Glorious summer is almost here. Schools are letting out, beach vacations are being booked and summer Fridays are in full effect!  It’s also midway through the calendar year and a great time for small business owners to audit their business, level set your goals, and create a 3rd quarter strategy for your business.

We’ve rounded up some hot ways for your business to stay cool this summer:

1. Plan a Team Outing
Team building is one of the most underused techniques to keep teams connected and motivated. Taking the time to spend with your team will have a positive ripple effect on the work that they do. Team building may seem like an overused term that equates to forced unnecessary time spent out of the office, but studies show that bringing the team together for a learning or personal development type of gathering increases productivity and happiness in their job. Pro tips: schedule something fun and interactive, preferably out of the office where the team can relax. Here are some great ideas for team building activities.

Check out this Forbes article for more!

2. Know Your Competition
Mid-year is the perfect time to take an objective view of your business. Look at what you are doing compared to your top competition in your area or in your category of business. You can do this by spending some time on Google, searching for ways to find a business like yours. You will see your competitors come up. An example would be: “Center City Philadelphia HairStylist” – when you search a specific business and location as most people do, you can see the top competition that comes up. In most cases, the top businesses are paying for their ad space so look beyond that by checking out the businesses on the first and second pages of the search results. Knowing your competition will keep you on top of your industry’s marketing and advertising trends and offer you ideas on how you can improve yours.

3. Make moves with Marketing
Just like knowing your competition is crucial, it is just as important to regularly assess your marketing and advertising strategy. It is no surprise that the internet is a primary focus of marketing in today’s climate, however, think about what is right for your business and what you haven’t tried yet. Could a direct mailer to your neighborhood be an option? For some small businesses, the old school paper trail is coming back. Email marketing is also a great way to stay in touch with your current and interested clientele.

We like these marketing resources compiled by Thrive Hive to stay on top of small business marketing tools. There are also a ton of FREE digital apps available to take advantage of, check some out here.

Always check in with your marketing strategy, it is an evolution and sometimes takes trial and error to configure the winning plan!

4. Outsource Your Pain Points + Prep for What’s Next
This is the best time of the year to do a tax audit on your company’s earnings so far in the year. If you like to crunch digits, we recommend calculating your taxes for the first two quarters to see what you owe. This will help you determine what you can proactively do for the latter part of the year to reduce your business taxes. Read a great article in The Hartford about reducing taxable income here.

If analyzing numbers sounds like a headache, hire a bookkeeper! Hiring an expert to tackle your books will alleviate the stress of messing around with the numbers side of the business.

Back to that financial statement for a sec. Planning for the future of your business calls for a clear understanding of your past. Again, this is where a reliable bookkeeper comes in handy. They asses your cash flow accounts receivable and payable as well as pay attention to any type of malicious behavior. Check out a few of our top services to help.

5. Network, Network, Network
“Your network is your net worth” – Porter Gale

We cannot stress the importance of networking and creating dedicated time to be out in your community talking about your business. As a small business owner, this is part of your job. Whether you are good at it or not doesn’t really matter. It’s the point of you putting in the time in your own way. Join local business associations, go to industry events and join Facebook and LinkedIn groups that align with your company goals. Here are some more small business networking tips!

We hope these summer small business ideas will help your business sizzle this summer and throughout the rest of the year. Check back for more small business buzz-worthy insight, advice and resources on our Better Bookkeeping Blog. Let us know what you want to learn more about in the comments below.

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