Common Mistakes Small Business Owners Make
Bonus: Join My Free Community For Female Business Owners Here
This blog post is for female small business owners who want to reach success more quickly.
In my last post I shared 7 common mistakes small business owners make.
Below are some more mistakes to understand and avoid in your business journey.
Let’s dive right in.
1.Timing
There are many female business owners who have the belief that they can show up online, and within 3 months have a hugely profitable business that the whole world wants to buy from.
We’re saturated with that kind of false message online from ‘gurus’ who will make those sorts of promises to make a sale off people who are desperate for quick success.
The reality is very different.
You will need to have the discipline to commit to your business for the longer haul.
Success will not come quickly, and almost everything you do in your business will take longer than you think.
Having a mindset focused on long term success will serve you much more than having a short gain mindset that is likely to let you down,
It took me almost 4 years to build my business to consistent five figure revenue sums.
I had to keep showing up and pushing, trying, testing, having set backs, picking myself and going at my business, and again, and again, day after day, before my business reached a tipping point, and the results started to come.
Some female entrepreneurs will not have the stamina to go the distance, or to have clarity about how they will survive financially whilst they’re making their way to success.
I had to keep old personal training and health coaching clients on the go for the first three years when I started Female Entrepreneur School. That gave me stable income during those early years in my business.
Be prepared for the longer-haul and know how you’re going to survive whilst you work to grow your small business to success.
2. Blowing Up On Social
There’s this sense that we can show up and post on social and in a very short time we’ll hit the big time. It rarely happens that way.
Some people get uber lucky and their growth takes off, but for most of us the path to growing big on any social account is going to be longer and more arduous than we thought.
You have to come at social, and all other areas of your business with a long term mindset, not a short term one.
You have to understand your audience and be delivering content to that audience in a way that makes them want to engage.
You cannot throw any old content out and hope something will stick. That will not grow your business on social, or in any other place as well.
3. Continuity
This is about creating journeys for your customers. And many businesses fail to do this.
You should have steps, systems, automations in place to continue to take a customer/client on a journey with you once they have made an initial purchase, so that you can sell them more.
That journey could look something like this:
Buys a product from your store puts it in basket, goes to checkout – before they make payment at checkout you put another well aligned product in front of them and ask if they would like to add this to their cart – customer/client decides to do so – goes to checkout to purchase – product(s) get shipped. You’ve immediately sold more than one item to that customer.
When a customer makes a purchase, they get added to your mailing list (legitimately) and you have a 3 email sequence that then gets sent to them.
(Please note the email sequence below is far from the exact words you’d use – they are brief to give you an example):
– EMAIL 1 – hey (customer name) your product has been shipped – it should be with you in the next few days. We hope you are happy with your purchase. Here are some tips about how to use it, take care of it, where to display it, etc.. Before you go, we have something that really complements what you’ve just bought that you will find useful, here it is, and we can offer you a one time discount on this product, go here to get it, we’ll get it shipped immediately.
– EMAIL 2 – hey (customer name) at (your business name) we know our customers really, really well. This is what we know they like, and why they like these things (refer to your best selling products/services and WHY your clients like them, want them, and the issues those products/services solve). If any of these float your boat, you can check them out here.
– EMAIL 3 – hey (customer name) we have something that we ONLY offer to customers/clients that have just purchased from us. It is our biggest value offer ever. (Create a bundle of stuff, talk about what pain points, challenges, issues, questions it solves for your audience). We thought it would be right up your street. If you’d like to (resolve some issue), you can get this value bundle right here, right now, but you can’t get it anywhere else.
When you create continuity like this in your business, you’ll sell more.
It takes thought and building out behind the scenes, but if you don’t have this type of continuity in place in your small business, you have gaps in your business model and revenue that you are losing.
It’s worth taking the time to create email automations that take your customers on a journey with you once they have made an initial purchase.
4.Thinking Social Is All About You
Back to THAT subject again.
Too many small business owners think social is all about showing up and waiting for people to come find you.
That’s not going to be good for your growth.
Your strategy should include following other accounts that are well aligned to you or have audiences similar to your own, and making a concerted effort to go and engage with people in those accounts.
As an introvert I find this REAL hard.
I’m always more comfortable with people coming to me, rather than me going and hunting other people down.
However, getting out of my comfort zone and making the effort to show up on other accounts to support them, to drop comments, to engage – has for sure helped my business and brought an audience to me – some of whom have become very loyal customers of mine.
5. Not Having Clear Strategy
This is more common than you think.
I have plenty of conversations with female business owners around strategy, vision, goals, plans.
I want to know from those ladies – where are you heading? What are you aiming for? Where do you want to be by the end of the year? How do you plan to get there day by day, week on week, month after month?
I’m often met with this response: 😬😬😬
You cannot grow a revenue earning, successful business of the back of showing up and just going with the flor.
You need strategy that looks ahead to the future business you want to achieve.
You need daily, week, monthly, yearly written down goals that work towards you achieving your longer term vision.
Part of having good business strategy is having a great business model, and knowing how that model will work effectively, fluidly, professionally, in the online space.
My 40k Club for female business owners works specially to help you create the best business model that will help you achieve major 40k goals in your business.
6. What You Need To Earn
Do you know how much you need to earn in your business each year so that your business can a. pay you a salary that would secure you financially, and b. provide enough profit to be able to re-invest back in the business to support your growth?
Yes? No?
If the answer is no. You need to get clarity about this NOW.
You need to know how much you need to draw from your business as salary to make your life financially stable.
You need to know that you can earn enough from your business to leave revenue in the business to re-invest back in your growth as and when you need it.
These figures help you determine how many units of your products and services you need to sell each week/month/year, making sure there’s enough profit in each of those sales to enable you to pay yourself and keep some money in the business.
It goes deeper than this, because you also need ‘set aside’ money for things like personal emergencies, general savings, and money you’ll have to pay the tax man.
It can be scary sitting down and working out your figures (I know – I’ve taken the ladies in my 40k Club through this exercise, and for some it was uncomfortable.
But they at least now know what they need to do and what they need to sell to hit 40k revenue goals and beyond.
Take some time to sit and figure your revenue numbers out.
It can be quite liberating to do this, because those figures can then really help to push you on to do the work to make your business a financial success.
Conclusion
I hope you’ve found some of this content useful, and that it has given you food for thought and strategy to take away to work on, to make your business more successful.
If you’re struggling to reach any real milestones in your business, and feel that you are making mistakes hand over fist, come and join other female small business owners inside my 40k Club Community – I’ll be there supporting you, and helping you to create a much more successful business in the years ahead.
Jenny 🙂
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