Starting a new business can be a daunting task, taking much time and effort to plan and execute properly. What can be equally as daunting is the decision to invest in an entrepreneur. If you ever thought about taking the investment plunge, might I suggest one thing: invest in women.
While it started out slow, the economy has seen a steady rise in the amount of women owned businesses, with as many as 8.3 million women owned businesses accounted for in the United States in 2012. In addition to that, a report from the Pew Research centre now shows that 40 per cent of mothers are the primary source of income for families. With those types of numbers, it’s no surprise that more and more organizations are looking to invest in and support women entrepreneurs.
One of these organizations is the 10,000 Women Initiative created by Goldman Sachs. This program is a five-year initiative meant to provide women entrepreneurs world wide with a business management education, so they are able to further themselves and their communities.
Another society is Lean In, created by the chief operating officer of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg. The Lean In community strives to encourage women through an active and supportive community, as well as offers continued education through online lectures. Included within the Lean In community is the innovative “Circles” aspect, where small groups are able to meet monthly, similar to a brainstorming support group. The Lean In novel discusses topics that could hinder women in their path to success, such as dealing with ‘imposter syndrome’, completing ‘successful negotiations’, and even ‘how to make your partner a real partner.’
One of the biggest topics Lean In covers is ‘the myth of doing it all.’ Women in the work force are still under the guise that they must complete everything alone, and that it must be perfect. The founder of Women in Biz Network, Leigh Mitchell, believes that perfection can sometimes be a burden, and can cause people to put off doing things. As a female entrepreneur, that thought is constant, and understanding that help is there (within societies like Lean In) can be quite the relief.
The Lean In initiative has taken off exponentially in the last couple months. Other online publications have also been showcasing talented female entrepreneurs, and as a women myself, I hope the trend continues.
Entrepreneur.com has multiple stories about women entrepreneurs, including ‘2013s Entrepreneurial Women to Watch’, ‘Young Women Entrepreneurs Speak Out About Starting Up Today’, and ‘Facing Down Doubters and Empowering Others,’ by Ingrid Vandervelt, an extremely successful female entrepreneur in her own right.
If you’re still looking for sufficient examples of the benefits of successful females in the work world (besides our own Pamela Christie, co-founder of DemGen), the Globe and Mail published an interesting article about how employing equal amounts of men and women in a company can have benefits such as increasing Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) by five per cent.
Now, having said all that, if you’re looking for an investment to become a part of I stand by my first suggestion: invest in women.
© Zoe Begopoulos, DemGen Inc 2013
Accomplishment = contentment. Those who have grown a business from infancy to success can attest to that fact and they will also tell you that it took every ounce of energy they had to get there. They learned to have faith in themselves, knowing that they could complete the necessary steps to accomplish their goal. What advice do they have for others?
Use your self motivation to take on extra work or even multiple jobs if that is what is needed. Sometimes working extra hard is healthy, it keeps your mind off troubles that you can’t do anything about at the present time and helps you to focus on what is important. Overcoming what seem like insurmountable obstacles gives you the confidence to take giant leaps forward in your business and reach goals that you thought were unattainable.
Sometimes gratitude needs to be directed toward inward. Never forget to appreciate yourself. Recognizing your abilities and strengths that you are especially good at is what got you this far in the first place.
Be conscious of where you spend your time. Using a time tracker for a week or two will show you where you waste precious minutes on the unimportant. Living a life of your own choosing, while being able to provide financially for yourself and your family, is not an opportunity that everyone has.
Reduce or eliminate distractions that keep you from working at your best. These could be demands from others, social events or just a noisy neighbourhood. Being able to concentrate on your work is of utmost importance if you wish to succeed. Running a business isn’t just about passion. If it was, more people would be doing it. Realizing that the hard work comes first and is the most important step means you’re way ahead of most small business owners. Many new business owners hire members of a virtual team to take care of any tasks that are getting in the way of getting ahead of their competitors.
Don’t get in the way of your own success by not taking care of your physical and emotional needs. It is up to you to decide whether or not you have the ability and the focus to do what needs to be done to balance out your life, one that includes your own business.
Keep in mind that in order to maintain your strength you also need to maintain a healthy body, both physically and emotionally. Don’t over schedule your life to the point of exhaustion. Productivity and relaxation go hand in hand to create physical well being and less stress. Prioritizing your day so the essentials come first (and this includes relaxation) makes for a balanced lifestyle and improved health. Mix up your day to include work and fun.
Include your social life in your schedule. Since some people need more time alone than others, this will vary from person to person. There are many who need a certain amount of solitude every day to be at their best and get stressed out when that time isn’t available.
Take advantage of the opportunities that running a business brings – the social contacts, the information about new businesses that may work well with yours and at the same time, identify those things which don’t work well for you and eliminate them if possible.
Identify your personal strengths: communication skills, good judgement, adaptability, integrity. Are you a good listener? Persuasive? Able to juggle multiple priorities? Take into consideration your leadership abilities, your excellent work ethic, positive outlook and well known integrity. Maybe you are great at negotiating, imaginative, innovative. These are all traits that a business owner needs to succeed.
The things in life worth having are rarely easy to attain. Self-discipline and the strength to make the right choices, and work hard for them, can be the way to happiness and contentment in running your own business.
© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc 2013
More and more professionals are cutting ties with the traditional office and clocking in from the comfort of their own homes. While the idea of working from home is music to many professionals’ ears, telecommuting isn’t as easy as it sounds. Fewer sources of motivation and abundant distractions can render productive professionals useless. A sound strategy can mean the difference between productive employee and couch potato.
Organize your home office, follow a schedule and take advantage of helpful tools to stay productive from home.
Create a separate place to work that is not in the middle of all the household confusion. Ideally, you will be able to create an office in the attic or basement away from the kids and the regular household activities. If you don’t have an attic or basement, consider a guest bedroom or turn your unused dining room or formal sitting room into an office, but make sure to install a door to keep out noise and other distractions. If you want to create the ultimate home office, consider converting a detached garage into your own private work space.
Second, organize a schedule for the day. Depending on the type of work you complete at home, you should know approximately how many hours you will need to spend working. Set a schedule of when you will begin working, how long you will work, when you will take a break, and when you will finish for the day. Too often when people work at home, they actually spend more hours working than if they went to the office. Give yourself a specific amount of time to spend at the “office” and then leave work and return to your home and family activities.
Once you have the location of the office settled, begin to organize your documents and files. The easiest and most convenient way to virtually organize all of your files is through Google Drive, a cloud computing application that enables you to access documents anywhere you have an Internet connection. Google Drive also offers offline mode, according to Internetproviders.com, so users have access to documents even without Internet access. If you have a meeting downtown, get a call from a client while at the coffee shop, or go on vacation, your files are ready and waiting whenever you need them. Not only will Google Drive give you access to your files wherever you are, it is also an excellent way to back up important information in case your computer crashes.
A productive home office can make your job seem like a dream job. The flexibility and convenience of working at home is economical and environmentally friendly. Join the millions of other people who walk just a few steps and begin each day working in their home office.
Hiring a dream team to help your business grow is the best investment you can ever make.
As your business becomes successful, new opportunities tend to arise, and you soon start to realize there are better things you could be doing with your time to help further increase growth, sales and profits.
Whether you’re a solopreneur or have a team in place, it’s often necessary to bring on additional team members to support your growth.
The ability to successfully delegate tasks to a team you trust is always worth more than the cost of adding members to your team. Hiring virtual on a per-project or hourly basis frees up your time to focus on essential revenue generating activities that only you can do. It’s an investment that will reward you greatly in the long run.
What if you know you need more support, but don’t have the time to hire yourself? There are companies like DemGen that are a one-stop-shop for pretty much any need and can also recruit staff on your behalf.
Regardless of the route you choose to take when hiring, the essential first step is to map out your entire list of priorities to determine what can be delegated and the skill sets required.
Begin by making a list of all your strategic priorities, initiatives and to dos in a spreadsheet. Then make note of all of the tasks only you can do. After that, indicate any tasks that can be delegated to existing team members. Once these steps are completed, you will have a good sense of where the holes lie in your team.
The next step is to outline all of the essential skills required to fill those gaps. Don’t edit yourself. If you require specific skills or a certain personality type, don’t settle for anything less.
The better you can define exactly who and what you are looking for, the better chance you will have at finding them. If you aren’t clear about your needs, you risk not being able to effectively communicate what you require and potentially hiring the wrong person.
If you follow the steps outlined above, putting together your dream team can be as easy as it was to assemble the 1992 US Olympic basketball team.
Happy hiring!
© Tamara Smith, DemGen Inc 2013
The world of business is a place full of good choices and bad choices, successes and failures, and most often, risks. Being an entrepreneur can be an area of business that encounters it’s fair amount of successes and failures, but can thrive on calculated risk-taking. So, if you’re an entrepreneur looking for a) funding and b) the best way to encounter your first risk that could lead to a success or a failure, allow me introduce you to Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is a website dedicated to projects looking for audience related funding, instead of major investors. Essentially, Kickstarter projects are crowd-funded on an all or nothing basis, meaning you have a timeline set and if you don’t reach that your goal by the end of the timeline, you receive none of the money pledged to your project. People who begin a project on Kickstarter must follow a specific set of guidelines but, and this is a huge draw, Kickstarter will not assume any creative rights on the project. In other words, if you meet your goal, Kickstarter allows you all of the funds pledged to you as well as your creativity.
Entrepreneurs and do-it-yourselfers alike have been flocking to the campaign in hopes of getting their projects off the ground. Since it’s inception in 2009, Kickstarter has successfully helped for fund 42, 286 projects and amassed a total of 637 million dollars for projects. This has allowed Kickstarter to have a 43.96 per cent success rate, and please plenty of risk taking entrepreneurs.
Bonuses for people supporting these projects are “backer rewards” or perks that people get when they pledge money to the project. These rewards can be the extra oomph some people need to pledge money, because it makes the transaction less like a donation and more like an investment.
Now, just because you may not have heard of Kickstarter, don’t be surprised if you’ve heard about some Kickstarter funded projects. Kickstarter supports artists, filmmaker, authors, illustrators, inventors, and scientists, to name a few. In the past two years, Kickstarter helped fund 10% of the films shown at Sundance, launched the app Dark Sky that helps predict weather patterns, fund the extremely popular board game Cards Against Humanity, publish multiple books and graphic novels (notably reMind by Jason Brubaker, Hatter M by Frank Beddor and The Future of You! Creating Your Enduring Brand by Roz Usheroff), as well as fund two major motion pictures for the upcoming year (the Veronica Mars movie and Zach Braff’s sequel to Garden State.)
In the wake of the virtual world taking over, Kickstarter is another way to use the Internet to your best advantage. It’s not only beneficial to helping people create and build their businesses, but it also provides an amazing network of support. It could be the best risk you’ll ever take. Kickstarter is one of the better ways to step into the virtual world of business with a wide door for expansion.
© Zoe Begopoulos, DemGen Inc. 2013