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Tools to Conquer the Top 5 Biggest Concerns of Small Business Owners

Katie Noerper

Woman with a tablet speaking to a man in an office

Our previous post discussed the Top 5 Biggest Concerns of Small Business Owners. As we know, entrepreneurship can be a beautiful dance filled with glittery bursts of dreams coming true. We also know, however, that this beautiful dance can quickly become a battlefield full of explosive, unforeseen challenges that can make a business owner’s head spin a full 360 degrees. Rest assured, fellow warrior; the tools explored below can withstand even the toughest obstacles.


Here's a quick reminder of the Top 5 Biggest Concerns of Small Business Owners:

  • Cash Flow

  • Funding

  • Client Attraction

  • Talent Acquisition and Retention

  • Work-Life Balance


Let’s dive into the tools that can help navigate these.


QuickBooks Online to Manage Small Business Cash Flow 

It’s no surprise that cash flow is the top concern for most small business owners. The process of tracking the ins and outs of money can be quite overwhelming, but luckily there is a simple and affordable tool to put our minds (and wallets) at ease – Quickbooks Online (QBO). According to Fourlane, “QuickBooks is the accounting software of choice for more than 29 million small businesses in the U.S.”, and there are so many reasons why. 

This software has a ton of versatility, so whether a business is in its infancy stage or is coming into its midsize britches, QBO is packed with user-friendly features to keep finances organized and on track. QBO’s most notable features include:


  • Bookkeeping Automation

    • QBO connects with your accounts to allow for effortless money tracking. Transactions are coded to categories to track financials for tax purposes and budgeting, making the end of the year a breeze when totaling costs and revenue. Furthermore, QBO tracks taxes owed and paid to ensure compliance and can even automatically deduct taxes due from your accounts, making it one less thing for you to worry about!


  • Reporting

    • QBO allows you to run various financial reports quickly and easily. We previously discussed the importance of Profit and Loss Reports, and this is just one report QBO generates. Balance Sheets and a whole slew of customizable reports are also available.


  • Managing Accounts Receivable and Payable

    • Pay contractors and create/receive invoices all in one place. It’s a no-brainer! Additionally, QBO allows you to quickly create 1099’s for your contractors at the end of the year, which is one less EOY thing to worry about!


In short, any small business owner struggling to track expenses, or unpaid invoices, or dormant quotes, or anything else affecting cash flow, QuickBooks Online is the golden ticket to sanity. 


Tools to Help Find Funding

Funding is an obvious issue for most small businesses, and the first step to remedy this issue is to build a business plan. SBA suggests, “To increase your chances of securing a loan, you should have a business planexpense sheet, and financial projections for the next five years.” 

Your account can certainly help project your finances!


Build a Business Plan

Having a plan in place shows you and potential investors that there is a clear understanding of pre-launch and post-launch costs and revenue sources. A good plan also illustrates a clear vision of the brand, its intended market, and what success looks like for the business. It will be easier to receive funding from banks and investors when there is a communicable plan in place.

BizPlan is a great resource point for someone just getting started. The platform takes a lot of the guesswork out of creating a plan, and even has a built-in fundraising feature. Plans start at just $30/month, which seems to be a great bang for the buck.


If you’re like me and enjoy free resources, the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) has a lot of great information, tools, and even webinars to help launch your business. Use their free templates and other phenomenal resources to kickstart your business plan.


Once the business plan is created, it should be made presentable and appealing to potential funders. Microsoft PowerPoint is a traditionally trusty program to make boring information “prettier” and is already included in the Microsoft Office Suite you may pay for. For the low cost of $15/month, however, my preference leans towards Canva due to the variety of templates and design resources available. Canva does offer a free version of their platform, but I believe the small investment is worth the many options gained through the paid version.


Now that the business plan has been made and is presentable, it’s time to find some money.


Find Funding

The quickest and easiest way to acquire funding is through traditional loans. Online platforms like SmartBiz Loans makes it easy to prequalify for multiple loans simultaneously to quickly review your options. But, as we discussed in the previous post, there are many funding options outside of loans, such as crowd-funding and finding individual and corporate investors.


GoFundMe is a popular choice to raise money for many individuals with over $10B raised for various causes and a 90%+ success rate for fully funded campaigns. This platform allows you to create a customized page showcasing your mission to people worldwide who may want to financially support the cause. It’s free to set up a campaign to raise funds for your business, so it’s almost crazy NOT to use it!


Similarly, Kickstarter is a great resource for raising funds. This is tailored to the creatives and is a really fun way to get people involved in your mission. The idea with this platform is that anyone who backs the project receives something in return, like pieces of artwork or prototypes. Check out their site for more details.


Additionally, Gust is a powerful tool geared toward for-profit entities to connect with investors and raise capital. Joining their network also equips you with a team to review your financials, pitch, and overall startup strategy. Check out their FAQs to see if your business is a good fit for Gust.

Tools for Stronger Client Attraction

Crowded markets with increasingly competitive advertising spaces can make it difficult to find the right clients. Ad space can be very expensive and frustrating if not effective, so let’s talk about tools to conquer this great feat.


First and foremost, do not skip out on building a website! Our previous post shined a huge neon light on how many consumers judge products and services based on the business’ website alone. If you have the means to do so, hire a digital designer to fluidly execute your brand. However, if finances are tight and this is an expense you don’t want to incur, Wix is a great platform to get started. They offer AI generated options, templates, and themes to create your site without having to know a lick of coding.


To get traffic onto your site, understanding SEO and keyword searches is vital. We’ll cover this in more depth in a later post, but it’s worth mentioning to do some research on what people are searching when looking for your type of business, so you know which keywords to include in your site’s copy. Answer The Public is a great place to start.


Once people are on your site, give them a clear call to action (CTA). “Call Today for a Free Quote”, “Book an Appointment”, or “Subscribe for x% Off” are just a few examples. Once a potential client follows your CTA and is in the pipeline, a strong customer relationship management (CRM) system will be invaluable in closing the sale and nurturing the relationship to encourage future purchases. QuickBooks Online can be used as a basic CRM, as it can send quotes and invoices, receive payments, as well as track notes and communications for specific clients. It gets the job done for these basic tasks, but it’s not a great option when trying to organize multiple moving pieces concurrently. When a bird’s eye view of pending tasks and ongoing projects is more helpful, Zoho CRM is your go-to option. This ultra user-friendly platform allows you to seamlessly organize and monitor activity. You can customize profiles and automate so many aspects of your customer relations. At only $14/month per user, this is an exceptional tool to track leads and maintain customers.


Additionally, we discussed the power of referrals in our last post, and how a vast majority of small businesses in America depend on word-of-mouth to obtain new clients. Creating referral incentives is imperative to promote these sales but executing an effective referral campaign can be cumbersome and overwhelming. Current clients may not be aware of peers accepting their referral offer, or business owners lose track of which clients came from whose referral, and so on. This is yet another solution that Zoho CRM can solve. Referrals can be linked and tracked through this system to allow you to better understand the sources of your referrals. This can help you foster relationships with clients who actively bring in new sales, as well as fine tune your marketing strategies to target like-minded clients.


In summary, to begin attracting clients, create a website with a clear call to action, properly nurture new leads and current customers, and promote referrals among your clientele.


Tools to Find and Keep Good Talent

Running a one-man show is fine for some small businesses, but the need to hire often comes with growing sales and momentous market traction. Regardless of what stage your business is in, it’s a great idea to keep recruitment in the back of your mind. Some small business owners hire a fully operating team before launch, which is often driven by the type of business and the personnel demands of such. Either way, let’s discuss how to find good help!


Commonly, business owners spend a lot of money posting jobs online and receiving a ton of cheesy, irrelevant resumes to sort through and maybe find one occasional diamond in the rough. Who has the time (or budget!) for that? A great alternative to the traditional online job boards is social media. Having a strong presence on social media can boost your brand in tons of ways, and it commonly makes it easier to attract potential employees. If your social media presence is vibrantly active, posting job openings can bring in some serious talent. Your posts and targeted ads will likely reach consumers who are already interested in your business, or better yet, already following it! The most loyal employees are typically the ones who believe in the brand they’re working for and enjoy what it has to offer, whether it be a product or service. Ad space can get expensive, so posting openings on your profile or in groups is free and can foster a lot of attention. 


Also, as we have learned, referrals rule the small business world. Similarly to how existing customers are encouraged to refer new clients, existing employees, customers, or supporters of your small business should be enticed to refer new employees. Recruitment referral platforms become expensive very quickly, making it a tough investment for a lot of small businesses. Although these platforms can be pricey, trying to track employee referrals on your own can be just as overwhelming as tracking client referrals. Wellfound Recruit could be a good solution to tracking referrals and posting jobs. While it has mixed reviews, it’s an affordable option with built-in referral incentives to help keep you organized. It’s also geared toward startups, which is a unique characteristic to weed out applicants who desire a different environment.


It also should be stated that freelancers should not be feared! Using freelancers gives business owners a ton of freedom and flexibility. According to an A.Team survey, “71 percent of companies using freelancers say they enjoy greater agility in times of economic uncertainty.” Freelancers are great, because they can be hired on an as-needed basis with little to no liability requirements for the business owner. Freelancers can be hired to fill long-term positions, or can be used for temporary projects. Either way, this is a commonly more affordable option to business owners than bringing someone onto their payroll.


When it comes to retaining your talented team, it’s important to understand what your teammate(s) value within a workplace setting. Our last post discussed how workplace flexibility is increasingly important to employees nowadays. Less rigid work weeks are becoming the new norm for many up-and-coming businesses, offering flexible work hours and more room for autonomy. This isn’t always an option for all businesses, so it’s important to set clear and realistic expectations during the interview process. For midsize to larger teams, anonymous surveys have been known to give valuable feedback to employers to help gauge how happy employees are. Business owners should review those results and adjust when practical to promote a happier and healthier workplace. Communal gatherings and happy hours can help bring people together and feel like a part of a team. Just be mindful that this method could be stressful for introverts. Comradery and open communication will always be necessary to foster a healthy team, and it’s ultimately up to you to decide what that looks like within your charade.


That’s the beauty of business ownership!


Let’s now talk about work-life balance.

Tools to Promote a Healthy Work-Life Balance

This has been a hot topic for many years now, gaining exceptional popularity during the interesting post-pandemic career dumps. As a fellow business-owner, we all know how easy it is to let work completely consume us. The demands of startups and running a business never end, so it’s important for us to step back and take breathers and remember we are humans…not machines.

We discussed previously how important movement is for our body, but as the days fill up with to-do’s, it’s easy to forget to get up and stretch. MyFitnessPal will be your best friend for this. It’s free to use and tracks all the important stuff to help keep you healthy – nutrition intake, fitness activities, personalized goals, and more. Stay focused, fellow business owner. The app will notify you when it’s time to move!

Additionally, Asana offers a powerful platform to help keep your mile long to-do list organized. This ridiculously customizable site allows you to collaborate and plan with your team, monitor project progress, and manage individual tasks to make things a bit less overwhelming. It also has a free version, so it’s a must-have tool in your bag.

Along with the various fitness tools available, there are lots of apps that will help you take pauses from your busy workday to meditate, practice breathing exercise, or simply unwind momentarily with soothing music. Mental health is just as important as physical health, so be sure to stay in tune with what your body physically, mentally, and emotionally needs to optimize productivity.

Take even more weight off your shoulders with Calendly and Sendible. Ditch the days of going back and forth on emails, texts, and voicemails trying desperately to find a time to connect. Simply send someone your Calendly link. They can view your availability and choose a time convenient for them to meet. Once they schedule, your calendar will instantly update, and that slot will be unavailable to others. For social media management, Sendible is a great solution for small business owners with accounts on multiple platforms. Sendible allows you to schedule posts on all your pages, such as YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, etc. One calendar will display all scheduled posts on all sites. This will save you so many headaches. There are other options outside of Sendible, but the cost in comparison to functionality is well beyond worth it, starting at just $30/month.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these tools will help bring comfort to small business owners struggling with the top five issues commonly experienced. Just know that this is not an all-inclusive list of resources. This narrative suggests tools that we’ve either used ourselves or have researched and determined are beneficial to other business owners. It’s important to analyze your business and personal goals to determine the tools that will work best for you and your team.


Looking for help?

If you’re overwhelmed by sorting out money and stuck on financials:

Selena Fogg CPA whips out numbers and makes this process super simple. 

If you want to attract clients and build your brand with authority and consistency:

R. King Design Group has so much fun with this and dissolves all branding anxiety.  


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