171648 Resource 149176 155860 149257 1181490045355 1181577062587 Controlled Small Business Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Business, Part 1

How to avoid business management mistakes that can lead to big problems for your company health

We all know to “stop, drop and roll” when it comes to protecting yourself from flames, and we all remember the advice to never take candy from strangers. But what about protecting small business owners from common danger zones, and taking the needed safety precautions? We don’t learn as a small child how to run a business, or how to manage it properly. In this series we’ll take a look at some of the common areas of trouble for small business owners, along with things you can do to avoid getting into danger areas in the first place: Having all your eggs in one basket. It’s common as a small business owner to have started up your entire operation by having one or two main clients. And you may still rely heavily on those same clients as the bread and butter of your business. But often, when focusing so much on your main collection of clients, you aren’t expanding your new client list. And then, guess what? If something happens to your one big client, your whole business could collapse. No matter how busy you are in managing your main clients, continue to search for new customers. If you have to, hire someone part-time to focus on new business. One rule of thumb is to avoid letting any customer make up more than 25 percent of your revenue. Losing your employees to the other team. You might employ only a hand full of workers, so it can be devastating if you lose just one or two if they quit to join forces with your competitor. You not only see your rival company strengthen its position, but now you’re picking up the slack and doing all the work yourself. Not to mention the time and money you’ll have to spend in finding, hiring and training new employees. In order to avoid this scenario, do everything you can to keep your employees happy. Recognize their efforts with words and acts of appreciation. Keep your morale high, keep your environment enjoyable and reward your people with competitive salaries. In the next part of this series we’ll talk about more areas of trouble for small businesses, and what you can do to avoid them. 10 application/xml false avoid business management mistakes business management business management mistakes company health ruin your business small business small business mistakes your company Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 cmalmstrom false true false false true 189572 false false true false false false true 149176 blog blogsite/FreedomVoice/web