With communication so easy today, many people with the entrepreneurial yen are deciding to strike out on their own without ever leaving the house.
The ability to operate a business within the four walls of one’s home is nothing new. Careers from beauticians to accountants have been doing it for years.
What is different now is the range of business types that can now operate from home. Countless products are made and/or distributed from home businesses, because now we can utilize e-commerce to market, sell, and ship products to customers all over the world.
The option of setting up shop without having to rent or buy the shop makes startup costs and even ongoing overhead considerably lower, increasing the chances that the business will succeed.
But even with all the advantages offered with e-commerce, you still need to meet the same standards for growing your business that have always applied. And your size can be a little bit problematic as you start out; while your goods and services might be right on par with the biggest in the business, you don’t have their resources for marketing, financial management, or finding clientele.
Fortunately, you don’t have to. The things that the big companies all do in-house can also be done for you. Hloom is a firm specializing in specialized business documents that can help you in a variety of areas. Their experience and success show just how much demand there is among smaller businesses to have an upgraded image.
Marketing you
The first thing you need to do is utilize a resume builder to put your best foot forward. Clients and customers want to have a personal connection with you. They want to see your work and business background, to know where you were educated, and to get an idea of how much time you’ve spent in this type of business.
It’s not an easy document to make. Knowing what to include and how to format a resume, curriculum vitae, or other personal background document is challenging at best and frustrating at worst. It’s much more effective to get help, especially when you may be looking for related employment to help make ends meet as your business grows.
Marketing your company
This is a bit more obvious. You want to generate all the appropriate ancillary documents for your business–flyers, product literature, and so forth. Yet as you scurry about the basement or guest room trying to make your business successful, you just don’t have time to put these out at the level of quality that is necessary. And besides, these items just may not be your thing anyway.
Turning this type of work over to an expert firm will pay off in several ways. First, you’ll not only get quality work, you’ll have the advantage of using the contractor’s experience to improve your image. They know about the right colors, fonts, language, and photos to use, so even though you might be able to create a nice product, it may not have the right angle to capture your target market.
The things you don’t think about
Most of us feel like customers are pretty predictable. They find you, they buy from you, and if they like it, they buy from you again. If they don’t like it, they go elsewhere. End of story.
It’s not that one-dimensional. With apps like Yelp and other review outlets, many people are providing feedback on businesses that don’t meet their expectations. To make matter worse, the stream-of-consciousness nature of smartphone users causes them to post quickly and without giving much thought to their feedback.
Dealing with this whole situation is known as reputation management. And it’s a very complex field, best handled by specialists who deal with the various platforms day in and day out. A bad review travels like a virus, and it takes skilled people to root out the deceptive and even fraudulent scuttlebutt about your company.
When your business is small enough to operate from home, you’re already running on fairly limited resources. But an investment in professional services can go a long way toward building your business into something your basement will never be able to contain.