Growing your wealth as a Female Entrepreneur
As female entrepreneurs, we can get caught up in the day-to-day activities of running our businesses and don’t spend enough time strategising about how we can grow our wealth as female entrepreneurs. Being a female entrepreneur isn’t easy – if it was, everyone would do it! But for the 5.6% of women in the UK who do run their own businesses, growing your wealth should be a top priority. We all have reasons why we pursue life as an entrepreneur, whether it is around flexibility to spend time with family, supporting a cause, doing something you love or something else. But, at the end of the day we all have to eat, we have to put food on the table and we have to make money. So growing your wealth as a female entrepreneur is not dirty or bad and having financial goals is not greedy!
As a busy female entrepreneur myself, these are the steps I have followed to grow my business and my wealth so that I now plan to only work a 3-day week:
- Finding your signature solution
- Evaluating your time and setting boundaries
- Analysing your figures
- Paying yourself enough
Finding your Signature Solution to Grow your Wealth as a Female Entrepreneur
As female entrepreneurs, one of the challenges that we come across is trying to do too many different things. We are trying to juggle so many different plates that we don’t know where to start and at some point, we become massively overwhelmed. As a female entrepreneur myself, I have been there too and I know what it is like to try to add and add and add when sometimes, we just need to keep things simple.
The solution to feeling overwhelmed is to focus on one core product, a signature solution or a signature offering. By focusing on a signature solution, you will become well known for that one thing. When it comes to choosing your signature offering, this doesn’t necessarily have to be your most expensive product, it could be the cheapest incoming product, so the most sellable product you have. But equally, it could be a higher value proposition such as a course. Whatever you decide on, make sure that it works within your business model and goals.
Focusing on a signature solution will not only help you to have more direction and feel less overwhelmed, but by focusing on a signature offering that you become known for, you will grow your reputation in that area. Thus, you will be able to grow your business and your sales, growing your wealth as a female entrepreneur.
Growing your Wealth as a Female Entrepreneur by Evaluating your Time and Setting Boundaries
Preventing overwhelming feelings caused by juggling too many plates, not only with business projects but also with family life, is really important in order to protect your energy. The first step in protecting your energy is to look at how you are spending time in your business and how that is affecting you. If you are rushing around from day to day and don’t feel you are going about your business in a more calm and relaxed way and are completely overwhelmed, then you are unlikely to be able to find any space.
It is really important to focus on creating that space and this comes from setting boundaries. For example, you might say you are no longer going to work weekends, or you are no longer going to work evenings. When you start to put those boundaries in place, you start to protect your energy and you give yourself a greater sense of freedom.
When you start setting boundaries, it can feel as though you are slacking. You might be thinking that you aren’t going to be able to do as much business or sell as many offerings and therefore are going to reduce your income. But the 80-20 rule applies, whereby 20% of your efforts will be getting you 80% of your results. By giving yourself space and protecting your energy, you will be able to focus on the 20% that is bringing your results and work out how you can grow and scale this, in order to grow your business and wealth.
Analysing your Figures to Grow your Wealth as a Female Entrepreneur
Even if you have overcome overwhelming emotions and set boundaries to maximise your time, you will find it difficult to grow your wealth as a female entrepreneur without understanding and analysing your figures. Despite working 50+ hours a week, lots of the female entrepreneurs that I speak to don’t find time to look at their figures. As a result of this, they don’t look at their business, they don’t know what is working, what is converting or where their clients are coming from.
There is nothing worse than working really hard and not actually getting rewarded or adequately paid for your work. It is therefore vital that as a female entrepreneur, you are analysing your figures, not just from an accountancy and bookkeeping perspective, but also analysing the marketing activities that you are doing and the effectiveness of these. Depending on your business, this could include looking at Google Analytics, looking at your funnel and where your clients are coming from. Once you know where your clients are coming from, you can identify what you need to focus on in order to grow your wealth and what you can reduce or leverage.
Growing your Wealth as a Female Entrepreneur and Paying yourself Enough
It can be really demoralising if you are working really hard and not paying yourself enough and feeling like you are not valued. Paying yourself enough isn’t necessarily about buying yourself the new handbag, it’s about being able to create what is key for you in terms of your values surrounding your wealth. For you, that could include financial security or paying for your kids to attend a school trip without having to scrabble around to find the money. To upgrade your money mindset, you need to pay yourself more and that will allow you to focus on your business and have a higher energy around your business and what you are charging, so that you can continue to grow your wealth.
Growing your Wealth as a Female Entrepreneur in Practice
As a female entrepreneur myself, I have taken the above steps to grow my wealth and give myself more flexibility. I now only have one signature course that we offer and other than this, I work with clients on a one-to-one basis and charge a flat fee. Evolution Financial Planning is in the process of taking on another advisor so that I can grow and leverage my position and spread the workload. In addition to this, I have three other members in my team that allow me to have some time off and my plan is to work three days per week on a healthy salary.