Build a business

Author Elizabeth Gordon helps women entrepreneurs who want to build a profitable business go “from flats to stilettos” in her new book, “The Chic Entrepreneur.” Sharing the five biggest mistakes that women business owners make that their male counterparts are less susceptible to, “The Chic Entrepreneur: Put Your Business in Higher Heels” highlights the essential components that women business owners must put in place to create a successful business.

To build a profitable business, businesswomen must avoid these top 5 mistakes:

1. Sales and marketing: Women fear looking like a pushy salesperson and have a resistance to charging a high price. Selling too softly, and not being willing to go after a premium niche and declare a high price for the value she is providing can handicap a business’s ability to generate revenue.

2. Planning: Business plan? What business plan? Women often go by their intuition when making decisions concerning their business instead of writing out a strategic business plan and sticking to it. While using intuition in business can be a strength, intuition should not be the only decision-making criteria.

3. Measurement and money: Women entrepreneurs often start a business because they seek a greater sense of fulfillment, meaning, connection, or flexibility. Because profit is not always the main motive, the need to put strong financial controls in place is often ignored. As a result, cash flow often becomes a critical issue. Finance is the language of business so women must get comfortable with their numbers. In addition to looking at overall revenue figures, understand fixed and variable costs, know your break-even point and growth rate. Do monthly, quarterly and yearly trend analysis. Examine expenses, and learn how to read a profit and loss statement and balance sheet.

4. Vision: Women in business often do not have a big enough vision for their company. They focus on making enough money to just get by, rather than on creating an asset of real value and maximizing their wealth. Dare to dream a larger vision. There is nothing greedy about sharing one’s business value across a larger spectrum; on the contrary, it is more generous to grow, as women can do more good this way.

5. Long Range Personal Plan: Most women start service-based organizations, but never take themselves out of the role of performing the service. Because most women start businesses with lifestyle considerations in mind, they are not willing to sacrifice their lifestyle to create an organization. It’s not impossible to do both. A woman entrepreneur can still have her desired lifestyle and the financial wellbeing that growing a profitable and large company can provide. The foundation of the business has to be structured properly to enable growth. A businesswoman then becomes the strategic leader of the organization.

For more information, visit chicentrepreneur.com.

Entrepreneur and adventurer, John Simnett, is offering a new service to senior business executives that helps them keep their company together whilst they go on an adventure of a lifetime.

Many CEOs are so trapped into their business, or just loving it, that they never experience real adventure outside their working lives. Taking several weeks out of their business to walk the Arctic wastelands, or to cycle the mountains of Europe, is an impossibility for most. An experienced businessman, John offers an executive life-line in both keeping the business together, and planning the Great Trip.

Working closely with the client business, getting to understand key areas, John provides a low-cost professional service that enhances peoples’ lives and improves their business.

The services, including costs, are outlined in his website.

Today, many people are eager to experience something well beyond the routine of daily work, that an annual holiday just does not provide. For someone who is running a business, they have a responsibility to their employees as well as their future livelihoods. Just think how a business would regard its responsibility to the environment, after their CEO returns from several weeks trekking through mountains and clean air.

For more information, visit simnett.com.

The Clay Nelson Life Balance Business Planning Workbook — Getting What You Say You Want is designed to help business owners get past the misconceptions and procrastinations that often get in the way of writing a business plan and move forward in creating a powerful document that will provide focus when the direction ahead may not seem so clear.

A written business plan:

• Helps you discover what you know and don’t know about your competition–and your own company’s strengths and weaknesses within your market.

• Guides company management as they make decisions that shape short-term and long-term business strategies.

• Defines the responsibilities of each team member in the company, and provides the basis for accountability in handling those responsibilities for the benefit of the company.

• Provides at-a-glance assessments of a company’s financial position, cash flow and overhead costs.

• Creates benchmarks for measuring progress towards goals and objectives, and shows you when you’ve gotten there.

The Business Planning Workbook also includes a discussion on what founder Clay Nelson cites as a common excuse for not having and using a written business plan: it’s no fun!

For more information, go to claynelsonlifebalance.com.