Bloggeries

Two years ago I got the fight of my life after it was announced that my business would undergo a tax audit. The reason why I was scared was not because we hadn’t paid taxes or because we were dodging the system, we were in fact doing everything by the book, but because our office was an absolute mess. We had files all over the place, we had stuff on computer and other staff in paper format and quite simply we looked like a right state.

Somehow we managed to scrape through that audit, but it served as a lesson for us to be more organized in the future. We have changed the way in which we do things now, and we have found that it came with many more benefits. If you have a business which isn’t very organized, here is why you should change. 

Tax Audit

I’ll start with the obvious reason and that is a tax audit, although any audit can be helped by a better organizational system. The reason why this is so important is because any auditors coming in from outside are going to need certain pieces of information quickly to hand, if you are not able to do this because you are too busy swimming through a sea of paperwork then you are going to be unlikely to be looked upon kindly by the auditor, and they will think that if you can’t keep paperwork up to date then what does that say about your ability to run a business, or pay your taxes. 

Speed of Operations

Something which has greatly improved since the big clean-up which we did was to massively speed up our operations. There are so many moments in the business where we need to get a customer’s records or cite information from previous deals and in the past we would have spent a huge amount of time each and every day searching through the mountain of paperwork in order to find it. Now that we have a perfect system which is all filed in alphabetical and chronological order, everting is easier to find and as a result we have saved a huge number of man hours which we’d have previous used on searching. 

Morale

 As the business owner I really should have paid more attention to how our dgsorgnziaed business was impacting the morale of the staff. They never said much about it because it just became the norm, but they have all since spoken to me about how much they would hate having to dig through the files and how happier they are since we have changed it. This change has greatly increased the levels of happiness in the office and I would say that now morale is very evidently  in a good place. 

If you have been putting off that organization then don’t any longer, pick a day and get it done. 

If you are looking at setting up your own business then I would like to share with you some key learnings which I have made after completing 3 years in business. I opened Lyoness, a female beauty store back in 2016 and the journey has been incredible so far. Naturally there have been highs and lows during that period but we have survived, and we have just started to make actual profit, an exciting time.

Although I studied business at college, you really don’t learn about running a business until you actually do it and this experience has been very eye-opening for me. Here is what I learned from those first 3 years with Lyoness. 

Recruiting 

One of the key learnings which I have made since launching the business is that when recruiting, you have to bear the team dynamic in mind. For the first year I would hire sales staff or management based on their own profile, without considering how they may fit into the team dynamic. The consequence of this was the hiring of some people who were great at sales, but who weren’t good at working with a team or getting on with others, and this presented a number of conflicts. Now when I hire people I ensure that they are the right fit for the team. 

Marketing 

Now that I look back on the first 3 years I realize that the way in which we have spent money on marketing has not always been the smartest investments. For example when we first launched our marketing campaign we decided to use email marketing and we then spent a lot of time on social media, although we didn’t pay for social media ads. I now know that any marketing strategy should combine a number of different marketing approaches, in order to really get the most from it. Instead of investing our whole marketing budget on one method, we now spread it out to hit as many points and targets as possible. 

Small Steps

Something which I was very guilty of from the outset was trying to turn this business into a global leader after just a few weeks, well my dreams weren’t quite as grand as that but you get the point. I am not someone who is very good at being patient and this is why I was already planning for growth before we had even established ourselves. It became apparent after a couple of months that these years were about building a foundation from which to launch the business from, a key learning. 

DIY

There is a temptation as a business owner to do it all yourself in order to save money but you simply cannot do it. There just isn’t enough time in the day to complete all of the tasks yourself and you have to either outsource or delegate in order to be more effective. 

Hopefully the learnings which I have made with Lyoness can help you in your business endeavors.