F is for Fatigue

Onward we go in this series of 26 posts. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.
You may read the previous posts here.

A is for Ambition 

B is for Business Plan

C is for Customer Connection

D is for Distractions

E is for Enterprise Evaluation

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F is for Fatigue

If  it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Being an entrepreneur is not easy. Building up your own business from scratch takes time, effort, money and the ability to stay strong during the slow periods and transitions. For a woman entrepreneur starting from scratch it can be quite challenging to keep her focus on growing the business, especially when she has to constantly split her attention between the business and her other responsibilities to home and family.

One reason why so many start ups of women entrepreneurs fail within the first year, is the fatigue that hits them trying to do the balancing act. This can be crippling when the family members do not support her efforts. Experiencing a few road blocks when you run a business is normal. It is to be expected, so don't think that you have failed. Now is when you need to pull up your socks and decide what you need to do differently going forward.

Trying to do everything together is not a good idea. The focus would change each day based on your priorities. Some day it may be more important to sit with your  child and get them to learn the Pythagoras theorem, than to call up potential customers and discuss your new discount offer. No two days are ever the same in the life of an entrepreneur. You will always have many balls in the air and you need to become proficient in juggling them.

At the same time you need to learn to take care of yourself and your personal needs. Everything hinges on you. Your home, your family, your business, it all runs on your personal energy. If you are running yourself ragged, nothing is going to go well. You need to not just prioritize but also delegate the non essential tasks to someone you trust to do a good job. Killing yourself trying to do it all, is simply not recommended. 

The Exercise 

What You Will Need: Time to rest and introspect

Have you reached a point where nothing you do seems to give you happiness. That all things seem to be dragging you down? The first thing to do is to give yourself a well deserved break. This can be in the form of a day of self pampering. If you can hand over the duties of your daily responsibilities to your spouse or another trusted adult, just physically remove yourself from the home and do things that bring you a sense of joy. 

The day's break will rejuvenate you. Plus once the day of rest is over you will be eager to get back to the main work that has been bothering you. Consider the recent failures to meet your goals. You need to analyze what is going wrong. You know that you are trying to do your best, however are you actually being able to consistently give your business your best? 

Are you connecting with your clients and building a relationship with them? The idea here is not to sell them things, but to help them. As soon as you begin to make a difference in their lives, they will be happy to buy from you. 

Think about both external and internal factors that are holding you back from your success. Internal factors will include your own attitude, your level of motivation and the energy you bring to the work. External factors will include time wasters in the form of chores and people, responsibilities that you can't circumnavigate, business trends and the economy in general.

If it's beyond your control, don't dwell on changing it. Think of how you can work with it. If it's in your control, what are you waiting for? Just drift it over to what you want instead of what you are making do with. Here are some things to think about and take action on.

• Setting the Right Intention for YOU!
• Connecting with your clients in a helpful manner, to them.
• Having proper promotion techniques and following them up.
• Help with your administrative duties related to the business.
• Regular analysis of the business in a month, quarter, half year and annually.
• Work out what things need to change and how you will bring about the change based on this analysis.

 

E is for Enterprise Evaluation

Onward we go in this series of 26 posts. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.
You may read the previous post here.

A is for Ambition 

B is for Business Plan

C is for Customer Connection

D is for Distractions

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E is for Enterprise Evaluation 

 Any venture that you undertake needs to be evaluated periodically. A business thrives on constant feedback and adjustments. You have started out with a venture that you will nurture like a baby. Just like it is difficult for a mother to hear about the faults in her own child, it is difficult for an entrepreneur to take criticism about her business. This does not mean that the criticism should be ignored.

Look at the source of the criticism. There will be some people you know who may criticize you and your business simply because they are suffering from the green eyed monster. Review what has been said. Are you going to find any merit in the suggestions made? Have these suggestions come from a person who has experienced your products or services? The feedback from an existing customer can be priceless in helping you improve your business offerings.

In addition you must realize that your creative gifts needs to backed by a logical and rational mind. Just as not all the ideas you started out with will end up as actual businesses, not all the products you first designed may be successful. It is up to you to make things work by balancing the creativity and practicality of your products and services.

As you begin to work at your business a number of new opportunities will rear their heads. It is up to you to decide if they are worth the effort and the time that they will take to be developed into viable money makers. There can be a great deal of excitement generated when someone asks to partner with your business, but you need to be careful about taking up such offers. For any such opportunity that comes your way, you may like to undertake a pre determined enterprise evaluation. Here's how you can do that.

The Exercise

What You Will Need: All the facts, a few reviews, and a person to act as a sounding board

Constant change is required to survive in today's dynamic market place. The products that you offer may do very well for a few months and then stop selling. This means that you need to evaluate what changes need to be made in order to boost the sales for your business. 

Do you need to add more value to what is being offered? Maybe come up with new products that will appeal to old customers. Get reviews from people who have bought from you in the past and find out what can be done to improve your offering.

New business opportunities may show up where others want to sell your products. Find out if they will buy your products outright or charge you a percentage of the sales you make through their store. What about returns or damaged goods? Figure out your policies in advance so that you don't get blind sided by such contingencies.

You may have a person approach you to work with them offering the services that you are selling. Here you need to be even more careful about what you take on. Clarify the role of both parties and write it down. You need to know exactly what your tasks will be and what the other person is willing to take on. 

Always get it down in writing. Oral agreements leave a lot of room for miscommunication. If circumstances arise at a later date which can not be dealt with easily, having these written agreements will make it easier to resolve them. 

Also before you take up anything, check in with yourself. Are the new opportunities in alignment with your goals for your business as set up in your business plan? Will it be fun to take on the new challenge or will it zap your energy? Is it something that you believe in? Do factor in the amount of time it will take out of each day as well.

Don't make instance or snap decisions. Speak with a trusted friend about your worries and expectations. Also always ask for a twenty four hour period from the person offering you the opportunity before you get back to them with your answer. Don't be afraid to say NO when things seem to be tilted in the favour of the other party. You don't deserve to be left holding the short end of the stick.

D is for Distractions

Today we continue in this series of 26 posts. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.
You may read the previous post here.

A is for Ambition 

B is for Business Plan

C is for Customer Connection

 ******

D is for Distractions

At any given point in a woman's brain there are at least two thoughts vying for her attention. This means that a new woman entrepreneur can often go hours or days without doing something constructive towards building her business up. In order to deal with these distractions that take you away from your business growth, it is important to come up with a working plan for the direction which you are headed in. All it takes is a little bit of determination to ensure that you are following this plan during the day.

You don't need to set aside large chunks of time in a concentrated effort. You can take advantage of the ten minute periods that you find yourself free during the day. However, you can't use those ten minutes trying to deliberate what needs to be done. You need to have an action plan ready so that you can begin ticking off various elements. Make a list of things that need to be done. Do you need to prepare some material for the products you produce? Or perhaps there is a potential lead that you need to call up. It could even be updating a social media account with some offer. Whatever it is, have the tasks set up and written down. This will make it easier for you to get them done.

 The question to ask yourself is where are you headed? What are the things that you need to do to go in that direction. For instance, if you are looking to produce ten sets of handmade jewelry, you will need to design the pieces on paper. Then jot down the raw materials that will be needed to put it together. After you check your available resources, you will know what else needs to be purchased from your supplier. You can make a list of these items and place a call to get them delivered. Then you can begin putting the sets together one section at a time.

The possible distractions here could be that you are unable to get time to complete the design, or that you keep getting pulled away from making that phone call to procure the raw material by other chores demanding your attention. However, if you have the list written down, you can then easily divide your time slots into productive segments for your business. Have a single place to write down these lists and refer to them often. Keep them updated as you tick off things from the to-do list section.

 

The Exercise

What You Will Need: Your Business Plan, an organizer and a timer

By now you should have your business plan well thought out and written down. This gives you the goals that you work towards. Each goal will have a number of steps that it can be broken down into. Work on these steps and designate tasks that will help you achieve these steps. These will then have to be written down in an organizer. 

The organizer can be a physical notebook diary where you can write down your to-do list. You may mark off the dates that you intend to accomplish certain tasks by. You can also schedule specific tasks on a date when you know you will have some free time to get to them. Also the satisfaction of ticking off or putting a line through a task that has been completed is a huge motivator. The more you get done, the more you want to do.

However, with everything moving online these days, you may find it easier to use a calendar app on your smartphone as your organizer. Using the online organizer gives you the added advantage of setting reminders for yourself. This is a sure shot way to bring your attention to tasks that need to be accomplished on a particular day. Many of these tasks will be repetitive in nature.

Another way to gain insight into how long you take for these tasks is to keep a timer handy. That way you can record just how long it takes you to do the task, making it easier for you to schedule time for it in the future.

You may also want to pay attention to things that leak your energy away from your projects. These can be any sort of distraction that make it difficult for you to work. Think about the non productive time wasters in your day. Too much net surfing without a goal, watching videos to hone your craft, getting stuck on perfection rather than getting the task done and moving on. Plan how to plug these energy leaks by either using a timer while doing these tasks or by avoiding them altogether.

Using the Pomodoro Technique is a good idea. In this time management system you divide your work into 25 minute intervals separated by short breaks. That way you focus only on the task for the duration and are much more likely to get things done faster. You may use five or ten minute breaks in between tasks to refresh yourself.

C is for Customer Connection

This is a series of 26 posts. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.
You may read the previous post here.
A is for Ambition 

B is for Business Plan

  *******

C is for Customer Connection

You can't sell if you don't have customers. You won't have customers till you forge a connection with them. No one wants to buy from a stranger. Even when you go to buy simple things like tea or toothpaste, you have a specific brand that you purchase. This brand awareness comes from having used the stuff before, and the trust that you place in the continued quality control that the brand maintains.

When you are starting out as an entrepreneur, you need to build up awareness of your brand. By now you should have a good idea about what your business is offering for sale. This will automatically give you a sense of who is likely to be interested in buying from you. It's now time to build a relationship with your potential customers so that they can be enticed to buy things from you.  

How do you build a relationship with people who you have never met before? Start with establishing a reputable social media presence. Most women entrepreneurs will agree that their potential customers can be found online. Depending on the demographics, you will have to establish accounts in the name of your business on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and LinkedIn. 

Please ensure that the business accounts are different from your personal accounts. This is very important for brand building. Do invite your friends and family to like your posts, but keep your eye on the target of finding new people who may be interested in what your business offers. The idea is to grow an organic audience by helping them with problems that may be resolved by your services or products.

Don't hard sell your products, instead offer advice that helps. The more value your posts provide the potential customers, the more likely they are to follow you on social media. Make friends with them, build a relationship, and offer your expert opinion. Have a limited number of selling posts. Maybe once a week is enough. The rest of the posts should offer value for the time that they spend reading it. Depending on your niche in depth articles or helpful links can be provided.

Ensure that you are regular. Having a ton of social media accounts is of no help when you are not available to respond to queries on them. Start out with a couple of accounts that you feel will be most helpful in terms of customer growth. Then move on to generating regular content for these sites. You can always scope out the competition for ideas related to the content to provide.

The Exercise 

What You Will Need: Social Media Accounts and Content to Share

Get started by creating accounts of your business on different social media websites. If you are a tech savvy person, go the whole hog and create accounts on everything. If you are new to this, just pick a couple of websites to start with. You should practice using the interface of the website before you make any posts public or share them with a wider audience. Test what looks most effective on the computer as well as the mobile phone view.

Ideally think about where your potential customers are likely to be hanging out, and begin with those social media websites. For instance, if you are hoping to offer book keeping services to small business owners, you may like to begin with LinkedIn. However if you are an artist selling acrylic paintings, you would be better off with a combination of Instagram and Facebook.

Keep the business logo as your profile image.You may add the website url under the logo and create a composite profile picture like that. Even if you don't have a logo pick a single picture that resonates with what you are offering. It's a good practice to keep the same image as your profile photo across different social media websites for easy identification. 

Ensure that you fill in all the details for the profile with your contact information as well as website url. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Some people add a phone number to every single post that they put up. This saves time for the customer when they like something for sale and want to buy it.

Keep a few posts up your sleeve. There will be days that you are bursting with creativity and others when you feel like a dried well. On a good day create a few posts and save them to be published later on your social media accounts. Most of the social media sites offer a scheduled post option. Make good use of those.

If they don't have one directly on the website, there are third party sites that you can schedule your posts on like Social Oomph or HootSuite. I have used both and found them easy to handle. There are a number of alternatives such as Sendible, SocialPilot, AgoraPulse, SproutSocial and more. Look for the free version which may have limited features, but is a good bet when you are just starting out with your business. You can always upgrade to a paid plan later on.

Nothing engaged people more than a contest where they may actually win something tangible. You can run a ten day social media challenge which engages your readers and has them bringing in more eyeballs to your posts. Look at posts offered by your competition for ideas that would work in your niche.

B is for Business Plan

This series of 26 posts is an attempt to alphabetically bring my insights to you. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.
You may read the previous post here.
A is for Ambition 

 

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B is for Business Plan

We discussed how to narrow down to a viable business idea. Now we build the idea into a business that is a recognizable brand. Many women are so happy at the idea of having something to do that they rush into things without thinking them through. This results in a number of errors which could have been easily avoided with some foresight. Speak with others who have ventured into entrepreneurship and get their inputs. Most people are happy to talk about what went wrong for them initially. Don't do triage, do prevention!

The first thing to remember is that you are building a business and must develop a business mentality. Remember to start as you want to go along. Now that you have a list of goods or services that you are able to produce and sell, it's time to work out how you are going to do it. Have a rate list for each item. This needs to include your production costs along with costs of what labour you want to add to it for your own skill, effort and man hours spent on production. 

Another aspect you have to think about is the scale of your production. How many products or services can you handle? Are you going to do it alone or hire others to help you with the work? Think about the needs of prospective customers and how you can fulfill them. Work out what bulk order discounts would be for units of tens, hundreds and thousands. Figure out how many free samples you would like to offer initially.

To be able to distinguish what you offer from others in the market, your potential customers need to see a proper business name, logo and presence. While it is not necessary to spend money on building up a brand, there are a number of things that can be done to keep your fledgling business in the mind of your customers. Having a formal business plan can help with this, as it works as a road map for your business to follow.

The Exercise

What You Will Need: Paper, pen, someone to bounce ideas off and quiet time.

The business plan starts with your goals. What is it that you wish to achieve? You need to big picture goal over here. For someone it may be simply enough money to travel for a holiday each year, while others may have specific sums of money in their head that they wish to generate through the sales each month.

Once you have the big goal set, now break it up into manageable steps. It's a good idea to create a visual chart with the vision or map of what you are hoping to achieve. This helps keep the end game in your mind. For instance if one of your goals is to have a website for the business, the smaller goals would include finding a hosting company, deciding the content of the website, having a programmer put it all together, and updating it regularly.

The best way to work through your smaller goals is to give yourself deadlines to meet each bite sized goal leading to the main goal. Time can literally disappear down the rabbit hole for a woman who is already running the home and managing the family's needs. You need to ensure that you set aside that hour every single day for the needs of your business. Only you can ensure that you stick to the deadlines that you have marked on your calendar.

Another aspect that needs to be spelt out clearly in the business plan is the money. What is your initial investment going to be? Work out where you will get that sum of money. It can come from your personal savings, or you could approach a bank for a soft loan, Many banks offer special loans for women entrepreneurs and you will need to educate yourself about these with a visit to the bank. Find out about the documents that you will need to produce to have such a loan sanctioned.

Also handling the money flow from the business in terms of invoicing customers, ordering supplies and the general book keeping must also be done. Are you going to handle all this yourself? Will you bring in someone to do the book keeping officially? Also consider the daily interaction that you will have with potential customers. Factor in time in your day to deal with the emails and phone calls that will come from leads or from suppliers.

Create a concise product or service list that will be offered by the business. Have an accompanying rate list. Decide if you wish to display the rates on your website, or would you prefer for people to call in and check with you. Many people are too lazy to want to call to check the rates, however those who do call will be much more likely to convert into customers. 

These are decisions that you need to take and periodically review. Don't worry about getting everything right the first time. There will always be an opportunity to learn and change what is not working for the business at a later date. Still, it is best to go in as well prepared as possible.

A to Z for the Woman Entrepreneur

I've heard of the A to Z Challenge but never given it much thought. Although today  I felt the need to start writing after a long time. As is evident from the blog history I've not done much blogging in the last two years. The reasons are many and I won't go into them. However, I will tell you about what I have planned for the next 30 days.

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For those of you who don't know me, I'm a person who loves to learn new things. I attend all the workshops that interest me, then try and apply what I learn, not always successfully, in my life. From bread making to jewellery to candle decorating, I've picked up quite a few skills from these amazing ladies who taught me.

I have also come in touch with many women entrepreneurs during this journey and some of them have amazing tricks to manage their home businesses. At the same time I saw others who were very talented but struggled to get sign ups to teach their thing. That's what got me thinking about what they were doing right, and wrong.

The Life Coach in me felt called to put this down in black and white for others who may be helped with this information. I speak of primary challenges and also give simple exercises that can help clarify your future course of action.

This series of 26 posts is an attempt to alphabetically bring my insights to you. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.

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A is for Ambition

Absolutely nothing happens without some ambition. There's a feeling of something missing in your life. Where you aspire to do more than the basic daily routine of looking after your family, especially if you are a woman who gave up her job to become a stay at home mom. For many women past the primary school stage, there is suddenly a whole six hours that they have to themselves. Time that used to fly by in looking after the children is suddenly crawling, even after doing all the household chores.

This is when the desire to do something productive with the spare hours arises. Not in everyone, just a few restless souls who feel that they need more. Think about what you can do. What your interests and talents point you towards. Thanks to the amazing access we have today due to the internet, there are so many options available for working from home. You can set up a small freelance business sitting at your dining table in a matter of a few hours, if you know what you are doing.

The process of working out exactly what you want to do is one of the most exciting phases.

Some of you will know right away what you wish to do. For instance, if you were into the IT sector and now want to go back after your sabbatical, you may decide to work from home as a freelance coder. In some cases what you did before may be nothing related to what you want to do now. For instance I know a lawyer who gave up practising after her marriage. Had her babies and now she works from home as a content writer for a couple of big websites. There’s another friend who is former HR recruiter who, post her marriage and baby, is into crocheting shawls and sweaters as a side business.

 The Exercise

What You Will Need: Paper, pen and some time.

As you can see from the examples I shared, there are no limits to what you can do. Just exercise your imagination and come up with a long list of things that you can do. Don't try and edit it at this time. It's just a brain dump of goods and services that you will be able to provide. Nothing is silly or too trivial. Silence that inner critic when it says you are thinking too grand.

Just put pen to paper and write down anything that comes to your mind. The reason to make the list with pen and paper and not the computer or mobile apps for typing is because the physical act of writing helps stimulate you to come up with more ideas. The feel of the paper below your fingertips and the pen in your hand actually make you want to write.

Keep the piece of paper handy for a couple of days. Things that didn't strike you in the beginning may begin to flow in after a few hours of starting this exercise. I will repeat, don't eliminate anything at this stage. It's all about exploring options. Give yourself the freedom to dream as big or as small as you are comfortable.

Once your list is ready, when you feel complete, sit down and read it. What are the ideas that are popping up at you? Take a second sheet of paper and write these down neatly. You may explore anything from five to ten such ideas. Now put the first paper away and focus on the ideas that transferred to the second sheet.

It's time to think about more details in each of these ideas. Work out what you intend to sell. If it's a service, what exactly will you offer? What are the add-ons that you may promote? Clarify what you will not be responsible about doing.

Similarly when you work on a product that you want to sell, work out exactly what you will be selling. Are there going to be any variations to the physical product? What about packaging and shipping?

Here the idea is to build up a list of goods or services that you can offer. Things that you know that you are capable of delivering. Make this list for each of the ideas that came through to the second sheet of paper. You will find yourself leaning towards a couple of options. Or you may be now clear about exactly what you want to try your hand at.

More about how to proceed in the next installment!