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10 Small Business Tips

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10 Tips from a Successful Small Business Owner
Small business owners wear a million different hats. From product development to customer service to order fulfillment to basic HR functions, you do it all in the course of a typical day. But how do you ensure the success of your business when you're focused so much on day-to-day survival? We talked to successful small business owners to see what advice they had to share, and we've pulled their best tips together right here. 10. Create systems that can run without you. As a small business owner, you provide the heart, soul, mind, and muscle that keeps your business running, so the idea of your company running without you can be difficult to accept. But as hard as it is to relinquish control, it's essential if your business is to grow to the next level. There are only so many hours in the day, and one person (even one extremely dedicated person) can only do so much. Be sure that the information and knowledge you possess exists somewhere besides your own brain. If there are critical skills that you alone possess, train your people to do them better than you do, and see how much faster your company can move when there are more hands to share the important work. 9. Hire great employees, then get out of their way. It can be intimidating to hire and work with people who you're pretty sure are smarter than you are. But just as keeping key information to yourself restricts the growth of

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your business, so does burying yourself in the minutiae of day-to-day operations. Train your employees well, listen to their ideas, and give yourself the freedom to move on to strategic pursuits such as growth planning and business development that will ensure your company's long-term

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