1. Join an entrepreneur round table. Connect with peers in a round table with other local business owners. Discuss key issues, share experiences, and leverage collective knowledge. Surrounding yourself with others who understand the challenges of managing a company not only provides essential support but also shortens the learning curve and helps build confidence in decision-making. Consider attending such events as Black Dress Partners’ Midwest Business Owners’ Conference, where you can spend a day learning, connecting, and discussing important business topics.
2. Prioritize. In any entrepreneurial endeavor, plenty of actions need to be taken. Your most important job is ensuring that you’re working on the right priorities. Having clear, focused priorities and blocking out time to work on them allows you to spend energy proactively building your business, rather than reacting to whatever comes your way. Focus on high-value priorities by embracing Stephen Covey's advice and creating a time-management matrix and scheduling the “big rocks.”
3. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Spend time working on what only you can do, and delegate the rest. Learning to let go is an art, so it's crucial that you can count on strong team members and foster a tight feedback loop. If you’re not ready to hire a full-time employee to offload lower-priority work, then consider outsourcing to a virtual assistant.
4. Learn to say no. Too often, we say yes to be polite or because we’re afraid of missing out when we really need to say no to keep focused. While many worthwhile opportunities might come our way that are difficult to turn down, it’s important to be honest about whether you’re spreading yourself too thin.
Sometimes saying no is acknowledging that you cannot do everything yourself. If you want to grow your business or learn how to market and improve yourself, considering attending a female-focused networking event, like Coffee and Contacts which is put on by the Women’s Power Networking group.
5. Focus on giving back. It’s easy to focus only on what you need to grow your company in the short term. But when you focus on making a positive contribution to others, others naturally want to give back.
You can partner with other local organizations like Rise, which is a collaborative work space dedicating to assisting female entrepreneurs grow their businesses in the St. Louis area. Rise not only focuses on collaborative work, but also works to connect local women and businesses through several community building social events. Rise is perfect for any woman who is looking to grow their business while also growing the community of female entrepreneurs.
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