8 Tips for the Female Entrepreneur

Being a female entrepreneur brings its challenges but also some pretty exciting opportunities! As I head into my second year in business, I have a few go-to tips & tricks for ensuring that I cultivate work/life balance and prioritize the important stuff. Here’s a handful of the highlights – tips for the female entrepreneur:

1. Stay Centered in Your Mission

When you know your “why”, you’re able to clearly communicate this to customers/clients and guide your employees and contractors with a specific mission or goal. This also helps keep you centered and striving for what got you into this line of work in the first place.

2. Outsource What You Can

Refer to the experts whenever you feel stuck on something – taxes, bookkeeping, contracts, even branding, and photography. Surround yourself with those who know exactly what they’re doing and specialize in your specific business needs so you can focus more on what you love to do and avoid having to learn EVERYTHING just to run your biz. At first, this can be difficult to afford, but it’s crucial to grow.

3. Remember: There’s Enough to Go Around

Part of being a powerful entrepreneurial female is acknowledging that there is enough work to go around and if you interview for a gig that you don’t land, you don’t need it! You can get back up and try all over again. This should help keep your head in the game and keep you resilient through the up and down rollercoaster of entrepreneurship.

4. Know Your Audience

Get into the minds of your target audience members. Where do they spend their time, where do they live, what do they do for fun? This will help you reach them both in-person and online. Knowing exactly who you are serving is the key to a successful business. 

5. Be Mindful of Your To-Do List

I catch myself working from early mornings to late nights, sometimes forgetting to eat lunch! Use a task system such as Trello or Asana to track your to-do list for the week/month and make sure that you don’t get too bogged down in the daily emails and unexpected surprises that pop up. It’s rare that emails can’t afford to wait a few hours, so scan for the most important items and ignore the rest until later in the day once you’ve completed your most important tasks. Always prioritize your most important to-do list items for the start of your morning when your mind is the freshest.

6. Focus on Inclusivity

Always make sure you are cultivating an environment that is positive for everyone involved – your staff need to be benefiting from the space just as much as you are. Send out team surveys, host group retreats/therapy and always make sure to listen when ideas are suggested.

7. Set Boundaries (and Stick to Them)

One of the most common challenges of the everyday entrepreneur is knowing when to take a break and shut that laptop off! You don’t have to stick to a strict 9-5, but making a deal with yourself on when you are going to take a tech breather and spend quality time with friends and family is key. Make sure you set boundaries with your clients/customers and stick to them!

8. Donate Your Time

Networking may be about making connections that will better your business – at least this is the message that we’ve been told time and time again. But what if we told you that networking is also about giving. Donating your time, talents and resources to causes that matter to you is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to network. Think about how you can serve others and not simply how others can serve you.

We hope these go-to entrepreneur tips give you actionable ideas for ways you can improve your systems and take a step back for some much-needed work/life balance and self-care. You’ve got this!