Passion. Creativity. Passion. Marketing Plan. Passion. Support Network. The key ingredient to successfully starting your own business is your passion---your conviction of the viability and merits of the goods and/or services you offer; your total, unwavering commitment to seeing it through; your ability to work whatever hours that are needed and your personal mantra - “I … [Read more...]
Top 10 States for Women-Owned Small Businesses
According to the Thumbtack Small Business Friendliness Survey, New Hampshire is the best state for a woman to open a small business. New Hampshire also ranked as the second friendliest state for both male and female entrepreneurs. Texas took the top spot overall and came in second for women-owned businesses. The researchers surveyed 18,000 small business owners across the … [Read more...]
3 Tips to Match Your Message to Your Market
You know that you must stand out in the marketplace, right? You know that the chances are there are innumerable people who sell what you have to offer, so the only way you can get their attention is to stand out boldly. How can you do this? You cannot just claim to be an expert and leave it at that. Lots of people do that, so how can people choose to work with you? Here are … [Read more...]
Find Reliable Business Feedback by Avoiding Nay Sayers and the Yes Group
When you are starting or growing a business, you typically can’t do it all alone---even in the early stages where the first steps might be proof of concept and customer validation, which are fancy ways of saying you're finding out if your idea is as great as you think it is and getting an idea of the demand for your idea in the market. This may mean conducting a survey or … [Read more...]
You Cannot Baby Anyone into Being Successful
Sometimes, I speak to people who have dabbled at entrepreneurship and when you ask them why they did not succeed, they start to tell me about all the reasons why someone else is responsible for their failure and I listen in quietly. On the other hand, some days I speak to business owners who are building a team and trying to accelerate the growth of that team and they are … [Read more...]
8 Tips for Improving Your Value Proposition
Before buying your product, customers will want to know a number of things. How can your product help them? Why should they buy your product, and not your competitors'? Why should they keep using your product again and again? The answer lies in your unique value proposition (UVP). It's exactly what it sounds like: It's the value you – and you alone – can promise to deliver … [Read more...]
Root Causes of Working IN Your Business, Not ON Your Business
One of the most common issues facing my solo-entrepreneur clients is frustration, often followed swiftly by fatigue. Suddenly swamped by so many roles, so many decisions, so many tasks, while trying to conserve expenditure – weariness sets in. What started as a dream business idea, to hone and drive further, has now become a 24/7 job, with no escape route. You realize you’re … [Read more...]
Paperwork Prevents Small Business Growth – 12 Tools to Recoup Time
Did you know that small business owners spend one day per week doing paperwork? In fact, according to research by YourTradeBase, more than one out of two small business owners (51%) believe that paperwork is preventing business growth. Interestingly, women business owners spend the most time on administrative paperwork (32% of women business owners spend more than 10 hours … [Read more...]
You Have to Get Lost Before You Can Be Found
How I went from having a dead end job and hating my life to successfully launching a company and finding happiness... Have you ever heard the saying, "You have to get lost before you can be found?" Yeah, I thought that was crap too. But that's exactly what happened to me. I was lost. Like… crying in my car, banging my head against the steering wheel, clinging to a fortune … [Read more...]
5 Ways to Sell Your Brand
Building a loyal customer base is absolutely essential for your business if you want to achieve steady sales growth. According to Pew Research, loyal customers on average are worth up to 10 times as much as their first purchase. Your probability of making a sale to an existing customer is 60 to 70 percent compared to 5 to 20 percent probability for selling to a new … [Read more...]