From Boardroom to Baby

Business Expert Jane Copeland Shares her tips for going out on your own…

Here’s a summary of my 5 best tips for aspiring or early stage business owners:

1.What problem are you solving? The bigger and more obvious the problem your product or services solves, the easier it will be to get your business off the ground. However here’s something most people don’t know…

Getting the right message-to-market match will sell millions of dollars of a mediocre product. So as startup or early stage business owner, you’re not trying to create the “perfect” product for the market. Instead you want to develop one that resonates with a market.

Your message has to resonate deeply with your market. To do this you must know who your ideal customer is intimately – not just surface level, you need go deep and understand what she is likely to have for breakfast. Only then can you create marketing messages that are going to resonate.

Focus on message-to-market match as your first order of business.

2.Find accountability. Over the last 6 years working with hundreds of students and people in the process of building their business, there is ONE surprising thing that correlates directly to speed of success. Can you guess what it is?

It’s motivation closely followed by having a deadline. In my own case I got started online back in 2011 when I was on maternity leave. I was aware that I had a small window of opportunity to start my business, otherwise I’d have to go back to my full time corporate job. I don’t think I ever would have got my business off the ground if I didn’t have that deadline.

See, having a deadline can create strong motivation. Give yourself a deadline to work through a project or achieve a milestone in your business and hold yourself accountable to it. Make it a non-negotiable.

3.Understand the real business you’re getting into. It’s not enough to be good at what you do. You my friend are now entering the business of selling. Every single business owner is also a sales person. Business is about making sales so it’s essential that you get good at selling and marketing.

4.No need to reinvent the wheel. Tapping into someone’s knowledge who’s already been where you’d like to go, can be a game-changer. The mistake some aspiring business owners make is that they don’t want to spend money on a business coach or training. But here’s the thing, investing in someone who has been there and done that can save you a truckload of time and money, and therefore it’s just that – an investment. Why reinvent the wheel when you could be turning it? The question shouldn’t be how much does this cost. Instead ask what’s my likely return? Make things easier for yourself by finding a good business coach.

5.How much do you want it? Finally, an important question to ask yourself and a crucial point to consider before going out on your own, is how badly do you want it? Because  being in business isn’t a linear process. In fact, be prepared for a journey filled with ups and downs. The only way to be able to ride the entrepreneurial waves, is to have unwavering determination to reach your goals. And  to do that you have to want it badly.

Author Bio:

Jane Copeland is an Australian entrepreneur, author and founder of award winning blog ‘Coping with Jane’.

Jane is a digital marketing authority who specialises in coaching other women in service based businesses (coaches, nutritionists etc.), helping to set them up for success across business, marketing, sales & package up a product for success etc. all by using the internet.

While pregnant, Jane developed the incredibly rare ‘graves’ disease, due to feeling that she had lost her identity as a woman she decided start a business from home due to her illness. Jane’s passion is helping women in that are in a similar situation she was.