3 tips for start-up owners you need to know about

If you are the owner of a start-up, then you are probably so busy with various tasks that formulating a clear strategy can feel akin to walking through quicksand.

Furthermore, you can miss key details or chances to gain an edge if you are trying to work long hours getting your company off of the ground.

It is important, therefore, to take the time to learn new business tips, risks to watch out for, and commercial traps to avoid. After all, the essence of learning is minimizing the time wasted learning lessons that more experienced heads could have told you from the very beginning.

Here are five tips for start-up owners you need to know about:

Keep an eye on who you allow on sensitive documents

The first tip you need to know about is related to data security. If you are just starting out on your own in business, then you may be considering hiring your first members of staff.

Although this is a natural stage of building a business, it is imperative to do it in the right way, with the correct security in place before you hire anybody. This is because many data breaches, thefts, and accidents that businesses suffer are due to an insider threat. In other words, they are traced back to a current or former staff member within the company.

It is important to say that insider data losses are not always deliberate. It is easy for anybody who is logged into important work documents or has access to sensitive information to lose their phone or laptop in the back of a taxi cab or in a cafe, only for it to fall into the wrong hands.

Of course, many inside data losses are deliberate, usually involving a disgruntled employee who realizes the potential value of the data they have access to, especially if the firm they work for enjoys a high status – such as a bank or government department.

Regardless of intent, you should always keep passwords for sensitive data very close to your chest, logging out any employee and changing the password once they have finished working on the file or account. If you want to find out more about insider threats, click here.

Build your company balance sheet by investing wisely

While money may be scarce when you first launch your company, with any luck, you will soon be enjoying a modicum of success. It is just as important to have a clear strategy in place once you do start earning money as when you are trying to chase the sales in the first place.

This is because money is easy to squander.

Buying a supercar or a new house might seem like a just reward for all your hard work, but don’t do it at the cost of your company’s health. Instead, reinvest in your firm if necessary – whether with more staff, larger premises, new tooling, or anything else you need to grow the company and increase profits.

If you have already done this and the money is beginning to stack up, it might be worth finding a place to store your excess money and even earn money while you are storing it.

You could, for instance, invest the money in safe assets, which earn your company additional money. Alternatively, you could keep the money ready to reinvest in your company as soon as an opportunity comes up.

Use social media to the maximum

Social media is a business tool of unprecedented power. Although this is common knowledge, many start-ups and small businesses neglect to use this power to the maximum, merely treating their social profiles as an extended website.

Although there is nothing wrong with this, you could use social media to create a receptive audience by posting compelling content regularly and then drive them towards your website or email list, where you can sell to your hungriest prospects every single day via email.

This can quickly build your customer base and establish your brand within your industry.