~by Haley Lynn Gray~
Business basics are unglamorous, which is why they get skipped in favour of whatever is currently being sold as a growth strategy. They’re also what determines whether a business survives its third year.
Here’s the short list.
Know your numbers
What comes in, what goes out, and when. Continuously — not annually when your accountant asks.
Profitable businesses fail by running out of cash at the wrong moment. Know your runway in months, keep business money separate from personal, and set tax aside the day money arrives.
Price properly
Start from what you need the business to pay you, divided by the hours you can realistically sell — remembering that much of your week isn’t billable.
Underpricing is the commonest self-inflicted wound in small business, and it compounds every year you leave it. Raising prices is usually more negotiable than owners believe.
Get the legal structure right
An entity that separates your personal assets from the business. An hour with a lawyer, early.
Then read what you sign — personal guarantees are where that protection quietly disappears.
Put things in writing
What’s included, what it costs, when it’s due, what happens if someone cancels. Most disputes come from two people who remember the same conversation differently.
A short written confirmation after any agreement prevents most of it.
Classify workers correctly
If you control someone’s hours, methods and schedule, they’re probably an employee — and getting this wrong is expensive.
Answer enquiries quickly
Not strictly a “basic”, and I’d argue it belongs here. The most common cause of poor sales I see is leads dying while nobody rings back.
Write down how things are done
Even if you’re the only person doing them. You can’t hand over, hire for, or grow past anything that exists only in your head — and you can’t take a holiday either.
Keep decent records
Invoices, receipts, contracts, hours. Boring, and it’s what stands between you and a bad month when someone disputes something or the tax authorities ask.
Why the basics get skipped
Because none of them feel urgent, and none of them produce a visible result this week.
The consequences arrive slowly and are difficult to trace back — which is precisely why they need to be deliberate rather than automatic.
Get these right and a great many problems simply never happen. That’s the whole argument for caring about them.
