A Woman With A Business

Today is the last post in the "So, you want to be an Entrepreneur" series, although really this is the tip of this iceberg!  This entire blog is about being an entrepreneur, but since I must break things up into topics and weekly focuses, we are wrapping this one up!  Today is Part 5, and in case you missed Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 follow the links! So, now, hopefully you have narrowed down products and product lines, and thought about at least one target market for each one.  When you start doing the things I am talking about in this post, you may find that you must go back and redo each of those.  I cannot stress enough that product lines and target markets need to be narrow for this step or else your advertising dollars or your hunts on where to advertise are going to be impossibly large!  Please remember again, you are not excluding shoppers, and you really don't have to exclude products, but you do need to have a target market that is fin...

Thanks for following along with the "So, you want to be an Entrepreneur" series!  Today is Part 3, and in case you missed Part 1 and Part 2 follow the links! Target markets are probably the number one thing that I see entrepreneurs struggle with.  Most entrepreneurs are so afraid that they will finally get a visitor to their shop, but they won't have something for that single person, so they frantically try to come up with something that appeals to everyone.  This type of broad net hopeful marketing may work if you have millions of dollars for television ads that are shown on tv shows where you have millions of viewers from different walks of life.  Unfortunately, most of us, don't have that sort of marketing budget. Knowing your target market will allow you to speak directly to your target customer in your listings, titles, and the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your site.  It also allows you to easily find places to advertise where those people han...

Thanks so much for reading along with this "So, you want to be an entrepreneur" series!  Yesterday, I told you what you needed to be a successful Entrepreneur.  You can find that post here.   You may be saying out loud ... "But you didn't say you needed a great product, service or idea!" Over my years of being self employed, I have seen thousands of great products and services never attain success.  I have also seen products and services become wildly successful despite them not being the best of the best.  The most common reason for these failures was the unwillingness to fully embrace the elements needed for successful entrepreneurship that I talked about yesterday, and not being able to fully define great product line.  A well-defined product line allows you the opportunity, to present yourself as an expert in your field, and to cross promote your goods and services. You will want to start your entrepreneurial quest by having 1 to 3 product or servi...

So, you want to be an entrepreneur.  It's intriguing, it's sexy, it's the dream to be the captain of your ship!  At least that is what they say ... Now, how to take that little idea and turn it into a viable business.  This is part 1 in this series, and please know that these are my ideas, suggestions, but this is the real world, and this is not a guarantee that you will be successful in your entrepreneurial quest. Being an entrepreneur was not my childhood dream, it was not something I even expected to be doing when I was 18, 21, 25 or even 28 when I became self employed.  I became an entrepreneur over time, and I didn't even realize that I was carefully planning and laying my foundation for success. If I told you the product lines that I started thinking of initially, versus what my product lines are now, you may be surprised that they are much different.  Although one of those products became my focus, not all of them stood the test of time.  Be ope...