Archives for August 2016

There comes a time in every entrepreneur’s life when you realize you’re focusing too much on repetitive, tedious and administrative tasks and have little time and focus left for the important things that will actually help your business grow.

It’s hard to start delegating, to let others handle some of the things that don’t need to be completed by you, and to free your time and mind. But it’s also a must on your way to being more efficient and running a profitable business. Michael Gerber message in The E-Myth Revisted was loud and clear: in order to scale and grow your business, you must work “on” it versus work “in” it.

Outsourcing may be the solution to your burnout, lack of motivation, boredom, bad time management, and more. It basically means that you’re delegating one-time projects and jobs, or whole aspects of your business to an outside company or individual.

Here are a few reasons why you and your business need it:

• it reduces costs – hire virtual staff (which is also inexpensive) and keep in mind how much an hour of your time is worth, you can do the math;
• fast and quality work – you’re letting experts handle whole processes of your business and do what they do best, be it copywriting (serviced by Womeneur Preferred Partner Vanessa Williams), marketing, branding (serviced by Womeneur Preferred Partner Brittney Fells), accounting (serviced by Womeneur Preferred Partner Pamela Balentine, CPA)
• you’ll stay sane – you will finally have time for your family and all the other things you want to do with your free time. What’s more, you won’t be worried about what’s left to be done as you’ll now have created a whole system that is working even without your supervision.

Where should you start if you’re new to outsourcing?

Begin small and first off, check out Womeneur Preferred Partners who offer Services and Digital Guides in a plethora of business areas. Additionally, platforms like UpWork, Guru, Freelancer and PeoplePerHour connect employers and freelancers. Post your first job offer and check out all the proposals you’ll receive.

I suggest you choose more than one person and give the collaboration a try with a one-time gig. See how he or she performs, how the communication is and decide whether or not he or she’s a good fit for the position.

You may not be lucky enough to meet the perfect candidate right away, as there are so many people constantly applying for jobs on these sites. Don’t get discouraged because once you do find someone you can see yourself working with in the long-term, you’ll save yourself so much time and unnecessary worries in the future.

 What can you outsource?

Below are some options:

1. Administration – that’s a time-wasting activity that needs to be done all the time. I’m talking about answering email, following up, record keeping, file maintenance, communication with employees and clients, and more. That’s where a virtual assistant can help you. He’s a person who can do basically any task you can delegate online, even personal ones. For instance, Womeneur Preferred Partner Tyra Johnson of POSH Life Social offer amazing virtual assistance and administrative support.
2. Marketing – get a marketing expert to do the promotion of your business, to reach out to influencers, get feedback from customers, create media pitches and campaigns, manage your social media channels and more.
   Social Media – Womeneur Preferred Partner Suzzette TurnBull of Ucommon Marketing created a kick-ass Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Managing Social Media and Jamie Caroccio of Hispire provides high quality social media management services.
3. Writing – part of your personal brand and site (be it a company or a personal website) is having a blog and updating it frequently with practical content on trending topics. But if writing isn’t your thing, or if it takes you too long to come up with a single blog post, let a freelance writer do it. He won’t just give you documents with text once a week or so, but can take care of the whole blogging process;
4. Finance – you can hire someone offering bookkeeping, accounting and payroll services and Womeneur Preferred Partner Pamela Balentine, CPA offers just that. You’ll never have to worry about late payments, information you don’t understand, taxes, stats and the big picture of how your business is doing again.

Now imagine communicating with each one of these five people every now and then online – it will be like a meeting, but a short and to-the-point one. You’ll assign them tasks, see how they did the past week, and even brainstorm ideas on how to improve this particular aspect of your business.

That will be your first remote team. From then on, the more your business grows, the more people you can hire and the more time you can free for yourself.

Now that you know why outsourcing is so important, are you ready to hire your first virtual employee?

Instagram Stories, business profiles, multiple contact options… Instagram is slowly, but surely making our life on Instagram more and more manageable. But if you’re like us, then you know the pain in the you know what feeling it is to continuously change the link in your profile when you’re directing your followers to different pages of your website, etc. Or having to include a non-clickable link in your caption. So what is Instagram waiting for? When will caption links be clickable? Well guess what? We found the perfect solution to make all your Instagram caption links clickable!

We have to give a big thank you and shout out to Kae Whitaker, who shared this priceless information in a Facebook Live streaming last week. Link in Profile allows you to include clickable links in your Instagram post without ever changing the profile link.

1. Sign up for a 30-day trial period with Link in Profile
2. You will receive a custom URL link similar to this: https://linkinprofile.com/womeneur
3. Place this link in your bio (we used bit.ly to shorten ours)
4. Include the respective URL link for each post anywhere in the caption (it must be in the caption and not comments)
5. We include respective URL links in our hashtags
6. Instruct your followers to click link in bio
7. When followers click the link in the bio, they’ll see a list of all your posts in order of most recent postings and instructed to “Tap an image to be taken to the link”
8. Link in Profile provides stats and displays how many clicks your images receive

Now that we’ve shared this priceless info, are you excited to begin using Link in Profile right away?

Entrepreneurship can be a wonderful journey once you get to the point where you start making money, making your customers happy with the product or service you offer, and become known in a competitive field.

But it’s not like that in the beginning and that’s where many realize they can’t handle the pressure, the amount of hard work that needs to be done way before you see any results, and the constant fear of failure.

So if you’re new to this and feel like it’s the right thing to do, here’s what you should keep in mind as a first-time entrepreneur:

1. Be in it for the long haul

That’s not a short-term thing. It’s what you’ll dedicate all your time, energy and focus to. It’s what you’ll be doing every single day.

So before you dive in, think about this: Are you going to work on one project for some time just to ditch it? Are you in it just for the money? Are you looking for fast results? Do you usually jump from one goal in life to the next without really giving it enough time?

If that’s so, you’ll have to change your approach. The great things in life take the most time. Entrepreneurship is not for quitters. Yes, if something doesn’t seem to be working, you’ll change direction. But you’ll still have the same vision and keep hustling daily.

2. Always improve your personal brand

Any action you take, be it online or in real life, becomes part of your personal brand. So always think before you act. Make that your mantra actually.

Yes, your brand begins with your portfolio, website, social media presence, professional pictures, testimonials, past work experience, logo and the design of your site, etc.

But it’s also every single email you send (and whether or not you follow up), it’s how you communicate with like-minded people, potential clients, or just readers of your blog on social media (Are you saying thank you when they share your stuff, for instance?).

Every comment you write under an article you just read, every event you attend or course you take, every time you hand your business card to someone you just had a friendly chat with – all these are how you promote your work and personal brand. It’s how you control what people think of you and whether or not they’ll mention you to their friends.

So do your research, get better at branding and take small and focused daily actions towards improving it.

3. Care about what you do

If you aren’t sure that the market you enter interests you, if you aren’t passionate about the work you do, you won’t get far.

Now’s the time to analyze the situation, to get clear about what you want and see whether that’s your thing.

If you don’t truly care about the problem you’re solving with your product or service, you won’t understand the people who struggle with it either. And no marketing research will ever help you.

And if you’re not passionate about this field, you won’t be willing to explore it further, to read about the latest trends, to be eager to make a business that will last.

4. Master time management

How you spend your time can be your biggest asset, or your biggest weakness.

Luckily, time management is a skill you can learn over time and thus maximize efficiency and make sure you work only on things that matter to your business.

Successful entrepreneurs know that most of the things average people do in their days are unproductive, and even unnecessary. So they define these early on and eliminate them. That leaves them with more time to focus on the stuff related to business growth and be able to give it their full attention.

Next, the business owners who succeed in the long-term identify their most important tasks for the day and start with them right after they wake up. That’s how you guarantee you’re moving forward in the right direction daily.

Start doing this early on and you’ll see progress sooner.

5. Learn from the best

There’s always more to learn when it comes to entrepreneurship. Make it a habit to always look for knowledge and experience, even if it’s not directly related to your field.

Read business books, be it biographies of famous entrepreneurs or the stories of the most profitable companies. See how they made it, and what mistakes they made on the way. Highlight what grabs your attention and come back to it later.

Also, meet people who are where you want to be. Listen to their advice. Do them favors and don’t ask for anything in return. Simply being in their surroundings and listening to their words of wisdom is enough.

This way you can skip most mistakes new business owners make.

So that’s where you should start if you want to become an entrepreneur and build profitable businesses.

What scares you the most? And what are you looking forward to from day one?

The very first step to starting a profitable business is to find an idea worth turning into a product or service.

Most people struggle with this as the brainstorming process takes time and they haven’t really let their creative juices flow.

But an idea is the foundation of what could be your biggest and most profitable project and a business that will change people’s lives in more than one way. So it’s worth taking the time to actually come up with a good one and then dedicate all your attention to it.

Here are some ways to find new business ideas:

1. Go back to your childhood.

Children are much more creative than adults for a number of reasons.

First of all, they don’t consider failure an option and thus don’t fear it. While with adults, that’s one of the barriers that limits their creative thinking.

Second, they are willing to test new things all the time. They have fun while doing that, don’t listen to the naysayers and don’t have any doubts when working on a new project.

If you can’t remember what this creative freedom looked like, why not spend some time with children and see how they think? Ask them questions and carefully listen to their ideas. You’ll notice that they are combining things in seemingly impossible ways that don’t make sense. But if you look closer, you’ll notice that some ideas are actually brilliant and can be implemented to the way you do business.

2. Get out of your comfort zone.

You won’t come up with a new idea for your business if you’re stuck in your market and do the same old things you’ve always been doing. So let’s go after the new and unknown.

Begin by studying other markets. See how different businesses operate, how entrepreneurs in other fields take decisions and think about how you can use that to your advantage.

Attend seminars, learn new skills, test new theories, talk to people outside your industry and read about different aspects of business.

All this will engage your brain in a new way and will boost creativity.

Another way to leave your comfort zone and welcome new thoughts and ideas in your mind, is to go to new places. Visit another country, with a culture completely different from yours. Communicate with the locals, learn some words in their language, try the food, listen to their stories, learn about their traditions.

That will open your eyes for the world outside of your comfort zone.

3. Find what your competitors aren’t doing well.

Study your competition and look carefully for the things they aren’t that good at.

How can you create a product similar to theirs but which offers a faster solution to people? What can you add to it as a bonus so that people are more willing to buy? How can you market it in a different, unique way? Can you make it simpler and thus easier to use?

Basically, you’ll be filling in the gaps in this case.

4. Talk to your potential customers.

Whatever it is you’re going to build, it’s going to be for other people. So the best way to get it right is to simply ask them.

Reach out to your target audience and ask them what they struggle with. Try to read between the lines. Write down anything they say and look for similarities, but also see what they aren’t saying directly.

The biggest waste in business is creating a product no one needs, so make sure people have a specific problem that you can solve. Another way to get feedback, but not directly from talking to people, is to check out forums and the social media platforms on which your potential customers spend time.

See what’s bothering them. There will be recurring themes and these are the answers to your next big business idea.

On social media people are opening themselves, talking to friends, expressing feelings and sharing issues. Do your research. You’ll be surprised at how much valuable information for your audience is already out there, without the need for expensive marketing research.

5. Write it out.

Writing is a great way to get things out of your head and start generating ideas. You don’t need to be good at it, you just need to let go of anything else and simply put pen to paper.

Check out our “I AM A WOMENEUR” Manifesto Notebook. Front and back cover filled with over a dozen affirmations, perfect for recording all your goals, notes, etc

Start by sharing what your biggest problem in life is. Then, try to come up with practical solutions for it. Write down anything that pops up in your mind, no matter how ridiculous it is.

After a day or two, come back to what you wrote and look at it from another point of view. You’ll get at least a dozen ideas out of it.

What about you? What other ways to find new ideas to you know of?

Womeneurs, how will you know if something improved unless you knew what is was before and after? Whether you want to improve your sales, find out how effective your services or products are, things need to be analyzed and measured. why? so that you’ll know where and how to best tweak what you’re doing in order to make it better.

If you’re a business owner, it’s essential you have a social media presence. In order to perform successfully, you should always have a goal & plan before jumping on any social media platform. You should not be posting just to be posting. Your efforts should be analyzed, kept track of and see which posts perform well and which one don’t, where your traffic is coming from, etc. When you analyze your data, you’ll be able to create better strategies that should increase your overall social media performance.

There are plenty of apps available to help with analyzing your social media data, but three we like and recommend are user friendly and free to very affordable:

1. Iconosquare – $4.99/month
2. Instafollow – free
3. Crowdfire – $5.99/month

Collectively, or individually (depending on which app) you can study and analyze info like:

1. how many gained & lost followers
2. how many new followers
3. when your audience is most active, so best time to post
4. where your audience is from
5. how many people you follow, but don’t follow back
6. performance graphs

Depending on your goals, you don’t necessarily have to use all three, but if you’re not familiar with any, you should be and should also try them out.

What apps do you use to analyze data?

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More social media tips, tools & tricks are available inside our Ultimate Guide to Understanding and Managing Social Media

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