3 Overlooked Things You’ll Need to Get Your Business Off the Ground

When starting a business, most entrepreneurs do a great job in developing a business plan, applying for grants and loans, and doing market research. These are some of the basic necessities when starting your business from the ground up. But even after completing all of the essential steps to building a business, about twenty percent of business startups fail in the first year. Truth is, while you may think you have everything you need to be successful, there are three crucial things that are commonly overlooked when trying to get your business off the ground: finding a business mentor, maintaining social media presence, and utilizing equipment and inventory storage.

Here at Universal Storage Group, we’ve helped businesses with their inventory storage needs for a long time. Here are our tips.

1. Finding a Business Mentor

Having a business mentor with more experience under their belt on your team is key to building a successful business. A business mentor is someone who has extensive knowledge in the industry that can help guide you through decision-making, share wisdom from their past experiences, and motivate you to reach your business goals. Don’t mistake your mentor for an employee or business consultant, though. Most of the time, they are taking the time to build this relationship with the kindness of their heart, so try not to take advantage of that.

Some of the benefits you’ll gain from finding a business mentor include:

• Objective advice from someone who’s been in your shoes before
• More opportunities for networking and connections
• Heightened confidence in running your business
• An increased likelihood for your business to be successful

Finding the perfect business mentor to build a relationship with isn’t as hard as it may seem. It’s likely that you already know someone who is in a similar industry whether it be a childhood friend, coworker, classmate, teacher, or professor. If you don’t have immediate contact with the person you’re thinking of, LinkedIn is a great place to start your connection.

2. Maintaining Social Media for Business

Over the past few years, social media has become an integral part of running a successful business. Social media provides businesses with a great platform to reach audiences to gain brand awareness, generate leads, show off your brand personality, and more. No matter what your overall goals are, maintaining a social media presence should be a top priority for your business.

While it may seem like a daunting task to create content and social media messaging, there are many tools on the internet that help make social media marketing easy. For instance, Canva offers thousands of different templates to choose from to create engaging content that fits your brand image. Hootsuite is also a great tool to manage and plan all of your social media for business in one convenient place.

What Social Media Should I Use?

Of course, it’s easier said than done to maintain your social media presence. It takes time and effort. But beyond that, there’s a simple question you need to ask yourself: what social media should I use?

One of the key things to remember about social media is that every platform is designed for different purposes, with different audiences and demographics flocking to each. The same strategy will not work for every platform. The most common social media platforms in today’s social media landscape include:

• Facebook—Ideal for targeting an older demographic. Facebook Business Manager has lots of capabilities, though, and is a powerful tool for posting news and interacting with fans alike.
• Twitter—There aren’t a lot of business specific features on Twitter, but Twitter is undefeated when it comes to shooting out quick and/or time-sensitive notifications.
• LinkedIn—If your business focuses on B2B services and sales, a LinkedIn account is a must. You can run ads, write posts, and even post job openings.
• Instagram—For many small businesses, a well-run Instagram account is the best option for organic social media efforts. Take great pictures, post great stories, and you’ll gain a reputation in your community quickly.
• TikTok—Ideal for targeting Gen Z and young demographics. Not for every business, but you might not have as much competition here compared to other platforms when it comes to other business content.

3. Utilizing Equipment and Inventory Storage

If you’re starting a small business from the ground up, it’s likely that you’re working from home or out of a small space. When handling day-to-day business operations, your space can quickly become cluttered with business documents, equipment, inventory, and more. It’s easy to lose important documents, lose track of inventory, and become unorganized when you don’t have the proper space you need to work from.

Renting a self storage unit is a cost-effective way to help declutter your workspace to keep you organized and can even help increase productivity. As your business grows and develops, a storage unit will help provide you with the clarity that comes with a tidy workspace—along with a secure place to store your important documents and inventory.

Expand Your Business with Business Storage Units

With storage facilities located all across the country, finding storage space to expand and develop your business is a problem with the past with Universal Storage. We offer affordable storage units on a flexible month-to-month basis, so you can decide how long you need to utilize your business storage units. We even have climate controlled storage to help protect your sensitive equipment and inventory from extreme temperatures. Stay on top of your business operations by finding a storage facility near you today!