13 business tips for entrepreneurs to help you get started, keep focused and juggle
Are you working hard to start or grow your own business? Here are 13 tips for entrepreneurs to help you get started, keep focused and juggle.
Before I give my tips to young female entrepreneurs, I would just like to give a little background that may resonate with you. I gave up work to bring up my children, and at the time I thought “That’s it, my life is at home and when the children have left it will be too late to go into business for myself.”
But I was wrong you are never too old or too young! If I had the idea for SEAMS when the children were small, I hope I would have gone with it then as I have realised that following your gut feelings is the best way to success. And when you have a light bulb moment the right time to do it is NOW.
It’s not easy, but what’s the worst that can happen? You fail then you learn from your mistakes. And remember: if you want different results then you have to do things differently.
One thing I will say though it’s not your gut feeling alone that will get you where you want to be. You must use your head too. Trust you gut, follow your heart but use your head.
13 business tips for entrepreneurs to help you get started, keep focused and juggle
Here are my 13 top tips how to get started, to keep focused and juggle, because you will be throwing all the balls in the air, and some may drop.
- You have the idea, write it down and you are making it real and are on your way.
- Don’t worry about what people think, you will be changing and everyone close has to get used to the new you. When I first started SEAMS the family took a while to adapt to me not being around but now, they are incredibly supportive.
- Be organized this is very important without organization a lot of precious time gets wasted and mistakes happen.
- Research your idea, why’s what you doing different to others? That’s your USP and mantra that will be used as the foundation of your business. Craft an elevator pitch you can articulate in a few sentences think of it as if you are getting into an elevator with a customer and by the time you reach the top floor, they will understand what you do.
- Understand your business fully as if you don’t then no-one else will.
- Who’s your ideal customer? Tailor everything you do to what you think would make that person buy into your product or service, this can change over time.
- Use your head (or someone else’s !) Get all the legal stuff in place, company set up, trade-marks, patents if necessary, have on board a trusted lawyer and accountant it may seem expensive at the start, but they can save you from costly mistakes later on.
- Intuition is an immediate understanding or knowing of something without reasoning but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for the opinion of others. Test things out on a few associates listen to their comments perhaps they give you an angle on something you hadn’t thought of but remember that’s only their view if your gut tells you to do or not to do something go with it. Don’t people please its ok to say no. You are your business stay true to what you believe in.
- Be the best you can at whatever it is you do I started SEAMS out of a need for a non-greasy hand cream that helped heal and moisturise and have made sure that Couturiers Hand Cream is the best. It has nine natural ingredients, non-greasy and helps to mend, moisturise, soften and protect hands and condition nails.
- De-sensitise – At some point you will come up against male or female opposition don’t get into the boxing ring it will take far too much of your energy.
- Don’t beat yourself up – there will be days when stuff doesn’t get done that’s ok. Running a business is 24/7 and it’s not all going to be plain sailing. Although us women are very good at multi-tasking unless you are someone who doesn’t need more than a couple of hours sleep, it’s really not possible to do it all. The key here is communication if you are struggling over an issue in business or at home ask for help and more importantly explain why.
- Thinking time give yourself time for your brain to process your intuition, some of my best ideas come late at night when there’s no white noise around me.
- Write notes I use thick note books that are kept full of meeting notes, ideas and to do lists and I often look back on them and see new things to act on.
Karen J Gerrard is a beauty entrepreneur and the founder of SEAMS.
