Thinking about starting your own business? It’s a huge move, filled with excitement and, let’s be honest, a bit of fear too. For those of you perched on the edge, trying to decide if it’s the right moment to jump into entrepreneurship, this post is here to help you figure out if it’s your time to shine.
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Beginning anything at all is difficult. It’s even tougher for entrepreneurs because creating a successful business module, funding it, and ensuring that it stands the test of time is an uphill task. The road to business success is paved with perseverance and tough work, no less.
According to SmallBizGenius.net, 46% of entrepreneurs have no business-related training whatsoever. So calm down, you are not alone in your probable confusion as to what to do to get your business up and running, and keeping it that way. Here’s a list of the eight most common mistakes entrepreneurs make and some helpful tips on how to avoid them.
Failing to plan
Failing to plan is essentially preparing yourself for failure. One great big idea is not enough to win everybody. If your family and friends seem hesitant when you pitch your ideas, it’s probably not because they do not want to support you. Instead, they most likely just cannot see it through your eyes. So put everything down on paper and come up with a plan. A business plan comprehensively gels the various aspects of your business concept.
Ask questions such as:
What am I going to need?
How is it all going to come together?
How am I going to fund the production of this concept?
Write down the answers to these questions on paper (not in your head). Also, have your friends critique your module from a client or investor viewpoint. As you comprehensively plan, have it critiqued, and tweak based on feedback. You’ll find that you’ll be able to, first, factor in other details that wouldn’t have come to mind and, second, defend your concept to naysayers. Since planning is foundational to every business, you should invest the time in building a strong one. Many online resources offer free business plan templates. You can download and fill one out and tweak it as you require. This will help you to better view and communicate your business concepts to people.
Over-prioritizing branding
While branding is to a business what clothing is to us, you do not have to make everything about branding. Some entrepreneurs wrongfully interpret branding to mean parading yourself as a hotshot business executive to attract clients who have the money potentially. It’s great to have the funds to rent your very own glass and steel building. But if you don’t, run your business within your means. Most people can sense an ingenious person when they meet one, and clients might be put off by this and not want to patronize your services. You don’t have to adopt a ‘fake it to make it’ business approach. Sometimes the best brand you can be is yourself.
Thinking you can do it all alone
You may be a pro at multitasking, but you can’t be a manager and perform different staff roles all at once. You are not a one-person team, and it could reduce productivity to try to be one. So, don’t underestimate great human resourcing. Make sure to provide accurate job descriptions to attract the best available talent. Also, check out the applicant’s referees as some applicants may lie on their CVs. If you dread making a bad recruiting decision, you can outsource your recruitment to https://xmigrowth.com. Hiring based on how limited your funds are will cost you invariably more money to replace the help, as well as time and productivity. You can also lose other employees as no one wants to work with a bad egg.
Get an industry-relevant mentor
Aside from not being able to do it all, you do not also know it all. This is where a mentor can be of great help. According to Forbes, mentored startups grow a whopping three and a half times faster and bring in seven times more revenue than their non-mentored colleagues. You can identify two or three entrepreneurs who are making it in the industry you want to get into. This is because what might work for the auto industry, for example, might not necessarily help you in the food business as the challenges they may have overcome are not likely to be the same you’ll encounter. You do not have to meet with them to get their counsel physically. You can invest in the material they’ve already put out there, such as books, tapes, and interviews. Tapping into their knowledge is what counts.
Leave the right paper trail
Prioritize getting your business legalities in order. Many businesses only regard the initial cost and don’t pay attention to these things until they require documentation to bid for a contract or access funding.
It could be too late by then, and you might lose out on a big opportunity. Some entrepreneurs also get by on verbal agreements, and it is not an advisable business practice to do so. So, don’t trivialize business documentation. A tip to avoid miscommunication is to get everything in writing. It could be as simple as emails or texts, but whatever it is, get it in writing.
Have a marketing plan in place
Not having a proper marketing strategy and plan in place could spell doom for any startup. Many entrepreneurs have an idealist perception of how business is done. The idea that customers will flock to you once you have a great idea running is not entirely accurate. Even the most successful companies today still need a marketing push.
While it’s great to be optimistic about your idea, factor in the marketing push it’ll need to grow. Harness the power of the internet and take advantage of the dynamic marketing options it offers businesses. It could be as simple as creating a Facebook or Instagram account, and progressing to ads promotion to get your business out there.
Launching into the deep with a bang
While it might seem like a great idea to go big and make your presence known, it could be a recipe for disaster if you can’t handle the stress and demands of new customers after your big launch. You don’t know what challenges lie ahead, so get structured and take things one step at a step. It pays to be ready at your own pace. If you get encouraged when others seem to be doing better and snowballing, remember that sustained growth is the best growth of all. Launch when you are ready to handle the pressure of increased client demands. It’s better to focus on delivering 100% to fewer clients than a half-baked job to more clients.
Ensure that the price is right
Don’t under-sell your product or service just to please a customer or as a marketing gimmick. While it’s true that you can utilize a sale or limited time offer to increase your customer base, regularly slashing your prices for some demanding clients will eventually impact negatively on your coffers. They’ll always come back with the intention of not paying your asking price. You can avoid this by simply saying no. Always be polite and helpful to your customers, but don’t be a pushover or afraid to say no to excessive demands. The customer isn’t always absolutely king. Be kind and let them understand that you have a business to run and a brand to protect.
You’ve decided that entrepreneurship is your calling, and it’s time you also made your mark. Having the idea is only the first step. Now that you’ve taken that step, it’s what you do from here that’ll determine how it’ll all turn out.
When you think about the term “ambitious“ it can often carry a number of negative connotations, especially when it comes to being a woman. Like many other women, you may have been told by your significant other or your parents that your hopes and dreams were way too big. Proving them wrong has always been your number one goal in life.
You aren’t afraid to admit that you are unapologetically ambitious and you want to be self-employed. Chasing your goals and owning a thriving and profitable business that allows you to live a life of freedom is something you know you can achieve. If you have always had this type of motivation inside you, you have everything you need to succeed. Use some of the following advice so that you can ignore the haters and live your best life as an unapologetically ambitious female.
Nail Your Morning Routine
You might be wondering why a morning routine is so important as a female entrepreneur. At the moment, your morning ritual involves staring at your alarm clock with bleary eyes, wondering when it’s going to stop. Instead of starting your morning feeling low on energy and unmotivated, imagine kicking starting your day with the ultimate fuel. You can fuel your body or you can fuel your mind; there are a number of different options for you to explore.
Many high achieving female entrepreneurs experiment with biohacking, which is essentially tapping into the way your body works in order to attain peak performance. Starting your day with a meditation, yoga stretch, or a run outside will set you off on the best foot possible. You also need to nourish your body by eating a healthy and balanced diet. As soon as you take care of your morning ritual, you will find that the rest of your day slips into place seamlessly. Try out your new morning routine for a week and you will soon get into your new flow.
Prioritize Self Care
The biggest mistake that female entrepreneurs mate is thinking that they need to adopt a 24/7 hustle mindset. Although you will need to work your butt off in the first few months of launching your business, this should not be the norm. Working every single hour of the day is going to take its toll on your mind and body. If you do not practice good self-care, you are going to experience burn out.
At some point in your entrepreneurial journey, you are going to experience burnout; it’s inevitable and it happens to everybody. The biggest lesson you need to learn after this is how to avoid it in the future. You might think that your morning meeting takes priority over your own self-care, but this is the wrong way to approach it. Taking care of yourself will ultimately take care of your business, which will guarantee huge success in the future. When you reverse engineer the big picture of your business in this way, you will start to see why your own health is paramount. Make non-negotiable appointments in your calendar if you struggle to practice self-care; this will help you to stay on track and it will always be a priority for you.
Hone in on Your Zone of Genius
Now that you have tackled your morning routine and self-care rituals, it is time to hone in on your zone of genius. This is a very simple but effective task that will pave the way for you and your future business. Knowing what you are truly good at will help you to make waves in the industry you want to tap into. With certain MBA concentrations, you can focus on your strengths and grow your skills in an educational environment.
Many female entrepreneurs don’t do the groundwork when it comes to starting the business from scratch. It is so important to recognize your own strengths rather than mimicking somebody else’s business idea. Although it can’t hurt to mirror other people's general ideas, it is so important to be authentic to yourself. In the future, it will become so hard to sell if you aren’t truly invested in the product or service you have created. This is why honing in on your zone of genius will make your business more lucrative. When you love your career, life feels so much easier. You would have stayed in your old office job if you wanted to wake up dreading your work every single day. If you don’t already know what your superpower is, why not ask your friends and family for advice? It is probably very clear to them what you are good at; sometimes it can be difficult for us to recognize these talents in ourselves.
Get Extremely Organized
When you are starting and growing a business from the ground up, you need to get extremely organized. There is no time for forgetting specific tasks or losing your way when taking a course. These early months are so precious so you need to use every pocket of time wisely. Create a list of needle-moving tasks that are going to support your business growth. Don’t get drawn into menial tasks that aren’t going to help you thrive and grow.
There are a number of different ways you can organize your time, but the best way is to focus on just one or two tasks each day. It is a proven fact that if you try to switch up your brain capacity too often throughout the day, it can become ineffective. For example, you should use one day of the week for administration tasks, one day for finances, one day for being creative, and other days for networking and meetings. Dedicating one day of the week for each of these tasks pillars will make your business grow in a smooth and streamlined way. This will help you to beat any overwhelm and it will prevent you from burning out.
Don’t be Afraid to Ask for Help
There is absolutely no shame in asking for help when you are just starting out with your business. You might have a very specific zone of genius that isn’t suited to deal with finances, analytics, graphics, marketing, or copywriting. You need to focus your time on the elements of your business that you excel at. You do not need to be a jack of all trades to be a successful female business owner. There are millions of successful female entrepreneurs that have skills that you could benefit from. For example, you may want to hire a virtual assistant to help you with your social media engagement; you may also want to hire an accountant to assist you with your forecasting and cash flow. Hiring people for your business before you are ready will always pay off, as it prevents you from backtracking on tasks that need to be completed imminently.
Hire a Mentor Who Has Done It Before
If you were to sit down and ask a handful of female entrepreneurs what their biggest regret was, it would probably be, not hiring a business coach or mentor. You may think that you can do this all on your own using Google as your private tutor. Although you can find all the information you need on the Internet, sometimes you just need a confident and accountability partner to see you through those tough times.
Growing a business is a hard slog that you will need to adjust to. Have a look online at some of the top business coaches in your industry. As soon as you find one that resonates with you and has experience in your line of work, you can simply reach out to them and see how they can help you. A business coach will walk you through any strategies they have learned during their entrepreneurial journey and they will see things in your company that you may not have ever noticed yourself.
Holding yourself back from what you really want to achieve won’t serve you well in the future. Even if you want to conform to society right now and stay in your dead-end 9-to-5 job, you know you’re not going to stay there for much longer. Why not take the leap and make it happen now?
Sometimes you just need that little extra push to cheer you on and make you feel positive again. Use all of the advice given above and you will be in The strongest position possible to chase your dreams, conquer your goals, and show everybody that it is possible to be an ambitious female entrepreneur.
It can be a daunting experience setting up your very first business. It is also likely to be one of the most exciting times of your life. There is so much that you will be focused on and trying to get right, and however you approach it, you are bound to need a little help here and there. There is nothing wrong with that. After all, it is true for everyone, and so there’s no shame in it. But let’s look now at some of the areas that most first-time entrepreneurs need help in, to give you some idea of where you are.
IT
It is often the case that you will need help where you are weak. Most people, for instance, are not well-versed in all things technological, and so this is one area where they generally need a little help to get things going. If you think you might need help, you will want to think about going to the right people to make sure you get it right. Using a decent managed services team like www.thinktechnologiesgroup.com is often the best way to go - that way, you can just leave it all in their hands.
Marketing
The world of marketing is one that changes profoundly with each passing season, let alone with years. It is a full-time occupation just keeping up with the changes in the cultural winds, so it’s hardly surprising that most business owners don’t have the time to look into this stuff themselves. See www.mplans.com/articles/ for advice on marketing to get you started.
If you are going to try and run your business as successful as possible, then you need to make sure that you are getting some help with your marketing. With that kind of help onboard, you will be able to lead your business to the kind of success that you really want for it
Sales
Some people seem to be born natural salespeople. If you happen to be someone who can sell anything to anyone, then you will be able to use those skills in your new business - although even then you might want to find someone to help you. But most people are not such individuals, and they will need to find true salespeople to help them get their sales off the ground and their products shifted. It’s definitely wise to look out for such people early on so that you can have a much better chance of selling as many products as possible as soon as possible.
Office Design
If you have ever helped to design an office before, you will know that there are so many things involved that you need to consider. In truth, this too is something that is best left to the professionals, as they are much more likely to be able to do your team justice. You need a working space that your team can enjoy, and that means having a keen sense of what works and what doesn’t. With this kind of help, your business is going to be much better off indeed.
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