She Owns It

Celebrating, Connecting, and Supporting Women Entrepreneurs

Sometimes Beauty comes with Strangeness by Sue Perez of @Beautyphonics

by Leave a Comment

by Sue Perez | Featured Contributor

 

Jack O’Lanterns, black cats, flying bats and witches brew. Creepy ghosts, nine legged spiders are some of the things I wish for you. Tasty cookies, frosted candies, chocolate covered dreams in your hands. It’s Halloween again and new makeup trends! Are you ready to play my friends? ( insert evil grin here or loud cackling laughter )

 

Playing Dress Up

If your like most people you wait until the last minute, sometimes even up to the day, searching for a Halloween costume. That is why I like parties. You can plan in advance and really create a cool costume. A few years ago a colleague who had lost a family member to brain cancer started a fundraising event on Halloween. It was such a fun way to get together for a good cause, have some drinks and dance around while looking fiendishly cute. Being a professional makeup artist you would think I live for this holiday. Sure, I enjoy dressing up and being creative, but I love creating the makeup looks on other people as you will see on the links below. But first, this is a snap from the event a couple of years ago. I was inspired by Dia De Los Muertos which means Day of The Dead and it’s a traditional holiday in Mexico where loved ones honor their deceased. 

 

 

 

 

No Sewing Machine Required

Unlike costumes, which need to be measured and fitted, makeup on the other hand fits everyone. And there is no assembly required. You won’t need to dust off your sewing machine and shop for fabrics and pull all your hair out screaming when you mess up. I think finding the right costume, one that makes you look and feel good is the biggest challenge. The makeup is the fun part and this look demonstrates how lovely and effortless a simple well placed Peacock feather can make. Or how about this adorably cute look which took me about fifteen minutes and a steady hand. False strip eyelashes in both of these looks made the impact. You don’t really need a lot of material to make a stand out halloween costume, just some ideas, planning and inspiration.

 

 

Trending for Ideas

Of course a three second Google search will reveal the most popular costumes this year but what if your not cool playing a character? I think there are many ways to create and conjure the most unique and exciting fantasy costume. My creativity comes from pictures. This visual inspires so much excitement! She is a goddess, strong and fearless. She has mastered her environment as she kneels on the ocean, harnessing fire and manipulating the air. Every element is hers to command and she absorbs it’s energy and manifests all of it’s power.

 

 

 

 

Power in Self Expression

It’s fun to create a fantasy and express yourself in it, draw on the powerful positive energy from a photograph like these and see how it can plays into your own life. ( swords not included ) Everyday we are bombarded with bad news and depressing headlines. Halloween is a holiday where you can play dress up and be as weird as you want to in the name of having a good time. Looking at inspiring images can also awaken the energy we need to adopt and manifest our dreams. Weird, or strange, odd and mysterious, embrace all the qualities that make you unique. Expressing who you really are can be beautiful.

 

 

 

 

Stages of Success by @SBSLEducSoltns

by Leave a Comment

[ ‘S o S’ ] = Leveraging Stages to Earn Something More: Significance

 

Flying @ 35K ft

 

As entrepreneurs, we’ve often heard how important it is to be successful.

 

And, as so many of us also know, success is defined in so many different ways, through lots of different life experiences & lenses, that there could be a fairly large library filled with content on ..

 

What is success?

How to be successful?

Who is a success & Why?

Where can success be learned?

 

To be clear, the stages that will be discussed below all DO feed into this ‘black box’ known as success, however, in my reasoned view, if each is leveraged unto one another, you’ll earn something far more impactful in the long term:  Significance.

 

Success vs. Significance

It’s left to you, the reader, to decide what you seek to pursue. A quick web search returns oodles of success quotes & related content:

Click HERE , then HERE to dip a toe ever so slightly into the ocean: The video & infographic in the latter are wonderfully displayed, by the by!

 

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”

―Peter F. Drucker

 

Turning the page to significance, one of the best sources to land on?  THIS one.

Our businesses can either drive us, as their owner/founders, to a significant life, or our lives can be the spark on the embers of the business, turning it from just surviving, to a modicum of success, and perhaps significance.

 

So, the road, visualized as two lanes, does have one going in one direction, and the other in its opposite.

 

“The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning. The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.”

― Vera Nazarian

 

Breaking down the stages  

 

I contend that each stage can be swapped for another, so the order below isn’t as important as the very high level explanation of the stage. And, if you happen to have multiple business ventures, you might even leverage the 5 stages differently, if & when you choose to pursue significance in either, or more.

 

Mental 

There are miles upon miles of created content online that talks up the vast importance of an entrepreneur’s mental mindset – the ‘inner game’ between the ears, so to say.

 

To be successful, you might’ve already noticed how you might ( or already have ) had to tune out cynics, critics, and unhealthy skeptics.

 

How it is often best to replace, 1:1, the mass media’s many arms with podcasts, webinars, audio books, and the like.

 

Yes, that quote about your mind being a garden, and having to pull the weeds?  It’s quite accurate.

 

Cultural  

Your workplace culture, or the culture ( coffee shop/cafe?  Coworking space? ) in which you invest time if not at a physical location of some sort, definitely is a puzzle needing solving.

 

Culture is an amorphous term, just like success; many thought leaders come to varying conclusions.

 

Yet, if you’re the founder or owner of a business with staff on payroll, you know how crucial culture is; your customer service; turnover; &/or engagement/satisfaction are each outward signs of how healthy it is.

 

In this post from a few years ago, I opined that culture feeds into vision, then strategy, & lastly, tactics.

 

Social [ Capital ] 

Your professional network/s are immensely valuable; while it’s best understood that clientele can come from any one of many concentric circles  ( perhaps a connector led to to a center of influence to this individual ), a very important concept is that of social capital.

 

While there are many phenomenal resources out there, one of the most impactful is found in the work of Mr. Robert Putnam — linked below is his ‘primer’ website, which by itself is chock full of goodness and explains well why this is a stage of success.

 

Financial

Whether or not you believe in retaining the services of a financial advisor/planner, or otherwise, you’re definitely encouraged to embrace the vast value in understanding the financial stage.

 

In my own professional journey, which began with one business venture as a side gig/hustle, one of the most impactful stages I ever engaged in?

 

= Moving from a consumerist/W-2 to a producer/entrepreneurial view of dollars & cents.

 

Since the vast majority of conventional classrooms in our nations don’t include much, usually any, content on money/literacy, let alone wisdom on how to invest, spend, and/or save money, it is left to us, as the owner/founder, to tap into the deep rivers of resources.

 

Leader[ship] -> Legacy

This stage alone could comprise a series of volumes, if not another separate library, alongside the success.

 

In this recent post, I unpacked variants of leadership. It wasn’t all encompassing, however, feel welcome to re(read) it and combine this stage with that post, to equal greater impact.

 

An informal mentor of mine teaches that one’s influence ( Excellent podcast HERE ) flows to impact ( which we’ll intentionally define as significance, as you leverage all 5 stages ) , then the entrepreneur reaches what she needs to be a viable business:  Income.

 

Intentionally moving from leading to legacy is a topic that deserves its own post; yet, it’s included above since both seem to be deeply intertwined:

 

leaving a legacy necessitates leading, just as much as the river of influence x impact feeds the ocean of legacy.  

 

Suggested Social Follows 

 

Robert D Putnam

 

Jim Collins

 

John C. Maxwell

 

Robert Kiyosaki

 

Mindset Works

 

As always, you’re encouraged to …

 

… use this monthly post as a jumping off point; take it as the sound of the starter’s pistol in track & field:

 

Ready ( reading this  ).  Set ( click on the links ).  & …  Go!  ( invest in content, set goals, et al. )

 

Social Capital Primer

Success Magazine

Servant Leadership Institute

Great By Choice

Rich Dad Radio Show

 

In short

 

  • A high level overview
  • Comparing 2 ‘S’ words
  • The 5 Stages – one by one
  • Recommended Twitter follows
  • Additional content

 

Thank YOU for reading!

____________________________________________

10 Qualities to Look For When Hiring a Marketing Manager by @lucyrk78

by Leave a Comment

by Lucy Render-Kaplan | Featured Contributor 

In an industry where the only constant is evolution, how do you know what to look for when hiring a Marketing Manager? If you were looking for an accountant, you would know to look for someone with accounting skills and who went to school specifically aiming to work in accounting, but very rare are marketing managers who possess an actual degree in marketing. And that’s ok! Because I believe that if people have these 10 traits, they will be just as good (and usually better) than someone that spent four years or more studying what I have been focused on learning for the past 16.

  1. Boundless Enthusiasm: Great marketers have passion for what they do oozing out of them. You never doubt they love this field, and you will never hear them say “God. Work is SO boring.”
  2. Creativity: Great marketers don’t do things “the way it’s always been done.” It isn’t that we’re trying to reinvent the wheel, but I’d argue that we’re always trying to look at that wheel in a way that no one else ever has before. And we can make you look at it that way, too. Great marketers are willing to take risks with what some may call a “crazy idea.” They aren’t afraid to fail because the WIN feels so good when those ideas connect. I’m willing to bet these people have notebooks full of ideas scribbled down, and at the ready wherever they are and ideas might come.
  3. Loyalty: I might not drink the beverage that I worked on when starting my marketing career, and in fact, I actually drink their main competitor daily, but I go on auto-pilot if I hear someone say something about that first brand that isn’t true. Great marketers don’t just work for a brand, they live that brand. That brand’s products or services are part of their daily lives.
  4. Know Their Audience: I always think of the line “I’ve made a living out of reading people’s faces…” when I think about what I do. You generally only have a couple of seconds to grab someone’s attention, and great marketers need to be able to tailor their message (I hate the word ‘pitch’) to differnet people so it makes sense to THEM. For example, I’m not going to try to sell someone in their 80s on the benefits of coconut water for strenuous workouts, nor am I going to talk about why a mental focus supplement is great for students, to a mom with 2 kids in her grocery cart and a very pregnant belly.
  5. Adaptable: No matter how much you plan, or how good you are, problems arise. Plans change. New legalities pop up. A great marketer can pivot and adapt and switch their entire focus at any point in any project. They don’t get too tied into one plan.
  6. They are Great Listeners: If you marketers are anything like me, you love to watch people. Find out what they like, where they go, what they do. What their habits are, what makes them NEED a product…We know what questions to ask to help draw people out and allow us to get to them, when we begin as total strangers.
  7. They’re Great Sales People: It might be a cliché, but it’s repeated so often for a reason. Great marketers CAN truly “sell ice to an Eskimo.” And they can get that sale before the Eskimo even realizes he needs ice. If you ever come across someone in marketing that hasn’t made sales, or thinks they don’t or won’t need to, move along! If sales puts items on a shelf, it’s the marketers that take it off, and that is because they know how to communicate clearly and show people WHY they need your product or service.
  8. See The Big Picture: It’s so easy to get bogged down in details, who needs to go where, looking at analytics, becoming overly focused on wanting to attach the brand to a specific event…it can be hard to take a step back, but we need to. The overall goals of the company must always be top of mind, and our first thought when deciding what to get involved with, what can wait, and what we can pass on.
  9. Storytellling: You definitely want someone that can tell great stories that not only draw people in, but are able to relate to. To get people excited about and choose your company over any others in the same category, you need someone that can get people to FEEL deeply and emotionally connect with the stories you are telling. You want someone that can get people to see themselves already using your brand in their lives, not just thinking it might be fun to try once. You want consumers, both potential and existing, to see themselves in the brand stories you’re marketing manager is telling.
  10. Team Player: Great marketers know they don’t work alone. Marketers best work is not born out of a boardroom or silo. Sales, Finance, Logistics…marketing is dependent and must work well with all of the employees in these various divisions. Teamwork is KEY to great marketing, and great marketers are humble enough to realize this.

I wish Top 10 Lists went to 11. There are so many other qualities that great marketers possess. What are some you don’t see on this list? Tweet me @lucyrk78 and let me know!

Using the Passion Formula: Building Your Business with Empowerment

by Leave a Comment

by Brooke Hart

I was recently mentoring a client who is very passionate about launching an online business. But when it comes to taking action items, it’s a different story.

When speaking with her about circumstances, she openly told me she wasn’t happy with her 9 – 5. It paid well but it didn’t fulfill her.

But when it came to building a different stream of income, she wasn’t so excited about the topic or the type of business that she was creating. It was creative, but not really her “cup of tea.”

This is a circumstance that I continuously see among networks of women as well as with those who are looking at me for answers to create and build the business of their dreams.

The question is – when did building a business of the dreams become a way to earn more income outside of a regular job?

Passion must mean more to us than finding an answer to something we dislike.

If we dig deeper, there is a solution where we are expressing the core of our being, bringing our internal dreams into action.

No two businesses are alike and there is never any competition.

Why?

When we are truly tapping into and living out the passion of our dreams, then it takes us out of the mix and into our own expression of success.

Discovering Your Passion Formula

I often say that empowerment is an internal job. When we tap into our core, we find that our source of power and our complete expression comes from what we hold inside.

This is the same space where we find our passion for life and what we really want to be and express in this lifetime.

When you look at business opportunities, look further than what you like.

  • Is this something you want to speak about every day for the next 10 years?
  • Does your business idea come from a space of belief? Meaning do you believe it will help someone, add value or create a better life where you can give as well as receive?
  • Are you driven by the concept and mission of your business?
  • Are you creative, defined by your own character and using ideas that no one else has? If not, tap into your power to find what makes you unique and reflect this in your venture.

If you don’t check the boxes for one of these then keep looking. Get into something that you know you want to reflect and which brings a better life to you and to others.

Then reflect that in your brand, products or services and with the approach you take with building a business. You will find that your business will build faster and you won’t experience burn out or a business that doesn’t achieve what you want.

 

————————————————————–

Brooke Hart is an entrepreneur, strategist and marketing expert. She has worked as a digital strategist for over 12 years, assisting hundreds of businesses from launch to growth phases. She is also the founder of Angel Guard Fashion, a fashion – self-defence product line designed to empower and protect the global community by reducing violence.

Trust Your Team to Grow Your Business by Katrina Petersen of @crooked_steeple

by Leave a Comment

by Katrina Petersen

It’s not always easy to trust, especially when it comes to your business. But without trust, you’re on a fast track to burnout. I should know. I bought a historic church and tried to turn it into a premier wedding and event space all by myself.

In my defense, I had good reason not to trust other people. Until recently, I’d been business partners with my husband. We co-owned a property management company together. Then we got divorced, and the divorce got messy. Really messy. As in, I had to take out a restraining order on the father of my children. That kind of messy. It’s no wonder I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy about handing portions of my business over to strangers.

So, I threw myself into my new business. The building was in rough shape. It had been privately owned for almost 20 years. First it had been used as a man cave. There was a pool table where the altar used to be and that owner converted the church kitchen into an apartment. Then it was music store and performance hall. The owners had done their best, but the apartment had been pretty much neglected and there was a to-do list longer than a Maine winter.

When I did ask for help, I was careful not to give anyone too much power over the business. I would make all of the decisions. I would approve the designs, pick paint colors, critique and nitpick until everything was just so. I had this idea that I needed to do this on my own. I needed to do the work and if I worked hard enough it would come.

To be clear, buying a dilapidated but historically significant church wasn’t exactly on my bucket list. It just seemed like the right building at the right time. I didn’t have a ton of cash and the owners were willing to do owner financing to help make the sale possible.

So there I am, sweating, dirty, all alone in this 170 year old building while my kids were at daycare and I thought, “What am I doing?”

Actually, it was like someone had slapped me and yelled in my face. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” It was an epiphany. I could renovate this space and turn it into a beautiful, uniquely Maine event hall. I absolutely could. But not alone. I needed help. I needed to trust the small team I’d been building. They were professionals and I could let them do what they were best at.

Now the work gets done and I get to spend more time with my kids. Crooked Steeple Hall is booking events for 2020 and beyond. I thought I needed to be in the middle of everything or my business would fall apart, but it turns out that what I really needed to do was trust.

—————————————————————-

Katrina Petersen was a property manager and event planner before she purchased Crooked Steeple Hall and started building her dream business. Located in the historic town of Winterport, Maine, Crooked Steeple Hall hosts weddings, receptions, town-hall debates, and other unique events.

How To Create a Mini-Course Right Now by @victoriahock

by Leave a Comment

victoria hockaday mini course

by Victoria Hockaday | Featured Contributor 

If creating a signature course overwhelms you, then a mini-course is a great way to start making an additional income stream. 

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – creating an online course is a huge task. First, you have to create the course, which can take up to 30-60 days to create and then you have to create the launch content.

So, if a course feels too big and intimidating, a mini-course is a great way to start creating and make an additional income. And it allows people to think “I love what she teaches and I wonder what else she has”.

In fact, there are many benefits of creating a mini-course, here’s just a few:

  • It gets you into creation. Creating a mini-course gives you the momentum to get started and make things happen.
  • Lower barrier to entry. A mini-course with a smaller price tag gets more customers through the door.
  • Proof of concept to make something bigger. If one person buys your mini-course, then it’s proof that its something people want and need. When you’ve validated your concept with a mini-course, you’ll feel more confident about putting the time and energy into a signature course. 
  • Build know, like and trust with your audience. It allows you to dial up your credibility and gives you the time to build trust with your audience. If they get results from your mini-course, then they’re more likely to want to learn more from you. Pretty cool, right?

Ready to create your mini-course? Let’s dive into the steps. 

Think of What You Can Teach 

To help you kick start your course creation you want to think about what you’re going to teach. At this point, you might have a few ideas about what topic you want to focus on for your mini-course. Ideally, you want to create a course based on results that you’ve created for yourself or others. So, think about what transformations you have had and how you could you turn it into a mini-course? 

Know Your Dream Customer Avatar

Now that you’re on board with what you’re going to teach, you want to think about your dream customer avatar. The key is knowing what their biggest pain point is and creating a course that solves that one problem. Let’s say that you’re a brand strategist for solo entrepreneurs. You know that one of their biggest pain points is creating a value ladder for their business. A possible mini-course that you could offer is one that demonstrates how to create a value ladder for their business. BOOM.

Decide How You Will Deliver Your Course

If you’re doing a mini-course there a few ways you can go about it. You could create a workshop course where you offer a 2-hour training. This would be to address an immediate challenge that your audience is facing. This might be a live recording that you do over Zoom and you can have a Q&A at the end. (Plus, it’s the easiest one to get up and running quickly!) Or, you can create a course made up of videos or workbooks. You can prepare a Powerpoint with a voice over and you can do screencast showing them how to use certain tools. Then, if you’re going to deliver your course via email marketing, you’ll need to set up an email drip campaign.

Work Out How You’ll Collect Payments

Delivery options include sending out your course via a course platform, such as Teachable, Thinkific or Member vault. Alternatively, if you want an all-in-one business platform and you want to have your landing pages, sales pages and email in one place you can use Kartra or Kajabi. Or, if you want to keep your costs low you can use a service like Gumroad and Send Owl for collecting payments and delivering content.

Getting Ahead Before the Holidays: 5 Ways to Prep Your Business for the Busy Holiday Season by @CorpNetNellie

by Leave a Comment

by Nellie Akalp

Happy holidays! Too soon? Not really, especially because the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates 2019 holiday retail sales will grow between 3.8% and 4.2% over last year. In dollars, that means between $727.9 billion and $730.7 billion. With numbers like those, your business had better be well-organized for the frenetic holiday season ahead. Here are five ways to make sure your business is positioned to take the holidays by the reins!

1)—Get Your House in Order

I don’t know about you, but I can always think clearer with a clean office and ample supplies. The holidays are busy enough without having to run out for copier paper or spend half an hour trying to find an expense report. Obviously, year-end is on the horizon, so you want to be ahead of schedule when it comes to organizing financial documents for taxes, finalizing annual reports and more. 

You don’t want to be experimenting with new software when things get busy, so if you’re considering buying any new technology, do it now, or wait until next year. Check with your  suppliers to make sure your orders will be delivered on time. 

2)—Big Holiday Sales Celebrations

All types of businesses can benefit from the masses of consumers shopping on the big advertised sales days like Black Friday (Nov. 29), Small Business Saturday (Nov. 30), and Cyber Monday (Dec. 2). Even if you’re not in the retail business, you can still offer holiday discounts and specials to attract customers and clients. 

If you are a retailer, according to a survey from Shopkick about half of shoppers plan to buy in-store this year, so make sure your brick-and-mortar location and your website are in tip-top shape. 

Finally, during this season of giving, be sure to offer a way for your customers to participate in Giving Tuesday—an important day set aside to give back to our communities. Your business can hold a raffle for a local charity, collect toys, clothes or food for kids in need, or come up with your own idea by brainstorming with your employees.

3)—Key in on Your Website

According to the Shopkick survey, 84% of shoppers will use their smartphones to “research, compare prices, find inspiration, read reviews and more.” To make sure consumers can find your website, tune-up your SEO by using the best keywords for your industry. Use a free tool like Wordtracker to research keywords or pay for a more sophisticated version, such as Alexa, which can tell you which keywords are working best for your competitors. For holiday advice from the SEO experts that control your ranking, check out the Holiday Retail Playbook from Google Services.

4)—Social Media Plan of Attack

Social media is a powerful sales tool but can also be an immense time suck. The holidays are definitely not the time to try and master the ins and outs of the social networking world. If you don’t already know how to best utilize social media, outsource it to a trusted employee or a freelance expert. The more you can plan ahead, the better. Once you get your social media posts written and scheduled, you’ll be free to actually interact with customers—in person and on social media. 

Make sure you answer questions posted on your social platforms. Even setting up an autoresponder to direct customers where to find answers is better than letting the customer think you don’t care enough to respond.

You can increase social media engagement by running fun holiday contests, posting coupons or even capturing, then sharing your fun holiday promotions and events. Create a social media calendar to ensure you are making the most of the holiday season and staying active across all your channels.

5)—Hire Temporary Staff

If you’re a retailer, it’s likely your store will be open for more hours, so you’ll  definitely need to make sure you’re not short-staffed. Other businesses may need to plan around employees who want time off to celebrate the holidays with their families. 

To ensure you’re covered, plan ahead by hiring temporary staff. Ask employees to request their days off now; then look for holiday help (no, it’s not too early). In addition to using job search websites, ask your employees if they know anyone looking for holiday employment.  

The holidays should be a time of thanks and celebration, so don’t forget to plan a party for your employees and shop for meaningful gifts for clients. By planning ahead, you can reduce holiday stress and your business will benefit, too.

Nellie Akalp is a passionate entrepreneur, small business expert and mother of four. She is the CEO of CorpNet.com, a trusted resource for Business Incorporation, LLC Filings, and Corporate Compliance Services in all 50 states. Nellie and her team recently launched a partner program for accountants, bookkeepers, CPAs, and other professionals to help them streamline the business incorporation and compliance process for their clients. More info at: CorpNet.com/partners.

How to Prospect for New Clients by @DONNAAMOS

by Leave a Comment

How to Prospect for New Clients

by Donna Amos | Featured Contributor 

Prospecting for new clients can be a difficult task for solopreneurs or small businesses, especially when your company is brand new. But even old hands mostly admit to struggling with getting new clients. While no business or solopreneur ever admitted to having enough or “too many” clients, most still struggle to prospect for new clients and avoid salesy marketing ploys.

But prospecting for clients effectively is something you can learn and incorporate into your regular business routine. Indeed, it should be something you always strive to improve, since your business depends on a steady supply of needy clients. Prospecting for clients takes time, but it needs to be one of the regular, systematic functions of your business. And since many potential customers or clients won’t buy or book a service on the first contact, you also need to develop a plan for staying in touch until they need what you have to offer.

Identify Your Target Market

It’s a no-brainer that you’ll save time and money by marketing to people who not only want what you’ve got, but also are willing and able to pay for it. And so, the first step in prospecting for new clients is to define the most likely buyer of your product or service. How old are they? What gender? What is their socio-economic background? Knowing who your market is, makes it easier to find them and deliver messages that entice them to check out your product or service.

Take the time to understand who your target market is so you don’t waste your time or money finding and selling to the wrong customers and clients. The best way to do this is to perform the necessary research and create buyer personas that represent each type of person in your target audience. Then you can tailor your prospecting and marketing messages to specific types of clients.

Begin Building a Potential Client List

Do you plan a party without a guest list? Likewise, you can’t start or run a business without making a list of potential clients. Listing people you know is a good place to start as you can make a quick sale and get referrals. But there are other sources from which to start your potential customer list. Here are some great places to start:

Personal Contacts: Your friends and family are the most likely to purchase something from you, even if they’re not your target market. Or, maybe they don’t need your product or service, but know someone who does or would be willing to tell others about it.

Existing Customers: If you’ve already made a few sales, call upon your existing customers to see if they need more of your product or service. Selling to an existing happy customer is easier than generating a new one. Also, ask these clients for referrals. Offer an incentive for clients to provide referrals. Word of mouth is still a great marketing tool.

Trades Shows or Local Events: Shows and events are great ways to network with other businesses that may fit your market (in B2B) or generate new customers and prospects through an exhibit if you sell to the end consumer (B2C). Even if you don’t make a sale, events can allow you to build your contact list. Ask show or event participants to register for a drawing and be sure to give away a spectacular prize as an enticement.

Social Media: Many service-based businesses find social media one of the best places to connect and build relationships with potential clients. Do you have social media followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, or LinkedIn? Interact and converse with them to build a relationship. Seek to establish a reputation as an intelligent and thoughtful friend. With this foundation, you can offer advice from your expertise and even share the occasional sales message.

Contact Prospects

Once you have a list of prospects, it’s time to reach out and make connections. There are many ways to do this, and each one requires something a bit different. One thing remains the same – be genuine and kind in every mode of contact. Respect people’s time and attention and don’t be pushy if they aren’t interested. Popular methods of contacting prospects include:

Phone: Use an easy flowing, conversational script to introduce your product or purpose for calling. Asking questions and presenting your product or services’ benefits turns the focus of the call onto them instead of you. Be sure to ask for something: a sale, an email for more info, or a referral.

Email: Email is less scary and often a great way to introduce yourself. And email marketing works. The trick is to not simply send a “buy” email, but instead, offer something of value. Give a brief explanation of who you are, then provide a coupon or a free article on a relevant topic. Remember to only send a one-time communication unless you have permission to send repeat emails, such as to a list where the recipient has subscribed to receive emails from you.

Text Messaging: It is said that 98% of text messages are read within 2 minutes. The availability of text messaging is part of its power. Most folks with a cell phone are within arms reach of their phone 24 hours a day. Although texting is convenient, you can’t conduct entire prospect conversations via text. But it does pave the way for phone calls and sales meetings. Texting is a great follow-up option once you have the prospect in your pipeline.

Direct Mail: Direct mail is still effective, which is why we all still receive so much of it. Create the piece you plan to send and be sure it doesn’t appear to be junk mail. Bulk mailing services can save you time, and even a percentage off postage.

Social Media: This can be a great place to build relationships so that you can move prospects on to your calendar or to purchase your widgets. Requires effort such as identifying prospects, commenting on their posts, share content of value with them, tag them in posts when appropriate and share their content all before trying to sell them anything.

Continue Your Follow-Up Efforts

The fortune is in the follow-up. Research demonstrates that 80% of sales are not made on the first, second, or even a third contact! It can take five or more contacts to achieve a sale. The trick is to have a non-annoying system of follow-ups, such as a regular email list or an agreement to call again in six months. Solopreneurs and small businesses can keep track of various leads and prospects by using some sort of CRM software tool and database. Many have free options and calendar reminders that signal you when to follow-up with different classes of prospects.

How do you prospect for new clients? Which method has been the most successful? Share your tips and experiences with our readers in the comments below!

 

The Magic of Delegating and How to Start Today by @JThiefels

by Leave a Comment

magic of delegating

by Jessica Thiefels | Featured Contributor

Delegating work to other people sounds great in theory. You spend less time doing the nitty gritty and get more time to focus on the big picture details you actually care about.

Despite the obvious benefits, when it comes to giving work to other people, we business owners struggle to hire help. Not only do you have to trust someone else to do the work as well as you, but it takes time to send out assignments and onboard someone. Plus, paying a contractor or virtual assistant means less money in your pocket.

I get it—I struggled at first too. Both onboarding and paying people to work for me was a hurdle I didn’t want to deal with. I’m particular about my writers because they ghostwrite for me. What’s more, as a writer and editor myself, I know that you get what you pay for and letting go of a couple thousand dollars each month seemed absurd. 

Despite my resistance, it came to a head. I’d reached a point where I could no longer do the work myself, and still make time for rest and growing my business. My business was running me, and I had to ask for help if I still wanted to maintain my client load and enjoy my life. I branched out to my network to bring on writing and marketing support and haven’t looked back since. My best months, financially and mentally, are when I delegate more work to my writers and marketing coordinator.

Having help not only allows me to get more done every month, but it gives me greater freedom in my day. With less work on my plate, I can take an afternoon off if I’m exhausted or take a full day to work on my book instead of being stressed about client work. I now rely on my writers and marketing coordinator and am grateful to have them on board. 

If I can do it, you can do it too. So, if you’re ready to build your business and take some of your time back too, use the following tips to delegate your tedious tasks. 

Start Small

magic of delegating

You don’t need to delegate $5,000 dollars in work right now. Start small to ensure that you find the right people or person. I always start new writers with a test assignment. If it’s something I can work with, I pay them and use it. If not, I’m upfront that they won’t get paid for the work. 

This allows me to get a feel for their writing as well as their work style. Do they communicate well via email? Do they submit the piece on time? Do they need a lot of handholding?

You can do the same, no matter what line of work you’re in. For example, if you want to hire a virtual assistant, start with a simple project. See how they do on that one project and assess their work style based on your own criteria, like I do with writers. From there, you can add more work to their plate or try someone new. You can also look for someone more specialized via sites like UpWork. I have five writers that I pay because I do a lot of content work. To me, that’s a lot more valuable to me than a VA. 

Make a list of where someone could feasibly provide support and then consider the best way to accomplish those tasks. Once you find someone, document the onboarding process so you have a record for the next person you bring on.

Follow the 70 Percent Rule

One of the greatest challenges with delegating is knowing that someone else won’t do it as well as you. That’s where the 70 percent rule comes into play, which says: if the person in question can do the job 70 percent as well as you can, you should delegate it. While this may still be a challenging concept to accept, Jim Schleckser, CEO of Inc. CEO Project makes a great point:

“To let go of perfection, you need to decide what’s more important to you: having the work completed to ‘perfection’ (the way you would do it), or having it completed successfully in a different way. You may even be surprised to find that when you give your team members [contractors] a little leeway, they discover new—and better—ways to do things.”

My writers are always coming up with angles I wouldn’t have thought of and digging up research I wouldn’t have looked for. I’ve come to prefer delegating as much as possible to them because my definition of perfect has evolved. My way isn’t always the best way and letting go of the need to have something a certain way has made my life much less stressful.

Give Feedback

If you don’t want to get subpar work, give feedback. I’ve been working with some of my writers for a few years now and they know what I like. They’ve turned my feedback into even better writing, which makes my job easier. Plus, feedback makes their lives easier because they spend less time guessing and more time producing great work.

Make this part of the process. Give feedback in real-time or do it in chunks, like one feedback email at the end of each month. If I need to do heavy edits on an  article, I’ll simply send the final article to the writer and ask them to compare their version to mine to see where they can do better next time.

Delegate What Someone Can Do Better

delegate to experts

This is so important as a business owner with a growing business. There’s a lot that you do better than the people you delegate to. There’s also a lot that you don’t do better, and that work should also be delegated. For me, that’s accounting and bookkeeping. Hiring a CPA and bookkeeper is the best money I’ve spent in my business because financials are not my forte. 

Looking at Profit and Loss statements and dealing with invoices is just not something I want to deal with. Plus, experts are experts for a reason. If I do it, I’m more likely to make a mistake. When they do it, I have the added peace of mind that everything is taken care of. This allows me to focus on what I do well, which is growing my business.

Start Delegating Now

It may be hard to spend the money or release control, but you’ll quickly find it’s worth it. Not only can you focus on bigger picture work by delegating small, tedious tasks, but you can also find more time to rest, which is crucial if you want to run a business long-term.  

October is “National Women’s Small Business Month.” Here’s some advice from two women who have been there and done that.

by Leave a Comment

by Julie Miner and Jaime Venditti

People always ask when we will get sick of talking to each other because we are always communicating. But what they don’t realize is that we’re a team that continually elevates each other’s vision into achievements.

Ten years ago, we were young women who had spent our careers in New York politics, alliance development, and public relations. However, we had grown tired of working for men who offered lower income as compared with less-qualified male colleagues and we were ready to be our own bosses. So, after months of developing spreadsheets and business plans, we jumped head-first into launching our own company, which was based out of our homes and we were the only employees.

We created a plan of action wherein success was the only option. We focused on getting out into the market and securing new business fast in the hopes that – one day soon – we could pay ourselves modest salaries and expand. Most importantly, we recognized we had a niche and believed in our skills and abilities.

Eventually, we carved out a lane for ourselves, hired staff, delivered for our clients, and helped some good causes and honest businesses seeking expertise and advice. Now, a full decade later, J Strategies is a multi-million-dollar company with over twenty employees, three offices in two states, and a suite of services available to clients up and down the east coast.

Despite our success, we have not forgotten where we started nor the hurdles we faced in doing so. As other women entrepreneurs know, we met some challenges when we launched. We had potential clients chuckle when we submitted proposals with price tags similar to our male counterparts. Despite our non-traditional office of young women in yoga pants working on laptops, we delivered creative, out-of-the-box solutions for clients. We looked for that level of problem-solving in employees and have recruited some of the hardest working, smartest, and tenacious professionals in New York. The firm now has both men and women, but we are proud to be one of the few majority-female firms.

October is “National Women’s Small Business Month,” a time to recognize and commend the more than 12 million American women entrepreneurs who fuel the future of our economy. We both wish there had been female mentors offering counsel in the beginning. So, in no particular order, here is advice to women in business looking to start something great:

  • Tune out negative voices. This is your passion, not theirs. So, don’t let the naysayers tell you what you can’t do. Follow your dream, but make sure you create a comprehensive business plan that expects the unexpected – you need to make sure you can overcome obstacles.
  • Don’t undervalue your services. Many service-oriented firms often make the mistake of offering what they do for less money because they are not confident their expertise is worth what the market dictates, especially as a start-up. First, you have to understand what that market rate is for services. Do homework. Make sure you know what others are getting for their time before you put a value on yours. Never underestimate your potential for growth or the value of what you bring to the table.
  • Choose Your Style. For far too long women have believed they have to mimic men in business or be overly aggressive toward other women to be taken seriously in the workplace. We both have dynamic personalities, and we do not hide them. A large part of our success is our ability to relate to others and be approachable. Women are often told to suffocate their nuances to be taken seriously. Own who you are and use it to drive results. You alone set the tone and culture for your business, nobody else.
  • Improving Yourself Never Stops. After ten years as business owners, we are always learning. With an office in Albany, another in New York City and one more in Boston, running a company which tripled in under a year was a challenge. So, we made it a priority to improve ourselves. We read, we listen to podcasts, we watch Ted Talks, we speak to entrepreneurs in similar circumstances to see how they did it. No one is done learning. Don’t think that you can stop just because you hung up a shingle.
  • Foster the Workforce That You Want. We decided to create a company that would actively tackle inherent bias and workforce discrimination. We created merit-based, fair pay structures, flexible schedules, and an environment that motivates every employee to reach higher. We invest in professional development that stresses communication and cultural competency. From this, we have cultivated a phenomenal team.

Being a small business owner is tough but being a woman who owns a small business can be even tougher. Pursue your passion but keep your eye on the prize and remain focused on your mission and success will follow. We hope what we have achieved will be the norm for the next generation of women and they will be writing about conquering something even greater.

 

Julie Miner is a Managing Partner and CEO, and Jaime Venditti is a Managing Partner and President of J Strategies, Inc., a New York and New England-based communications and government relations firm specializing in alliance development, media relations, lobbying, social media, brand reputation management and event planning and execution.