NETWORKING WAHM

Archive for the ‘Business Growth’ Category

We ALL have time management issues today. How do we improve our time management to create more time to network? How does improving our time management lead to networking opportunities more often? Implementing time management skills will ease up your with time to attend more meetings to meet more contacts.

By attending more meetings means more contacts in your network. Professional contacts are people who know and trust you! They are your best references and the “word of mouth” is still the most trusted from of advertising. Your contacts are your referral partners. A referral partner is simply a professional contact who will vouch for you. We all know of people who are great at what they do in our network often in conversations someone will say “I need to work on find someone who’s knows how to___”. We’ll say in reply ”I know of a guy who does___ ” Now how many times have we heard that phrase? Often by having a large referral base it will lead to more clients. Then end result is more income to your business! 

Part of time management is outsourcing when needed. As you grow with your business, you’ll learn we’re really better off hiring out some tasks…granted it’s hard to hand over control. We totally understand, it’s a necessary step to get to where you want to be in the end! For growth and expansion, even to look more polished and professional it’s necessity in some aspects of business.

It’s in the nature in our culture today, time management and networking are harder. It’s harder to find time for networking with so many devices to manage we’re all overwhelmed. With loads of social media sites to stay actively engaged on. Then we have loads of activities to attend for business/career and our family time to manage too.. we’re BUSY! Busier than we have ever been. How on earth can we find the time to network to build our contacts for our business or career growth?

We’re bombarded with emails and direct messages from everywhere today. From everyone from professional contacts to others who’d just like to get to know us a bit more. With all the job seekers out there reaching out, you may come across those messages also. You’ll have those who’d like to work for you reaching out. Many job seekers have taken to writing emails for leads.

All the messages are really overwhelming and hard to keep up with. Also, spammers are still able to make there way through the spam filters with very ingenious ways. They’re great at tricking the system. So how do you personally manage all of the messages and weed out the ones which are the most important? *TIP* - Personally I use lists everyday in my email accounts and in social media.

Suggestions to help :

1) Use folders in within your email!  Make folders and move your emails around. To utilize NEW folders it’s a step to stay organized. Prioritize how soon you need to reply to keep you organized ”High Priority”, “Reply A.S.A.P.”, “Answer Soon” “When I have time” for example are great folder titles.

2) Consider outsourcing for your email or other tasks! Outsourcing has grown tremendously over the last few years. Outsourcing is taking off! Outsourcing has grown, because our needs have changed and the way we do business has changed! The need for all of us is really to be out front and “the face” of your business! To become very diversified with our marketing campaigns! We all need to do it all! To be out front rather than on the backend of our businesses or careers. This is really why outsourcing has grown.

3) Consider hiring a Virtual Assistant! The VA community of professionals is a fantastic resource for anyone who would prefer to be networking over replying. There are many stay at home mothers who are former corporate women who today are top notch Virtual Assistants.

4) Prioritize importance of actions! Do what needs to be done now? Have a what I call a ”Priority Hit List” The 5 top priorities of the day are_____, ____,____,_____, and _____    All the rest for messages and actions can wait until later.

5) Delegate to others! As a business owner the hardest part is really finding people with strong work ethics to accomplish your mission! Who are those people you’d impeccably trust? Those who’d do a quality job at the tasks assigned? Those are the people you “MUST” have as employees. It’a not an option in hiring! To go the top, top people are must haves! If you’d like your company to go grow must start with quality people. Put enormous time into finding the right team of people! The return on investment is HUGE!

6) Consider hiring social media management or a consultant. Social media consultants are the way to go for better understanding how to effectively target your audience. Think of a target when it comes to social media marketing. Excellent marketing people understand how to find the center of the target, your prime clients you’ve been working so hard to locate yourself. I believe in working smarter not harder. I own a company which does exactly this! My NEW company Divas Social! You name it we do it when it come to social media! http://divassocial.com  On Twitter – http://twitter.com/divassm and  http://twitter.com/divassocial  On Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/DivasSocialMedia 

7) Training your family for tasks you have been doing yourself. Aren’t we mothers all guiltly of doing too much ourselves? Children are great at helping once they feel rewarded for their actions. Laundry, Dishes, Cleaning, Emails etc. the list goes on. They’ll need these skills once they’re grown so why not start to mastering it now?

Break large projects into tasks. Always step and chunk your work into smaller pieces. It’s less overwhelming to look at smaller steps. It’s always easier with large projects to have phases or steps leading to a much bigger goal.

I’m just amazed how hard women are working today! Many of the mompreneurs are the most versatile people of all. We’re businesswomen with business ventures of every type. Many are even running multiple businesses all while raising a family. The dynamics are slightly crazy at times for most of us. Those who try to run businesses while raising a family, we all attest it’s hard, but it worth the end result.

How does one manage so much? It takes a lot just to run a business never mind a family and a business? While having a family and running a business is worth it, it’s not a cakewalk. It comes down to priorities and taking care of what’s most important first. For most of us it’s the children first and everything else is second.

I’m truly amazed by the women I meet. In the business groups today online and in person the most dynamic women are leading and teaching others. Some are bloggers, others are magazine editors, some are social media developers, coaches coaching others, the careers choices are unlimited. Many are doing so many different things to build their business brands, it’s very empowering to other women even to watch.

Then some are in also launching themselves into podcasting. With the YouTube anyone can become a star. The online radio shows have taken off they’re where today’s women are building empires. Many of us women are combining podcasting with our other businesses, because it’s more comfortable than being on camera. We’re truly layering ourselves and branching out in lots of directions at once. The list goes on as to exactly who the podcasters are  - some are authors, some are chefs, then you have bloggers, amongst true corporate businesswomen. The list goes on to include life coaches to even doctors who today have found podcasting touches lives. Podcasting is a great way to get your message out and market your own business.  You know you have a captive audience when they tune in just to listen directly to your show.

It’s an exciting time and who knows what could be next? In the social media world who knows what could be next? We’re Facebooking, Tweeting, YouTubing and Podcasting to get where we want to go with our careers. Many of these women are building  up and teaching  others along the way, as a powerful group of forward thinking women.

We all have heard of the companies which are originals. The way to become a huge success is to think up an a truly original product or service. One no one else has developed and taken to the market yet. Many are household names. To the point of the which the brand name becomes synonymous with the product.  How does this even happen? To become successful to that point? It’s incredible, but it does happen. Kleenex it’s brand name which we use rather synonymously, we use the ‘brand name’ Kleenex in place of the ‘product name’ – a tissue. How many times have you asked for a Kleenex over a tissue?

How does that level of success happen? Well one way to truly become success, is to be original. Many inventors spend their lives only thinking up new new products to bring to market. Some create  only a few successful hit products while there are a few who have created several hit products over their careers as inventors. Different products are created in their mind’s eye, which overtime and development we will someday all will be using.  Once the product is created, developed and marketed, we all take for granted the product not understanding the years it took to bring the product to market.

‘The first and only type’ products are the real gold mines of the business world. Swiffer comes to mind, now who is going to top that product?  How do one become the first and only? Thinking, thinking and more thinking is how it’s done.  Fairly new companies such as dog waste removal services did not exist until recently, but it’s a huge success. Every year new successful ones are created out of no where to become gold mines.

Well the same business philosophy applies to women businesses. Create a new business which has not been developed yet.  Virtual assistance, blog server hosting, web content developers, affiliate managers, blog advertising companies are all examples of newer type businesses which women can do from home. What will be the next newly created career or service for women to do from home? Who knows what it will be? Maybe you do, maybe your designing it right now! Reflect on what is needed to help the growing female sisterhood on the net. Think about what exactly do women business women want to outsource? Outsourcing has created many women’s careers. Once you become successful there is no way you can do it all, you must outsource some of what you to do in a day. You may of found a new business opportunity for yourself? Picking up an outsourced task or creating a service in helping women with their business needs. Women who work from home have needs! There’s a whole population who are working from home and can’t get it all done from home. Their business needs are your opportunity to gain and grow your own business.

We’re really growing! Growth it can be a great thing and a bad thing – if your a mompreneur! Mompreneurs are very different than other moms. We think up deals and ideas all day long. All while changing diapers and driving the kids around we’re running our businesses. Well in the spirit of growth we are now going to start a new venture with blog links. Our first time is today! Enjoy!

Lots of  great blogs to enjoy on your Sunday!

<script src=”http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=87425” type=”text/javascript” ></script>

post shared with http://momsindulgence.com