Whatever you say, say it with confidence. The good news is that you don’t have to feel confident in order to portray confidence. You might not be feeling confident but you got to project the confidence.
Getting involved in this digital age can be difficult to network and it's strongly suggested to do it in person. Ashley worked with speaking story coaches through a VC program and one piece of advice the coaches gave her you may find helpful is improv (taking improv classes) because it helps you learn to think on your feet and to be able to talk through any conversations.
Learn the language of revenue. People don't truly understand the heart of revenue operations in the business and in their business particularly. If you're a business owner the biggest liability is financial liability and so understanding how money works are critical no matter what you are selling, what you are doing, and how you are doing it.
Just trust your gut. Especially a woman, have this innate intuition that they should look into it and listen to it throughout their journeys. It can be scary or it can be like anxiety or might look like you are overthinking it but sometimes honing in and listening to that gut feeling can make a huge difference.
Find yourself a mentor if you can. Somebody to guide you, Somebody that ca n have that perspective aside from yourself. As a business owner, you've got so much going on and so many things to be concerned with. It's good to have somebody who can stand back and kinda sort through all the noise like hey this is a good idea or maybe not such a good idea. Get yourself a mentor or somebody that you can talk to about the decisions you make so you don't go off in the wrong direction, get some advice fro...
People nowadays are too quick to go out and look for investors and funding. Rather they should just put a little extra thought into "How could we start this on our own? and how could we implement and get cashflow from that?". If you don't need to get investors, you've come up with a very clever system. It's also not like if your system requires an investment don't shy from that as well but you still got to write up your business plan so it would invite investment.
Many entrepreneurs struggle to talk about their business in a way that people on the other end of the conversation find engaging. When you can openly talk about your business and make people take an interest, it can lead to new relationships and possibly even new clients.
Focus on finding the right people or finding the right co-founder. If you want to start on your own, that's totally fine. It's like if you want to go fast go alone or if you want to go far go together. Find somebody that compliments you.
Get out there and meet as many people as you possibly can. There are so many different networks where you can get on and have a random meeting with a guy for 45 minutes each week. It is transformative. You can move from having this small circle that you are surrounded with to a broad one.
The one piece of advice is to try to partner with someone that is good in an area where you are not. If you could find a partner it doesn't have to be your wife it could be a colleague, it could be someone else out there that would really compliment you and participate in the business and do much for that business as you can but just in a different area because you're not gonna be able to do everything by yourself.
Keep an open mind to everything you do. If your customer is talking to you listen to them. You can't tell people how to use your product you can't say you're holding it wrong, you're using it wrong. You're there to serve them. If they need something and they are willing to pay and you can do it which wouldn't impact you that much you can try it.
The best way to figure out what to do is to test it out. Once we start testing even on just 100 or 50 customers, the needs are really clear. They don't care for example about the package of the box or the big logo. They just want to feel comfortable with the high-quality item. There are so many small details that we don't know or even can't imagine but once we start testing people would tell you the same thing. So testing your hypothesis is a minimum viable product.
Be on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is such a treasure cove for building your brand, growing your visibility, and really finding your audience so that you can create new opportunities.
Having a network is important. Having people that you can talk to, having people that you can share your challenges with who aren't gonna judge you who aren't beholding to you in some way so that you get some honest feedback. It's surprising how differently someone else might look under the same set of circumstances that you do and give you the complete insight you might not have thought of. If you're starting a journey and you don't have a network of peers, create that network of peers because ...
Once you start growing teams and managing people, the power of being intentional with your decision-making as a leader whether you are a leader of one or leader of 100 is incredibly important. When you make intentional decisions, even if you're just holding intentionality to yourself you're doing the right amount of do-diligence, you're exploring why you're making that decision, and also you're weighing out if you have multiple options, what are the pros and cons of each of these options and the...
Just be curious, you have something in you that you want to offer, and being curious and talking to people, being empathetic and listening to their stories, you begin to match what you have in you to what the world needs from you.
Don't quit your day job, not that you won't succeed, don't take it that way but when somebody has an idea that they would like to pursue it does take a lot of time to do it but when start to run out of the money because it not taking off like you wanted it to, it does put a lot of stress.
Make sure you have a single problem that you are focused on at any given point in time and treat it as existential. It is just what is the single thing that is the most critical for your business at this point in time and actually worry about that one thing and then move on to the next thing. It is the behavior that could be the most useful.
Be very clear about where you're headed. What is it that you want to do, what timeline, how much revenue, how big a company, how big a footprint, and what is your market? Be very clear on all these things that will take to satisfy you because in the end getting exactly what you want is what's going to be the ultimate satisfaction in life.
Work with folks who value what you bring to the organization. Whether you are a subcontractor or not, you bring value and should be valued. Folks should respect that and if they don't you can walk away. All money ain't good money.
Never get too high, never get too low. The swings in the startup are insane. One day you'll go from "Wow we just got 500 users on your platform" to "Wow this platform sucks because of the way it's built". Find the silver lining in everything and always try to learn and be better the next day you came in the day before.
What are your goals? Goals are like road maps; they get you from one point to another. Goals provide the direction you need to reach your destination, the motivation to sustain you on your trip, and a way to measure your progress.
Put yourself in uncomfortable situations. Do things that make you uncomfortable because that's how you grow as a person. So when it comes time to make decisions as an entrepreneur, they are never emotional you're just doing it because you know you have to and growing is uncomfortable.
Have a plan. Maybe you have heard this before, create one page about what your business is gonna be about, what's your product and services, what you think your market will be, what your pricing would be, and do some quick math if you can make money and have all that in a place. Start with a one-page plan.
Know yourself. Absolutely know yourself. You are the leader. At the end of the day, you are launching something and you have to innately know your strengths and your weaknesses and who you are and what makes you tick, and what you need. It's like you are the generator, you're the sole inspiration.
Build an email course. Building out an email course is the best way to have something of value right from the beginning and to stay in constant communication with your ideal client. It gives you a place to point people towards.
Go find the customers and talk to them. Never stop talking to them and just ask questions about their pain points. The thing that will make you successful or not is going to be - Do you understand these customers' pain points, can you find more of them, and can u solve them a solution.
Decide what kind of business you want. Be true to yourself. If you're an introvert or if you don't like managing projects or don't want to be a manager or whatever it is. If you just want to work 2 days a week. It's up to you to be real with yourself about that don't try to make something giant. Build what makes you happy.
Don't underestimate the power of personal branding. You go from nobody to suddenly somebody who a lot of people want to speak to and that really open doors because suddenly you got contacts, you can engage with them on social media people see that you're offering value upfront, you get to learn from them, you get to have really engaging conversations with people. There are just so many benefits.
Just go for it. There are a lot of inexperienced founders who take way too long developing an idea, getting a lot of opinions, and not just starting. That is really the number one thing, is go for it and get started right away. It doesn't have to be perfect you can always fix it as you go along.
