The A to Z challenge and writing about woman entrepreneurs. You may read the previous posts here.
B is for Business Plan
T is for Training
Very often women entrepreneurs start out a business without any formal training. It's usually a passion or a hobby which gets converted into a business, of sorts. The processes are made up as you go along, with a high learning curve. There are almost as many disasters as there are successes to celebrate. The challenges can arise in using the appropriate technology, or simply being unaware of the facts.
There's a lot of time that can be saved with the appropriate training. The right training allows you to increase your limited knowledge, develop a new set of skills that will help you be more efficient, and eliminate the energy drain that you currently feel while struggling to put everything together comprehensively. Yet, on a routine basis, I come across women entrepreneurs who will be highly reluctant to get trained.
Despite understanding the fact that the training would help them be more productive and efficient, there is a tendency to prefer using the trial and error method. This hit or miss strategy often ends up costing more in terms of materials, money and manpower than a course which they refuse to invest in. So do yourself and your fledgling business a favour, get trained in the aspect of business that you are struggling with.
No one is denying your expertise in producing what you do, but there is more than simply creating a perfect product to running a business. If you do not understand terms such as ROI (return on investment), intangible costs, and KPE (key performance indicators), it may do you a world of good to find a good business management course and train yourself to run your business perfectly.
The Exercise
What You Will Need: Do a Time and Energy Audit to determine the training you need.
Start with making a list of activities that need to be done as a part of your running a business. Make this as comprehensive as you can. Doesn't matter if it only needs to be done once a day, week or month. As long as you spend time and energy doing the activity, you need to write it down along with the time it takes you to do it.
Here please be brutally honest with yourself.
If you are regularly struggling with an activity, it's time to check just how long it takes you to get it done from prep to follow up. From gathering the resources you need, to the work you need to put in, till you actually complete it, add all the minutes and hours it takes. Including travel time if there is any involved. Or awkward packets of time where you can't seem to get anything done and simply end up wasting it.
Identify where your energy leaks are.
What's taking an unreasonably longer time to accomplish? Also mark out what would help this to go faster? This is a good way to find out if you can learn stuff on your own in self paced courses, or if you need expert help. In the end, there is no one size fits all solution to your personal training needs. While you may be benefited from the opinions of experts, it is only you who can determine what training you can afford to take, and what you can afford to learn through trial and error.
Very very good
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