The A to Z challenge and writing about woman entrepreneurs. You may read the previous posts here.
B is for Business Plan
U is for Utilize
As you go about setting up your business, you will begin to collect tool, enhance skills, and network with people. Having all these resources is just half the story to becoming a successful entrepreneur. The other half is what you do with them. The bootstrapped entrepreneur is often cutting expenses and saving resources, so when you begin to see some success, instead of trying to capitalize on this and moving forward, you retreat.
Don't hide behind old deadlines that you found difficult to meet when you were just starting out. You have become much faster and time efficient since then. Do away with limiting beliefs around the budget and how you need to save every penny. While it may have been true before you had regular customers, this definitely doesn't limit you now that you actually have people showing up to buy from you repeatedly.
There may have been constraints on how much funding you could pour into the business, initially, but now you have other funding options such as pre-sales, soft loans, and standing orders. Your support system is also likely to have grown to help you deal with the time constraints that you initially faced with launching and running the business. In addition, you can collaborate with other people in the industry.
Up selling to your own customers will only take you so far, but cross selling to another friend's customers will help both of you boom your business. Tie up with businesses in your field to offer gift certificates and discounts when they buy from them. It's a fantastic way to gain new leads, that will actually convert.
The Exercise
What You Will Need: Use your available resources to their full potential
Here the idea is to unite with the other small business owners and harness all your resources together. Remember that old tale where a single stick could be easily broken, but when a bunch of sticks was tied together it was much stronger. It's pretty much the same principle of strength in numbers that we are striving for here. A single store owner may bring in a few customers, but when a bunch of you get together and combine your marketing skills, all of you will be able to attract and sell to more people.
Here are some small things that you can do regularly to foster goodwill amongst your potential business allies.
- Share an even that a competitor is promoting with your social media accounts and tag them.
- If you have used and liked any of their services or products, share your genuine experience with your fan base.
- Reach out to the people whose work you admire and ask to collaborate with them on a project of mutual gain.
- Maybe organize a speciality workshop and have them come in as a guest speaker. This could even work out as a series of posts for your own social media accounts.
- Find ways to help each other if they are going through a rough patch, get in touch monthly via a meetup, either physically or virtually.
The idea is to be available and visible to your network. That way when you need their help, they will be much more likely to extend it to you. Again, remember not to abuse their trust. You can always ask them to reciprocate the things that you have already done for them.The idea is not to make a single killing and be stuck, but to foster relationships where you all get to grow together as individuals, entrepreneurs and businesses.
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