The Ultimate Guide to Being Your Own Boss

  If you’ve decided to start your own business, you might be wondering how you’ll navigate the confusing world of entrepreneurship and step out on your own. How will you manage your time, and how much money will you need to get your ideas off the ground? There are big decisions to make, but the more research you put into your venture, the higher your chances of success. So, whether you’re ready to quit your day job and work for yourself full-time, or you’re launching a start-up on the side, there are several things you need to know about being your own boss.…

The Ultimate Guide to Competitive Analysis

What’s the point of digital marketing, or any marketing at all? It can be many things, however, We can argue that, above all, it is about beating your competition. So, as the old saying goes: before we can beat our enemies, We should first know our enemies. In the professional world, we call this part: ‘competitive analysis’, and that will be our focus of discussion today. In its essence, the competitive analysis might seem like a fairly simple task: find out What your competitor is doing, figure out a countermeasure, and when you can’t beat them, you might opt to join them.…

The Guide to a Happy Office (Infographic)

Keeping everything under control in an office can be hard work. As your business begins to grow, so will your team, and with this comes great responsibility. The first hurdle that you need to cross is finding an office which is in a location which works well for all employees and clients (should they need to visit you). This can be quite the challenge, as all businesses are usually striving for a spot in a location with easy access to public transport.…

5 Ways to Improve the Safety of Your Home Office

Your home is your haven, and your home office is an integral part of it. If you want to improve the safety of your home office, you need to make sure your entire house is as safe as possible. Whether you’re living alone, with a partner or have a whole family to take care of – small kids and all – then you need to take it upon yourself to provide a safe space for everyone living there, while ensuring that your business operations aren’t disrupted.…

Skills Every Business Administrator Should Have

How many times have you worked for an administrator who never seemed to know exactly how to communicate what needed to be done or never seemed to really hear what you were saying? Their minds seemed to be somewhere else. Perhaps they were thinking of everything they needed to do or perhaps they had never learned to stay on task. This could easily have been resolved if they had taken the time to get a masters in project and program management degree because those skills can be learned.…

Culture: The Difference-Maker

In a world where information flows at the speed of bytes, where products get copied, prices matched and distribution is ubiquitous, culture is one of the few things – often the only thing – that competitors cannot match. In short, it’s a company’s one source of sustainable competitive advantage. A great culture allows businesses to attract and retain A-grade talent and allows them to fulfil their potential. This is achieved by effectively distributing decision-making power through the organisational system, so that employees can fluidly respond to the challenges and opportunities that emerge every day, in the moment.…

Words of Warning: Starting a Business is Hard (Infographic)

B2B research from Circle Research have created this infographic to educate you just how hard it is to start your own business. A really interesting fact that is definitely worth knowing, is that nearly 60% of all businesses fail within the first five years of starting up. Different niches have different success rates. For example the top survival rate is Healthcare. All statistics shown, over 40% of all healthcare businesses survive, this is a massive difference compared to any other business niche.…

How to Choose the Right Remote Assistant

Hiring the right remote virtual assistant is much tougher than most entrepreneurs initially think. Forget the fact that they’re often continents away from you, which presents its own set of challenges. Remote assistants are just like any other employee you hire – some are good and still others are a nightmare waiting to happen. Like Tom Hank’s Forrest Gump character famously said “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” If you’ve ever hired employees before, it’s quite likely you’ve pulled a bad apple or two out of the bag.…

8 Things to Consider When Choosing a Virtual Office

A virtual office is a great way to add legitimacy to an online business and gain access to physical office space when you need it, while saving loads of money you’d otherwise spend leasing or renting a permanent business location. While the selection process is fairly simple, there are a few things you’ll want to consider before making a final decision. Here are 8 things to consider when choosing a virtual office: 1. Flexibility Ask yourself what your virtual office’s ideal business hours should be.…

If Superheroes Had Real jobs What Would They Do? (Infographic)

Superheroes are ridiculously awesome; I think we can all agree on that. But what if they had to work normal jobs like us average, non-super people? Would they be able to cope with working 9:00 – 5:00 like Dolly Parton and us? Maybe, maybe not; but that’s not what we’re here to find out. We want to take an educated guess at what they’d be good at in the real world. Nick Fury Without a doubt Nick Fury would be in some sort of directing, managing job.…