Liberating Your Company From Day One

We tend to think of starting a business as the great liberator of our lives. We’ve finally thrown the shackles off from our regular employment, and now we’re free to do put our own thoughts and ideas into practice. Or at least that’s what we think.

While we are more free in a professional sense, it’s not as if everything we touch is liberated. Your company won’t be, for starters, unless you’ve made a focused effort to make it so.

Below, we take a look at a few tried and tested methods for setting your company free and putting it on the path towards being the best business possible.

Get your Finances Ready

There are a lot of blog posts and YouTube channels and everything else out there that says you can start a business with no or little money. And it’s not as if they’re lying — it’s true. But it’s much easier if you don’t, and if you make sure that you’ve got a lot of funding behind you, then you’ll be more liberated, too.

This is the case in virtually all areas of life. So rather than rush into starting your business with whatever money you’ve got, look at biding your time and putting together a “war chest” level of cash. You’ll have to make too many concessions if you take the other route. 

Well-Rested

You’re going to find out, one way or another, that it’s not easy to run a company. You’ll have a lot of things on your plate, and not all that much time to rest. As such, it’s important that you’re starting your venture from a place of rest. You’ll want to go into the venture with bags of energy.

You should have a spring in your step, and be raring to go. This might sound like an unnecessary thing, but just remember this — for your company to be the best that it can be, then you need to be at your best. And you can’t be at your best if you’re feeling tired and drained of energy. 

Big Mentality

One of the issues that new business owners run into is that they’re afraid to fail. Because of this, they do everything to stay in second gear. They tried to minimize losses, rather than maximize rewards. While this is understandable, to a degree, it’s not going to help in the long run. And it certainly won’t liberate your business.

You might begin your life as a small business, but who says that you’re going to end up there? No-one knows where you’ll end up if you have a big mentality. So look at tweaking your mindset so that you’re able and willing to step up, should the time comes. It is of course risky to do this, but it’s really the only way. It is sometimes better to fail spectacularly, rather than succeed on such a small scale that it doesn’t even feel like a victory. 

Hiring Others

You’re not going to do everything yourself. Not to a high standard, anyway. But beyond simply doing the tasks, think about this: you’re unlikely to have all the ideas needed to take your business to the next level, either. So there’s a lot of value in hiring certain people for your business.

Of course, you might not have the money to hire for every position, in which case you can look at outsourcing (more on that later). In the early days, focus on hiring talent, rather than hiring for specific tasks. The nature of your business is still being figured out, but if you have supremely talented folks on board, then you’ll always be in a good position. 

Free To Work

Of course, there are positions that you can’t hire for because there’s not enough work to justify a full-time employee. This will be the tasks that are time-consuming or complicated. For these, you should look at outsourcing the work to third-party companies. You don’t need to spend your days wrestling with your IT network when you could just give the work to an IT company.

Another area of running a company you’ll want to outsource is the paperwork matter. Get Registered Agent Services to stay compliant with your legal obligations. Work with an HR company to handle your employee and payroll matters. Work with an accountant to ensure all your financial matters are in check. You get the idea! If all of these things are handled, then you’ll be free to work on the tasks that will actually help to push your business forward. 

Where You’re Going

It’s easy to get too focused on the “here and now” when it comes to your business. This pushes you into what we could call “short-term viewing.” Everything is about what’s in front of you. While it’s important to keep your eye on this aspect of your business, for your business to be free, then it’s best to have a long-term vision in mind. Look at coming up with a company mission statement, and also think about where you want to go in the future. It’ll help you to retain the big mindset needed to reach your potential. 

Time and Space to Work

You can start a business anywhere, but should you? You’ll find that it’s much easier to work efficiently and productively — which is what counts when you’re starting a new business — if you have a dedicated working space, and a schedule too. It doesn’t really matter where this is. It could be a rented office, a coworking space, or in your home. The key part is that you know that it pushes you toward working well.

Get Educated

Finally, look at pushing your business forward by topping up your education. You’ll know enough to get a business started, but do you know enough to hit the big heights? Studying on a course on a topic that you don’t know much about, or working on a Master’s before getting started can help give you the know-how and confidence to deliver your best. 

This is a contributed post.