Being involved in a start-up faces its own fair share of challenges. However, an effective and powerful woman entrepreneur in a start-up is a whole other arena. Unfortunately, there’s a significant gap between women vs. men run start-ups. For example, it was reported that out of 200 tech startups that ranked for GeekWire this year, only 8% of them were led by women. While this is just one example, it’s not a surprise that there are these kinds of gaps within numerous business communities. Though being a woman in business itself can be a challenge, there are no doubt your fair share of obstacles you’ll have to face along the way when forming your own start-up. Whether you’ve been in the business world your whole life or are just entering into it now, here are effective ways to stand out when forming your own start-up company.
Maintain Your Budget
Maintaining financial stability is crucial to your success, not only for your business but for other aspects of life as well. Keeping a set budget is key in making sure your business thrives as much as possible. If you don’t allot you and your company a budget, your whole business could go into a downward spiral faster than you may even realize. If you’re good with numbers, do the bookkeeping yourself and be diligent about tracking all of your expenses and income. Many find it helpful to outsource an accountant or if your company grows big enough, hire a CFO. Whatever you do, make sure that you have a reasonable and realistic budget in place in order for your company to continue to grow while also being stable.
Establish the Right Team
Having the right team will help determine whether your company will flourish or falter. You may find that as your company is in the beginning stages, that you’ll have to go through trial-and-error with finding and hiring your perfect team and that’s totally normal. Successfully growing a start-up is a learning process, so it only makes sense that you’ll have to learn who is and isn’t right for your company. No matter how long it may take, finding the perfect team will help make your company that much more successful. Not only will the right team serve as an excellent support system, but it will also ensure that the work coming out of your company is only the best.
Have a Company Culture Set In Place
During the process of companies getting established, many develop a kind of culture for how the business operates. More times than not these days, we’ve seen businesses develop a casual culture with being able to work remotely more often, bring their dogs to work, and even wear jeans during the workday! In order to ensure that you and your employee’s are all on the same page, develop company values and the kind of culture you envision for your work environment. Going forward, this will play a part in who you believe will be a good fit within your company and making sure the daily operations of your company go as smoothly as possible. Liora Dudar, co-founder of oVertone haircare stated in an interview with Authority Magazine that her three most important values are, “tough love; intentional introspection; and honesty & clarity”, helping to successfully distinguish oVertone’s hair dyes from other competitors on the market. If you don’t have values in place at the moment, make a goal to establish them and base your company values off of what is individually important to you.
Stay Motivated
Growing a business can be thrilling and yet also exhausting at times. Through all the ups and downs you are bound to experience, maintaining your motivation is key in keeping your business successful. As every company experiences a sense of rejection and/or a series of obstacles to face, keeping your motivation up will be most important. Whenever you feel like you may be losing that motivation, look towards inspiring quotes from powerful women. Looking up to strong women who have accomplished so much despite their own share of obstacles is a great way to stay motivated as you face your own.
Take Advantage of Free Advice
If you’re new to the business world, you may find yourself in need of business advice. Since you might be strapped financially, some of the best business advice you can get is the free kind! If you have close friends or family offering to help you in the beginning stages of your business, take advantage of it. Along with utilizing free advice from those around you, look towards online forums and business outlets to also guide you in your venture. The amount of information and advice available is truly endless so be sure to take advantage of it whenever possible. If you want advice that is applicable to specifically your business, don’t be afraid to utilize places around you for free business advice, you may find that you have more in your area than you realize. These kinds of places will help cater to the specific obstacles you might be having and how you can overcome them.
Have a Roadmap
You may never know exactly how and when a business is going to progress, but having a roadmap is always helpful when starting your business. While it can get as specific as you want it to be, it can always just be a general outline of the things you want to accomplish and when you want to accomplish them. Whether you’re looking to find a set of offices within the year or developing a full marketing strategy within the next month, the roadmap is completely up to you. Using a roadmap will help you coordinate the biggest goals for your company and ideally how you’d like to achieve them. This will also be useful for your team to make sure you’re all on the same page on what you want to accomplish and how quickly you’d like your company to progress.
