Emergency Planning
Call Your Major Clients If and When You Have the Chance: If you can, have frequent communication with your major clients to keep them informed about your situation and status. It is essential to maintain professionalism as much as you can, no matter how difficult the emergency.
Maintain a Current Client Contact List on Your Home Computer or Lap Top: Having a home computer or laptop with current client email addresses and phone numbers can be essential for emergency planning. If an emergency occurs in the middle of the night or after business hours, you can contact your clients immediately to notify them of your emergency so you leave town or attend to your emergency sooner.
Have Important Project Lists or Client Documents Accessible: Make sure you have access to current client project files, timelines, and other valuable information at your fingertips. Make sure you either take client files home with you each evening, have a duplicate set of important docuemnts on your laptop or home computer, or have the ability to access files electronically. You’ll be better able to assist your current clients in an emergency situtation by taking time to make these advance preparations.
Strategic Visioning Success Strategies
On June 6th, the “Strategic Planning With Vision: A Retreat for Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners” was held. It was co-created by two Women TIES (www.womenties.com) members Pamela Moss Ph.D., Vision Board Expert and Carmen Munson, LMSW, Success Coach for Entrepreneurs. Here is some valuable business advice about strategic planning and visioning to help you in your own business today.
* Visioning and using vision boards give you clarity about your goals and dreams and create a mindset that enables you to achieve them.
* A “vision board” is a deceptively simple but powerful tool – a visual reminder of the change you want to bring to your work or your life.
* Vision boards eliminate magical thinking, the biggest pitfalls of most motivational methods. Instead of just thinking and hoping about the future, vision boards enable you to literally create visions of your dreams today, in a much more visceral fashion. The work from the inside out, not the outside in: you create from your own inspiration, not motivation or fear from the outside.
* After you have “seen” your vision, you must transform your vision into goals. Using a technique like “A Letter From the Future” can help you make your vision become more real, keep you on track by serving as a compass to guide you towards your vision, helps you see how to get there, allows you to see the milestones along the way, and adds significant clarity to the process.
* To set goals – make them S.M.A.R.T. SMART stands for specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time specific.
* In order to reach any goal you must create action steps. Action steps empower you to make changes in your life and they help prevent feelings of being overwhelmed. They also build your confidence.
* Different size action steps are needed to achieve all goals. For the biggest advantages, use different size actions steps, adjusting them as needed along the way.
For more information on this program or advice, contact Pamela Moss at pamela@innervisionportraits.com or call 607-277-5817; or Carmen Munson at carmen@toclimbhigher.com or call 607-898-4126. You can learn more about these women by visiting their Women TIES directory listing at www.womenties.com
Strategic Visioning
Perched on my desk is the personal “vision board” I created at Saturday’s “Strategic Planning With Vision Retreat” hosted by two Women TIES members Pamela Moss of Inner Vision Portraits (www.innervisionportraits.com) and Carmen Munson of Climb Higher (www.toclimbhigher.com). The images that fill the large poster are of First Lady Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey in the White House, young African girls with sparkling eyes, and women entrepreneurs from Ethiopia. The words I choose to accompany the photos say: “Let’s Start a Movement,” “Be What You Are, Give What Is Yours To Give,” “Reasons Why Women Make Life Worth Living,” “Forward Thinking,” and “It Felt Wonderful to See Her Empowered.”
As I followed the directions to clip images and words from magazines that tugged at my heart and vision, I didn’t pay attention to them until I had the display board done. I recognized things I already knew about myself while at the same time discovering things I didn’t realize. I wasn’t surprised the large photos were of women, the complimentary photos of pink flowers, and the words of empowerment, inspiration, and abundance sprinkled around. I know what moves me and that’s why I love my company Women TIES. But I was surprised at the emergence of a deep desire to help impoverished women in other parts of the world – a larger global dream I will now keep in mind.
After we created our visioning board, we put together a strategic plan for our vision. We analyzed our strengths, resources and opportunities and put together an action plan. I’ve never been more motivated in my life to achieve my “vision” for my life. It was a truly amazing experience. Today I want to remind you that you must stay in tune with your internal entrepreneurial vision in order to stay on your path and to travel down a road that will lead you to your deepest dreams and aspirations. We have an incredible opportunity to change the world for ourselves and others. As Oprah says, “Live Your Best Life.”
Unleashing Your Creativity
At a recent Women TIES event in Ithaca, women entrepreneur Erin McKenna Nowak, President of Bride Design, (http://www.bridedesign.com) shared the following success strategies on unleashing your creativity with women entrepreneurs.
Step Out of Your Comfort Zone: Difficult problems and situtations may be scary, but they’re wonderful for creativity, because they cause old ideas to “resurge” and multiple ideas to compete. We can spur creativity by seeking challenges and learning to manage failure. Try at least one new thing a day.
Make Creativity an Important Part of Your Life: The generation of new ideas is perhaps the most important creative activity we do as entrepreneurs. it is vital to our survival. Therefore, it’s important to pay attention to and preserve any ideas we might have, even if they don’t seem valuable at the moment. Carry a pad with you each day and write down thoughts or sketch quick ideas.
Choose to Look at a Problem from Different Angles: A major block to creativity for many of us is the mind’s fierce grip on reality. Always try and see beyond the historical or accepted use of an item, service or concept. Create a list of 100 new ideas for your business.
Suspend Judgement: Judging too soon is one common way to shut down your creativity. You must allow yourself to think freely and entertain all ideas. When ideas are brought forth, no critical comments are allowed. What-iffing is a great excerise to train the mind to explore unreality or imagined reality.
Forward Motion
After reading a short story on survival, a woman who had tragic and unexpected circumstances occur in her life talks about her will and determination to go on. She said, “Every morning I woke up (literally and figuratively), put my feet on the floor, took a deep breath, fixed breakfast and did everything I always did. I used my routine to keep me moving. I continued moving forward.”
As women entrepreneurs we have experienced tough entrepreneurial moments when we’ve lost a client, made a poor decision, experienced a regretful moment, or lost faith in ourselves. The question is, “Have we let that moment, that event, that decision, affect us and our business negatively or positively?” Like the first character, have we remained stuck in a bad decision from years ago that still influence or harm us? Or like the second character, have we moved forward from a bad situation knowing the only way to move on is to go forward?
Today remind yourself that what matters most is the fact we cannot go back and change our past – past decisions, poor choices, or wrong turns. We must continually think and move forward realizing we are always given opportunities to advance ourselves. It is up to us to set the goals, devise the strategy and most importantly control the way we think so we can move forward freely and at peace.
‘Forward Thinking’ and ‘Forward Motion’ are statements which crossed my mind this week and made me think about their significance as an entrepreneur.
Using Creativity to Grow a Business
Recently a woman entrepreneur asked me, ” How have you become more creative or used creativity to grow your business?”
As a twenty three year experienced event manager, I told her by nature event planners or event managers have both a logical and creative side to their thinking. To be successful in my business you need to be extremely focused on organizational details while interlacing creative elements into an event to make it memorable. As an entrepreneur I’m successful because I dedicate as much time to the creative side of business as the practical side. A company cannot remain idle; it must constantly seek creative new ways to grow its offerings and client base.
To be creative pay attention to new ideas brought up by your clients, staff or associates. Their “needs” can become your next best product or service. Also pay attention to any current challenges your company is facing. Sometimes difficult situations force innovative thinking which leads to corporate growth. Finally, allow yourself and your staff time each quarter to generate new ideas for your business. The next best idea could be right around the corner but you have to allow time for them to be generated.
The Logical and Creative Side of Entrepreneurship
As an event manager for twenty three years, I have used both a logical and creative side to my thinking. To be successful in my industry you need to be extremely focused on organizational details while interlacing creative elements into an event to make it memorable. As an entrepreneur I’m successful because I dedicate as much time to the creative side of business as the practical side. A company cannot remain idle; it must constantly seek creative new ways to grow its offerings and client base. Both sides of the brain must be engaged to survive, exist, and expand one’s enterprise.
An entrepreneur can become more creative by paying attention to new ideas brought up by their clients, staff or associates. Their “needs” can become your next best product or service. Also pay attention to any current challenges your company is facing. Sometimes difficult situations force innovative thinking which leads to corporate growth. Refuse to thnk their are only a finite amount of ways to solve a problem. By creating solutions, you might create more success. Finally, allow yourself and your staff time each quarter to generate new ideas for your business. The next best idea could be right around the corner but you have to allow time for them to be generated.
Before you implement any brilliant new ideas, use the other side of your brain to make sure they make financial and planning sense. Incorporate them into your business plan, crunch the numbers, schedule the work, create the marketing plan, and analyze staffing requirements. We must be able to dream and create while being able to remain strong and financial successful.
Creating Innovative Ideas
Four years ago on a balmy summer day with a lemonade in my hand and a yellow pad of paper and pen in front of me, I sat outside under the coolness of a majestic maple tree following the “creative” directions of Erin Nowak of Bride Design (http://www.bridedesign.com) who had just presented a program on using creativity to grow a business. The task she gave to seminar attendees was to spend an afternoon creating a list of 100 new innovative ideas for their companies.
The challenge sounded fairly reasonable, fun and easy. Ironically it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. By the time I got to creative idea number 37, I was stumped. Coming up with 63 more ideas was like asking a woman entrepreneur to give up what she loved doing. It seemed impossible. But by pushing my mind to think beyond its normal parameters and contemplate expansive thoughts, I ended up producing 100 innovative ideas in which five solid revenue producing concepts were born.
As women entrepreneurs we get use to running our businesses the same way once we find the magic formula. But when we are challenged to think differently it eventually alters our perspective and allows for fresh insight and ideas. Doing business the same way all the time can make us successful, but periodically fresh vision opens up unlimited possibilities. As the spring and summer seasons begin to blend, I hope you’ll check out the weather forecast in advance, head outside and take an afternoon to create your own list of 100 innovative ideas. If you need inspiration on creativity and growth, we have two fantastic presentations coming up to inspire you.
Today’s blog post is to remind you that just like a majestic maple tree needs to ‘branch out’ to grow big and strong, so do women entrepreneurs interested in doing the same for their companies. I hope you grab a glass of lemonade, a yellow pad of paper and a glorious day and enjoy an afternoon of creative and challenging thought.
One Day At A Time
As women entrepreneurs we work relentlessly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to make our businesses successful. Sometimes we push ourselves beyond reasonable limits in a frenzy pace trying to sell more, market more, and produce more. Especially in today’s times when it seems like the economic road ahead looks bleak, we work even harder. Sometimes when we feel like we are in the midst of a difficult stretch we look ahead instead of concentrating on what we can do in this moment, this hour and today to help our businesses remain successful.
There are times in life and in business when the stretch ahead doesn’t look good. But having a day-at-a-time attitude can help us focus on making this one day successful. Taking business one day at a time can be useful when the future feels uncertain. When we don’t know where to start with some challenges, we must remember how essential it is to take one day at a time. Sometimes it is helpful to take one hour at a time or one task at a time to gain a sense of control.
Ultimately we control how we think and feel every day. We have limited control on the changes in economic times. We do have control on how we feel about the uncertainity and the action we take to work towards a brighter day. If you’re feeling like your future is unpredictable, concentrate on the tasks at hand, accomplish what you can, and reward yourself at the end of the day. Remember we only have one day at a time, sometimes in business reminding ourselves of this can make today really productive.
Improving Your Marketing Materials
At the April 23rd Women TIES Greater Penn Yan Luncheon, experienced woman entrepreneur, Becky Bayne, President of Becky’s Graphic Design (http://www.beckysgraphicdesign.com), shared success strategies on improving corporate marketing materials. Here is a list of some of the important marketing materials to have in business today and suggestions on improving them to bring more success to your corporation.
Bio/Story – Do you have your biography or “story” of how you started your business documented somewhere? Bios and stories can be used on your website, for conference materials, board appointments, major press releases, and other significant corporate promotion. If you aren’t a talented writer, hire a woman entrepreneur who specializes in writing to compile it for you. It’s an essential part of marketing yourself as an entrepreneur and leader of your organization.
Tag Line – Do you have a short, descriptive tag line that explains your business well? Taglines are creative ways to get your corporate image and message across to potential consumers. Once again, if you are not a creative person, hire a PR or advertising expert to help you. After you have one, make sure the tagline is on all your marketing materials.
Logo – Make sure you spend money to have someone design an attractive, usable logo (for all types of print mediums) from the start. If it has been awhile since you have updated your logo, seek advice from a graphic designer on how to update or improve it. Remember to have a logo that looks good in multi colors and black and white.
Business Card – A business card is still an important marketing tool. But today you don’t have to have as much “standard” information on it as you use to. You can be creative with the copy. Include blogs, mission statements, tag lines, a list of services or products. Use the front and back of the card since it doesn’t cost that much more to use both sides. Business cards are also priced much more reasonably than they use to. Letterhead/Envelope – With so much business being done via email, entrepreneurs are not ordering as much standard stationary and envelopes as they use to. This might be a marketing material you don’t need anymore, or you don’t need large quantities to keep in stock.
Website – Websites are essential in today’s business environment. The size and complexity of a website depends on what you use it for. Some use it for promotion only; some as a store; some as an extensive PR tool, etc. Make sure you understand the purpose and mission of your website before you contract a professional to develop one for you. If you don’t know where to start, check out some websites you really like and then ask those companies who designed or produced their sites and contact them for more information.
Email Signature – An easy way to market your business is to have an automatic email signature attached to all your email communication. You can include any contact information as well as list special offerings to trigger some sales interest. Use it to brand you name, your tagline and your product line. Change it often to keep educating your clients and potential customers on sales opportunities.
Headshot – Make sure you have a professional headshot to use on your website, marketing materials, press releases and other promotional materials. Hire a Women TIES photographer to have one taken. They are one of the most essential parts of marketing yourself as leader of your organization. If you have staff, have their photos taken too. Include their photos on your website and appropriate advertising pieces.
Women TIES 