Women, Wealth, and Wisdom

Women, Wealth, and Wisdom: Strategies for a Thriving 2024. Women continue to be the fastest growing entrepreneurs and business owners over the last year. It’s exciting to see so many follow their passions. Yet unfortunately statistics show that many will also fail? A lot of this comes down to putting the foundations in your business first. I mean often we start our businesses with no business experience.

When I got into entrepreneurship, I was “lucky” as I came from a solid business background. I had been running and growing an estate agency sales office in London for over 6 years. That meant I already had experience at running teams, hitting targets, crunching numbers and taking market share. In a very short space of time I developed strong business foundational skills around sales, team management, business finance, marketing and much more.

But most I see start their business with their own passion and skills, but with little or no business experience. Let’s talk then about what you can do instead to set yourself up for success in 2024.

As the prominent Benjamin Franklin said – “If You Fail to Plan, You Are Planning to Fail”.

Based on my experience there are three standard core profit levers to growth in most businesses:

• Sales – how many sales you make (based on how many leads you convert)
• Less Costs – cost of the product you produce (the margins you make) and the overheads you have to run your business
• Customer Lifetime Value – how much you make per customer (cross sells/upsells – repeat business).

If you alter any one of these elements in your business, you’ll have an impact on your bottom line profits. When planning I’m focused mainly on three simple yet effective core areas to success.

VISION & MONETISATION  – Without knowing what you want to achieve and what you are selling to get you there is like having a sat nav with no destination. If you sit in your car and wait for it to get you there without taking any action, you won’t get off your driveway. Your business needs to be the same, it’s time to stop treating it like a hobby and start building a business.  I don’t know of any successful business owners that don’t have a vision and a plan for where they want their company to go.

1.  Create Your Vision & Focus

Most entrepreneurs have dreams and goals but a lot of them are afraid to document them or put them into a plan. Let’s change that – start with some simple questions – Imagine getting on stage in 5 years time and telling everyone your journey of success. What does it look like for you, what are you doing, who are you surrounded with, what are some of your big achievements, what impact have you made?

Now write that out into a clear statement as if you are reading it to the audience talking i the presence tense.

Then look at your next year. What needs to happen to move yourself closer to that five year goal. Create some tangible goals for the year ahead. 

I like to work in 90 day increments and set myself four key projects that need to happen for the year to help me reach my goal – eg. write a book, get on more stages, launch a new product. What are the big things you need to focus on each quarter to move you closer to your end goal?

2.   Reverse Engineer Your Numbers

Don’t avoid your numbers. Yes I love manifestation and energy when it comes to getting what I want. But I also believe in focus. If you have clarity you have conviction and it’s easier to take action.

So take your five year and 1 year plan and reverse engineer your income goals. If you want to create £1 million in your business and you are only selling a £500 product. It’s going to take a lot of volume to make that target. Do you have that big of an audience or way into someone else’s audience? If not you have to start to look at your product mix. Create a matrix with the products you are going to sell and define the numbers you need to sell to hit your target.  (Ideally create a full cashflow forecast)

• Are you selling the right products/services?
• Do you need to do a pricing review?
• Do you have the ability and capacity to reach your desired income goals?

Now you have a clear vision and numbers to focus on.

We move into …

MINDSET & RESOURCES – This is the stuff that is going to hold you back from getting to where you want to go. 

One of the core exercises I like to work on is taking your five year vision and start to look at the person you need to become to make that happen.  When standing on that stage what do you see, how do you think, what habits have you created along the way.

You are building a vision and plan for the next level.

Then start to look at the support and resources you have. What else do you need to create your goals? Do you need additional team members or maybe you need to learn a new skill, gain some education. Maybe you need a mastermind team around you to support you on your journey.

Identify the gaps in what you have now and what you know you need to create your five year vision. Then prioritise them in order. So for me for example one of my next year’s first 90 days goals is – I need two additional team members.

What do you need?

Then the third core area is:

MARKETING – you don’t have a business without marketing. You now have a strategic plan of what you are selling and how many you need to sell but that doesn’t happen without marketing. Get clear on your marketing strategy.

I really love Clay Collins who wrote the Power of 5 One’s where he talks about:

1. One Target Market (one core target audience for your business that you really resonate with)
2. One Product (one core product line with two levels of service – with a clear “results driven” focus that your clients just know will help them achieve what they want to achieve)
3. One Conversion Tool – your method/process for converting leads (prospects) into clients. Don’t chop and change all the time get good at one thing and make it better (eg. live events, webinars, book sales)
4. One Traffic Source – that you can scale as your business grows. 
5. One Year – you stay focused, master the skills and process you’ve created above instead of continually changing your activities.  Creates your success.

• What is your clear marketing strategy to sell the products and services you’ve outlined in your plan? 
• Is it a repeatable process?.
• Can you scale it with traffic or collaborations?

Following this planning process you answer the top three questions:.

1. What do I want to achieve?
2. What will stop me or hold me back from achieving this and how can I overcome this.
3. How will I make it happen?

Let’s make 2024 your best year yet. Don’t avoid the planning stage, always take time away from your business to work on your business. Ideally with someone that can help you see the bigger picture too!