Archives for May 2016

During the month of May, we are accepting guest posts from the Womeneur community and this has been republished with permission from Charrish Ferguson of Bout Your Biz.

Nowadays it seems like everyone has a blog, whether its for personal or professional purposes.  For that reason alone you might think it doesn’t make sense to have a blog for your business.  After all, if the internet is flooded with blogs then it’s not like yours will make a difference, right?  WRONG!

Blogging is still effective and I see no signs of it ceasing.  If you don’t believe me here’s five reasons why you should be blogging right now.

1.  Blogging is an easy way to connect with your customers/clients

This is one of the most obvious reasons as to why you should have a blog for your business.  A great entrepreneur should want to connect with their followers and a blog is an easy way to do it.  You don’t have to stick to words alone on your blog, if you’re worried about becoming too stale you can add videos or galleries, interviews and so much more.

Also, every time you publish a post you’re boosting your presence online.  Each blog post transforms itself into content that people can share on other social sites like Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter.  If you’re supplying great content and you build a following of people who love to share, you can literally sit back and watch as your readers help you expand your reach online.  It’s a little circle that never stops rolling once it starts.

2.  Blogging establishes you as an expert in your field

Having a blog forces you to stay current and educated about your particular field.  The last thing you want to do is share incorrect or outdated info to your readers.  Think about it, for someone out there you are becoming their ‘go-to guru’.  The last thing you want to do is let that person down, or steer them in the wrong direction with bad info.

I’m currently drafting a few blog posts on Periscope (follow me to catch my live weekly scopes!).  In order for me to give accurate information and ensure my readers are confident in what I’m sharing with them about this trending app, I have to educate myself about it.  For all the topics I cover (Social Media, Blogging, Branding) I have to constantly research, review and try new things to give valuable information to my followers.

BE BOUT IT:  Think of three topics you could write about if you were to start a blog today.  Write them down so you have a head start when you’re ready to begin.

3. Having a blog helps you sharpen your focus

If you’ve heard me talk on Periscope you know I talk a lot about strategies and knowing your audience.  When you get serious about blogging you get serious about who you’re blogging for – that’s part of your branding basics!  I often tell people if they’re still unsure of who they’re targeting and who their key audience is, a blog is a will force them to find out.

4. A business blog can lead to more opportunities

No matter the focus of your blog, if you’re committed and doing it right it could lead to some amazing opportunities.  A few ideas that I can think of are:

• Speaking opportunities
• Sponsors for your business
• New business partners
• Endorsement deals for you
• New clients

5. A blog makes you face your fears

This might not seem as serious as the other reasons but sometimes the truth is we just punk out.  So stop being a punk.  It’s not as hard as you’re convincing yourself.  If after you’ve given it a legitimate try and you realize blogging isn’t for you, aim to hire a full time blogger.  Oh you thought I was going to tell you to give up?  You really don’t know me.

These are things entrepreneurs dream of, regardless of what field their business is in.  So if you own a gym, a blog can help bring new customers in.  If you a stylist, a blog could connect you with a celebrity or it could help you decide to raise your prices.  I wouldn’t focus on when it the opportunities will happen, but more onensuring you’re blogging correctly to make them happen.

Calling all professionals, startups and entrepreneurs who want to learn tips and strategies from today’s established and leading women. She Leads Africa is bringing their 4-day professional boot camp event to New York from June 2nd to June 5th. SheHive brings together young female professionals and entrepreneurs to learn new business skills, network with their peers and connect directly with potential mentors and investors. SheHive NYC also aims to reconnect participants with the continent, providing a space for them to meet and network with fellow young ambitious African women living in the US.

We’re delighted to inform you that our founder, Sharon Beason, will facilitate an interactive workshop on Saturday, June 4, 2-3pm. Her workshop will revolve around the key steps to launching, branding and pitching your business. If you want to learn smart strategies from Sharon and other established women, then grab your tickets here asap before they sell out! They’re going, going, going and you definitely don’t want to miss out on this not-to-be-missed event.

Confirmed speakers for SheHive NYC include:

• Sharon Beason, Founder, Womeneur
• Vanessa De Luca, Editor-In-Chief, Essence Magazine
• Lola Ogunnaike, former CNN presenter
• Thelma Golden, Director Studio Museum Harlem
• Ngozi Opara – Founder, Heat Free Hair
• Asmau Ahmed, Founder, PlumPerfect – one of only 11 black female founders to raise above $1mn in outside funding
• Adiat Disu, Director, African Fashion Week New York
• Lola Coker, Founder, Resource Nigeria – a recruitment firm that specializes in placing Nigerian diaspora returnees with competitive companies in Nigeria

Speaking about the #SheHiveNYC, She Leads Africa co-founder Afua Osei said: “In the US and UK, men dominate the business and corporate landscape but with so many new industries being created in Africa and for communities in the diaspora, we have the opportunity to change things now. Young women should be encouraged to take leadership roles in startups and corporate organizations and supported along their journey towards professional success. It doesn’t matter if you’re first generation, a recent expat or African American, we all have a shared history and opportunity to make things better.”

Some of the topics being covered at SheHive NYC include:

• Building a multicultural brand
• Marketing, especially social media marketing
• Capitalising on the black beauty industry
• Pitching to investors
• Rising up the corporate ladder
• Building a cosmopolitan and international career
• Business development
• Networking
• Goal setting
• Moving back
• Getting into a top MBA school

#SheHiveNYC is part of the SheHive Tour which will take the bootcamp to 7 cities in 2016. Previous editions have been held in Lagos (September 2015 – video here) and Accra (January 2016 – photos here), Abuja (May 2016 – photos here photos here). Former participants have described it as a life changing experience. One participant described how implementing a marketing tactic she learnt at SheHiveAccra helped her close a sales lead the very next day.

Tickets for #SheHiveNYC are going, going, going! Don’t regret not buying your tickets and missing out on what will be an amazing event! Buy your tickets today!

#SheHiveNYC is supported by BellaNaija, Facebook, AfroElle Magazine, Womeneur, WomenWerk, OkayAfrica, Face2Face Africa, Applause Africa, Royalty Lifestyle, Innov8tiv and District Co-work.
She Leads Africa is a social enterprise dedicated to supporting young African women and their journey towards professional success. The organization has been featured on CNN, CNBC Africa, Black Enterprise and Fox Business and has more than 30,000 members across Africa.

If you’re reading this, then I’m more than sure your time is money. As a Womeneur, your life is consumed with your to-do list and you don’t have time to add another long, drawn-out task , so I’ve complied a way for you to create your business plan in 20 minutes or less.

Say, what?! 

Yeap! Gone are the days of hiring someone to write a business plan for you. You can totally do that yourself for the going price of free.

But how can I write a business plan in 20 minutes? 

It can be done and I’m a witness. When you’re first starting out, you need a plan to make it all real instead of being abstract. If you’re serious about starting a business, you’ll need a plan because:

1. it’ll give your guidance to reach milestone in your business
2. it’ll keep you on track with new ideas
3. it’ll decrease the feeling of you being overwhelmed
4. you can clearly track your progress

“ACTION IS THE FOUNDATIONAL KEY TO ALL SUCCESS”

-Pablo Picasso

A traditional business plan will take you longer than 20 minutes. No, I didn’t lie about the 20 minutesbecause you have to start somewhere and this is a good way to get you rolling.

Okay, I know you’re anxious to get started so here’s how it’s done.

CREATE YOUR BUSINESS SUMMARY

Mission Statement – a mission statement is the core purpose and value of your business.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• What does my business offer?
• How is it unique?
• What problem am I solving?
• What’s my responsibility to my customers or clients?
• How will I reach my goal in my daily operation?

 

IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL CLIENT

Know who you’re selling to and what they want because, of course, your product or service is not for everybody – and it shouldn’t be.

Questions to Ask Yourself: 

• How old is my target market?
• Where is my target market located?
• What is the gender of my target market?
• What is the income of my target market?
• What is my target market relationship status?
• What is the education level of my ideal client?
• What does my target market do for fun?

 

WRITE YOUR GOALS FOR YOUR BUSINESS & BRAND

Yes, you have a ton of goals to but you want to narrow down and focus solely on the message your brand is conveying to your ideal client.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• What pictures will I use?
• What colors will I use and stick to for branding?
• What font will I use?
• What feeling would I like to create for my client/customer?
• What uniqueness will I show from my personality?
• What feeling do I want my client/customer to have?

KNOW YOUR OBJECTIVES

Objectives are short-term goals that can be achieved relatively quick within 6-12 months and can be measured. Ideally, you should start with 5 but for the sake of the 20 minutes, you can start with 3.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• How many subscribers do I want in 6 months?
• How many subscribers do I want in 12 months?
• What is your target engagement rate in 3 months on Instagram?
• How much do you want your website traffic to increase?

 

MAKE A MONETARY GOALS 

This is one you probably already know the answer to which means all you have to do is fill in the blank. If you don’t know, now’s the time to think about it how you will bringing the dough and list it out.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• What products will I offer?
• What services will I offer?
• Will I sell ads?
• Will I offer memberships?
• Will I get involved with sponsorships?

 

COMPOSE A MARKETING STRATEGY 

This is probably the most important aspect of your business. Yes, you may have a great product or service but how will people know about you and all your ahhhh-someness?!

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• How can I grow my email list?
• How can I market offline?
• What social media platforms will I use?
• How much time will I spend a day on social media?
• Will I delegate or run my own marketing?

“SOME PEOPLE DREAM OF SUCCESS WHILE OTHERS WAKE UP AND WORK HARD AT IT. “

– Winston Churchill

Now all you have to do is compile each list to create your business plan.

Ta-da! See, that wasn’t that bad. 

In less than 20 minutes, you have created your first business plan. The idea is you will continue to add to this list which will make it more efficient. Be sure to place your plan in a working document that can be edited and retrieved quickly. For your convenience, I have created a business plan template that you can save to any program.

Remember, to always review and edit this plan to help you stay focused on growing your business. No excuses!

Today is the day! Now get to it!

Until next time….

 

Amber Dee

In the past four months, I have logged over 230 miles on my mobile running app. Not to toot my own horn, but – beep, beep! All jokes aside, I have been training for a ten-mile race that my beautiful city of Philadelphia hosts every year. It’s a glorious sight – over 40,000 runners running down Broad Street and what feels like the entire city cheering us on.

I actually hate training but I really love the solitude of running. It’s just me, my ragged breathing, my motivational podcasts and my thoughts.

One of my recurring thoughts was the correlation between my progression as a runner and my progression as a business owner. I saw that I could apply the principles I learned as a runner to running my business.

Principal 1: There are no shortcuts.

Training for a race is grueling. Day in and day out, you have to show up – regardless of how you feel. It doesn’t matter if you’re tired or if you are discouraged. You show up, put in the work to get the results you want.

It should be the same with our businesses, but unfortunately, that isn’t the case. This is a painful lesson for me. If I was tired, I wouldn’t make any additional calls or emails sharing my business or product. If I was discouraged, I’d spend my time doing something else to take my mind off the situation. You can’t grow a business like that.

Like my Nana used to say, “Don’t nothing work but the work.” In order for us to get to the finish line, we have to do the things we don’t want to do.

Principal 2: Schedule time when you are productive and focused.

When I first started running outdoors, I was so embarrassed by someone I knew seeing me run that I would schedule my runs after work…in the dark. For a while, embarrassment was my motivator. Needless to say, it was a very reactive, unproductive way of motivating because, after an intense day at my 9to5, my brain was fried, I could not focus on my run.

It took me a while to understand my body clock; morning is when I am most productive and focused. I had to “pull up my big girl panties” and deal with insecurity.

As Entrepreneurs, we are guilty of this. We force ourselves to work, even when we’re not being productive, and we accomplish nothing. Like I said, I am most productive in the morning, so I block time for the hardest tasks after my morning run. When are you at your most productive? If it’s the afternoon, block out time for those hard tasks then. When you understand your body clock, you’ll become more productive.

Principal 3: Keep going. Do not stop.

I spotted a spray painted sign on my run this weekend and it was like it was there just for me. I was about 7 miles into a 10-mile run and was not feeling it. I was flooded with negative thoughts and very ready to give up on my sweat session when I saw the stop sign spray-painted with the message: “Don’t stop.”

Aw damn. It was right, though. I did stop to take a picture, giving myself a quick breather.

Being an entrepreneur is hard. There are days we wake up and we don’t want to do a darn thing, but this is where the mental toughness comes in. We have to tell ourselves to keep going, don’t stop.

If you don’t hustle, you don’t eat.

Principal 4: Run your own race.

Comparison is the thief of joy.– Theodore Roosevelt

 

Picture it: You rocked your business, signed up three new customers, and added a business partner. You are filled with excitement and ready to post your awesomeness on social media. And then you see someone posted their super business news of Oprah holding their product.

Suddenly you don’t feel so awesome, and you start second-guessing your decision of becoming an entrepreneur.

See? Comparison = joy thief.

Be happy and celebrate where you are. When we compare ourselves to others, we’re comparing our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.

I recently had the opportunity to meet with and work with an amazing group of female entrepreneurs in Karachi, Pakistan through the World Bank-funded WomenX Program. It’s a program where existing female entrepreneurs are given intense business training at a local university to help them grow their businesses to the next level. Their stories of passion, drive, and determination, in spite of extreme hardships, are testament to their dedication and business visions.
Through my interactions with them I was able to both teach and be taught. Their attitudes were contagious and their souls courageous. Here are a few lessons I learned from these women who are working so hard to make a name for themselves and their businesses in a very patriarchal society.

1. Impervious to pain

Entrepreneurs have a greater tolerance to pain than most. They are able to work long hours, go without food and drink longer than most can handle, and push their bodies to the limit as far as travel is concerned. Forbes notes that “Entrepreneurs have a greater capacity for pain and discomfort than most. They can stay up later, work longer hours, stay more focused and, somehow, are able to set so much aside in deference to their dreams and visions.”

But there’s much more that sets them apart.

2. Bird in hand

What makes most entrepreneurs truly entrepreneurial is that they can look at their available resources and determine a way to fill a need and pin point for their customers, even by using very limited resources. This is known as the “bird in hand” approach. Entrepreneurs see a need and then look at the resources they already have around them to fill that need – coming up with creative uses and solutions to the problems they see.

Most entrepreneurs start out with very limited resources – and it can take years and even decades to grow their businesses into the brands we know them as today.

Roxanne Quimby, the co-founder of Burt’s Bees line of products, got her start in 1984 selling candles that she made from discarded beeswax. She traveled around Northern Maine and sold the candles at local fairs and a few loyal customers out of the back of a beat up pickup truck. She used to net a few hundred dollars in profit per load.

Ms. Quimby used the resources she had in hand to create a new product using mostly free and easily available raw materials and resources. Even as she grew she refused to buy raw materials on credit for decades. It was a strategy that served her well until she grew her business into a multi-million dollar enterprise, finally selling it for $925 Million in 2007.

3. Affordable loss

Another quality that entrepreneurs have is that they always know, seemingly instinctively what their affordable loss is in any situation.

Having an intimate knowledge and understanding of their growing business helps them make quick and intuitive business decisions when needed – and in the world of business they are needed often. It’s a quality that many more calculated businessmen and women may not quite understand. In many businesses accounting sheets are king, and reports are needed before any important business decision is made – bringing all the facts and figures before the board members and allowing them time to deliberate and weigh in on any decisions.

However a true entrepreneur, usually also the lone decision maker, operates on instinct. She goes with her gut on important business decisions, but she also knows exactly how much she can lose in each twist and turn of her business and still keep moving forward. This concept is known as an affordable loss – how much a company can afford to lose and keep moving forward towards their long-term goals.

4. Cultivating patience

All entrepreneurs need to possess immense patience. It’s difficult and challenging to at the beginning and it’s also true that many businesses fail to take off. Some women have willingly chosen the path of entrepreneurship. Others were forced into it by a series of challenging life circumstances like job losses or a chronic illness of themselves or a family member. Other hardships may have included things like overwhelming student debts, something a disproportionate amount of women face, that were affecting their credit score, and making traditional nine-to-five employment impossible.

5. Embracing creativity

No matter how we got to this point, and despite the risks, entrepreneurship is an option for those forced out of, or fed up with, corporate ladder climbing. For those who choose this path it’s heartening to remember that entrepreneurship also allows for more intense creativity, especially when we are developing a healthy competition in existing markets and industries. In fact, creativity is the most important quality an entrepreneur can have.

When entrepreneurs play to their strengths, and fully embrace their high tolerance for pain, their resourcefulness, and tap into their innate intuition and creativity, they are sure to overcome both their own self-doubts and their competitors as well.