What's Your Best Business Advice?
The Wednesday Warmup Virtual Entrepreneur Networking Group meets the last Wednesday of every month at 9 AM online. Register by visiting The Hub.
Last week, we joined our friends at the Business Enterprise Centre and The Hub in Huron-Kinloss for the second Wednesday Warmup Virtual Entrepreneur Networking event.
Despite a storm playing havoc with the power, we had a lively discussion that kicked off with three local entrepreneurs offering up their "best business advice". Each point could be an event or blog on its own and we are excited to delve further into some of these topics in the future.
For now, here's some takeaways from our discussion.
Focus on What You're Good At, Outsource the Rest
Nicole Teeter, owner of Teeter & Co. Bookkeeping and Business Solutions, encouraged entrepreneurs to spend their time doing the things they are good at and love most. Depending on the task, there may be local professionals you can hire to help or you can look too platforms, like Upwork, to hire people to do manual task, such as data entry, that may not be value added for you to perform.
"Things like bookkeeping and social media are important but if they're not your passion, you can pay people to do these things for less than it costs you in your time."
2. Now is the Time to Work on Your Culture
Joe Dietrich, one our Catapult Grey Bruce mentors, emphasized employee engagement is more important now than ever. With many teams working remotely for over a year and dealing with the pandemic employee engagement is likely waning. The post-COVID workplace could look very different and now is the time to be intentional and address what that will mean for your business.
3. Be Part of Your Community
Covid-19 has also illustrated how important this point is as people have stepped up to support local businesses. West Shore Clothing + Surf owners, Tonya Schmalz and Ash Adams encouraged entrepreneurs to go beyond the business and look for ways you can help fill gaps and build your community by offering something that may be missing.
"We added surfboard and SUP rentals to our business because we love these activities, and we saw it as a way to help bring more people to Kincardine."
Tonya and Ash also renovated an apartment above their business so they can provide a full "Surf & Stay" experience.
Finally, one last piece of advice offered by Teeter was to set up processes and procedures early on. Documenting repeatable processes will make it much easier to onboard and train new people when your business reaches that stage. Does this sound daunting to you?
Our next Wednesday Warmup will focus on tools which can help you do this and become more efficient. Mark you calendar and register to join us Wednesday, May 26 at 9 AM!