The Minimalist Guide To Becoming A Successful Woman Entrepreneur

Business woman at home using laptop

Do women make better entrepreneurs? It’s a controversial gender-biased question, but the answer may surprise you. According to serial entrepreneur Andrew Griffiths, who has worked with men and women around the world in a number of companies, both big and small, women do make better entrepreneurs.

In an article he wrote for Inc.com, entitled “6 reasons why women make better entrepreneurs than men,” he argued his case.

In his experience women were more honest, more aware and emotionally intelligent, fairer negotiators, better at getting to the point, appreciated the value of creativity, and valued relationships and well-being over business interests.

Successful Women Entrepreneurs around the World

Dr. Jennifer Riria from Kenya is the group CEO of Kenya Women Finance Trust. The microfinance business funds women with great business ideas. The primary trait that made her successful was compassion. She focused on how to enrich the lives of women in Kenya and looked for ways to empower them.

Maria Mahdaly from Saudi Arabia is the founder of Rumman Company. The publishing company offers a portable guide to Jeddah and Riyadh, with an emphasis on fine dining and other things that would interest visitors to these cities. The primary traits that made her successful were passion and persistence. She is passionate about the quality of life in Riyadh and Jeddah and wanted to share them with the world. She was also persistent in building her own publishing empire, starting at age 19.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw from India is the founder of Biocom. Her company offers cutting edge biotech tech products. She is worth an estimated $655 million. The primary trait that made her successful was combining her in-depth scientific knowledge with a knack for successfully managing huge projects.

3 Tips to Succeed In Your Own Business

1. Hire the right employees.

Lisa Falzone, the CEO and Co-founder of Revel Systems, a company that provides iPad point of sales systems for grocery stores, retailers, and restaurants, offers this hiring advice on Entrepreneur.com: 

“Over the course of three years,I have grown Revel Systems from 0 people to a team of more than 160 employees, based here in San Francisco and across the globe. As my team has grown, I’ve developed a system for both evaluating prospective employees as well as nurturing existing ones. Although we tried a few outside hires for management positions, we found that our current, long-standing employees were a better fit for leadership positions, as they have a deep understanding of our culture and our product. This, as well as the explosive growth of this company, has prompted me to share some of the modes by which I grow the best team.”

2. Invest in useful technology.

Technology can provide the winning edge in business. Besides looking into things like cloud computing and Software as a Service, a business can often do very well by using practical software. If there is something you need to do, there is likely to be an app for that. If you want to organize remote teams to collaborate on a project, there’s Kanban boards. If you want to manage digital contracts around the world, there’s e-signature. If you want to handle a ton of boring business plan transcriptions, there’s Online OCR, which can recognize multilingual documents in 28 languages.

In addition, if you have a particular type of business, then you can use software specifically designed for that business. If, for example, you’re running a staffing company, you know how important it is to get paperwork done quickly. Using e signature for staffing companies makes it easier to speed up the application process, cut costs, increase efficiency, and improve customer and client service.

3. Stay on top of your finances.

Often the success of a business is based on how well it manages its numbers. The most brilliant business ideas or the most daring vision will come to naught if expenses exceed revenue.

Here are four ways to manage your money better:

a. Avoid manual accounting. Software can often do the work faster and more efficiently, as well as make it easier to keep track of where your money is going. Quick Books Online is excellent for a small business. It integrates with 150 apps and is popular among accountants. If you have a really small business, –you’re a solopreneur or hire less than 5 people–then Zoho Books with its uncluttered dashboard and clean layout may work better.

b. Reinvest your profits. Calculate the lowest costs you can pay for overheads, then plough back what remains after expenses into the business. It’s tempting to increase expenses as a business profits, getting more perks for yourself and your employees, improving décor and upgrading equipment, but the best use of your money in the first few years is to grow your business.

c. Negotiate when possible. When working with vendors, there is always some room for negotiations. See if there are ways to get a discount or to allow you to pay thirty days after the receipt of a service.

d. Hire slowly. As your business grows, you will need more help. One way to reduce the costs of hiring someone part-time or full-time is to outsource the work to Independent Contractors around the world using the Internet. Services like elance.com or guru.com allow you to find service providers for all kinds of technical help you may need with your business.

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Ms. Career Girl

Ms. Career Girl was started in 2008 to help ambitious young professional women figure out who they are, what they want and how to get it.