Successful Startup 101
Real Startup Advice for Today’s Non-Conventional Entrepreneur
Women’s Issue 2014
Editor & PublisherTabitha Jean Naylor
www.successfulstartup101.com
Copyright 2014 by Tabitha Jean Naylor. All Rights Reserved.
Table of contents
* Characteristics of Great Female Entrepreneurs
* Leave the Nest to Start Your Own Company: 8 Signs You're Ready, by Marla Tabaka
* Who Advises the Entrepreneur? by Kerrie MacPherson
* Five Startup Lessons for Fast-Growing Companies, by Kit Hickey
* Set Goals – Evaluate And Re-Evaluate Often! by Deb Bixler
* Calculating Your Business’ Available Working Capital, by Meredith Wood
* Fear - The Entrepreneur’s New Fuel
* 7 Things I'd Do Differently If I Started My Small Business Today, by Sarah Santacroce
* 3 Successful Women Entrepreneurs Who Beat the Odds
* Building A Startup Empire, by Kriti Vichare
* How to Close a Sale: The Only Thing You Need to Know, by Jill Konrath
* Manage Your Marketing: Remember You’re in Sales, by Margie Clayman
* It’s Time to Focus on Retaining Customers, by Monique de Maio
* 9 Ways Not to Ruin Your LinkedIn Reputation, by Victoria Ipri
* Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business Model, by Nichole Kelly
* Women Connect: Do Childhood Dreams Really Come True?
* A Business Guide for Protecting Personal Information, by Sandy Glover
* 5 Free Online Tools Too Valuable to Ignore that Will Help You Grow Your Business, by Didi Zheleva
* The Quest for the “Easy” Startup
* 3 Hardships Women Must Overcome to be Successful
* Do You Have What It Takes to Start Your Own Business? by Rieva Lesonsky
* 6 Ideas for Starting a Business, by Mary Ellen Biery
* These 8 Business Beliefs Are Killing Your Startup, by Ana Yoerg
* Getting Ahead: Don’t Forget to Feed Your Spirit, by Mindy Thomas
* Contact Successful Startup 101
Letter From The Editor
Are you aware that as a woman, you have more persuasive skills than your male counterparts? What’s more, this isn’t a charm issue because even the most disciplined and serious woman can be more convincing than a man. In fact, dozens of scientific studies reveal that women can be smarter than men – if they choose to be. According to an article published in The Atlantic in August 2014, women make 3 times more money on hedge funds than men. The author of this article also found that women CEOs earn almost 50% more for the businesses they work for than male CEOs. Imagine the possibilities if you decide to start your own business.
Women and entrepreneurship belong together - and this is proven because of several facts…
* Women are more willing to take calculated risks than men. This could be because of a pressing need to prove oneself - and one of the main reasons women and entrepreneurship are ideally matched.
* As a woman, you instinctively know how to be a team player. This trait makes you a better team leader than most men, especially in the areas of decision-making and problem solving. At the same time, women are more willing to openly admit fault, which eventually works in their favor because it makes them appear human and more likeable.
* Women draw on their power of intuition as an additional key to success. In 2008, the British Journal of Psychology studied the human instinct, also known as the “sixth sense.” What they uncovered was that intuition happens instantly and on the unconscious level. Intuition taps on past experiences and environmental clues. This means intuition isn’t a flaky, warm and fuzzy feeling, but something intellectually-based and often reliable. Yet most men refuse to use their intuition because they see it as an emotional decision – a “woman’s thing” so they tend to toss it away as insignificant.
The Next Step
Women and entrepreneurship isn’t just about learning how to start and run a business; it’s about removing the barriers that come between you and your resolve to be successful. These barriers are your emotional and psychological excuses.
“I don’t know where to start and I don’t know how to be a leader.”
“I’m afraid that people I know will laugh at my ideas.”
Let go of your barriers. Understand that what you do not know, you can learn. If you have a passion for something, you can turn it into a business. You don’t even have to quit your day job. Women are excellent in planning, staying focused, and multi-tasking. You can do this. You just need to believe in yourself.
Quick Tips on How to Get Started
* Believe in your skills but don’t hesitate to keep improving.
* Turn to government and privately-supported groups that encourage women as entrepreneurs.
* Don’t let others convince you against starting your own business.
Most important, be the kind of entrepreneur that solves problems. You can be a part of the rapidly growing number of successful women entrepreneurs in the country.
All the best -
TABITHA JEAN NAYLOR
Editor & Publisher
Characteristics of Great Female Entrepreneurs
All great business women have some things in common – the positive qualities that assist them in propelling anything they touch to success. Women have become strong in the business world and are making success stories every day. The modern woman has become part of the economic wheel and her investment ideas and business opinions are highly valuable. If you are planning to be an entrepreneur in the near future, or you are already running a business, you should know the characteristics that make a successful entrepreneur. This is what the leaders in business possess:
Ambitious
To be a successful woman in business, you need to have a clear vision. Achieving great things is important and your vision should be ambitious but attainable and realistic. Having a vision is simply not enough; it is just a small part of the deal. You should have the drive to pull resources together and build the energy you need to drive a business to achieve set goals within specified time. You should have eyes all round to check for new technology, advice and any type of information that will fuel your strategies and take your business to the next level.
Confident
To fit in the shoes of a modern successful businesswoman, you should have a great amount of self-confidence. Believe in your skills and use your abilities to build a strong business empire. Doubting yourself is part of being human but instead of dwelling on it, focus on your strengths to boost your confidence. You should not personalize any criticisms or mistakes; instead, use them as feedback and as lessons to make better decisions next time.
Though you should be confident in what you believe in, creating room for other people’s opinions is crucial in succeeding in just about anything. Do not be too self-reliant that you cannot seek professional help or listen to advice from someone else; whatever they are offering might be valuable to your operations. Instead of blocking their advice and opinions, be confident enough to constructively criticize what they have to say and analyze their ideas for usefulness in your business. A confident businesswoman should take risks, make bold decisions, be responsible, analyze poor judgment and mistakes, explore new business opportunities, adapt to a new environment and move forward.
Innovative
To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to have the energy and boldness of creating new strategies, and plans to replace an ineffective status quo. Use traditional and modern methods of
doing business to create a twist that works for your business. As much as it is good to be innovative, you should also look out for talented people. Accept that there are people with better ideas and listen to them for the sake of your business. Smart entrepreneurs accept that the best way to take a business forward is by combining the efforts and abilities of different people to create a strong foundation.
Willing To Learn
Though you should be bold in your opinions and decisions, you must be willing and ready to accept change. The world is changing every single day and if you are not in the bus of change, your business will lag behind. You should be willing to embrace new technology that works towards making your business better. Learn on how to use different methods in bettering your company and don’t wait until it is too late.
To survive in the business world, you must be willing to work extra hard and most importantly, work smart. Believing you can steer your business to success is the first step in making it and the above characteristics will come in handy on your journey to that success.
Leave The Nest To Start Your Company? 8 Signs You're Ready
By Marla Tabaka
So, you have a great idea for a business. You believe in it with all your heart. (On your better days anyway.) Furthermore, you are really tired of the 8-to-6 grind. (Hey, didn't that used to be 9-5?) On some days you are absolutely certain that it's time to follow your dream and take the plunge into entrepreneurialism. But on other days the doubt, and yes, even the fear, are enough to make you pack your lunch and trek off to another day on the J-O-B.
Sound familiar? So, what are these doubts and fears really all about? Do other people feel like this? Sure they do; you are definitely not alone.
Some of the most common uncertainties that keep the would-be entrepreneur bound to his commitments in corporate America relate to the potential loss of financial security, fear of failure, fear of success (yes, you read that right), and lack of emotional support. Frankly, if you want guarantees, it's probably a good sign that you are risk-adverse...and perhaps not cut out to be an entrepreneur. But if you are close to making a decision between the security and familiarity of your day job and depths of the unknown in the world of small business, this may be the check-list you've been waiting for.
In his role as a top-level executive, Paddy Spence has helped numerous emerging brands leverage their success in specialty channels, and successfully cross over into mainstream markets. During his 18 years of executive management experience in the natural and organic consumer packaged goods industry, Spence was vice president of marketing at Kashi and created one the natural industry's first market research firms. Today, he leads the way in his own company as the Chairman and CEO of Zevia, a line of zero-calorie sodas sweetened with the natural sweetener stevia.
Spence knows firsthand what it is like to make a choice between an existing job and launching a business. "It's important to be aware of what appeals to you most when you make this decision; whether it's the idea of managing a business or building a business," says Spence. "For me, the excitement came when I had the opportunity to build something based on a cause that is significant to me."
So with his knowledge of the natural foods market and his personal mission to reduce the quantity of artificial products and sweeteners that people are consuming, Spence set out to build something new. Is it time for you to do the same? Let's take a look at what he cites as the main differences between his new role as a CEO.
"Building a business requires an ongoing level of sustained passion that managing and maintaining a business from a corporate position requires less of," Spence says. "To be an entrepreneur you need to have a tolerance for immense risk and the ability to wear a lot of hats. Inherently in a smaller, emerging enterprise you will be called upon to do the mundane and unexpected. Your bandwidth in terms of functional skills will be stretched much more. So if you want to be a specialist in one thing only, then managing a business via your corporate job is probably what you're built for."
So aside from recognizing whether or not you have entrepreneurial passion and ability running through your veins, what should you have in place before saying goodbye to your comfy corporate cushion? Paddy Spence offers some sage advice.
WATCH FOR THE SIGNS: Spence began waking up in the morning thinking about that day's to do list rather than the next three months—or three years. This increasing short-term focus, along with feeling that work-thoughts were an intrusion when he wasn't at work, were both signs to Spence that he was ready to leave his job. He felt that he was maintaining something in his job rather than building something new and exciting. "When I realized that there was an opportunity to jump into a product category that 96 percent of Americans already purchased; that no one had used stevia as a sweetener across an entire soda portfolio before; and that I was already a huge fan of its all-natural sweetening ingredient," says Spence, "I knew it was a perfect match for me!"
START WITH PASSION: Remember, what defines an entrepreneur is to go beyond thinking about it, ignore the calculated risks and do it.
BELIEVE IN IT: Define a product, segment, or category that you really believe in and combine it with a business opportunity in that segment. This creates a fertile business opportunity. Stevia is a personal passion for Spence. Because of it he is able to live a completely sugar-free life; as an athlete, that's important to him. Spence took that passion and married it up with a business opportunity; a void in the marketplace. Stevia is a great sweetener and no one was maximizing its full potential—until now.
KNOW YOUR PLAYERS: Spence had a close-knit team of people with whom he'd worked throughout his career. There was a level of trust and camaraderie that eliminated a lot of the risk for him. "Personal chemistry is just as important as the written track record of an individual," he says. "It's great if you've done a lot on paper but I've never worked with you I don't know if we are going to have a strong work chemistry."
HAVE A PLAN: careful financial planning is critical right up front. "All emerging businesses need capital to grow," says Spence. "Understanding those capital needs and how achieve them is important going into it, as opposed to trying to figure it out as you go along."
DO YOUR MARKET RESEARCH: Test and learn. Try things on a small scale. Begin with friends and family and get their input on what they think of your product or service. From there you can go on to larger control tests where you will identify measurable quantitative results and actionable changes you might make in your product offering. "The larger your sample size the more you eliminate bias," Spence says. "Start out with a small group and expand it to get feedback from hundreds or thousands." Today, our customers and retailers, such as Whole Foods, Target, and Kroger, are our test groups.
HIRE A GREAT PR TEAM: Spence suggests looking for a firm that has been there before, knows how the bigger companies do it, who the players are, how to leverage opportunities, and how to identify areas where you can improve over your competition. Find PR people who share a passion for your product and can communicate your brand's message naturally.
KEEP YOUR BRANDING SIMPLE: "You need to be able to tell the story of brand or product without it being a complicated story," Spence reminds us. "For us, our consumer value proposition is incredibly simple: Zevia has zero calories and no artificial sweeteners, it's all natural. So when I tell people it tastes great, has no calories, it’s all natural and it cost a dollar, that’s a pretty easy sell!"
One of my favorite tidbits from this interview with Paddy Spence is this important reminder: "You are going to learn from your experiences; both good and bad experiences. Regardless of what happens in an entrepreneurial or emerging brand situation, you are going to come out of that experience with more knowledge than when you entered. New risk doesn't make you dumber it makes you more experienced. If you have to go back to the corporate arena, you will be a more valuable employee than when you left."
About The Author
MARLA TABAKA is a small-business adviser who h
elps entrepreneurs around the globe grow their businesses well into the millions. She speaks widely on combining strategic and creative thinking for optimum success and happiness. Connect with her @MarlaTabaka and www.inc.com/author/marla-tabaka.
* This article was originally published here
Who Advises the Entrepreneur?
By Kerrie MacPherson
If you’re leading a startup business with potential for high growth, one of the most valuable things you should do early on is to set up an advisory board. Scaling an enterprise is hard work, and you only stand to benefit from drawing on perspectives, experience, and networks that augment your own. A group of advisors committed to your success not only provides a sounding board to test and strengthen your ideas, it gives you access to important competencies and resources.
But many entrepreneurs, especially those in the early stages, find the task of building an advisory board daunting. Whose strengths would complement their own and counter their weaknesses? Who might bring an insight to the table that would otherwise be missed? It can feel like an exercise in knowing what you don’t know. Moreover, most people who have not formalized such a board before haven’t given much thought to what it takes to keep one running effectively.
This is why, in the Entrepreneurial Winning Women™ program I oversee at EY, we make this an early part of our teaching. The program is our effort to help women entrepreneurs in particular take their small businesses to the next level. We identify promising startups and provide the women behind them with customized executive leadership training and the opportunity to join an elite network.