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Most online start-ups start from the comfort of a bedroom or a garage, so it makes sense that you’re on your own when you start. There’s no IT department, marketing team, swish office space to start in. As a brand-new entrepreneur, you are likely in the ‘bootstrapped’ way, where everything is on a shoestring budget, but your ideas are bigger than your wallet. This should never get in your way, though, because some of the best businesses start out being cash-strapped and idea rich.

Once you finally get yourself some traction in your industry, you need to look at how you can start cleaning things up and looking more like a professional company than looking like a person having a hobby in the spare room. Standing out in a crowded market isn’t the easiest, but even the smallest fish have to start somewhere. Making your business more professional is what is going to get you growing into the big fish you want to be one day. So, how can you make changes to get taken as seriously as you need to be?

Contact Details. Not many companies have letter-headed paper anymore, but your company emails should be blasting with your brand, your logo and your office contact details. Having a separate phone number is one way to ensure that your personal and professional lives stay separate, and if you don’t want to put your home address on your business cards, you need to look into virtual offices like Grosvenor St Pauls. People need to have some faith in your company and a home telephone number may be intercepted by someone else in the family. Make sure this doesn’t happen!

Domain Name. Your company brand is one of the most important parts of your identity as a professional business. Buying your domain name is going to get you the recognition that you need for your company going from hanging on another company, to being independent. A free domain name keeps you attached to an impersonal platform, so purchasing your own is going to mean independence!

Email. Business email addresses are far more trusted for customers than the standard Hotmail or Gmail account names. Be creative with your email addresses but don’t make them too worthy. You want to be consistent with your branding and stay professional, and an email that mentions your company name is exactly how you can get there.

About You. On your business website, your ‘about us’ page shouldn’t just be two lines. You should talk about how you started and who you are as a business, as well as what you hope to achieve. Your page is your stage to announce to people what you can do and how you plan to do it. It’s also a good place to embed links to other parts of your website.

Professionalism means different things to different people, but these steps above can give your company some credibility and make your customers put their faith in you!

In the life of a small business, there are loads of little milestones which are cause for celebration. Hiring an employee, getting your first building, and even making your first bit of income will all feel great. Of course, though, at a point, the milestones will become impossible to reach without some outside help. To give you an idea of what you’ll need to do, this post will be exploring some of the ways you can fuel your business’s growth.

The Business: To begin on this journey, you first have to consider the business itself, along with a couple of key factors. When you’re ready to grow but don’t have enough money to do it, it can be hard to know which areas you’ll need to improve.

• Enough Work: In a lot of cases, companies will find themselves struggling to handle the workload they are getting long before they can afford to improve it. When you’re struggling with something like this, you have to make sure that you’re getting enough to sustain another business, while also being able to afford the new space. There’s not much point in growing if you’ll collapse as the result.

• A Good Standing: Along with making sure you have enough work coming your way, it is also a very good idea to make sure that your company is regarded well by those who you’ll be asking to fund it. Having existing debt, a poor reputation and even a dirty workplace could all impact these decisions. So, you have to make sure that you’re working hard to improve them.

The Funding: Once you’re certain your business is ready to grow, you can start to look for places to find your fuel. Below, you can find some great examples of your options, though there are loads of other chances to get yourself funded in the world of business.

• Loans: Borrowing money will probably be most people’s first idea when they’re looking for funding like this. Business loans come in loads of different forms, with options to help with things like construction and product development, along with loads of other areas. This gives you loads of choice when you’re looking for finance.

• Investors: Of course, for some people, the idea of getting someone else on board with the business could be a better option. There are loads of websites out there which are dedicated to helping small businesses to find investment. To do this, you’ll need to have a company which is already making a good amount of money.

• Personal Financing: Finally, as your last funding option, you could consider using your own money to push your business onto its next stage. This is arguably the best choice you can make, as it will leave you in complete control of your company. Of course, though, this might not be your priority.

Hopefully, this post will inspire you to start working harder to find ways to fuel your business’s growth. A lot of people struggle once they reach this stage in their corporate journey. But, with the right time, effort, and knowledge, you could make it a lot easier.

The term productivity is often confused with being organized and a person that likes things just so. While a productive person is likely to plan achieve more over a long period of time than someone that is less productive, it also needs to become part of who you are. You don’t necessarily have to be doing more in the same amount of time; you can be productive and be doing less. It is all about worker smarter, not necessarily harder. But how can you make your worklife (and homelife if needed), be more productive? Here are some things you can do to make sure that you are getting much more of the right things done.

Look at the Stoppers

There are many things that might stop you from working as hard as you want to be. For many of us, it is simply us and our attitudes towards things. We can be the things that is getting in the way! Do we complain or blame others as a justification for not doing certain things? Do we organize our time badly? Take a look at what is stopping you at the moment; it will be different for everyone, but there will be something.

Think Positive

You’d be surprised at how much a change of mindset can alter how you feel and how you get things done. It can be as simple as saying that you have this and that specific tasks to get done today, what is the best way that you can achieve it? Rather than ‘I am feeling so overwhelmed, I’ll be glad when today is over’ kind of attitude. A change in attitude can help you to feel more productive and empowered.

Look at Tools To Help

Planning better and changing your mindset can make a big difference, but they can only get you so far. So looking for certain tools to help you to be more productive at work can be a good idea. Take cloud computing by Mustard IT, for example. Using the power of the cloud can enhance your collaborative efforts at work, and unite your workforce. The cloud helps you streamline your workflow, improve how productive you are, and redefine what is possible.

Remove Distractions

If you find that you are easily distracted, then it is time to remove those distractions. Do you just check your phone for social media notifications and then get sucked into it, and before you know it an hour has passed? If something like that is a distraction, then take the distraction away. Turn it off. Put it in airplane mode. Don’t even bring it to work. Figure out will work best for you. We will all have different distractions; so find out what yours are and you can go from there.

What helps you to be more productive at work? It is important to remember that not everyone will do well with everything as explained. So find out what will work for you, rather than giving up right away.