Editorial Team
Female entrepreneurs need mom tips and tricks at work. They take on many challenges while running a business. They may face difficulties such as competition from male-owned businesses, lack of proper funding, meeting high expectations, as well as balancing home life and work-life.
While there are many obstacles, there are also tremendous accomplishments that women will experience while owning a business. Each of which may help to motivate and further drive the growth of their businesses. However, in order to reach any achievement and run a profitable business, it’s essential for women to structure their business in a way that will benefit them while also setting a blueprint for success.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a definitive handbook that gives you mom tips and tricks at work or guides you in the right direction when running a successful -business as a woman, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t resources available. If you are a woman looking to grow personally and professionally in your business, here are some tips and tricks that will benefit you.
Implement a Business Plan
Whether you are just starting your company or have a few years of experience, one of the most crucial mom tips and tricks is to implement a business plan. This plan will help to guide you through the process and begin to drive your business in the right direction. Business plans tend to include, overall company goals, department and employee goals, growth structure, mission and value statements, and strategic objectives for the future.
Specifically, as a female-owned business, you can even include the certification and proof of your woman-owned business. Businesses led by women stand out as they aren’t as common as male-owned businesses so having that information in the plan will benefit you and your company.
Once you have created your business plan, another great mom tip and trick is to reach out to someone who can help review and adjust anything that may be insignificant. This can include your attorney, a partner in your business, or even a potential investor in your business.
While this final business plan can be helpful for the start of your business, it can also be useful to track growth years down the line. As you start to get into the swing of things and your business takes off, you may have to refer back to your plan to ensure things are headed in the right direction. Additionally, this revisit to your plan is a great opportunity to make any necessary adjustments to your strategy and better suit future business needs.
Creating a Strong Mission Statement
As a woman-owned business, having a strong and powerful mission statement is extremely important. Well, for any business it is important, but specifically for women who want to stand out, it’s ideal to craft a creative or powerful statement that will benefit the company as a whole. While brainstorming certain goals and objectives for your mission statement, be sure they are ideas that will make you stand out from the rest of your competitors.
Doing research on what your competitors offer and what their mission statements consist of will help to frame yours, as well as provide guidance toward making yours better than the rest. Your mission statement should include what your company does, its goals, how to serve your target market and what your values are. Not only should you create the statement to reflect your company, but you should also tailor it toward your target audience.
To keep a specific, but large consumer base and to maintain their loyalty, you want them to feel like they are a priority. Continuously gaining your consumer’s trust by providing them with high-quality service, rapid response, and honesty will keep them as a constant customer and supporter.
Running a women-owned business can be difficult, so keeping your customers happy is one of the easiest mom tips and tricks. It will boost the traffic to your company. Doing that with a positive and informative mission statement will help the growth of your company.
Mom Tips & Tricks at Work: Balancing
Working moms can sometimes feel exhausted, both mentally and physically, because they are struggling with their work and home-life balance. Between their work responsibilities and being there for their children, moms can often feel as if they aren’t able to give their full attention to both work and their personal lives.
Working moms or moms who run their own businesses should be intentional with finding balance in their lives or they may lose sight of what they love, both personally and professionally. Regardless of the demands of your career, you should never feel like there is a void in your home life because you are spending too much time working and not enough time at home.
Moms who work may consider setting strict working times, such as working 8-4, and then once they are logged off of work, they must refrain from checking their work phone or email for the rest of the day in order to be present at home. Creating schedules and boundaries will not only benefit you but will also benefit your family. Making the boundaries known can help to separate your work and home life as you don’t want to continuously build up stress.
On top of creating boundaries at home, some other tips for managing mom and work life for newer business owners are:
- Create a dedicated home office that the rest of the family knows not to come to when you are working
- Utilize a shared calendar to ensure the entire family knows when you are working and when you have free time
- Purchase dedicated office equipment that is only used for work and not other familial tasks such as homework or other projects
- Handle familial tasks like meal prepping on weekends so you don’t need to drop everything and cook during the workday
- Block off time each week that is not intended for work or familial tasks
Both you and your family deserve the attention that you can give to one another and eliminating the worry of any distractions is in your family’s best interest.
Mom Tips and Tricks: Receiving the Appropriate Funding
Starting a new business, no matter the size, is going to be an expensive investment. If you can’t handle the costs alone, don’t panic, there are plenty of ways to fund your business. For brand new business owners, you will be restricted to certain types of funding, but options are still available.
Newer business owners tend to use a personal loan for their startup funds over a business loan, as business lenders have stricter requirements to qualify for funding. Most business loans require positive net cash-flow statements, proof of income, and the business needs to be established for at least two years before qualifying for funding.
While you are waiting to qualify for a business loan, a personal loan, business credit card, or other funding product will allow you to use the money for whatever you may need and not feel restricted as to what you can put the money towards. You may use the funds for your office lease, office furniture, or purchasing office supplies like computers, notebooks, pens, and any other necessities.
However, like any other minority group, women entrepreneurs may face challenges while applying for loans so it is important that they do their research before taking that step. Being prepared and having an idea of what the challenges may be could potentially benefit you as you sit down to speak with someone.
The more information that you can provide to the bank or lender, the better chance you have to receive the loan. Lastly, make sure to sort through your current financial situation, review any debts you may have, and create a plan for how you are going to repay the lender in the future. Each of these will ultimately help your chances of receiving a loan.
Preparing a game plan before speaking with a bank or financial institution about why you are applying for a personal loan can also increase your chances of approval. If you find that you are struggling with receiving a loan for the full amount you need, coming up with a backup plan may be beneficial as well. You may even start putting your own money away and applying for a loan that is half the cost of what you originally wanted.
Positive Outcomes of a Female-Owned Business
As a female business owner, you will come across many different obstacles on a daily basis that you will have to learn to work through. However, once you’ve powered through the rough part, you’ll find a number of incredible accomplishments and maybe even something that can better your business.
Each challenge and hardship that you face can teach you invaluably important lessons that you can even use to educate your employees. As a female entrepreneur who needs mom tips and tricks at work, you are setting yourself as an example to other women out there and little girls who can grow up and see that they are capable of being successful and a true leader!