{"id":1076,"date":"2014-04-01T09:05:50","date_gmt":"2014-04-01T13:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2014-04-01T09:05:50","modified_gmt":"2014-04-01T13:05:50","slug":"small-business-startups-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/small-business-startups-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Business Startup&#8217;s Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1265\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/113614750_ccef01db17_o.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1265\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1265\" alt=\"Financial Services for Small Business\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/113614750_ccef01db17_o-300x200.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/113614750_ccef01db17_o-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/113614750_ccef01db17_o-1024x682.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1265\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/b3iH1\">Credit: Flickr<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<p>One piece of advice that many entrepreneurs receive is to keep their business simple. Expanding too quickly or jumping around from idea to idea without a clear direction can certainly prevent a startup from getting off the ground &#8211; but simplicity in the wrong area may be just as detrimental.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s great to do something simple, provided customers want what you have to sell. There&#8217;s a survivor bias in small business &#8211; you read about one success story that started with a simple idea. There are 15 other companies that did equally simple things that nobody wanted. Only the few that really focused on getting that first sale succeeded.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Experimenting with different tactics and learning to concentrate on what worked was the key to success.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Accept that some ideas will fail.\u00a0<\/strong>Not everything you try with your business is going to work. This can be a difficult reality to face when you and your team have become invested in a project, but the best course of action is to let it go and move on. Continue experimenting and finding out what fits, as long as it doesn&#8217;t become an excuse to avoid a difficult problem.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Clearly define your team&#8217;s roles.\u00a0<\/strong>Everyone working with you should have a clearly defined path and know what they&#8217;re supposed to be doing at any given time. A good knowledge of your team and each team member&#8217;s strengths can help you decide the most effective way to divide up labor for new strategies.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Don&#8217;t overload.\u00a0<\/strong>Trying new ideas for your business can help you find out what works, but it&#8217;s important to avoid taking on too many tasks and overwhelming yourself and your team.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Push and contract. \u00a0<\/strong>It&#8217;s tempting to want to keep trying one new strategy after another, especially when you have the resources to do so. But it is\u00a0 recommended going through a <b>push and contract cycle<\/b> with your business activities.<\/p>\n<p>Push for a couple of months with new ideas, but then have a period of pullback and reflection to see if they&#8217;re making money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One piece of advice that many entrepreneurs receive is to keep their business simple. Expanding too quickly or jumping around<\/p>\n<div id=\"more-button\"><a class=\"btn btn-more excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/small-business-startups-focus\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,355,1236],"tags":[416,1584,1585],"class_list":["post-1076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-practices-for-merchants","category-financial-services-2","category-small-business-improvement","tag-business","tag-cusomers","tag-making-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1076"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1076\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaltransaction.com\/credit-card-merchant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}