When I first starting running a business online, one of the most enlightening exercises I carried out was when I took steps to figure out who my customer was and what they wanted from me (spoiler: it wasn’t what I thought).
If you’re an entrepreneur, let me ask you a question, and it relates to how good you are at staying focused on your business:
What have you achieved today – just today – in your business?
It seems like an innocent question. If entrepreneurs have one thing in common, it’s that we’re dedicated to our cause, so I’m sure your day has been filled with a variety of business tasks.
But working on your business, and achieving something with your business, are two different things. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way, and it’s one I want to share with you in this post.
(more…)
The rapid growth of new technology is a real blessing for us entrepreneurs. Running a business online is just getting easier and easier, and I’ve found some of the best free tools on the web to help me get there.
When I first started working at digital agencies back in 2006 it took months to develop a website, weeks or months to add new features to it, and web design required heavy input from someone hugely skilled in Photoshop. Can you imagine how frustratingly slow it would have been back in those days to adapt your business to an ever-changing marketplace?
I’m always on the lookout for new tools, resources and apps that are designed to make the life of the entrepreneur easier. Here are ten that I’ve been really excited to discover (and no, I’m not affiliated with any of them):
(more…)
I’m not one to typically write about ‘soft’ topics like emotions. But this post is close to my heart because it’s something I have struggled with. And I know from speaking to customers and from speaking to associates that it is far more common that people realize, even if we don’t want to admit to it. It is the feeling of being overwhelmed. I want to talk about what it feels like to be overwhelmed at the start of your business journey, why it can be so damaging to your business success, and what you can do about it.
(more…)
A new business and no sales. Or as I call it: the website launch trap. It’s a problem many entrepreneurs fall into: they spend time and money building their perfect website, fine-tuning their product offering, getting traffic, and then…..wait a minute.
Where are my customers?
It can be so frustrating to an entrepreneur who has put their heart and soul into creating something from scratch. You know you have a fantastic product. You really believe in what they are doing. But people just aren’t buying it. And the longer this goes on, the more you start to doubt yourself:
Am I in the wrong business?
Is my product just a failure?
(more…)
I truly believe words can be powerful motivators. So if you want this to be your year of positive change, let the words in these 100 inspiring quotes guide you forward:
1. If you dream it, you can do it – Walt Disney
2. Don’t look back. You’re not going that way. – Anon
3. Do not look back and grieve over the past for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering. – Anon
(more…)
Running a new online business can seem overwhelming at times. As an entrepreneur, you wear many different hats. So it’s easy to get distracted from task to task. When that happens, chances are that you aren’t pushing your business forward as much as you could be.
So how do you stay focused? Well, one of the best things you can do for your business from the very outset is to have a clear plan ahead. Here, I’ll share with you the strategy that has been working brilliantly for me in my business, and I’ll also give you my own template I use to write and plan out my goals (scroll to the end for that). (more…)
Be honest. You hate getting criticized. Of course you do. It’s human nature. None of us like to be critiqued, and we definitely don’t like to admit we are wrong (just ask my husband 🙂 ). But as an entrepreneur, learning how to handle criticism is one of the best things you can do for your business.
Because the truth is, you won’t get your business right the first time you launch it. You’ll think you got it right. You’ll launch it and you’ll feel a burst of pride in your new baby. All your time, stress and hard work will have grown something that you are truly proud of, so its inconceivable that other people just might not like it as much as you.
(more…)
Thinking of starting your dream business? Well, I’ve spoken to so many women with dreams of starting their own business. Women who dream it but have never made the leap. So I ask them this question:
What’s stopping you from starting today?
The most common answer I hear is money.
I’d always had the urge to start my own business.
When I was on maternity leave, that urge became so strong, I made the leap. I left my well paid, full time job, and jumped into the unknown.
Whilst it’s been one of the best decisions I have ever made, it hasn’t been plain sailing. So I wanted to use this blog post to give you some honest thoughts about what it’s like to run a business when you’re on maternity leave (or simply when you have a young family), and how to go about starting your own part time business.