Without knowing it, as you start a business and grow each step of the way, you can face certain pitfalls that no one in any industry talks much about. As a business owner, you are typically and honestly blind to everything until it happens to you because you are focused on your work and growing your book of business. You start out with the mindset of a good employee until you learn to be a business owner who is on guard at all times waiting for the next concern or issue to arise.
I know this is an uncommon topic, but over my 21 years of being in business, my main goal when I started was to simply provide for my family, treat my team with respect, and teach them as much as possible so I could share as much growth and success with as I could afford.
Caring for staff
Protecting your company is something you must learn to do on so many different levels, from different types of insurances, cameras, security systems, regular maintenance, files, and so much more.
When we started up in New York state all I knew needed were comprehensive, liability, and healthcare insurance for the most part.
When we were in business for around seven years, my wife came on full time from being a manager at a pretty massive bank, so then we needed to get our own health insurance. We actually had a customer who was a broker and educated us about Small Business Healthy NY plans, which allowed us get healthcare for ourselves and our staff at a reduced rate. We have to cover 50% of the premium and this plan has great coverage and a prescription plan on top of that.
We opted to not offer eye or dental plans because the plans are overpriced for what anyone would ever use on average. Instead, if our staff gets their teeth cleaned and brings us the invoice, we pay for one cleaning a year out of pocket. We have a customer who is an eye doctor, and we pay for yearly exams and our customer offers a 25% discount on all glasses to our staff.
You want to make investments like these to keep your team healthy and show that you care, since many in our industry do not offer healthcare. Yes, it will increase your cost of doing business, but that is why you explain to your customers that you believe in taking care of your team, and trust me, they will understand. We have explained our pricing for years.
Security concerns
At my old building around 14 years ago, as we were growing, I had to make extra keys for staff to get in if we needed them to stay late or come in early. I had one employee who was let go due to not showing up to work on time and simply not wanting to work when they did arrive. When I asked for our company keys back, they told me they lost them. I did not think anything of it.
A month went by and I started noticing things out of order. Since I only had around six staff at the time, I soon noticed screens burned that were not for any jobs I had sold. I easily recognized the style of the artwork. A couple weeks of this went by and my neighbor happened to notice on their camera system someone going into my business at 2 a.m. and showed me the footage.
Sure enough, it just happened to be the employee I let go. They were coming in after hours and making their own stuff to sell, using our equipment and stock. So, I made the local police aware (who were also great customers of ours) and they staked out our place for a week and caught the ex-employee, who was arrested for breaking and entering along with other charges.
I suggest you invest in a security system and cameras. They aren’t cheap, but I cannot explain how many times this investment has paid for itself. You are better off making the investment rather than being sorry later. We started slowly with a security system and two cameras, and now we have two buildings with security sensors, professional fire systems, and 32 cameras.
Maintenance
Maintenance is a huge need for any size company. I suggest writing up a maintenance schedule for each machine along with doing end of the day walk throughs so you can spot check each production area to make sure things are organized, orders are moving on time, and equipment is in working order. On average, this can take 30 minutes per day. By being proactive you can catch 95% of something about to go wrong before it does and have a planned shutdown, so you can work your production schedule around it, lowering your risk of missing production deadlines.
File security
Protect artwork files with your life. Without your artwork files, your company is dead in the water. When we first started up, everything was saved to each computer’s hard drive, and if they failed, we had to work to extract the files from them. Over time we moved to saving to the computer drives and then setting up external drives that would save new files each night to them.
As we kept growing, we learned that saving everything to the computers slowed down everyone from having access to files as they needed them. Now we have a 42 TB server dedicated to artwork files which has extra drives in it that duplicate the newer files saved each night, and then everything is stored as a third layer online in the cloud. Redundancy is key. You can never have them saved enough, in my opinion.
These suggestions are just scratching the surface on protecting your company. The concerns I have addressed, if you take them on now, may prevent you from going through what we did. You will be protecting yourself from wasting time trying to fix what others did and have more time to focus on running your company, and also with a little bit less stress on your plate, which is what my goal is for you! The only mistake is the one you did not learn from, and I am here to help you prevent having to learn them on your own.
