(image courtesy of ScarletBeautiful2)
As you know we are thrilled about our new book deal!
And oh joy - the interviewing, writing & research has begun! A big part of our book will be including stories, experiences, anecdotes & tips from women entrepreneurs and all of you!
We will be posing weekly questions to help us with our writing and brainstorming. Sometimes we will be soliciting a tip and other times a reflection on your own experience.
Thanks to all of you who shared their thoughts on what has been surprising about entrepreneurship, how you work best, and what you love most about entrepreneurship.
Next up -
Oh the places you can go…! What's the right business direction?
We want to know:
* Was there a point along the way that you felt your business either got off track or that you were unhappy with the way things were? Why? What did you do to correct or change that?
* Have your clients, colleagues, or friends tried to push you in a business direction that you don’t want to go? What have they suggested? Why doesn’t it work for you?
We’d prefer if you reply in the comments because it makes the conversation richer and I think you’ll see that you’re not the only one with the same insights or challenges! If you’d feel more comfortable sending me an email, you can do that too. Adelaide@
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2 comments:
The biggest derailment my business ever had was not so much going in the wrong direction, but trying to do too many things at once. Even though my business is as a publishing consultant, I made the huge mistake of thinking I had the time to do a little "side" business of real estate investing. That involved much more time, energy, and money that I could have been devoting to my primary business. And, oh yeah, I lost a bucket load of money on the real estate -- not just in the actual losses from the investment, but in lost business because I had to split my focus.
The danger when you're in business for yourself is when things get quiet and there's not a lot of business coming in. You start to think you have all sorts of time, and you start to look for other income streams to fill the gap. I believe that if I had just kept focused on my primary business, that I would have been much further along by now.
I spent literally months designing my own website (when I had no website development experience to speak of), months trying to learn how to take high quality photos of my jewelry (when I barely knew how to use my camera), and more months trying to set my business up properly in QuickBooks (when I'm much more of a touching-paper-gives-me-comfort kind of person).
After nearly a year experiencing frustration after frustration, it suddenly occurred to me that my baseline assumption that it would be faster and less expensive to do things on my own was completely and totally wrong.
So for the past few months, I've been working with a team of really wonderful people (I always dreamed of having my own "team"!) who have been helping me with a complete overhaul of my website, professional photos of my jewelry, and development of my marketing strategy.
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