A reader asked for info on starting a business – she wants to be a female entrepreneur! Well, who better to learn from than successful businesswoman Martha Stewart? Her ten tips for for creating and maintaining a successful business will help even established entrepreneurs.
“No one ever said that starting a business was easy,” writes Stewart in The Martha Stewart Rules (10 Essentials For Achieving Success As You Start, Build, Or Manage A Business). “The reality is that companies, even the largest and most well known, falter not once, but many times.”
If you’re a female entrepreneur, you need to know how to bounce back from failure – and not let setbacks become obstacles. Here are more business tips from Martha Stewart — and if you want to get the “full Martha treatment”, read The Martha Rules: 10 Essenials for Achieving Success As You Start, Build, or Manage a Business.
Martha Stewart’s 10 Business Start Up Tips
1. Build your business success around something you love – something inherently and endlessly interesting to you. So, write the book you want to read, bake the cakes you want to eat, and sell the clothes you want to wear.
2. Focus your attention and creativity on basic things, which people need and want. Then, look for ways to enlarge, improve, and enhance your Big Idea. For instance, my Quips and Tips for Achieving Your Goals evolved into a site about love relationships in particular, not goals in general. So, I enlarged my basic idea (a blog about goals) into an more specific website about relationships – When Love Bugs You. That’s what readers seem to need and want.
3. Create a business plan that allows you to stay true to your Big Idea, yet helps you focus on the details. Remain flexible enough to zoom in or out on the vital aspects of your enterprise as your business grows. Martha Stewart’s third business start up tip involves a telescope (to look ahead), a wide-angle lens (your business’ environment), and a microscope (the details of your business).
4. Share your knowledge about your product or service with customers to create deep connections. Don’t just sell your product or service: help your customers or clients by teaching them, getting to know them, and asking for ideas or feedback. This business start up tip from Martha Stewart doesn’t mean you have to have a network tv show! Use Twitter, your blog, or email to reach your customers.
If your business start up is consulting, read How She Became a Small Business Marketing Consultant.
5. Use smart, cost-effective promotional marketing techniques that will arrest the eye, tug at the heart, and convey what is unique and special about your business or service. Martha Stewart uses the example of Madge (a manicurist) selling Palmolive dish soap. She adds a personal touch to a mundane household product. When starting a business, female entrepreneurs need to find their own touch.
6. Put quality at the top of your list of priorities, and keep it there. Quality is something you should strive for in every decision, every day. This means striving to be your best self – even in the details – when you’re starting and running your business.
7. Seek out and hire employees who are brimming with talent, energy, integrity, optimism, and generosity. Search for advisers and partners who complement your skills and understand your ideals.
8. When faced with a business challenge, evaluate or assess the situation, gather the good things in sight, abandon the bad, clear your mind, and move on. Focus on the positive, stay in control, and never panic. This is one of Martha Stewart’s business start up tips that comes from her professional experience with stock and investment fraud.
9. Remember that in business, there’s a difference between a risk and a chance. A well-calculated risk may very well end up as an investment in your business. A careless chance can cause it to crumble. When an opportunity presents itself, never assume it will be your last.
10. Listen intently, learn new things every day, be willing to innovate, and become an authority your customers will trust. As a female entrepreneur, you will find great joy and satisfaction in making your customers’ lives easier, more meaningful, and more beautiful.
“When work is based in passion, it does not feel like work – it feels fulfilling and empowering, far more about creating, building, devising, initiating, leading, and serving than simply moving through one task and on to another,” writes Martha Stewart.
Do you want to work from home? Read 30 Home Based Business Ideas. I’m a professional blogger who works from home, and I love not going into a “real” job everyday.
If you want more info on Martha Stewart’s business start up tips, please let me know below! I’d be happy to write another article, explaining any of Martha Stewart’s business rules in more depth.
