Category: business coach

Seven Ways To Make Your Online Business Stand Out

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Many millennials are stepping away from the traditional world of work and choosing to start their own businesses. The internet has made setting up on your own easier than ever, and many young people are successfully running online businesses, selling everything from their own jewelry to coaching sessions for other business hopefuls.

  1. Set up a professional looking website. There are lots of tools online now to help you create a website that looks slick. If you’re new to setting up websites, look at easy to use platforms like Wix, WordPress or Squarespace, and use a template to create your first sites. Make sure it works properly and is easy to navigate. 
  2. Create a business profile on Google. Many people overlook this, but make sure you fill out the profile in full. Add your location, hours and services. Also add relevant photos of your business and projects, as well as links to any recent blog posts. Encourage customers to leave you reviews on Google too. Verify your business with Google My Business to help boost your search rankings. 
  3. Choose packaging that stands out. If you’re shipping out physical products, using packaging that looks good when it arrives will make your business more memorable. Choose poly mailers in the same colors as your branding or in fun patterns.
  4. Embrace video. Video gets a large amount of web traffic, and can really boost your search rankings. YouTube is still one of the main platforms for video, but Facebook also has great options for video too. Upload directly to Facebook to get your videos to perform better on the timeline and get more views. Video content can be used to showcase your products and services, and show off your business. 
  5. Create How To content. How To content tends to perform well on search engines, as it naturally builds in keywords that your customer base are searching for. Content like this solves problems for your customers, building trust. Guides are really shareable, helping them to perform well on social media too. Use your area of expertise to create this content. For example, if you’re a blogger, create guides on SEO tips for other bloggers. If you sell cakes, create videos of tips for creating decorative icing at home.
  6. Get on social media. If you’re not making the most of social media, your business will quickly fall behind. Most of us spend a lot of time online, particularly on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. Meet your customers where they are by making sure your business is on social, with properly branded social profiles. Use your campaigns to engage your audience, not just talk at them. Encourage conversation, not just advertising. 
  7. Show off good reviews. Customer reviews are a good way to enhance your online presence. Show testimonials on your website and encourage customers to review your business on social media. If you use an online marketplace, take reviews there too. Reviews build trust with potential customers, and help you gather feedback to improve your company.

Stop Using The Conventional Methods Of Marketing

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By conventional way of marketing, we’re on about the techniques that people are using that are making them battle against each other. Think about it, with techniques such as Google Adwords, you’ve got businesses competing against each other and putting a lot of money into it, all to sit at the top spot of Google. So why would you want to waste your money on techniques like that, when you can think about the ones that nobody is really using in comparison to the amount of businesses that are out there, and how you can be the one that’s getting all of the attention. But when you’re trying out different marketing techniques, it can seem like you’re taking a bit of a risk, and you’re not sure how it’s actually going to work out in the end. So, we’re going to explain some of the not so conventional marketing techniques that we think you should be trying, what they’ll do for your business, and how effective they are.

On The Move Marketing 

If there’s one way you’re going to be able to catch people’s attention, it’s when they’re focusing on something intently. The most common place you’ll find this happening is on the roads, with many people driving around. This is an idea that we know isn’t being used as much as it should be. It’s so easy to print your logo and some information on your car, or van, and drive around so that people notice your brand. You could even pay other people to have it put on their car. Accurate Signs is just one of the businesses that can help you to do this, you just need to think about making it as eye catching as you possibly can. Think about being bright and bold, and try putting images on there that you know will catch people’s attention. Always make sure that they way to contact you, or your website, is really visible to you. There has to be all of the appropriate information on there, as well as the eye catching things! 

Events Marketing

Events marketing is definitely one that small businesses in particular do not seem to focus on. It can be an expensive game, but it’s a great way to get your brand out in the public at the same time as making direct sales. Not enough businesses have face to face interactions with their customers, and we think it’s an art that’s being missed out on. There will no doubt be events in your local area or a nearby city that you could go and explore! We promise that this one will pay off.

Billboard Marketing

Billboard marketing is another firm one that you should be trying. It’s simple to organize, all you have to do is pay for the location that you want. Preferably you want it to be one where plenty of people are passing by. The LED motion picture ones are the best. The bright lights catch attention, but they are a little more expensive.

 

Taking Care of Your Business Premises

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It’s important that you’re thinking in the right terms when it comes to your business premises. It’s not just any old space where you and your employees sit at a desk and get things done: it’s an extension of your company. It reflects your values, what you’re trying to achieve, and the level of self-respect you have. As such, it plays a huge role in how your visitors and customers see you. As such, it’s important that you’re actively managing the space, to ensure that it’s in fine condition. We take a look at a few ways how below.

Hire a Cleaner

This one should be at the top of your life. You’re running a busy office, and it’s just normal that from there’s mess and debris. While you could have an internal cleaning schedule, the truth is that these are far more complicated than their worth. You’re not paying your staff to clean, for starters, and in any case, they’re unlikely to put in the required level of care into the task — they have more important things to do. So hire a cleaner. They’ll ensure that your office is always spotless and they won’t interrupt your working environment. 

Thwarting Potential Damage

A little bit of dust and debris isn’t ideal, but at least they can always be quickly cleaned up. There are some things, however, that can have a hugely detrimental effect on your overall business operations. Take your worksite’s general infrastructure, for instance. If there’s a problem there, then you could walk into an issue that is expensive and lengthy to resolve. There are two areas in particular that can do damage: the roof, and surrounding trees. Have an inspection of your roof regularly carried out by a commercial roofing company; they’ll ensure that no water can get through during heavy rainfall. Trees pose a danger because they can crash into your premises during high winds. If you’ve got trees there, work with a tree surgeon before and after summer. They’ll remove any dead branches that could break off. 

Curb Appeal

It’s normal for business owners, like homeowners, to focus on what’s going on inside. But there’s value in making sure that the outside area is in tip-top condition, too, for the simple reason that this is the first thing that your visitors will see. If it’s dirty, or there are broken signs, or it’s just otherwise unappealing, then you won’t be doing right by your business. Look at upping the curb appeal of your work premises, and you’ll be getting off on the right foot with your guests. 

Setting the Tone

Finally, make sure that you’re looking at the overall ambiance and tone of your business premises. It’s not just about what you see! What you feel also counts. To improve the general vibe, look at adding incense and atmospheric lighting. These things will have a subtle but influential impact on how people feel when they enter your premises, and can also boost your employee’s happiness and productivity, too.

Getting The Word Out: 3 Ways To Share Your Passions With The World

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If you are someone with a strong opinion on a subject, you probably want to share it with the world. But, have you ever thought about using your enthusiasm and knowledge to create something for others? You could start your own channel, or blog and get yourself lots of avid viewers or readers. With a little hard work, anything is possible. You may even be able to earn a bit of money for doing it. 

Write A Blog

Blogging is an excellent way of getting your message out there. If you can write engaging articles about several different areas within your niche, then setting up a blog site will be a good idea. You can get a free, professional blog from WordPress. The number of readers that you get will largely depend on how often you are posting, as well as the quality of your work. If you can, try to create an article on most days. Make sure it reads well and has a really good point to make. 

Record A Podcast

So many people enjoy listening to podcasts. They’ve become popular with lots of people, and are great for listening to when you are driving or working. You’ll need to create a script and record your content. Podcast hosting is not a problem, as you can easily upload your content ready to share with your audience. 

YouTube

YouTube is the place to be for video content, with so many channels, you can find something about everything. But that does not mean that there is no place for you. If you’ve got the right voice, and are producing quality videos, you could find an audience on YouTube and possibly be the next big thing on there.

Getting A Following

If you want to bring some people in to read; watch, or listen to your content, then you might want to think about promoting yourself on social media. Set yourself up a professional-looking page on all of the major platforms, and share any content that you create. You’ll need to use a few techniques to get followers on your social media pages. You can use hashtags on your content, try creating viral campaigns where users are encouraged to follow and share your content in exchange for something. You can also follow and comment on other peoples material. 

If you’re running a blog, consider using search engine optimization techniques such as keywords and link building to bring people to you through Google searches. 

Get Paid For Your Content

You can easily earn money from sharing content, assuming you’re willing to put in the work building a following and creating lots of new, exciting content. 

If you have enough followers, you may be able to get into affiliate marketing, where you provide advertisements for services and products within your content. If anyone clicks through and buys anything, you will earn money for each sale. 

You may also want to look at placing advertisements within your content, or on your page too. This is an excellent way of earning a bit of money from something that you enjoy.

6 Ways To Look After Your Employees In The Workplace

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If you’re a business owner, you’ll know that your team are the cogs that keep your business turning. Without them, you wouldn’t be able to get almost anything done, and sometimes, your employees contribute great ideas to help to move your business forward. In short, it’s pretty important that they’re there, and even more important that you look after their health and happiness in the workplace.

But what should you do to ensure that your team are feeling at their best? We’ve noted down 5 ideas here, for those looking to make a difference.

#1: Be approachable

The first thing that you can do, and arguably the most important, is to ensure that you’re an approachable boss. Your team should know that if they have any issues, they can bring them to you directly without worrying about any potential repercussions. Ensure that you’re consistent in the way that you act, and that they can roughly predict how you’re going to react to their worries. Be considerate!

#2: Encourage breaks

For a lot of workers, the idea of a lunch break is long gone into the distant past. Many people are simply too stressed to take a break, and believe that working through their lunch will allow them to get back on top of their work. This is something that you should discourage as a boss; taking regular breaks is good for your teams productivity, and it means that they can come back to work ready to go.

#3: Don’t disregard physical health

Whether you and your team work in an office or elsewhere, physical health is also an important thing to consider. Sitting at a desk all day without the right support could lead to a whole host of health issues, from stress to musculoskeletal disorders. Look into ergonomic DSE training by EssentialSkillz if you want to ensure that you’re protecting the health of your team, whilst encouraging productivity.

#4: Opt for chill-out Fridays

Many offices now have some kind of policy for a more relaxed day at the end of the week, whether it’s a dress down Friday or after work drinks. Whilst you shouldn’t be aiming to take over your teams social lives, you should be making an effort to reward them for their work, and this is also a great way to promote stronger relationships in the workplace. Think about what you can do here!

#5: Be personal

At the end of the day, your employees are human beings, just like you are. Attempting to relate to them on a personal level is key; show some interest in their lives, and don’t just dismiss their needs and feelings within the workplace. Think about how you would want to be treated if you were in their position, and be sure to help them if you see that they are struggling. Outside of the office, we all have our lives!

Good luck making your office a great place for your employees, and benefiting as a business as a result.

#6 Employee Welfare

Looking after a group of employees is never easy, but it can have a dramatic impact on your productivity when you master this art. Small businesses can often struggle to meet the needs of their team. Without the resources to make investments or big changes to your business, you’re going to need some extra help along the way. Options like MEWA insurance give you the chance to pool your resources with other businesses, making it much easier to give your team what they need.

3 Areas You Need To Take Care Of In Business

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Anything you purchase or create in this world needs nurturing and taking care of to stay in peak condition. Running a business is no different in this respect. It requires a holistic approach, an investment of time, effort, and money to sustain your companies success and in turn, hopefully, see it flourish. For a perspective on which areas need most of your care, there are three things you need to think about.

Health, Safety, And Wellbeing

An area that all businesses need to bear in mind is health and safety. And with the increase in awareness of mental health problems, wellbeing is becoming an increasingly important topic for business owners the world over to incorporate into their HR practices. Whether you’re running a cargo shipping business, you own a store selling camping equipment, or you run a zoo, health, and safety regulations possess a place in every industry. To assess your business needs in this area, keep it simple and think about the following to see where and if you need to improve your business in this department;

  • Cleanliness – A filthy workspace is a breeding ground for germs. This will, in turn, will impact on your employee’s health, meaning more sick days. Not only this, but bacteria could infect or contaminate the products that you sell also.
  • Clutter – An unorganized, messy workspace is a poor environment filled with hazards that could mean a nasty fall or accident for one of your workers or customers. Resulting in impacting your reputation and the need to pay out for a personal injury claim
  • Developing hazards – Such as a fire door that keeps getting stuck when you attempt to open it, or a fire alarm that keeps going off in the middle of the day with no specific reason behind it. All of your health and safety equipment should work and be free from obstructions or errors. 

The health and safety areas listed above form the foundation for taking care of your employees. Alongside this, it’s essential to look after your employee’s wellbeing. A happy team is a productive team.

  • Team building – Create a pleasant, sociable environment to work in by instigating team building activities for employees.
  • Training – Provide ongoing training for staff to improve their existing knowledge and boost confidence in their role.
  • Promotions – Great employees should be allowed to excel when there is an opportunity to do so.
  • Praise and celebrate – Accomplishments big and small should be recognized. Such as, via a certificate, or a letter outlining why your employee is an asset to the team.
  • One to one meetings – This allows your employees to voice any concerns they may have and highlight anything they think the business can do to make life better for your staff. 
  • Perks – Whether free fruit every day in the office, to wine and beers stocked in the fridge on a Friday afternoon. There are tons of ways to boost employee morale at work by implementing a few perks on the job.

Taking care of your employees and customers is essential for running a great business. By committing to some of the suggestions above, your workforce will feel valued, comfortable, and confident in their jobs. Taking care of your employees properly will lead to a better, stronger workforce with a reduced turnover of staff. 

Back-Up And Protect

The concept behind your business and the intel you have accrued along the way (such as the clients, business contacts, financial reports, and bank accounts, future plans to grow, etc.) is the lifeblood of your business. A lot of energy from entrepreneurs is spent growing their business, but the same can’t be said for protecting it. Which is why you need to be smart about backing up and protecting the business data you’ve worked so hard to accrue.

There are many sources available for you to store your business information. It purely depends on the size of your business and how much information you need to allocate. This will be the deciding factor on what storage is right for you. For instance, if your work is currently in paper form, it is 100% advisable to scan this into digital form to keep copies in case the originals are destroyed. Furthermore, once you have your copies of your work in digital form, don’t rely on one device alone to hold your business data, branch out, and seek other opportunities. You can store your data on an external hard drive, by using cloud services, or by buying or hiring servers.

Once you have stored your business intel in a few areas, you need to protect your sources any way you can. Whether employing an experienced IT technician to protect your systems from errors and hackers, or by outsourcing Server Monitoring to survey your existing servers and eradicate any faults and mistakes that may crop up. 

Take Care Of You! 

Your employee’s health, safety, and wellbeing, along with protecting your business information, are your top priorities. However, there is one more that’s incredibly important, you! What would your business be without you? It needs the very best of your creativity, ideas, personal inspiration and problem-solving to sustain the growth it’s made this far. If you’re in a bad place physically or mentally, this will have a devastating impact on the health of your business. Initially, it may be challenging to prize your thoughts and self away from your growing company, but it’s entirely necessary to stay sane and energized, by regularly sleeping, eating (mostly healthy food), exercising and laughing!

On the subject of laughter, as you’re probably aware, running a business isn’t all roses and rainbows. You have to solve difficult problems from competitors cropping up across the street from you, issues with reaching your target audience, and difficulties with staff that are finding it difficult to take orders. Which is why at some point, you will need to find the funny side in the events that occur. Otherwise, you risk spiraling into a pit of depression, where everything about your business appears to be doom and gloom. And so, through those tears laugh when the vending machine breaks for the umpteenth time and join in when employees are cracking jokes about you.

Prioritizing the needs of your employees, business information, and will enable you to effectively run a healthy, prosperous, and sustainable business.

Converting Your Website’s Visitors Into Customers

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Getting visitors to your website, but no customers? In order for a website to generate customers, it needs to have the right design features to get people buying. Here are a few key tips for helping to build more leads from your website.  

Make sure you’re attracting the right visitors

If you’re getting lots of visitors but few customers, you may want to check how visitors are arriving at your site. It’s possible that inappropriate keywords may be optimized, leading to the wrong type of visitors arriving at your site. Investing in the help of an SEO service provider could help you to optimize relevant keywords that attract the right visitors and get them buying. You can use analytics tools to see which keywords visitors are using.

Speed up slow-loading pages

If your website’s pages take too long to load, visitors may get impatient and leave. This could be stopping you from getting customers. Slow-loading pages can be the result of many issues ranging from a slow hosting provider to possibly too many plug-ins/embedded media. There are guides online that can help you to improve the speed of your site’s pages.

Ensure your website looks professional

Your website needs to look professional in order to gain visitors’ trust. If it looks amateurish, visitors will assume that your company is run by amateurs. It could be worth hiring a website reviewer to check your site and point out any improvements they think need to be made. This will determine whether your site needs redesigning (you may want to hire a professional web designer to do this).

Show off your credibility

In order to trust a business site, consumers like to be able to see evidence of credibility. Award and qualification badges, testimonials and case studies can all show people that you’re qualified and experienced. Make sure to also check reviews of your company on the likes of Google and TrustPilot to ensure that it’s largely positive – too many third-party negative reviews could be damaging your ability to generate leads.

Keep the checkout process simple

A complicated checkout process can put off visitors. Lengthy sign-up procedures made up of multiple pages can irritate potential customers. Try to keep the checkout process to as few pages as possible and consider making signing-up optional. You should also make sure that you’re using a professional checkout process builder tool to help minimize bugs and glitches. Some company sites may not have a checkout process and may rely on customers ringing up to book a quote – if this is the case, make sure your contact details aren’t hard to find.

Expand your payment options

The final hurdle for customers is likely to be your site’s payment gateway. Aside from accepting debit card, consider whether you should also accept credit card and possibly alternative forms of payment such as cryptocurrency. Certain customers may be put off if you don’t offer their preferred payment option (credit card could be particularly important when it comes to large value items).

How to Make Life Easier for Your Staff

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Keeping your employees happy is essential if you want them to do their best work. If they’re finding it difficult to concentrate or they feel like it’s harder than necessary to get their work done, you could find the productivity is nowhere near as good as you want it to be. Many employees complain that things get in the way of them doing their jobs. If you want things to improve, you should think about how you can make life easier for your staff. There are many things you could do that will remove some of the barriers your employees face so they can work better.

Remove Unnecessary Work

There are tasks that you might ask your employees to do that they feel are completely unnecessary. Although you might see them as things that they need to do, they could just think that they get in the way of their real work. The best way to identify these tasks is by asking your employees for feedback. If you’re unsure if they will be honest, you can allow them to give anonymous feedback. This will allow them to say what they feel, without having to worry about whether there could be negative consequences.

Put Them in Control of Their Time

Helping your employees to manage their own time can help them to balance their work life and personal life. This is one of the best ways you can improve your employees’ happiness and work satisfaction. With the right HR software, your staff can manage their own time off, submitting requests for leave when they need to. If they have their own accounts that they can log into when they need to make a request, look at pay slips or find out other information, they won’t have to spend time dealing with HR in person or sending emails.

Make Sure Team-building Has a Purpose

One thing that can really frustrate your employees is having to deal with team-building days that don’t have a clear purpose. Many companies want to engage in team-building, but they don’t have a clear goal. So your employees are left wondering why they’re doing it, and why they can’t just get back to their normal work. Before making them participate in team-building activities, make sure that you know why you’re doing it so that you can make it clear to your staff why you’re doing it too.

Improve Transparency

Another thing that can be frustrating for your employees is feeling like they’re missing vital information. Not only does a lack of transparency cause frustration, but it could also lead to big mistakes and a lack of motivation and morale. While there are some things that might need to be as confidential as possible, they are many times when you should open up communication and make sure that your staff have as much information as they need. Keeping them in the dark won’t help them do their jobs better.

If you want to make life easier for your employees, stop getting in the way of them doing their jobs. Help them to get their jobs done well and avoid unnecessary work.

A Failsafe Guide To Preventing Customer Complaints

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Every business owner will be aware of the old adage, ‘the customer is always right.’ In a day and age when competition is par for the course across all industries, and client reviews play an increasingly integral role, customer service has never been more important. If you’re keen to preserve a 5-star rating, here’s a failsafe guide to keeping customer complaints at bay.

Customer engagement and communication

We all have experience of trying to contact a business as a consumer. The one thing that customers don’t want is to feel like they’re wasting time. Many of us live hectic lives, and people don’t have the time or the patience to hang around, waiting for you to get back to them. There’s nothing more frustrating than listening to the same jingle over and over again when a phone line is busy, or waiting for an email response to arrive to a query you submitted hours ago. As a company director, it pays to ensure you keep channels of communication open at all times and that it’s simple and stress-free to get in touch. If you don’t want to man phones 24-hours-a-day, investigate options like an answering service company or use online features like live chat and social media messaging. If you keep existing or potential customers waiting, or you don’t get back to them at all, there’s every chance that they will choose a competitor. 

Delivering on promises

Failing to deliver on a promise is the most common reason for customer complaints. If you offer a service, a buyer expects to pay their money and receive that product or service in line with the terms you laid out. If you run a store, for example, and you’ve promised next-day delivery, make sure you can dispatch and deliver that item on time. There may be times when delays occur, and the situation is beyond your control. In this case, contact your customer as soon as you become aware of any problems, offer an explanation, and provide a resolution. In this scenario, you could refund the delivery charge, arrange for the product to arrive the day after, and give the buyer a discount on the next purchase. If you fail to impress your customers with the service you offer, you run the risk of attracting negative attention, and this will put prospective clients off. Make sure you can fulfill every promise you make. 

Don’t forget about your loyal customers

One of the most pressing concerns for existing customers is that they get forgotten about. Competition is a driving force in business, and this often means that companies go all-out to sign up new clients and entice customers who haven’t decided which business to choose yet. It’s actually a lot easier to sell to existing clients, and if you continue to impress, word of mouth and positive reviews can also provide you with more customers. Reward loyalty and always ensure that your customers feel valued. 

It’s virtually impossible to please 100% of customers 100% of the time, but this should always be your aim. Social media and online reviews are so influential today, and this means that even one bad comment can dent your reputation. Take these handy tips on board to prevent customer complaints and retain an excellent rating.

Here’s Why Your Projects Always Cost More Than You Think

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When you and your team plan a project, you imagine that you’ll move from where you are now to where you want to be in a linear fashion. After all, that’s what seems most reasonable. 

The problem is that the world doesn’t move linearly in business projects (or in pretty much every other field for that matter). We like to believe that change is a straight line, but it usually does a few loop-the-loops on the way. 

Just look at the stock market. Over fifty years, you can say that the stock market goes up, on average, about 7 percent per year. Not bad. But if you look at any single year, you can have enormous variation. Some years it’s down by 40 percent, others it’s up by more than 20. The world doesn’t move in a straight line, and neither will your projects. 

The good news is that you can do a lot to make sure that your project doesn’t cost more than you think. There are ways around this seemingly intractable issue: it just takes a little thought. You need to fundamentally change the way you see the world and becoming more accepting of the chaotic nature of reality. 

Reason #1: Your Estimates Are Way Off

We all like to think that we can plan cost estimates for our projects, whether they are construction projects, new products, or organizational redesign. Projects are just something that we “have to get on with.” Once the ball is rolling, milestones will fall like dominoes. 

What’s strange about this mentality is that we all know it’s wrong from our past experiences. Very few of us have ever had the luxury of working on a project which progresses effortlessly from one step to the next. There’s always a problem. And those problems always result in higher costs. 

Quality estimation services can help you calculate your costs better. Most are sophisticated enough these days to ascribe a probability range for prices, instead of an actual figure. Costs that nobody foresaw can come out of nowhere and change the nature of the game. 

Reason #2: Your Project Is Not Effectively Managed

Working out how much it’s going to cost to design a project and hire the people to implement it is one thing. Organizing people correctly is quite another. A substantial part of risk site risk management is choosing and coordinating contractors. It’s not easy to pick up if you’ve never done it before. You need professionals on-site who know what they’re doing and who have experience interacting with various stakeholders. 

Reason #3: You Have Administration Issues

The people administering your project need to understand what stage you’re currently at. You might think that you’re in control of the situation on the ground, but if your admin people don’t know anything about your progress, then they could make mistakes. 

The best way around this is to provide admin with project management tools. If they see the stage that you are in, they are in a better position to provide proactive support.