HOW TO RUN A BUSINESS WITHOUT IT RUNNING YOU

Running a business, especially from ground up, is not an easy task. If the business owner isn’t careful, such might run into loss or have nervous breakdown as a result of stress.

Imagine a logistics business with only one truck yet, where the owner of the business oversees marketing, truck maintenance, driving, accounting and auditing, tax documentation and delivery confirmation. Imagine this business owner has only one employee that cleans the trucks and assists with transportation of goods from one location to another. You’d agree that at the end of a business year, this business owner would either be out of business or be lying in a hospital bed because of his mode of business – he does everything, probably has no time for family.

Now, imagine another business owner starting out a logistics business with one truck but has a marketer, a truck driver who also maintains the truck, an accountant who also does auditing and tax documentations, and an assistant for the truck driver who confirms pick-ups and deliveries. You’d agree that there is high probability that this business would have gotten another truck to support the existing one, at the end of a business year.

What differentiates the business owner in the first instance from the one in the second instance is PLANNINGand TASK DELEGATION.

Nothing works without planning. A business with a proper plan and implementation of plan is bound to grow. This phase of any business irons out the nitty-gritty of the what the business entails and how it intends to achieve set goals and objectives. In planning, a business owner knows where task delegation is necessary and which part to handle personally.

Task delegation is also very important in running a stress-free business. The reason for hiring employees is so that one person doesn’t have to take up all the responsibilities. In a company, a huge chunk of tasks is broken down into smaller bits (steps) and each bit is handled by either a person or a machine. This is popularly known as division of labour. With this in sight, each process that leads to a result can be carried out efficiently and with improved productivity.

Apart from delegating tasks to employees, there are tools that facilitates the processes of doing business.

Let’s look at some of the tools that eases running a business:

Online communication tool: You can hold a meeting with your clients or your employees without being physically present in the same location as they are, using free online conference applications like skype, google voice, etc. You can also send request and receive response while seating at your table using any of the email services around now.

Cloud storage: Saving files in a cloud makes file access easier and reduces the amount of paper needed by a company. This eliminate incessant need to print documents when they aren’t physically needed. Example of these tools are dropbox, google cloud, etc.

Accounting software: there are software that makes accounting process stress-free. With these tools, you can detect and correct any previous mistake in calculations and even make better business projections based on certain values.