Sue Stockdale is a motivational speaker, executive coach and polar adventurer. She inspires people to step out their comfort zone and make the seemingly impossible become reality.
This week we had our Mission Growth Speaker Event featuring Leila Wilcox, founder of Halos n Horns and soon to be launched Angelis Insurance.
She told us that her interest is to build value early in the business journey so that she can exit and enable others to grow the business in the longer term and therefore the importance of creating strong foundations for future growth.
We then had table discussions to debate what the issues that faced growing businesses were and how they should be addressed. This was a lively debate with the top issues being:
Letting go – If you’ve got someone doing a job 60% as good as you then you have got a great employee.
Inspiration and vision – create the long term vision for your business and get your employees to buy into it
Delegation - if you don’t delegate you spread yourself too thin – so do what you do well and leave the other jobs to other people
Cash Flow – Cash is king so plan, plan, plan and keep an eye on the numbers
Flexibility – make sure you maintain the edge within your sector by being able to adapt to changing trends
Put in place contingency plans for when things might not go according to plan
Time management – making sure you keep healthy in order to be able to run your business
All in all a good evening and I was pleased to hear that most business owners face the same issues!
There
are now over 1 million self-employed women in the UK and whilst over 70% own their
own businesses, less than 20% of those have employees.Some might argue that women don’t want to
grow big businesses, but it’s not true for many female entrepreneurs
today.So what will encourage women to
grow their businesses to a size that contributes to the economy by providing
jobs for others?
Three
things: aspirations, capabilities and
resources, and underpinning them all a
good idea that is scalable.
Business Model
Many
women start out delivering a product or service that is based around their own
skills e.g. complementary therapy. Whilst
you might be the best therapist in your local area, the business can only be
scalable if you create a business model which helps you (and others who may
become involved in your business) understand how it makes money.
A
business model should describe how your business positions itself within its
industry and how it intends to generate revenue.It should answer the following questions:
1.Who pays? (consumer,
producer, or third parties?)
2.What for? (goods, services,
expertise, assurances of quality or security.)
3.To whom?
4.Why? (perceived value, competitive
price etc.)
You
need a clear and convincing answers to the above questions, especially “why”.
If your business model cannot be replicated
then it will difficult to turn your service into a growth business. But assuming that it is, then consider the
other areas too.
Many
women start up in business for different reasons to the traditional
entrepreneurial values of financial success, power and status.Some tend to be motivated by personal comfort
or self-actualization goals that allow them to work at something interesting
and maintain flexibility. Running a high growth business tends to demand high
levels of energy, commitment and leadership skills and might not seem so appealing.
How to get inspired
Read about women who are
running growth businesses and find out what it’s really like
hink about your future and
what you would like to achieve.Think
about the benefits of investing time and effort for a few years in order to
build a business that has the potential to be sold. This could provide the finance
for you to achieve your longer term vision.
Believe it is
possible.Sometime the greatest fear we
have is fear of success, not fear of failure so create your own model for
success based on your ideal work environment.
Capabilities
This
is the combination of knowledge and skills that you bring to the table.Sometimes I think many of us like to imagine
we can do it all, and it’s foolish to believe that this is the case.This encourages you not to delegate and get
others involved, which is what is needed to grow a business.
Critically assess the skills
and capabilities that you have.Be
honest with yourself and recognise that if you are focusing on your strengths
then you can start to value strengths in others and it’s easier to delegate.
Resources
are the combination of financial and social capital that you have available
which can help you make the transition from lifestyle business to growing
business.
Finances
Over
the years, maybe you have not had as much interest or taken the responsibility
for understanding and managing finances, and research shows that women spend
less time engaged in activity related to acquiring finance at the start-up
stage.
This
could be because we can be more risk averse regarding business funding.I wish I had a pound for every woman I have
spoken to that will only start their business on a shoe string because they
don’t believe it’s really going to be a success!Yet it’s this under-capitalisation of a
business that can cause problems if you intend to grow.
Challenge your thinking
– ask yourself - what is attitude to financial risk?Would you put up your house as security?If not, why not?Is it that you would not put your family in
jeopardy, you don’t believe in the potential of the product/service?By asking yourself these questions, you can
begin to think like an investor – if you don’t believe in your business, then
why should the bank or an investor?
Contrary to popular
belief, successful entrepreneurs are not risk takers, but what they do is
carefully evaluate all the risks before making a decision.
Social Capital
As
you begin to grow, you will need to find good people to help you. They might be
business specialists, investors, potential members of staff, mentors etc. and
the more diverse networks that you have, the greater the chance that you will
be able to find the right people.
evaluate all the
networks that you are part of already. E.g. family, school friends, other
parents, business networks, evening class contacts, people at the gym, and you
will amaze yourself at the number of people you know.
Even if you don’t have a
large network, you can “borrow” social capital from others who do and that is
where a mentor comes in.If you are
looking to build contacts in a particular industry sector then you might consider
seeking a mentor in that industry.Whilst this might seem a “one-sided approach” if you have ever mentored
someone else you will know that the mentor gets a lot of satisfaction too from
being able to help their mentee and to make introductions.
It's been a funny old time recently, with such turbulence in the financial world rubbing off on us locally.
First we were woken up in the early hours of Monday morning with a call from a friend at Lehman telling us what was going on there....then a few days later another call from a friend at HBOS telling us of the news about the merger...which they learned about from the TV! Makes you think that corporate communications is vital at times like these....
Then we have been going through our recruitment process for a new Managing Director, with a great many high calibre people expressing an interest. It's wonderful to see how all the networking we have done over the years yields results when it has been through this source that most of the candidates have found out about us.
What I reflect upon is how important a company's public perception is, because whilst not everyone will know about, or want to know about the detail behind the glitz, we do judge companies often on their website, their staff and their level of service. So think about what image your business portrays. If you don't know, then why not ask your customers and find out what people really think about your business.
One of the most fun parts of my job is making connections and we had a recent great example of this.
We have just included Dr Julie Bradshaw on our role models section of the website. She holds 17 world records for long distance swimming amongst other things! When she browsed the other role models, she realised that Anita Corbin, our award-winning photographer role model, had photographed her in a feature about her achievements for the Sunday Times Magazine when she was 15 years old!
I asked Anita if she remembered Julie - and of course she did - who could forget a rather determined 15 year old record breaking swimmer? Anita also said that she was the tender age of 21 at the time....so probably no surprise why she remembered another talented young woman....
And now years later they have been back in touch with one another as a result of our role models section. This is an example of how I love facilitating connections between people. It underpins our philisophy of "Givers Gain" that runs through all the events we organise. It costs nothing to link people up and provides a sense of satisfaction. So go on, facilitate a connection today....
We recently teamed up with Jonathan Pfahl, founder of the Rockstar Group to offer mentoring to our entrepreneurs. Often people can lack motivation to keep going and having a business mentor can be really beneficial in helping you to keep focused and have goals to work towards that someone else is going to be asking about.
Watch the video clip below which explains more about mentoring
