October is Women Small Business Month and it’s one my favorite months of the year! It’s a time to celebrate everything I stand for! I am a woman who created a successful small business and I help other women do the same. What I love about women small business owners is the multiplicative power that one woman can create. One woman can employ tens, who then feeds hundreds, which then impacts thousands. Women are one of the most powerful forces for change on this planet. But we cannot do it alone. Women small business owners (and frankly every business owner) need help! We need someone to get us started, steer us in the right direction, give us support (emotionally and financially), share our message, and thereby grow our business. One of the best ways women small business owners can flourish is by supporting one another. But to do so requires some introspection. Below are some of my personal experiences dealing with other women in business and how I think we can do better, and therefore be better together....
Can you believe it? Making Straight Paths has been in the Earth for 5 years!!! Wow! That's someone's car payments, someone's child, an undergraduate degree, and a presidential term! When I first started this company I had no idea what I was doing nor that I would be doing it this long! But I'm so thankful for my journey and I want to share what I learned along the way. I really love the word success because it's so individualized yet definitely achievable. It's in my tagline and something I reflect on often. A couple of years ago I had a "Define Your Success" campaign that was pretty well successful (couldn't help it!). It helped me position my brand to work on some great collaborations but also forced me to really define it for myself and this business. Success for me was providing quality service at an affordable price to help people who believed in what they wanted to create find a clear way (straight path) to do so. 5 years later I can say I definitely am successful even in ways I never originally intended. I have a clear vision, established reputation, confidence in my abilities, a diverse and extensive network, and the wisdom of how to walk out the next 5 years better than the first 5! Here are my 5 elements of my success for you...
From mid-November to January many people shift their focus from their business to enjoying/surviving the holidays. There are travel arrangements to be made, gifts to buy, food to cook, reflections from the previous year, and plans for the upcoming one. It's a busy and magical time where memories are made and everything that is important returns back into focus.... except your business. For many they get distracted by the holidays and forget that they are solely responsible for what they produce. Things get shifted to auto-pilot and no real progress is made until January. I want to encourage you to enjoy the holidays AND your business during the next couple of weeks. I'm not anti-break or anti-holidays, I'm just anti-stagnation. Just like the pounds that sneak up during these couple of weeks so does losing focus and momentum in your business.
It shouldn't be that hard to shop for or support the entrepreneur in your life right? Wrong! Entrepreneurs are a special type of person/crazy. They have decided to jump out of the safety next of societal norms and do their own thing. Success or failure they HAVE to try to run a business or nonprofit. The pain of NOT doing it is worse than the FEAR of failure. That's the spirit of an entrepreneur. So how do you shop for that?...
When I first started my business I quickly realized how little I really knew about starting, having, or running a business! I didn't come a family of entrepreneurs, and all my life I was told to do the traditional or safe thing ie. go to school and get a job. So when I started my business one of the first things I needed to learn was how to stop being a CONSUMER and how to be a successful PRODUCER. Below is my journey about what resources I used to help position myself as a successful entrepreneur and become the go-to contact for my clients and colleagues....
