Archives for November 2018

The Event Planning Checklist: Everything You Need to Know

November 28, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Event Planning Checklist

Are you thinking about setting up an event planning side hustle? Check out this event planning checklist to keep up with everything you need for a great event.

Organizing a corporate event can be a way to demonstrate new product lines, meet new industry contacts, and to improve existing skills.

Planning one isn’t for the faint-hearted, however. Organizing a big event takes time, money, and a lot of preparation to get it right.

So how can you start planning a large event without making mistakes? By having an event checklist to follow, step by step.

And that’s exactly what we’ve got for you. Here’s our ultimate event planning checklist for you to make your next event successful.

What Do You Want to Achieve?

Before you start preparing an event plan, you should first decide what it is you actually want to achieve with your event.

Do you want it to serve an educational purpose? Is it promotional — for your business and its products? Or is it more for recreational purposes, as a treat for your colleagues?

Deciding the purpose can help you as you head into the planning stage. You can figure out rough figures for your attendance, as well as understand (at this early stage) what sort of venue you might need.

Confirm Your Budget

With an idea of your goals in mind, the next decision to make — and potentially the most important — is the size of your budget.

Without a firm idea of how much you can spend, you can’t decide on a venue, catering, speakers, or any other requirements for your event.

If you’ve organized an event before, great! Your figures may not be too dissimilar, and this can help you plan your budget much more effectively.

If you haven’t, you may need to do a little bit of research. It’s better to overestimate than underestimate.

If you’re unsure how big your budget should be for your event, don’t worry. There are event budgeting guides available that can help you narrow things down from a financial perspective.

Check and Decide a Date

If you have a budget, the next decision on your event planning timeline is deciding on a suitable date.

Your date can have a big impact on your preparations. If you decide on a date that’s unsuitable for your business requirements or it’s around major vacation periods, you’re not going to get the attendance numbers you need.

You might also find that your budget is impacted with reservations for venues at higher rates. Try to pick a date that’s a reasonable period into the future, to give you breathing space to prepare.

Find a Suitable Location

With a date decided, you can start to look for a suitable location for your event. You might want to keep it local, especially if you already have local connections with venues near your business location.

If you want to travel a little further, consider the impact this might have on accommodation and travel for your colleagues and for yourself.

Don’t just pick the first venue you find. Speak to, and visit, a few locations and get quotes for your event. You also need to check they have availability on the date you need to book!

Consider an Overall Theme

With some of the physical and practical elements out of the way, you can start to think more about your event itself. Choosing a theme “sets the scene” for the purpose of your event.

It can be used to excite your potential event attendees and generate publicity, it can link elements of your event together (from the speakers to the catering), and it can help you as you start to plan the rest of your event specifics.

Once you’ve decided a theme, you can think about the fun stuff, like an event musician! Discover more about how to find a musician for your corporate event the right way.

Further Event Planning for Events and Speakers

At this stage, you should be ready to start sketching out the nitty-gritty details.

Corporate events often use speakers to help bring in outside voices from their industry. If this is what you want to do, start thinking about names in your industry you can approach to run a session.

Speak to industry contacts about the possibility of sponsoring your event. It might not be for any financial benefit, but big names attached to your event can help generate greater interest through brand recognition.

Need some exciting event planning ideas? This event planning advice guide should prove useful.

Ramp up Event Marketing and Confirm Attendance

You should be thinking about event marketing from the beginning. Let your staff, customers, and clients know the date and specifics of your event as you confirm them.

As the event date gets closer, you should ramp up your event marketing efforts. Build a website for your event with an easy form for users to guarantee attendance (as well as to help you build an email marketing list for the future).

With an idea of potential event numbers, you can be sure you don’t order too much food or merchandise. As the day gets closer, continue your marketing efforts with an appropriate social media campaign. Don’t forget the email reminders either!

Final Event Preparations

Before your event happens, you need to confirm everything. Share responsibilities with your team to ensure nothing gets missed.

Everything from the caterer to the tech support has to be arranged and ready for the day. Do you have somebody to hand out the event passes and confirm attendance on arrival? Do you have backups for speaker no-shows?

With your event checklist in hand, you can keep your preparation on track. Don’t stress, don’t panic — follow the plan, and let everything come together.

The day before the event, do a final run-through with your staff and any relevant vendors to be sure no detail gets missed.

Make Your Event Successful with This Event Planning Checklist

Every good event starts out with a clear and successful plan of action. With so many things to organize and put together, an event planning checklist can help alleviate some of the stress that planning a large event can cause.

Our advice? Stick to your plan.

Confirm a budget on paper, organize your event specifics, and confirm attendance before your event happens. Make sure everybody is following the same plan by distributing a copy of your checklist to all parties involved in your event setup.

Check out some other business strategy articles for more ideas and strategies.

Planning for the Future of Your Business: What Happens When You Die?

November 28, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Effective Succession Planning

Are you prepared for the future of your business? Do you know what happens when you die? If not, keep reading!

Having a successful business is one of the biggest accomplishments you can ever have in life. But, it can still be taken away in a split second!

As such, one of the best business decisions you can make is to prepare for the unexpected. You never know when your company may need to close its doors – or, on a more serious note, when you may take your last breath. It’s a grim thing to think about what happens when you die, but it is a possibility you can’t rule out.

Here are 3 things you can do to prepare your business for what happens after you die.

1. Establish a Successor

A successor is someone who will take over the business after you’re gone. This person typically assumes your role and responsibilities as well as any finances left in your name that are tied to the business. Your personal finances are not theirs unless otherwise stated when estate planning.

There are a number of other reasons to be specific and clear when choosing a successor, though. Say you want your successor to be a child of yours but you have more than one child interested in leading the business. Say you have a few employees who would be great leaders to run the business, but at the moment there isn’t a clear way to tell who would take over.

It falls on you to offer the guidance that’s needed to ensure a smooth transition. These are decisions you have to make sooner rather than later, considering you never know when your time will come.

2. Get a Business Partner

Another way to ensure your business lives on long after you’re gone is to get a business partner. This person will basically take over your side of the business in the event of your death.

They may choose to bring on a new partner to fill your role or they may decide to do your job and theirs after you pass. Your business finances are also in their hands, which they can keep for themselves, donate, or invest back into the business. If you have a preference as to where your money goes, put it in writing to ensure things go as planned after you’re gone.

3. Put an Employee Stock Ownership Plan in Place

The final option you have to prepare your business for the event of your death is to create an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).

Such a structure puts all of the business funds that are in your name in the hands of your employees. It sets up annual contributions that can happen just once or over a set period of time, depending on the amount of money you have and the number of employees who have stock in the company.

Be Ready for What Happens When You Die

As much as you may not want to think about what happens when you die, it’s something you need to do as a business owner.

Just imagine being an employee and having a job one day and then hearing the company is going out of business the next. Picture what it would be like to be a child thinking you’ll inherit your parent’s company only to have it taken from you.

These are the things that happen when business owners don’t prepare for the life of their business after their own life! They can significantly alter the course of your business or stop its progression altogether.

For more important business tips and insights to be aware of, click here.

Who Should You Listen To When Starting A Business?

November 27, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Business Startup Advice

A lot of people find the reaction which they get from telling those around them that they are starting a business to be quite frustrating. Everyone, from your closest relatives to your colleagues at work, will all have strong ideas and advice to help you with your work. Of course, though, you don’t want to be pushed down someone else’s route. Instead, you need to figure out who is worth listening to about your company, and who you can ignore entirely, with this post to guide you through it.

Loved Ones

Your family members and friends will all care very deeply about you, and will want you to succeed wherever you can. It’s easy to miscommunicate this, though, leaving a lot of people at odds with each other when one party simply wanted to offer some support. When someone you care about takes the time to tell you something, you should always give them the courtesy of listening, even if you don’t end up using their ideas. This will ensure that you don’t miss a diamond idea while toiling by yourself.

Those With Experience

If you’ve been running your company for a few months or more, it’s likely that you will already have some relationships brewing with larger ventures. The people at the helm of organisations like this can be a great resource. When you have ideas which you’re not sure about or have a problem which you’re struggling to solve, someone who has been in the field for many years will be invaluable. Of course, though, some people will charge you for this service, and this isn’t usually worth it.

Experts In The Field

There are loads of people out there who dedicate their lives to supporting different parts of businesses. If you need to solve a legal issue, for example, you can get a consultation here and start the ball rolling on your solution nice and quickly. When someone is paid to do something like this, you can rest assured that they will do their job well, especially when their employer has very good reviews.

Yourself

Finally, as the last area to think about, it’s time to think about the advice you can offer yourself. When you have so many people throwing their ideas at you, it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that your own aims are silly, even if this isn’t the case. To avoid this, you should always be making the final decision for your business. Even if someone works hard to convince you of something, it’s essential that you have the final say, as you are the one who is putting all of the work into the company in the first place.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working harder on the time you put into the advice you get for your business. Some people are worth listening to, while others won’t offer anything at all, and you have to be able to spot this before you take on anyone’s support.

How To Design An Office With Productivity In Mind

November 24, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Productivity is a primary concern for all businesses and your office space plays a big part in that. It’s important that you’re leading your team in the right way and manage workloads properly but if your office isn’t up to scratch, people won’t work hard. If you haven’t given your office a makeover for a while, you should probably change it up a bit. When you’re redesigning your office, it’s important that you do it with productivity in mind at all stages of the process. Here are some important things to remember.

Productive Office Space

Splash Out On Furniture

You might not think that an office chair makes that much difference to productivity but it really does. There are a lot of negative health problems associated with sitting down all day long and if you don’t have good furniture, your staff are going to end up with back problems and they’ll be generally uncomfortable all day, which makes it more difficult to concentrate on work. That’s why it’s important that you go to a professional company like Rieke Office Interiors for proper office furniture. As well as good quality office chairs that offer great support, you should invest in some comfortable furniture in the break areas. Giving people proper downtime and helping them to relax when they’re not working will help to improve productivity once they get back to their desk.

Update Equipment

The tools that your employees are using to make their jobs easier need to be updated regularly, especially the computers. If they’re using outdated equipment, your employees will end up working a lot slower than they could be. When you’re redesigning the office, you should take this opportunity to replace all of the basic office equipment that your staff use day to day. It’ll help them to be as effective as they possibly can be without anything slowing them down.

Room Color

The color of a room can have a massive impact on your attitude and your ability to work effectively. Different colors elicit a different psychological response so when you’re picking colors for your office, you need to choose wisely. Studies show that blue and green are great colors for inspiring productivity and creativity in your employees so make good use of those. Avoid red because it can be distracting when you’re trying to focus. Yellow can have a calming effect so it’s a good color to use for high pressure environments. You should absolutely avoid using any boring colors like cream because they don’t create a dynamic environment that makes people want to work.

Co-Working Spaces

Separating everybody into cubicles is the worst way to realize their full potential. If you want to get the best out of your employees, you need to allow them to pool their skills together and work together as a team. Giving them a space to do that is vital in a modern office setting so make sure that you’re creating great co-work spaces in your new office.

When you’re redesigning your office, it’s important that you always do it with productivity in mind.

10 Basic Office Supplies Every Successful Business Owner Needs

November 23, 2018 by Contributed Post 2 Comments

Basic Office Supplies You Need

If you want to run a successful business, you’re going to need the tools to get the job done. Here we go over 10 basic office supplies you can’t do without!

Have you finally decided to leave your dead-end job and start your own business?

Congratulations! Starting a new business is an exciting and stressful time in every business owner’s life. There are over 28 million small businesses in the United States. Each one may have started with just an idea and the hard work of a handful of people, but that’s not all they started with.

They also started with an office full of the appropriate basic office supplies. Making sure your office is properly equipped is a major key to your success. On top of that, it’ll save you a ton of unnecessary stress.

Not sure what basic office supplies you’ll need? Read on to find out!

1. Computer

This is an obvious first component of a well-equipped office. When selecting your electronic equipment, there are a few factors you should consider.

First, how many computers do you need? This is based on the number of staff you’ll have and/or the different parts of your business that need a separate computer. Once you have that in mind, set a budget. From there, look for computers that fit the demands of your business.

For example, you want a desktop for the office, but you travel a lot, so you need a laptop when you’re on the go. Calculate both of these needs into your computer budget.

2. Monitors

Monitors are not a surprising item to add to your office unless you’re planning on purchasing a laptop.

Consider this, though, you’ll no doubt be spending a significant amount of time on your laptop. Unless you’re propping up the laptop and setting up a separate keyboard, it’s simply not ergonomically correct for you to hunch over a laptop all day.

Monitors can be connected to your desktop, or laptop, and help you work pain-free. You can also add multiple monitors if you need to toggle multiple things on the screen. If you want to do this, you’ll need to make sure you have a good KVM switch to enable this to work.

3. Backup Hard Drive

If you’ve ever had your computer crash, then you know backing up your data on a backup hard drive is incredibly important.

There are two main types of backup hard drives you can purchase: a physical hard drive or a cloud-based backup. The perk of a cloud-based backup is that there’s no hardware that could fail. The perk of a physical hard drive is that your information feels more secure. Both work very well in terms of protecting your data.

You work hard to make your business a success, don’t lose that hard work due to technology failure.

4. Printer

You never know you need a printer until suddenly you have to print something! Printers have come a long way from the dot matrix days. If you’re looking for quick and reliable, opt for a laser jet. Thankfully, advances in technology have brought down the price of laser printers significantly.

5. Copier and Scanner

Copiers and scanners are both critical pieces of office equipment. Whether its copying receipts for your taxes or scanning documents your customers have sent in, it’s never a mistake to equip your office with a high-quality copier and scanner.

Thankfully, they often come as a single unit, saving you money and space!

6. Shredder

Shredders are incredibly important in an office setting, especially if you’re dealing with sensitive data.

If you’re handing paper records of people’s credit card numbers, social security numbers, or private information, then you need to make sure you have a way to securely dispose of it to prevent any future liability.

Shredders also work to protect you. Small businesses frequently receive offers for loans or credit cards. Throwing those offers out without properly destroying them leaves your business vulnerable to fraud.

7. File Cabinet

Ah, the old file cabinet. There’s no way around it, if you want to keep your files neat and organized, you have to have a file cabinet. It doubles as a way to securely store your physical files if you purchase one with a lock.

8. Desk Supplies

Ever need a pen and suddenly realize you have no idea where one is? This may seem obvious, but many people overlook it. Make sure your new office space has everything you’ll need in terms of basic desk supplies.

This includes things like pens, pencils, erasers, extra lead, rulers, tape, staplers, highlighters, permanent markers, and refills for when you run out!

9. Stationary and Mailing Supplies

Most communication these days is done electronically, whether through email or by telephone. Regardless, there will always be times when you need to send something out via mail, and you want to be prepared for those times.

Be sure to purchase stamps – Forever stamps, if possible so you don’t have to worry about changes in postage rates. If you think you’ll be doing a lot of mailers, it may be worthwhile to invest in a postage machine.

Lastly, take some time to consider your stationary. If you can swing letterhead paper and envelopes, now would be a good time to stock up. If you’re not ready to commit to a logo or letterhead, try a personalized rubber stamp! Check out Creative Rubber Stamps to learn more about your rubber stamp options.

10. Telephone(s)

Last, but certainly not least, you need to make sure that your office has a telephone, or more than one if you have multiple people working in your office.

Your cell phone works great when you’re starting out, but eventually, your business will get busier and you’ll want to separate your work calls from your personal calls. Beyond that, you want to be able to take a break when you leave work.

The best solution is to purchase a land line for your office. If you’re not feeling that, then get a dedicated cell phone line, but remember to turn it off every once in a while. You’ll quickly learn that a balance between work and personal life is extremely important!

Ready to Buy Your Basic Office Supplies Now?

An office equipped with the right basic office supplies sets your business up for success and saves you the trouble of having to scramble for them at the last minute. Now you’ll have time to focus on more important things like business strategies, marketing, and maximizing your staff.

Loved this advice? Check out the rest of our blog for more super helpful business tips!