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When it comes to opening a business, or even a smaller and more humble startup, there are a million things to consider. Where should you open your business? How should you conduct yourself within those early few days? How watertight is your working plan really? Do you have items or implements to wait on before you can even call yourself functional? What is the IT capability of your operation currently looking like, and how can you improve it further?

These are questions which all business leaders who started from humble beginnings have asked themselves at some point. No huge and successful leader ever had an easy ascent, and their start was likely anything but glamorous.

You may have noticed that one question was not listed above, perhaps one of the most important questions of all. Exactly where is your business going to be located? Not regarding an area, or location, or community, but in terms of which exact building space should you rent or purchase in order to get online? The answer isn’t always obvious. Sometimes, even the best decisions can elude us thanks to difficult landlords or stagnant permits.

If you’re running an operation from the ground level, and you hope to increase your growth over the next few months, the following tips should help you out regarding this issue:

Garage

Nobody said that the first year or so of business had to be glamorous. It’s likely that while you may have watched Google and Facebook office tours on YouTube, your desire for a space like that won’t be granted by a wish-giver. It’s important to keep costs low during the early stages, so if you haven’t even brought in a revenue stream just yet, or are lacking in any form of angel investing, then setting up shop in your garage could be a good place to start.

Here you may have access to your WiFi connection, and setting up additional power leads for a couple of home computer systems or laptop terminals is possible. Cleaning up the garage will allow for a lot of space, meaning a large table could be planted and sat around by your interns or budding employees. It will help you store items and separate yourself from your home space, which is important when trying to get into the working mindset. This should be a permanent solution, but it can help in the early months. Just be sure the building is well ventilated and lit, and is checked for fire safety.

Build Your Own

This might sound like a joke, but it’s really not. A plot of land can be found for cheap in suburban or even city communities, depending on the story behind it. If your revenue stream is now coming in reliably, and you have been approved for investment or some form of the shareholder agreement, the savings you have could help you place down investment in your own manufactured buildings. Here you can detail the size requirements and basically set up the entire office to the exact requirements of your future staff count and utility. This is highly suitable for those operating within a niche, who may have separate office requirements, such as a business that needs soundproofing or some form of studio reliability.

These smaller considerations may just be the thing you need. Consider them if you’re hoping for quirky, cost-effective and tailored solution to the needs your business currently has.

When you own a business, the last thing that you want to happen is for someone to steal all of your hard work, equipment, or even personal information that if leaked could cause your business to fall under. While it’s never easy to know if someone is after what you’ve built, you can make some necessary steps to protecting it from theft. Here are some tips on how to keep your business safer so that you can concentrate on building your empire.

Security Alarms

The first step that any business owner should take when setting up their business premises is to have security alarms fitted. These will alert you and the police if anyone unauthorised is trying to gain access to your property. The police are usually there within ten minutes of alert, so there’s a high chance that the thieves won’t have gotten far. The great thing about the technology used these days is that you can now have apps connected to your security alarms so you can be alerted wherever you are in the world.

Document Destruction

If you work in an industry where you have to deal with people’s personal information, then you will need to think about how you’re going to protect that person’s confidentiality when you’re finished with the information. For example, if you’re running a Doctors surgery, you will be handed information from patients and consultants all of the time, but once you’ve finished with the information what do you do with it? Luckily Box-it Central offer a document destruction service which can guarantee that no accidental information leaks will be let out. Definitely something to consider to protect your customers and business.

Security Cameras

Much alike alarms, having cameras installed can help you catch the culprit if you are ever burgled. Not only that, even though thieves will still attempt a robbery on a place with security cameras, it will certainly make them think twice before doing so. Make sure that your cameras are on at all times so that you don’t risk a failure when they are needed the most.

Extra Security On Your PC

It’s too easy for hackers to gain access to your PC in this day and age. They do this by mimicking a page that you’d be expecting to see and then gaining your credentials after you enter them into this dummy page. To avoid being hacked, be sure to install extra security measures like an anti-virus onto your computer to avoid you accidentally opening something that could give hackers access to your information. You should also always logout of accounts online and offline to ensure that there’s no one waiting for you to leave it before hacking it.

Follow these easy tips and you will be able to rest assured that the empire you’ve built isn’t at as much risk of theft, and that if anyone does attempt it that you’ve got the right security measures in place.

Your business has rights, of course it does. And both you and it should fight for these rights, too! But, just be aware that for every one right that your business has there are two laws placed upon it by the law and government. And, these laws cannot be broken; well, they can’t be broken if you want to keep your business out of some serious trouble. For advice on how to keep your business on the right side of the law, make sure to read on.

There will always be trouble ahead for your business to avoid. 

Don’t infringe on a name or trademark

If you are a prospective business owner and are yet to pick the name of your business, or if you want to completely renovate your business by renaming it, then you should be aware that you can’t just pick any old name. No, you have to do your research before your business’s new name is made official. Specifically, you need to ensure you do not copy a name that another business is already trading under; this would be trademark infringement, and this is a serious rule to break.

To protect your business from breaking this very serious rule, as stated you should do some research when you come to choosing your business’s name. This research includes first using a search engine to search your prospective name in order to see if it has already been taken. This research also includes actually learning how to trademark correctly from professionals in the field. By doing so, you will help your business to successfully circumvent the very serious trouble of trademark infringement.

Pay your taxes!

Paying your business taxes is something you simply have to do in order to stay on the right side of the tracks in regards to the law, whether you like it or not. So, make sure you pay it and never avoid it!

To ensure that you are paying your business’s taxes when and where you need to, the first thing that you should do is set yourself up a tax recording book. By doing this, and then recording all of your business’s instances of tax payments within it, you allow yourself the best opportunity possible of keeping your business up to date with its taxes. Something else that you should do is make sure you keep your finger placed firmly on pulse of the ever-changing world of taxes and taxations. This is because the rules chop and change, and regardless of whether you know of these changes or not you will need to abide by them.

Keeping your business out of trouble with the law is something you simply have to be doing for it. If you don’t, then you may find all the hard work you put into making your business all it can be is ruined in the blink of an eye. This could be because of the fact that, one, your business might be shut down by your local government, or two, your reputation may be tarnished that much in the eyes of potential customers that you wouldn’t be able to garner custom any longer.