Successful businesswomen help newcomers to choose an idea, start a business, build processes.
For those who are starting their own business or are still burning with an idea, we have collected a selection of 20 tips from already existing girl entrepreneurs. Businesswomen who know from their own experience what difficulties and problems can wait at the initial stage, share their recommendations on choosing a niche, starting a business, building processes.
Set goals. Not just for a year, 5 years, 50. It is great to set goals for 100 years, goals beyond life. When you realize what legacy you will leave (books, texts, meanings, values, children), it becomes clear why all this is necessary.
It is necessary to understand how you will improve the lives of others with your wonderful future business. What is your value? Why do you create a business?
Write a plan, a sequence of actions and an end result that you want to see in the end. Then it will be clear the path to be followed. When you understand the reality of the end result and the adequacy of your steps, then you can come to something.
It is important to understand from the beginning how your business will scale. Many entrepreneurs miss it. You cannot do it for 10, 15, 30, 40 years. You have to understand what kind of development you have. If you are making one product, who else can you supply it to. If you open a store, how are you really going to scale it. If you have this understanding, it is very noticeable in business. It's a vision of the future, of how you're going to enter another country's market, it allows you to see from above whether you're doing it right.
There's no need to build an idealistic picture at once. I read a book about business development, and there was a good phrase about perfectionists. When you send out mail, you can create an envelope - an example of Michelangelo's work, for which you will spend a lot of effort and time, but know that a regular envelope and such an envelope masterpiece will come to the addressee at the same time. This doesn't mean that you have to do some work, but you don't have to put something off because you can't do it perfectly at the first attempt. Just start to act and it will work better over and over again. As long as you bring it to perfection in your head, the other one will take it and start implementing it. Decide on what you are in love with, and start to act now.
If you have an idea in your head, don't put it in a long box, look for funds to implement the project! Otherwise, you may get ahead of yourself.
Be sure to come up with something new. If you do like everyone else, people won't come to you because they already have "their own people" who are doing the same thing.
Finding your niche is very easy: if you need your own product and you know other people who need it, and you love what you're going to do, the product is doomed to success. The only thing left to do is to make an effort.
Be aware of the fact that it may not go well. Well, it just so happened. I opened an online store of designer watches. They were super cool, but there were few sales. It happens that way. It is important not to give up. All businessmen go through this first "pit". Someone eats it, a person decides that the business is not his, and returns to work for hire. And somebody overcomes difficulties. Someone tries again and again. And if you are not ready to do it, it is better not to go into business.
First of all, it is important to be honest with yourself and to answer the question why you need your business, what kind of opportunities that you can't get while working as an employee, entrepreneurship gives you personally. Often the concept of "your business" is too romanticized, you can read a bunch of articles about the history of failures and all the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs to have a more complete picture of how it happens.
Do not pour too much money in. Money corrupts resources and prevents you from thinking. When money is scarce or limited, creativity and productivity are included. You look for new solutions, you use unconventional approaches. Noubar Afeyan of the Massachusetts University of Technology (MIT Sloan), one of today's prominent entrepreneurs and investors, says about start-ups: "It's ruining your own ego, a lot of money and no team. We didn't have a team at first either, we all wanted to do it ourselves, but it's very difficult to do something alone.
If you are not confident in yourself, in your strength, in your idea, you shouldn't invest a lot of money in business at this stage. All the more reason to take a lot of credits and get back into debt. Start with a small one. Start with what you have.
Count on it. Action-analysis, action-analysis. I came to this very not immediately. To the fact that the business on the one hand is a fan, you do what you like, you think it's funny, you may not meet the standards. But it's very important to look at the future, what brings the exhaust and what does not. Where to invest and where not to invest.
Do not wait for quick results. Our life teaches us to dates: we defended our diploma, went to look for an internship and so on. And in business results do not appear immediately, and you need to be calm about it and just keep working.
So before you make a decision to start a business, think about how you will measure your success in life, because it is measured not only by money.
All processes have to be organized. All behavior patterns should be set at the beginning, the rules - written down on paper, so that each employee understands the other with half a letter and all work in a single way.
It is necessary to count the money and delegate it. Many people do not understand what to spend money on at the start and what niche the money is in and where it is not in. I am not a fan of business plans, but I am for the fact that everything should be counted at the start. How much should I invest? When will everything work out? Who and what will do if it does not work? It is necessary to learn how to delegate. You should not consider yourself the smartest and think that no one will do better than you. This attitude hinders your growth.
You don't have to get attached to your employees. Any business, absolutely any business - it is always a staff turnover. I have made some distinctions. A job is a job. There are working moments in which I am very demanding, but at the same time I can madly love a person and be friends with him in life.
Treat business as business: pay your salary and assess how much more profitable it is to have a business than a corporate job.
There is no need to spend time on developing your weaknesses. Even if you put a lot of time and effort into it, it will still turn out mediocre. It is better to develop your strengths. Delegate everything else.
Be sure to start social networks and show what is going on in your business. Now both your personal brand and your business should be as transparent as possible. People will trust you if you show them the truth. Where are you, what's going on with you, what's in the business, what customers go. I don't even have any special secrets, because everything is as open as possible for each client.
You can't work with rough clients. This is stress, which does not justify money. The people who will come across them (my employees) will be nervous for nothing. The exception is a good financial bonus for harmful work. Very good.
