Published May 01, 2024
Publisher: Timothy Kim, Director
“99% of what we deal every day in business doesn’t matter. If you religiously follow the few core business philosophies that mean the most to you, everything else will naturally fall into place.”
— Gary Vaynerchuck, Serial Entrepreneur
One year sure went by fast when reflecting on everything that was accomplished with The CapSentinel (TCS), LLC! It is truly a blessing to be able to start a small business and see where life would take the team within all our endeavors. For this month’s blog, our CEO wanted to use this opportunity to mark the milestone of reaching our first full year of operations and archive our thoughts and inputs. Below are some of the key topics we found important within our day-to-day operations:
- Network! Build Relationships and expand your connections: We cannot emphasize this enough where networking is paramount to a small business’ success. Developing and nurturing relationships with people will greatly assist in opening many opportunities with agencies or departments. Collaborating with other small businesses and agencies will help build the company’s reputation (hopefully a good one), which greatly benefits in expanding the Company.
- Financial Management and Budgeting: The first year, we learned how to prioritize spending to minimize expenses. Priorities focused on building a company website, creating business cards for networking, investing in business development to ensure TCS has as good of a start we can get, and seeking opportunities to network at conferences. All these things were what we learned as we developed the company from the ground up. We also learned a lot about tax requirements and expense tracking for TCS. It has helped us develop systems to efficiently document finances throughout the year and helped us develop a better understanding of the many forms associated with filing taxes for a small business.
- Effective Proposal Writing: Practice, Practice, Practice! Find opportunities to pursue so that you and your staff can develop better operating procedures, refine existing products, and obtain knowledge of the industry of proposal writing. What are the criteria to pursue the work? What requirements are listed, and can we resource them? Is it a set-aside? How long do we have till submission of the proposal? The more you participate in proposal writing, the more it becomes second nature to consider all the factors of pursuing the work. There is “no dumb question” when it comes to learning and realize that there is always someone new joining the industry.
- Balancing Growth and Sustainability: Reflecting on our experiences with scaling our business while maintaining sustainability and financial stability, we sought ways to provide incentives to have personnel join TCS. Although we didn’t have the capital to support full-time employees, we found ways to provide experience to people while gaining intelligent talent to assist with our business’ growth. TCS developed an internship program to assist newly graduates and transitioning service members from the military to gain experience before fully entering the workforce. As they gain mentorship from leaders of TCS, they assist with day-to-day operations based on their availability. We look forward to expanding our program, and hopefully make it a pipeline for TCS to offer full-time positions in the future!
Looking forward to what year two will bring in 2024-2025, together with the TCS team and all our partners!
