporation or S Corporation requires more regulations and paperwork than an LLC. If you form a C Corporation/S Corporation, be ready to spend more time keeping track of tax, business and financial records.
Do you plan on holding the business for at least five years and then sell? If so, the C Corporation could be very advantageous – particularly if you will be keeping profits within the business until cashing out.
Are you concerned about your personal liability? One of the key reasons to form an LLC or Corporation has always been the ability to minimize the personal liability and protect the personal assets of business owners from things that happen in the business. This holds true whether you form a C Corporation, S Corporation or LLC.
How to Incorporate
If you are interested in forming a C Corporation, it might be easier than you think. Follow these steps…
Choose an available business name for your state
Appoint the corporation’s directors
Register the C Corporation with the state, and draft and file your Articles of Incorporation. You can do this yourself or have an online legal filing service handle it for you.
Issue stock certificates to the initial shareholders
Obtain the necessary local permits and business licenses
Apply for an Employer Identification Number (EIN) with the IRS
If you have an existing business that’s currently structured as a pass-through S Corporation or LLC, you may decide it’s now more advantageous to operate as a C Corporation. If you’re an S Corporation, it’s an easy change to make. With majority shareholder consent, an S Corporation may revoke its S Corp election with the IRS (depending on timing, the revocation may retroactively apply for the whole tax year, or you may need to split the tax year between S Corp status and C Corp).
If you’re an LLC and want to restructure as a C Corporation, your state may allow a statutory conversion, which is a streamlined process. An alternative route is to create a C Corporation and then merge your LLC with the C Corp. This involves a bit more paperwork — but in some cases, the tax savings could be worth it.
The bottom line is your business structure doesn’t have to be set in stone. With the current changes to the tax law, this could be a good time to think about your business structure of a new or existing business.
You want to know the value of your small business. And this starts with an up-to-date valuation. Even if you don’t plan to sell immediately.
Small Business Trends spoke with Mark Zyla. And Zyla acts as Managing Director of business valuation and forensic accounting at Acuitas, Inc.
He explains what small business owners use these for. And he also speaks about what goes into one.
Face the Challenges
Zyla highlights some challenges small business owners face.
“Small business owners are usually part of the management team,” he says. “ That means there can be a mingling of the cash flows marked as a salary and return on investment.”
Clearly Differentiate
That means the smaller business needs to differentiate between labor and investment. And that usually does not become the case with bigger enterprises.
The differences between valuing smaller businesses and bigger ones don’t end there. Because the capital and tax structures often differ too. So valuing your small business might challenge you more than you think.
You base the income approach on the cash flow the business generates. But studying the transactions of competitor’s works as well. That’s a good way to see what the market bears.
“The third, which isn’t used as broadly is called the cost approach,” Zyla says. This is the cost of putting together all the assets of any particular business.
Consider Goodwill
If you’re going to sell your business, you need to consider goodwill. This is an intangible asset. It includes factors like the value of an SMB’s brand name and the customer base.
Even things like good employee relations and proprietary technology can be included.
Once again, small businesses need to be careful here.
Develop Successors
“It’s important to be able to distinguish between goodwill that’s attached to the person and the business itself” Zyla says.
He adds the value of your business gets bumped when you can develop successors internally.
In other words, it’s a good idea to ensure the value of your business’ goodwill doesn’t hinge on just one person.
Look at Regular Updates
Even if you’re not selling, regular updates matter so you can stay on top of your present valuation. This kind of exercise is important to bankers and lenders. It helps if a small business is looking to attract investors too.
Stay on Top
Staying on top of the differences between your assets and liabilities is a good practice.
“These also show that you’re on track for increasing value over time,” Zyla says.
Considerable Intangibles
Intangibles vary from business to business. But proprietary technology like software or processes make up one example. And a highly trained workforce makes another.
Recognized trade names in certain communities are examples too.
Zyla supplies an excellent example for SMBs with a good track record.
Establish Relationships
“If you have established relationships with customers. They return because they know the quality of your services and products. That enhances the value of your business.”
That means someone buying your company doesn’t need to find new customers.
According to a report published by Gallup last summer, only 34% of employees in the US are actively “engaged” with their jobs. This is an improvement from figures recorded earlier, but it still means that about two-thirds of employees are disengaged.
These are worrisome statistics all businesses should seriously consider. After all, between absenteeism, employee churn and contagious lackluster motivation levels, disengaged employees are estimated to cost companies in America between $450 and $550 billion per year.
Start with a Well Thought Out Plan
If businesses leaders are serious about increasing their revenues, they’re going to need a well-planned-out approach to curbing employee disengagement.
All too often, when businesses realize that employee engagement is low, the blame is pointed back at the employees themselves, and nothing is done about it. This is a huge mistake — leaders need to know better and take more responsibility than that.
So, if employee engagement is down at your organization, it is time for the leadership to do their bit in boosting it by correcting previous mistakes that caused it.
Reasons for Employee Disengagement
Here are the usual culprits from leaders that lead to employee disengagement.
1. Neglecting Proper Communication With Employees
According to data from the International Association of Business Communicators, poor communication skills among managers is the top barrier to improved information flow in organizations. If your employees find that their leaders don’t recognize their achievements, don’t provide clear directions, don’t care about their lives outside of work and have no idea how to offer constructive criticism, then why should they aim to deliver their best work?
The most important thing to do is to regularly thank and congratulate employees for their efforts. Make sure you do this both for individual employees and for the team as a whole.
Also spend ample amount of time having real, meaningful conversations with your employees. Ask them about their lives outside of their work and if everything’s alright. This will make a huge difference.
Make sure that plenty of additional channels of communication are open and available. Face-to-face talks might be the best, but some of your employees would likely prefer communicating through an online channel.
Someone who understands the importance of building a culture and properly communicating with his employees is Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. He communicates with them through personalized email updates, all-hands meetings and informal team gatherings. Here’s a comment (recommendation) an employee left on Tony’s Linkedin page.
This level of dedication towards his employees has helped Tony build an engaged workforce that generates over $2 billion annually and was acquired for $1.2 billion. Leaders and managers at companies of all sizes must make a note of this.
2. Having an Inferior Personal Brand
Many leaders make the mistake of believing that the only thing that contributes to effective leadership is their activity at work. But it’s also super important to realize that their online presence matters too. The average person spends 5.9 hours per day online. A lot of this time is spent using social networks. They do this even while at work.
It is very likely that your employees are following you and are reading your updates. This is why the manner in which you conduct yourself on the internet has such a huge influence on how much your employees respect you. If you develop a personal brand as a leader in your industry, your employees will look up to you and the company you contribute to.
So pay close attention to the brand image you project on your social media channels. And build your presence on more professional social networks like Twitter, Medium, Linkedin and AngelList. Expressing thought leadership through blogging or a holistic content marketing strategy can help too.
An example of a leader who understands the importance of building a presence through thought leadership online is Dharmesh Shah. Many people already know that he is a founder of HubSpot, and he’s projected his tech and marketing expertise through articles like these on the HubSpot blog.
Projecting Your Personal Brand
Shah has also projected his expertise as a founder who cares about creating companies with engaged employees and a good culture through his OnStartups blog. He regularly speaks at conferences and has authored a number of well-received books. Shah also adds to his personal brand by explaining his areas of expertise on his Linkedin account, which is something every business leader can do, regardless of company size and level of influence.
This type of activity can help keep your current workforce engaged, while also helping your company easily attract more engaged employees.
Another way to easily display your personal brand and expertise online is by using a site like Crunchbase, an authoritative directory of leaders and companies that are active in startup ecosystems. Here you can list things like the social networks you are active on, the recent press coverage you have received and more. Your employees and potential employees are likely active on Crunchbase.
For example, let’s take a look at Russ Ruffino’s Crunchbase profile. Ruffino doesn’t have anywhere near the name recognition that Dharmesh Shah has, but by maintaining an active profile, he makes a strong impression.
Getting a High CB Rank
Here people can see that he has a relatively high “CB Rank” on the site, in the top percentile. They can see that he is the founder of the company Clients on Demand, which also has a good rank on Crunchbase. On his profile, you will find links to his website where you can access his articles, podcasts, videos and interviews. There are also links to social networks like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. When people view his website and social networks, it strengthens his brand identity.
If you scroll down further on his Crunchbase page, you can see the recent publications that Ruffino has been featured on. This includes top sites like Entrepreneur and International Business Times.
All this content shows people that he is a leader in the client acquisition niche. A vibrant, dynamically updated digital footprint like this can go a long way towards improving team engagement, as his current employees will feel proud to work for him.
3. Failing to Actively Develop Leaders
Some 46% of employees feel that their own leadership skills aren’t being developed. This is a huge mistake, as businesses need to take steps to spot and develop new leaders within the company. If employees show leadership potential, it is the job of current managers in the company to mentor them and improve their skillsets.
When you groom leaders from within your company, it makes the job of the managers easier, as it helps to give people a greater sense of investment in the company. It will also help you keep some of your best talent around for longer, as 67% of employees say they would leave a position if it lacks avenues for leadership development.
So, get your managers to keep an eye out for the natural leaders present within your company. It’s a lot cheaper, easier and less risky to hone top leaders within your company and promote them as managers than to hire strangers from outside.
Here are a few things you can do to develop online leaders.
1. Conduct tests. Before you begin developing leaders, it is important to figure out who shows the strongest potential. So make sure all your new employees complete assessments. 2. Offer training. Purchase courses, webinars and conduct workshops on leadership that will help these employees develop their leadership skills further. 3. Turn current leaders into mentors. Get your leaders on board with mentoring these employees by sharing their own tips and experience on the subject.
Taking these three steps will ensure you build leaders for the future.
Conclusion
These are three common mistakes leaders make that result in employee disengagement. Address them, and you will likely notice a boost in morale, collaboration and even revenue.
When you’re self-employed, increasing business is a constant effort. Normally, you’ll do this by growing your main business. But you can also do it by adding income streams, from sources not directly related to your main business.
Usually those income streams will mostly provide additional revenue. But sometimes they can even be used to increase your primary business.
New Income Streams
Let’s take a look at a few ways to make that happen.
Start a Blog For Your Business
So much of today’s business takes place on the Internet. One of the best ways to increase your income is by positioning yourself as an authority in your field. You can do this by starting a blog related to your business.
The basic idea is to become a preferred information source for customers. In most cases, when people go to the web they’re not looking to buy something. They’re looking for information. And while it may seem as if providing information will hurt your business, it can actually have the opposite effect.
By providing a steady stream of information related to your product line on your blog, you position yourself as an expert. That builds trust. When customers and clients are ready to make a purchase, there’s an excellent chance they’ll buy from you.
Fortunately, you can build a blog easily and inexpensively. In fact, if you use WordPress – which is the most popular blog platform – to start your blog for free.
Make Instructional YouTube Videos on Your Specialization
In a real way, this is taking the blog idea to the next level. A lot of people are visual learners, and videos are a preferred way of gathering information. You can create simple instructional videos and place them on YouTube.
The videos can be specific to your business, and work to drive customers to it, or you can make videos about whatever you have expertise in.
Videos can earn money in two ways. First, they can drive customers to your business. They’re commonly used by businesses to bring prospects to the business website, where they make purchases.
But videos can also be used to generate revenue on their own. This can be done by adding advertising to the videos, like Google Adsense, or by direct selling specific products from each video.
It’s easier to create videos than you might think. There are even videos on YouTube showing you how to create YouTube videos.
This is becoming another common way businesses are increasing their income.
Sell Related Products for Adding Income Streams
You can often add additional income streams by selling products related to your current product line. This is another common business strategy. For example, if you have a business selling organic food, you can add selling organic cookbooks, or books on how to grow your own organic food.
This will also help to create the “one-stop shop” that makes the business more valuable to its customer base. And since the add-on products are related to your main business, it won’t be like stepping out of your comfort zone.
Set Up Dedicated Websites for Specific Products
Most businesses today have a website up and running. But it’s usually designed as something like an online store, to sell the entire line of products and services.
You can move to the next level by creating websites dedicated to specific products. If you have one or more product lines that are particularly important to your business, you can increase sales by creating a dedicated website for each.
This can be a benefit because you’re zeroing in on the specific product, eliminating the clutter that crowds multi-line business websites.
This is also another way of positioning your business or product in the expert status category. You’ll be able to dedicate the entire website to the single product, making it easier to emphasize its value and benefits. And once again, when people come to the web, they’re looking for information, typically about a specific product. Your dedicated website will give them just that.
It might also make it easier to specialize your search engine optimization, enabling you to draw more people to the dedicated website. You can be more specific with your keywords and audience targeting.
You can then link back to your primary website, or create links between your individual product websites.
Add Affiliate Marketing to Your Existing Product Lines
If you have a website or blog, or you’re creating business-related YouTube videos, you might also look into affiliate marketing.
This is a different way of adding additional product lines. Instead of carrying the products directly in your business, you’re instead acting as a lead generation source for other businesses that carry those products.
Literally thousands of companies today are offering affiliate programs. You can even go through a general affiliate program, like CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction), where you can find hundreds of companies.
But you can also approach individual companies. Many will pay you a percentage of each sale that’s generated by your website, blog or video. You can generate the leads either by having advertisements for those products on your website, blog, or video, or you can even write reviews or endorsements of the affiliate products.
This will help to generate additional revenue for your business, but without you having to maintain inventory or fill orders. Due to special coding in the web links, you will be paid a commission when a customer leaving your site goes to another and makes a purchase. It’ll all happen automatically.
Adding Full-on Passive Income Sources
It’s probably just about everyone’s dream — not just business owners — to have passive income sources. You know what I’m referring to, the kinds of revenue sources that produce income without any effort on your part.
The perfect example is interest on savings. Unfortunately, as we all know, interest rates on savings are pitifully low. It may qualify as passive income, but it’s not much income at that.
If you have money to invest, that isn’t earning much in the way of interest income, but you’re concerned about investing too heavily in the stock market, there are some alternatives.
Some passive income sources I’ve found to be the most generous are these three.
1. Peer-to-peer Lending
Websites like Lending Club and Prosper enable you to invest money in loans taken by other people. If you know much about banking, then you know the same bank that pays you 1% interest on your savings, will charge you 10% on a loan.
Peer-to-peer lending puts you in a banker position. But instead of earning 1% on your investment, you earn something much closer to 10%. That’s because you’re acting as a direct lender, with no “middleman” involved in the process. It’s one of the very best passive income sources available.
2. Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
A lot of people would love to invest in real estate – we’ve all seen the get-rich-quick in real estate infomercials. But most of us are also well aware of the challenges it involves. Still, you can invest in real estate – especially commercial real estate – through REITs. These are something like mutual funds for commercial real estate, but they pay a steady income.
This is an excellent way to earn income from real estate while you’re busy tending to your main business.
3. Become a Silent Business Partner
Do you know someone who’s running a successful business, and looking to grow? Think about becoming a silent partner to that person. By making an investment in his or her business, you can take an ownership share in the company, entitling you to a pro rata share of the profits.
It’s much like investing in stocks, except you’re investing in a private business. Of course, you’ll have to make sure it’s all nice and legal, complete with contracts. But it’s another way of increasing your income without disturbing your regular business, and without any additional effort on your part.
Final Thoughts on Adding New Income Streams When You’re Self-employed
As you can see, increasing business income doesn’t necessarily mean doing something radical – like buying a new building, or acquiring a competitor. It’s possible to increase your income, and even dramatically, by creating multiple income sources.
If you’re self-employed, you’re actually in a unique position to do this. The strategies above can easily be blended into an existing business of just about any type. All you need to do is adjust the specific tactics to your particular business.
With some creativity, and a little bit of cash, you’ll be able to do just that
You may call me “Captain Obvious.” But I will point out one of the most important factors in growing a small business. Make sure you are saving as much as possible when purchasing goods and services for your company. Now you may think everyone should know this. But many entrepreneurs aren’t sure how to maximize their spend. And don’t know how to ensure they are buying the type of resources their companies require.
Creative Ways To Save Money
This article will give you some easy tips that will help you save money. When you follow these guidelines, you will have a better cash flow that you can use to invest in other areas of your business.
Use Comparison Sites
Choosing which products and services to purchase for your business can be tough. Depending on your industry, there are likely many different resources you might need to keep your business running efficiently, and each of these items come with different pricing, quality, and service levels. Determining which one is right for your business can be quite taxing at times.
One of the ways small business owners can streamline the process is to use comparison sites that do much of the work for you. They gather the data and the relevant facts of each product and packages them in a way that is easy to understand. In this way, entrepreneurs can take advantage of better pricing and quality without having to spend an inordinate amount of time to discover the right products.
Barter With Other Businesses
As a growing business, bartering is both a fantastic skill to utilize and a great way to save on cash. Other local small businesses are in the same position you are—trying to scrimp and save at every corner. Bartering services is a great way to assist both organizations.
For example, if you are a mechanic and you require plumbing repairs in your office, you could offer auto or appliance services in exchange for them. When you are in need of a service, always try to barter before offering to pay—you may not always succeed, but there’s no harm in trying!
Don’t Buy New Office Equipment
When you’re in need of office materials, there’s no shame in exploring your options. It makes sense to buy gently used equipment when you have the option and bandwidth to do so. New technology, printers, desks, and other daily-use supplies are perfect items to purchase used.
Look at your local newspaper or neighborhood Facebook pages for going out of business sales — these will often have all the furnishings you’ll need to stock your entire office on a budget. In many cases, the used equipment may be just as serviceable as if you had purchased it brand new.
Outsource As Much As Possible
Employees are essential to getting work done, but employee costs—from salaries to office space to insurance—can be the biggest chunk of a small business’s budget. Georgette Pascale, owner of PR Firm Pascale Communications, chooses to keep her full-time staff to a minimum and outsources work to independent contractors for the work that her staff cannot cover as needed.
Deborah Sweeney, CEO of My Corporation Business Services, Inc., uses the same method by hiring consultants as needed; Sweeney maintains that she can not only negotiate a lower rate with consultants, but that her business benefits from their more varied experience in their fields of expertise.
Money Saved Is Money Earned
Making sure that your business is being smart with the way it spends its money is essential to your success. The better you are at preventing unnecessary spend, the easier it will be to grow your business and earn more profit.
