Unpacking The Small Business Owner's Toolkit
Starting a small business takes more than a great idea—it also requires managing key areas like marketing, hiring, finances, and data security. Our toolkit offers essential insights on HR, operations, and financial planning to help you build and grow with confidence.
Congratulations on your decision to launch a small business! Your vision, determination, resiliency, hard work and expertise will be instrumental to your success. However, as entrepreneurs know, starting a business can be challenging even with the best ideas. As the owner, you must manage many aspects essential to business development that are beyond your products or services, such as marketing and sales, hiring and retaining employees, maintaining finances and data security. All of these are critical aspects for starting and growing your business. However, it's hard to know what you don't know.
This toolkit can help. With a focus on HR, finances and operations, it provides the foundational information new businesses must know, from starting to thriving.
The Small Business Owner's Toolkit: What's Inside?
Each section of the toolkit breaks down the essential areas of operations that small business leaders must tackle.
How to create a business plan
Every successful business needs a roadmap, and the business plan provides that. A business plan may be very simple, but it will need more detail if you're looking for investors or bank loans.
The toolkit reviews what key components to include in the plan and why. From demonstrating you've researched the market and that your product or service adds value to describing how you'll operate and advertise, the process of creating a business plan can help you think through the many possibilities and anticipate (and avoid) stumbling blocks.
Hiring and retaining 101
Whether you're hiring one person or ten, every hire in a small business is critical. As the first employees in a newly established organization, they will help imprint the culture and processes. You need reliable, talented people who will stay on board for the long term.
The toolkit helps you determine what jobs to fill and how to recruit and hire for them. Moreover, it outlines the critical development and retention aspects you'll need to incorporate to create an ideal employee experience, no matter your business's size.
Just because you're good at the things the business does, like plumbing, drywall or insurance, does not mean you are good at running a business. Educate yourself on business management. Learn about cash flow, finance and bookkeeping. Business management is a whole new skill, and many small business owners never learn it, so they fail even if they are the best mechanic in town.
Thadeaus J., Small Business Owner, quoted in the ADP book Grit & Wisdom: Smart Advice from America's Hardworking Small Businesses
What to know about protecting your business and employees
Many entrepreneurs adopt the "buck stops here" sentiment and feel responsible for minimizing risk to the business and their employees. Understanding what insurance and benefits you may want—or be required—to offer can help protect your people, property, finances and products.
Succession planning is an essential way to protect your employees' futures and the longevity of your business. With so much going on during a business launch, planning for what happens if a key employee leaves or is unavailable long-term can get overlooked. However, anticipating how the business should move forward even if an essential person (including you) leaves, provides security for employees and creditors.
This toolkit highlights multiple ways to care for what you've spent so much time and energy building. Moreover, it includes resources to help you make these decisions now and later, when circumstances may change.
Ensuring good money management
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, although the majority of small businesses survive their first year, one in five don't. One of the primary reasons is a lack of financing or money management. Without being able to pay the initial and ongoing costs, including bills, employee payroll, inventory and technology, a business can't survive.
It's not just about the money going out. It's also about the funds coming in. It is essential to have a streamlined system to create invoices and to process and track sales to ensure you are paid on time.
A significant part of business money management is paying taxes. They can be complex, but you don't have to calculate them alone. Look in the toolkit for information on how an expert, such as a certified financial planner, can help you make the right money moves.
How to navigate HR technology and data security
HR technology is constantly evolving to streamline employees' tasks and make it easier for them to access information through self-service. The toolkit illustrates top areas of HR technology that can benefit entrepreneurs, saving them time and effort and increasing accuracy.
As you increasingly rely on technology, it's also important to ensure that the data used by that technology remains safe. You may think that a small business would not be the target of a cybercrime, however, a recent study found nearly 44% of small businesses had been attacked. Even more alarming, 17% of businesses have experienced more than one cyberattack. Small businesses may have fewer resources to protect their data, making them more vulnerable.
The toolkit provides essential best practices to ensure the security of employee records, payroll systems and other financial data.
And finally, a punch list.
We've also included a simple checklist to guide your journey and mark key business milestones as you go.
Building a business takes more than passion—it takes planning, knowledge, and adaptability. This toolkit can help you lay a strong foundation and be aware of common pitfalls as you grow. Use it as a reference, revisit it often, and take each step forward with confidence. You've got this.
Download Plan, Launch, Thrive: The Small Business Owner's Toolkit today.
