Here are some handy tips to make that happen:

Start a Business For The Right Reasons

If all you want to do is develop revenue streams to supplement your income, this might not be the right move to make. A business takes time and patience—and plenty of sacrifices—to bring off the ground. You have to love what you’re doing. Be passionate about it.

You can’t let failures pull you down. If you thrive on meeting challenges and believe the service or products you provide fulfill a need in the market, then those are all great reasons to get started.

Manage it With Care and Caution

Poor management is one of the many reasons why companies fail. If you haven’t got enough managerial experience to fall back on, no worries. You can hire someone else to handle that for you. Don’t try to do everything on your own. You’ll need help. That’s where hiring the right people comes in.

By looking for employees that are a culture fit for your company, you’ll start to see your startup grow by leaps and bounds. That’s because the right hire can bring something else to the table. It’s not all about experience and skill. The first employees you hire basically form the cultural backbone of your organization. By hiring the right people, you set the kind of work culture and environment your employees will follow for years to come.

Have Enough Cash Flow

Operating costs can suck your startup dry. If there aren’t any angel investors in sight, you’ll need to keep a firm eye on the money to make sure you have enough to keep the company afloat. By opting for cost-effective solutions like video conferencing, you can get the job done—market your products, connect to possible clients and business partners—all without putting your capital at risk. With a video conferencing system like BlueJeans, companies can lower their operating expenses.

No need to travel for meetings because video calls make that a thing of the past. Wasting resources, looking for qualified candidates to fill up hiring vacancies? No need to wait till Kingdom Come.

With video calls, you can interview, hire and even manage remote employees with ease. That’s one way to get the right people on board without bleeding your capital dry. Whether they’re in a different state or country, you can easily reach out to anyone on your team.

Build Online Presence

Your site and social media pages help you establish online credibility and presence, two qualities that build consumer trust. The more trustworthy you are, the more likely it is for consumers to give your product or services a try. No one wants to be swindled. That makes customers extra wary of falling for scammers. With an established online presence, customers are sure to take a second or third look until they eventually pay for the service or goods you have on offer.

Video technology can help you establish that credibility. Posting promotional videos can boost traffic to your pages and lead to higher conversions and sales. Given the growth of video consumption in the past, that isn’t surprising. FB says it had a record of one billion video views in the span of a single day. When 2015 finally drew to a close, that figure had jumped to as much as 8 billion, Social Media Today says. By taking advantage of video solutions, you can expand your market reach and grow your business.

Expand Right

Don’t try to rush through your growth and expansion, though. Some companies make a mistake of expanding too soon and find out, the hard way, how rushing can lead to bankruptcy. However, that doesn’t mean repressing your company’s growth as well. Steady and slow is a good pace to follow.

If you think it’s time to expand, though, be sure to check your options. Find out what the costs will be then focus on hiring people to help you manage your business and keep it running without any problems. By expanding right, you have a bigger chance of surviving well beyond the first year.

It’s going to be tough. But these steps should help you get a better gauge on what you need to do if you want a thriving and successful business in the future. Don’t let lack of capital or poor communication tools get in the way of your freedom and success. Heed these tips to guide you through your first step toward starting and managing a business. 

5 Steps to Building a Thriving Business is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Decide on Your Target Clientele

Do you want to clean for businesses, or would cleaning homes be more up your alley? If you aren’t sure, first clean the home of a friend or someone you trust to be honest with you about the end result. Then, ask them questions such as whether or not they were satisfied with the length of time it took, the cleanliness, etc. This could be a valuable way to discover if you are suited for this line of work before you start setting up clients.

Set up a Bookkeeping System

Even a simple cleaning business will need a bookkeeping system of some sort. If you are going to be a one person team, you will still need a spreadsheet or some other way to keep track of your income and expenses. Don’t order checks and business cards right away, however. These things cost money, and until you get rolling, you might be putting the cart before the horse.

Do get a calendar of some type so you can keep track of appointments and addresses. Then, you can add those other things once you build your clientele. But as with any type of business, you should have a separate checking account so it’s easy for you, your accountant, and the IRS to see what transactions are for your business and which are personal, and so you don’t have anyone digging through all of your own personal expenditures that you may wish to keep private.

Decide How to Charge

Remember your time is valuable and you need to pay yourself well.  Also, if you are the one providing the cleaning products, mops, buckets, vacuum, and any other items, then you are the one replacing them as well. Vacuums depreciate with use and will need to be replaced at some point. Cleaning products must also be replaced as they are used, so don’t forget to charge enough to be able to do so and still make a profit.

Determining if you are going to charge by the hour, by room, a flat rate, etc. can be tricky, so don’t make this decision lightly. Do not take a job without having the chance to view the home or business – ever! You don’t want the surprise of walking into a filthy environment and having to spend way more time than you budgeted for the job. This adds extra expense, because in a cleaning business, time is literally money!

Ask for Cleaning Business Referrals

When you are just starting out, you want to keep your expenses as low as possible. You are in this to make money, after all, so you don’t want to spend a bunch of money advertising your new cleaning business. Make sure you do a good job and ask your clients for referrals if they are happy with your services. If they are unhappy about anything, do your best to make it right. It will be worth it in the end for the free advertising you will get. Happy people tell others how great of an experience they received.

Hopefully the steps above will help you avoid the headaches of starting your own cleaning business, and allow you to make some good clean cash!

Have you ever thought about starting a cleaning business to make money?

Ways to Make Money: Start a Cleaning Business is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Long before the Internet gave businesses an easy way to sell themselves directly to customers, a business owner might best find their name in print by building a relationship with a reporter for the business section of the local newspaper. If the reporter was working on a story about the economy, for example, they may call the business owner for their take on it.

It’s a lot easier now to promote your business online. You can reach customers from your website, where you provide content that they’ll want to come back to again and again.

Or you could be cited as an expert source in a news story to run online or in a newspaper by answering a query on HARO — Help a Reporter Out — a site that connects reporters with sources. Other sites do this too, though I think HARO is the best out there.

However you connect with reporters, being seen as an expert source in your field can go a long way in giving your business free publicity.

A message gap

As a journalist, I’ve had the help of many sources throughout my career. As a freelance writer since 2008 who specializes in online personal finance content, I’ve found that most sources prefer a link back to their website in exchange for helping me as a source. I’m happy to provide the links (though that decision is in the hands of my editors), and I’m thankful for their help.

But too often, people who want to help as sources don’t do the best job providing the best information in the best way possible. There’s a gap between what they want to say and how they say it.

To help potential sources deal with that so that they’re quoted in the media and make the most of such opportunities, I’ve written a short book called “Sources Say,” with my best tips for being a great source.

Here are a few ways to be a great source and have reporters call you often:

Know your business like a pro

Everyone is an expert in something. If you’re an auto mechanic, then you can offer a lot of information about cars. If you’re a teacher, you’re probably a great source on education and changes in the field. Whatever your profession is, you probably know it forward and backward like a pro.

If you want to be a great news source, you read the news every day and keep updated on the latest happenings in your field. You spot trends in your area of expertise long before they happen, and have an idea when the conventional wisdom in your field doesn’t make sense anymore.

Be pithy

Reporters are on the lookout for great quotes when they interview people. A great source will be pithy and say something in such a short and sweet way that a reporter can’t help but use their quotes in the story. If you can say something much better than a reporter can write it, you’re gold.

What you don’t want to be is boring. Talking too long so you can hear yourself talk, or responding with a long email that doesn’t get to the point, and you may never hear from that reporter again.

More important than any of this, however, is the ability to speak expertly about your field and to be accurate in everything you say to a reporter. If you’re trying to wing it, then stay home.

Reach out

One thing that sources — or their public relations company — do that can be successful in promoting their business is to reach out to reporters and suggest story ideas based on recent news.

Pointing out a legitimate survey that your company just completed on a newsy topic could get a reporter’s attention. If the stock market is falling fast and you’re a financial advisor, you could come up with a tip sheet on why investors shouldn’t panic.

One downfall in this that I’ve seen often is when potential sources or PR people either send too many followup emails or call a reporter to see if they’re going to use the news tip. Reporters, like many people, have a full schedule and a full in-box, so responding to such questions could take up hours of their time each day.

If they haven’t gotten back to you within a few days of your query, chances are they’re not going to do the story.

If you’re smart in how you reach out to reporters and provide worthwhile information in a unique way, then it may not even seem as if you’re promoting your business by being an expert source. Promoting your business may turn out to be a byproduct of your desire to help a reporter out and help explain to the public how your industry works.

Be a Media Ninja and Promote Your Business for Free is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.