8 Breakthrough Business Tips for New Female Entrepreneurs
The journey through entrepreneurship can have you feeling like popping the cork on a bottle of champagne, not giving a care as you spray bubbles around the room…
….or crying under the covers for an entire day.
As an entrepreneur, you're stepping into a world of endless possibilities and uncertainties. To navigate this exciting adventure with the fewest bumps and bruises, here are some invaluable business tips to guide you through the early stages of starting a business.
Preview the 8 Breakthrough Business Tips for New Entrepreneurs
First, we’ll preview the 8 Breakthrough Business tips and then I’ll teach you how to apply each one.
1. Define Your Vision and Mission Up Front
2. Perform Thorough Market Research
3. Build a Solid Business Plan
4. Lean into Strong Financial Management
5. Build a Strong Online Presence that Guides Leads to Become Paying Customers
6. Cultivate a Strong Network of Relationships
7. Use Challenges to Develop Adaptability and Resilience
8. Develop an Obsessed Customer Focus
1. Define Your Vision and Mission Up Front
I’ve noticed two kinds of people:
The visionaries
The engineers
The visionaries can see the end vision, but tend not to know how to get there.
The engineers are great at taking someone else’s vision and working backward to develop a plan to get there.
Which are you?
Your brain needs a roadmap, so even if you’re the engineer type, you still need to develop the vision up front in order for your brain to get to work making it happen. Defining where you want to go is so important for creating productivity, not just busy work.
Before diving straight into building your online presence or marketing your offering, it’s important to first take a step back. Most new entrepreneurs jump feet first into opening new social media accounts and designing a brand. While these are important preliminary steps to opening your doors, there’s something more important to do first.
Do not skip this step! Clarity about your deeper motivation for starting a business will help you build a meaningful brand that serves customers well.
Clearly articulate what your business stands for and the impact you aim to make. In entrepreneurship, we call this your “WHY.” Simon Sinek is the master at guiding you to finding your WHY in his book, Start with Why.
Your WHY is essential for helping build a business around a bigger meaning and purpose - two factors that tend to be nonnegotiables for female entrepreneurs. Clinging to a vivid mission and your why will also help you through challenging seasons in business when it’s easy to wonder if all the hard work is worth it.
How to Define Your Vision and Mission Up Front
Asking yourself important questions, like the long list I included in How to Start a Business: Step-by-Step Guide for Female Entrepreneurs, is the key to building a business vision with depth. Some questions include:
How does your offering (product or service) meet your ideal customer’s needs?
How does your business deliver its offering to customers?
Why does your business matter? Are there any special aspects that contribute to it’s purpose?
Do you enjoy the responsibilities required of you to run this business?
What difference does your business make in your ideal customers’ lives?
This foundational step will serve as a compass, guiding your decisions and actions throughout your entrepreneurial journey.
At the end of the day, customers love a business entrenched in meaning and are more likely to become raving, repeat customers when they have context about why their purchase from you is important.
When you get clear on why you’re building a business, you’ll be able to articulate that important purpose to customers through your marketing message.
2. Perform Thorough Market Research
The reality is, as entrepreneurs we have a limited vantage point. You must grow into the person capable of building the wildly successful business in your heart. That includes good solid research before diving in.
Comprehensive market research is crucial for understanding your industry, target audience, and competitors. Identify market trends, customer needs, and potential gaps in the market.
How to perform market research for a new business
Performing market research means looking at your competitors, your industry, market trends, and how your target customers are currently meeting their needs.
Thorough market research will inform your business strategy and help you position your offering in a way that deeply resonates with the customers who are the best fit to buy from you.
Important questions to ask as you perform market research for a new business
What trends are happening in the industry that will shape the way you build your business over the next 3-5 years?
What do your competitors’ offerings look like? Their brand? What’s the customer journey like?
How are your competitors uniquely competing? In other words, Is there anything giving them an advantage over similar businesses, such as strong vendor relationships, a key location, or years of experience?
Is there an opportunity to disrupt the industry by delivering the offering in a new way that makes getting results easier or more convenient? On a smaller scale, can you develop a competitive advantage over direct competitors in a way that differentiates your offering from theirs so that customers can’t compare “apples to apples”?
Also remember there can be many alternatives customers can use to meet their needs. For example, if you’re a fitness coach who walks clients through adopting a healthy lifestyle, your customer could be using workout classes, an at-home treadmill, or walking outside in nature as alternatives to your fitness app or 1:1 coaching.
Knowing what your customer is currently using that isn’t working to achieve their goal is essential to creating a message that resonates and compels them to give your offering a chance.
3. Build a Solid Business Plan
Before your palms get sweaty thinking about writing a business plan, know this: Your business plan can be as simple as one single page. If you’re the only one who will be using it to get started (i.e. you won’t be going to the bank to ask for capital), it can be as simple as it needs to be.
Just as a clear vision and mission guides your business forward, a solid business plan takes the guesswork out of building your business. In essence, a solid business plan is a clear roadmap about how your business will function.
A well-crafted business plan is your roadmap to success. Like I said, if you plan to pursue outside funding for your business, a thorough business plan is essential, but if you don’t plan to purusue funding, scroll down for my one-page business plan template.
The sections of your comprehensive and complete business plan include:
Executive Summary (i.e. the summary of your business plan),
Company Description (i.e. the clear description you created in step #1) ,
Market Analysis (i.e. what you discovered in your market research),
Organization and Management (i.e. how your business will operate),
Marketing and Sales Initiatives (i.e. how you’ll get customers through your door),
Financial projections (i.e. how you’ll become profitable),
Your business goals (i.e. what you’re aiming for), and
Appendix, (i.e “extras” like charts and spreadsheets that back up the other sections of your business plan).
On the other hand, if you don’t plan to pursue outside funding, a single-page business plan could work just fine.
Snag that template here:
4. Lean into Strong Financial Management
Knowing your numbers – meaning, revenue coming in and expenses going out – is the lifeline of any profitable business. After all, as they say - Cash. Is. King.
It’s important to research what it will cost to start your business. But truthfully, that’s only half of your financial finesse. It typically takes new entrepreneurs longer than they expect to develop predictable revenue. Researching how much it will cost to keep your business’s doors open (without depending on incoming revenue) is a wise business move to prevent closing up shop and searching for jobs on Indeed.
Knowing that the top reason businesses fail is because they run out of cash, it’s essential to prepare a healthy cushion of cash for your business throughout the first year.
Finally, maintaining a budget and keeping a close eye on cash inflow and outflow will help you keep enough cash on hand to weather slower seasons in business and unexpected challenges.
Detailed records of your income and expenses, a realistic budget, and closely monitoring cash flow regularly is a non-negotiable skill for any business. Understanding your financial health will enable you to make wise business decisions and keep your business’s doors open in the long run.
I still manage money the way my mom taught me to with $0 in consumer debt, a credit score of 800+, and a growing real estate portfolio. If you want to learn the same money management principles my mom taught me, click to read 10 Ways I’m Teaching Financial Literacy to my Daughter.
5. Build a Strong Online Presence that Guides Leads to Become Paying Customers
Sales don’t just happen. Learning marketing, sales, and how to guide leads to becoming paying customers is one of the most crucial skills you can learn as a female entrepreneur.
A strong online presence marks your business with legitimacy, trust, and convenience in a world where customers depend on browsing online to make decisions about where to spend money.
Having a well-branded website that’s easy for customers to navigate and leads them through the buying cycle is essential. (I outlined everything you need to know about the buying cycle in my article, 5 Essential Steps to Create a Marketing Plan that Turns Leads into Paying Customers).
If this is an area where you need to upskill, we cover marketing fundamentals in our SEO Glow Up Training and frequently inside our women’s business mastermind.
Aside from a great website experience, the important elements of your online present depend on where your audience already spends time.
Social platforms, review sources (like Google and Yelp, or industry specific sources), and industry-related memberships all depend on your ideal client. (Don’t worry, I walk you through developing your ideal client in this detailed post: How to Start a Business: Step-by-Step Guide for Female Entrepreneurs)
There’s little point in investing time and money into building and maintaining a presence if your audience won’t see it.
6. Cultivate a Strong Network of Relationships
The business of business is relationships. Period.
You cannot build a successful business hiding from people. You must put yourself out there and build relationships online and in person.
It’s easy to think the things you do inside your business matter most to creating a successful business, but that’s not true. Actually, it’s the people you know that can decide your business’s fate. Relationships are essential to growing a successful business. I’m not talking about the kind of relationships where you take someone’s business card and then hard sell them with 20 sales calls.
In fact, that’s not relationship building to me at all. Genuine relationships take genuine effort and a give-first approach.
One of my favorite tips for building genuine relationships is to give first. When I meet someone new, I listen to them talk about their business while I think through ways I can serve them before they have to ask. I tuck those in the back of my mind and before the conversation is over, I ask them this: “What can I do for you?”
Usually people look a little shocked that I’m offering help instead of asking for something so I follow up with some ideas, like: “Who would be helpful for me to connect you with?” or “What type of customer is a good fit for you so I can keep my eyes out?”
Then, I genuinely deliver on my promise. I write an introduction email that same day or keep their ideal client on my radar until I come across that type of person.
People want to empower good people. The best way to do that is to show genuine interest in helping others and do what you say you’re going to do. Their gratitude will serve you well, and if it doesn’t? It’s okay to develop a reputation as someone with a big heart uplifting others.
7. Use Challenges to Develop Adaptability and Resilience
Many people I know are motivated to start a business so they can work from home and make money on their terms. I can definitely relate, but being an entrepreneur so is more dynamic than that.
The truth is, many times it feels easier to work for someone else. To follow their vision. To collect a check and benefits on a predictable 9-5 schedule.
Unforeseen challenges in small business are inevitable. You can’t predict every challenge in business, so you must become the person capable of handling challenge arises. The character traits of adaptability and resilience don’t come easily. You must earn them by navigating hardship and collecting the wisdom. You can only refine those qualities with challenges. Navigating uncertainties isn’t possible without learning by trial and error.
As my Zumba instructor says, “Ego is not your amigo.”
The only way you can fail is if you quit. Otherwise, it’s all just an opportunity to learn and adjust your strategy.
8. Develop an Obsessed Customer Focus
I mean, obsessed. I had a client once who ran her business as if her wants and needs were more important than customers’. It was hard to watch the less-than-stellar reviews come through, but I knew her focus on herself was the root of the issue. Customers would serve her great ideas on a silver platter, but this client would get defensive and take the ideas as criticism.
Strong businesses grow from understanding customers’ needs sometimes better than the customers understand them themselves. Only when you have a deep understanding of how you meet their need and create transformation will you build a business new customers can’t wait to try and existing customers stay loyal to.
It’s easiest and least expensive to sell to the people who have already bought from you. This is one of my favorite profit strategies! That’s why it’s so easy for businesses to grow who understand their customers’ needs and deliver with an excellent experience. Retaining customers is one of the keys to success because they generate revenue on autopilot while singing your praises to new customers.
Yes, I always preach to build a business around your life and not a life around your business, but that refers mostly to the systems you instill and the time freedom you create. Having an obsessive customer focus will carry your new business far.
Conclusion to 8 Breakthrough Business Tips for New Female Entrepreneurs
Let’s recap the 8 essential business tips for new entrepreneurs:
1. Define Your Vision and Mission
2. Perform Thorough Market Research
3. Build a Solid Business Plan
4. Lean into Strong Financial Management
5. Build an Online Presence Based Around Your Ideal Client
6. Cultivate a Strong Network of Relationships
7. Use Challenges to Develop Adaptability and Resilience
8. Develop an Obsessed Customer Focus
The entrepreneurial journey is a thrilling adventure filled with learning opportunities.
By defining your vision, conducting thorough research, building a solid plan, managing your finances effectively, establishing a strong online presence, cultivating a network, embracing adaptability, and putting customers first, you'll be better equipped to overcome challenges and create lasting success as a female entrepreneur.
Remember, resilience and a passion for your venture will be your greatest allies as you navigate the exciting and rewarding path of entrepreneurship.
P.S. Here are some of my top favorite female small business resources:
Dream, Build, Grow Free Resource Suite - free business templates for your business plan, marketing plan, ideal client persona, financial statements, and more!
Founding Females Community - an online female mastermind space for entrepreneurs to connect, support, and get inspired
Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business - a guided handbook including everything you need to know from business idea to launch to profiting and scaling your business.
Free Downloads for Female Entrepreneurs
Free PDF Download: 25 Ways to Market Your Business (Aside from Social Media)
Free PDF Download: 33 keys to Business Success
Free PDF Download: SEO Tips for Entrepreneurs
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About Founding Females®
The mission of Founding Females® is to help women build thriving businesses. We create safe spaces for women to share business challenges and receive peer support.
In addition, Founding Females® offers an online female business mastermind, a how-to guidebook for female entrepreneurs called Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, and in-person events, like an annual women’s business conference and local Founding Females® Meet Ups.
Founding Females® was founded by small business educator, Francie Hinrichsen. She believes anyone with a dream on their heart can pull up a seat to change the world through entrepreneurship. Click to learn more about working with Francie.
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