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The Secret to Building Your Business from the Inside Out
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The Secret to Building Your Business from the Inside Out
As a woman entrepreneur, have you ever wondered what the secret is for building business success? Sure, it’s important to have a mission statement, a business plan, and a product or service that meets the needs of your niche market. It’s also essential that you have funding to back your venture, a support system in place to guide and mentor you along your journey, and savvy business acumen.
Yet even if you have all these things, you still may not hold the key. What is the key to business success for women? The secret is to build your business from the inside out. From a place inside that you as a woman intuitively know and understand. From your Inner Samurai. If you are an entrepreneurial woman committed to doing work that is meaningful and important if you see your work as a mission, service, or calling if your goal is to help other people transform their lives and make a difference in the world, then the key to making that happen is to connect with your Inner Samurai. Connect with my Inner Samurai? What’s that?
Connecting to your Inner Samurai means connecting to your “inner knower”. This will empower you with the strength you will need on your journey as you build a successful business.
All You Need to Know about Your Inner Samurai
Who? Your Inner Samurai is known by many names. It has been called the voice within, the inner knower, the still small voice, God Self, Soul, God Within, and Spirit, to name a few.
What? Your Inner Samurai is best defined by describing its opposite – the voice inside the head, the monkey mind, the ego. By contrast, your Inner Samurai is the inner voice, the voice within. It is the quiet, sure, confident, strong, vast, and powerful voice of inner knowing. Being able to tell the difference between the rationalizing, explaining, blaming, and chattering voice inside your head and the calm, sure, wise voice of your Inner Samurai will make all the difference to your business success.
Where? Your Inner Samurai is aptly named because it is the voice within. Inner because the voice is deep within your being to distinguish it from the voice inside your head and Samurai because of how strong and powerful it is. Understanding who your Inner Samurai is and knowing where to connect with it are vital for your business success.
Why? Everyone has an inner voice. It is that part of us that is the repository of all our life experiences, hopes, and dreams. It’s so important to get in touch with our Inner Samurai because it is our greatest source of strength and knowing. It is the seat of our wisdom. It is the place of our extraordinary uniqueness. It exists to remind us of who we are. How? The most challenging part of connecting with your Inner Samurai is realizing how it communicates with you. Your Inner Samurai has a gentle, yet very recognizable, way of doing so – I like to call it “pulsing.” When you go inward and ask your Inner Samurai a question, you will feel a pulse answering you. This pulse will have one of two distinct qualities. It will feel like either a yes or a no.
When? Once you know who, what, where, why, and how, the last thing you need to know is when. When is the best time to tune in and feel for the pulse of your Inner Samurai? The answer is always. Make your Inner Samurai the primary voice you listen to. Turn to others for support. Turn inward for guidance. When in doubt between your feelings and thoughts, go with the pulse. Your Inner Samurai will never lead you astray, do you wrong, or leave you hanging. Your Inner Samurai pulse is right 100%25 of the time. So, enjoy writing your mission statement and your business plan. Get creative making your product or service the best it can be. Develop positive relationships with your investors and supporters. And don’t forget the most important relationship of all – the relationship with your Inner Samurai. It’s the key to building your business success from the inside out.
Managing A Small Business
Posted by: | CommentsKnowing how to manage a small business is a very useful when you are considering starting a business and running it successfully. Without proper guidance it is hard for any venture to succeed. Time, money, employees have to be managed efficiently for a business to operate smoothly. A well-drafted, carefully planned business plan will help greatly in managing a small business. A business plan will help understand all aspects of a business and the steps involved in all operations.
Tips To Manage a Small Business
Financial Management
It is essential to manage the finances wisely as it is the determining factor for success. Cash flow forecasts are very handy tools, if done accurately, to determine the amount of cash needed at a given time and to ensure that the cash is available. Good management will ensure that loans applied for are only as much as can be repaid, as early as possible. Good bookkeeping and maintaining records of all transactions in an organized manner will help improve fiscal management.
Having a plan to reinvest profits in assets etc. will also be a sign of good management. Making use of software available will lessen the time and energy spent in managing the finances. Make sure that taxes returns are filed on time, opting for a good insurance policy for the business will ensure that the business will continue no matter what.
Human Resource Management
It is necessary to be able to manage the employees making sure that they perform their duties as well as ensuring that they are happy and motivated. Assigning the right person to the right job as well as proper delegation of duty is another aspect to be taken into consideration while managing personnel. Periodic checks have to be carried out to check their performance as well as to ensure that they behave well and create a good impression when they interact with customers.
Marketing And Sales Management
Marketing and sales aspects of a business have to be managed well too. Proper strategies have to be implemented to improve sales as well ensure that the target set is reached. Maintaining good relationship with suppliers and dealer is also essential. Good, effective planning will ensure that the business is equipped to deal with any situation. Having a plan ready for the course of action to be taken when sales targets are not met will also be helpful. Using good advertizing strategies as well as using the Internet, making use of e-mail marketing, to promote the product or service will improve business.
These are just a few tips to manage a small business. When all aspects of a business are managed well and well coordinated, the business will function smoothly ensuring that it will definitely succeed. There are firms that offer services as well as products that will help run and manage a business easily.
Small Business Financing Problems and How to Solve Them
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Many, if not most small businesses will experience financing problems at some point during their life. How well management deals with these problems will go a long way to determining the ultimate success or failure of the business. There’s an old saying in business “Cash is king” and so it is. There are many instances of businesses being profitable on paper only to be unable to sustain operations due to poor cash flow management. Read More→
Business Performance Indicators Key
Posted by: | CommentsThe Importance of Key Business Performance Indicators to Small Business Management
How do you know how well your small business is doing? Do you look at profit? Do you look at your sales numbers? Do you measure growth Most businesses use monthly financial statements which include sales revenues. Some compare those monthly results to the plan and For to the previous year’s results. All business should continue to use that information to manage their business.
However, all small businesses should also include more significant key performance indicators as part of their measurement process. As a small business owner, managing-by-measuring performance is a significant key to your success. Develop a set of key performance indicators to track your business growth and success.
These measures will keep you focused on your business goals. When you write your business plan make sure that you include measurable goals and objectives. Then set in place a system that will provide you with regular indications of performance. KPIs can be easily developed and monitored however each business needs to customize the measurement process to their own business needs.
Here are just a few KPIs you can consider for your business
- Number of orders in a day/month/year
- Number of estimates in a day/month/year
- What kind of win ratio does your business enjoy e.g. do you win 15 or 25 of all estimates – track this data?
How long does it take for you to respond to customer queries estimate turn-around times order processing, time from order placement to order delivery, responsiveness in handling customer complaints, and so on?
How often do you hit your promise date i.e. the date you promised to deliver the order to your customer? Analyze the misses ship dates you don’t make. Are they with one product line? Or with one customer or type of customer? Or with one employee? What kind of employee turn-over rate do you have? What kind of customer turn-over rate do you have? Percentage of business your largest customer holds?
Sales by customer, Sales by customer by product, Sales by product
These would be in addition to your regular monthly financials but consider KPIs more of a daily or weekly measurement. Set up KPIs to help you see what is going on in your business presently and to help you forecast the near term this week, this month, next month.
If you track some of these statistics daily you will begin to develop trend lines that will highlight both the positives and negatives of your business growth. Once you start to collect the data, it becomes much easier to see where the problem lies. If you are a manufacturer and you are always late delivering to your largest customer, find out why.
Analyze your process.
If you are a distributor and you are always late delivering a certain product, find out why. Is your supplier always late? Do you need to carry more inventory of that item? Or in both these examples is it because your employee turn-over is particularly high in the shipping department? Why is turn-over in shipping high? Are you hiring the right people? Are you under-paying?
Does your shipping supervisor have weak people skills Developing good performance indicators will help you identify and solve issues quickly. Once you have developed KPIs that are aligned with your business goals, and once you track your performance regularly, you will be in a better position to manage your business.