Working as your own boss in a field you are truly passionate about is a dream come true for many women. Although launching a start-up represents an enormous challenge and, for many, an enormous learning curve, the potential rewards far outweigh the risks.
You can significantly boost your chances of success by doing as much preparation as possible, speaking to potential future customers to find out exactly how you can fulfill their needs and having a solid business plan in place. Here are a few other tips you might want to bear in mind.
Don’t try to do everything
Although you can scale your business, you can’t scale yourself, and sometimes you need to ask for advice. Trying to do it all in the early stages of your business can be a recipe for disaster. The best chance of making your business venture into a success is to surround yourself with experts in specific fields and to use their experience to help you move forward. As a start-up, the funds will simply not be available to hire such experts on a full-time basis so hire them as freelancers instead.
This enables you to obtain co-workers who are of a much higher caliber than you would otherwise be able to afford, cuts down on the administrative burden of having staff and makes it quick and easy to adjust the size of your workforce as your business expands.
Find a support network
Launching a business can be an isolating affair, so it’s important to have the right support network in place. Making the right sort of connections will not only benefit your company in the long run, but it can also help you deal with any personal difficulties and frustrations that come up. It’s suggested by this women-for-business infographic that for women to find support, they should seek out a female-dominated community for advice.
In particular, obtaining support from other women starting their own business ventures is hugely beneficial if you want to be able to keep yourself motivated during the many challenging times you are certain to encounter. If you don’t have anyone suitable in your immediate social circle, consider joining a group such as Blooming Founders, an online community for female entrepreneurs.
Maintain a healthy work/life balance
It may be tempting to give all your time to your new business venture, especially in the early days of your enterprise, but this can be bad for your health which, in turn, can be extremely bad for your business. A far better strategy is to set, right from the start, specific office hours outside of which you do not work. Once your office hours have come to an end, do not check emails, accept phone calls or do any other work-related activity. So long as you stick to this schedule yourself, your clients and customers will do the same. You may also need to learn to say “no” on occasion.
Avoid the temptation to bring work materials home with you at the end of the day unless you absolutely need to. If you work from home, keep your business materials in a separate room and don’t let them spread throughout the rest of your living space. This makes it easier to shut the door on work and fully relax into your home life.