A business should be built on a solid foundation, and there are several parts of a business that make up the building blocks. We’ve talked about the first two layers and today we go into detail on the last two layers of a strong business foundation – Resources & Customers.
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Episode Transcript
Welcome back I’m Traci Simkins and you’re listening to Refined By Divorce, the podcast for women like you who want to rebuild a thriving life following divorce.
I teach you how to start a service-based business that will support you and your family financially, give you the flexibility you need to set your own schedule, and the independence to live the life you choose.
Being a small business owner is hard work, but I truly believe every wife and mother already has the skills and experience needed for success, I just give you the tools to make it happen.
Every episode we start with a short story of hope and inspiration of the Refined Rebels who came before us and paved the way, but before we get there today, I need to give you a quick update on a couple of things.
This is supposed to be a weekly podcast, but I’ve told you before how my year started off with a hospital stay, literally on the day the podcast launched, and since then I have been playing catch up. My health has taken a little bit of a turn in the last couple of weeks, not been feeling great. I was supposed to be launching a new course April 1st, actually April 3rd, so yesterday, but I decided I need to you know, I need to take care of myself, that there are times when I just have to slow down, and even though there are many things that I wanted to do, and should be doing, and I’m “shoulding” all over myself and I know I “shouldn’t” be doing that either! But I decided to take some time, and so my apologies that this is late, as in two weeks late. But hopefully going forward I will be on time, although you never know, you just never know how your health is going to go, and you’ve got to appreciate it when you’ve got it. I just, I really do appreciate the days when I feel good. That wasn’t supposed to be an excuse, just a reason, so enough of them, today’s Rebel never would have given an excuse! But she lived an incredible 90 years.
Refined Rebel – Anna Hedgeman
Anna Arnold Hedgeman was born in 1899, just before the turn of the century, in Iowa, and then she moved with her family to Minnesota. She was not permitted to attend school until she was 7, but she went on to graduate high school and became the first African American to attend Hamline University where she graduated with a degree in English. She worked with the Young Women’s Christian Association for the next 12 years, before she became the executive director of the Black YWCA branch in Philadelphia. After successfully becoming the director of four different YWCA facilities, she met her future husband, Merritt. A. Hedgeman and they got married in 1936.
Anna was a firm believer that permanent legislation was needed to outlaw discrimination in employment. She lobbied for a permanent FEPC agency and led the fight against employment discrimination at a nationwide level. She then became dean of women at Howard University, but her work in politics was far from over. She worked on Harry Truman’s presidential campaign in 1948 and upon his request, became the executive director of the national citizen’s committee. Anna was officially sworn in as the first Black American to hold a position in the Federal Security Agency.
Anna went on to become the first Black woman to hold a mayoral cabinet position in the history of New York City. She also ran for other offices she didn’t win, but drew much needed attention to the issues of poverty in the city.
She then served on the planning committee organizing the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that took place on August 28, 1963, which brought 250,000 people to the Lincoln Memorial and highlighted the role African American women had in the civil rights movement.
Anna remained a fearless advocate for African Americans and employment rights. She was a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and wrote two books. She passed away in Harlem, NY, having received many awards and recognition, including honorary doctorates from both Hamline and Howard Universities.
You can read much more about her and the other rebels on the website at refinedbydivorce.com/refinedrebels
Resources & Customers
Anna was a tireless and fierce advocate who understood the importance of people and resources to her success, which is what we’re going to talk about today.
When building a business, you want to ensure that you have a strong foundation. We’ve talked about the four main parts of a service business and how if you spend the time and effort on each one, your foundation will be solid, setting you up for success.
We’ve gone over the first two layers in detail, the Infrastructure and Service Offered. Today I want to talk about the last two, Resources and Customers.
Let’s start with Resources. In the context of business, a resource is anything that’s necessary to carry out the various tasks of your business. Figuring out ahead of time what you’ll need is pretty straightforward, but coming up with creative sources and figuring out creative ways to leverage what you have takes some additional effort. Many people who start a business don’t do this step and they’re missing out on the benefits too.
Some of the standard resources it takes to run a business are labor, equipment and space or land, finances and time. So for each of these four categories, take note of what you have and what you need, and then you can work on coming up with creative strategies and unique solutions.
Resource Category 1 - Labor
Almost every business requires human labor to get through a work day. Labor includes your own labor, all the people who work for you, and the jobs that they do. For the type of service business I help you build, one that requires little to no capital to get started, it usually starts out as a workforce of 1 ––> You. You’re doing everything. You build your business on sweat equity, and it take more labor than delivering just your service. Think about things that need to be done on a daily basis, on an annual basis, you’ll need to account for labor on administrative tasks, marketing and sales, taxes and legal obligations.
I think on average, self-employed people spend typically about 16 hours per week in their business.
Once you know what labor needs you’re going to have you want to figure out what you have at your disposal. Who do you know? Family, friends, acquaintances who might be willing and able to help with the labor, either for free because they love you, or in exchange for your service or payment.
Does your brother in law do taxes? Do you have a friend from school who’s an attorney or accountant? You get the drift.
I’ve had help from friends and family, including my own very talented children.
My daughter has helped with social media and copywriting, and what’s trending, she keeps me up to date. My son, he is an artist and graphic designer, and I consult him on many things about the business, and then my second son is an engineer by heart. He’s into coding and technical setup and he just understands how things work, so I’m frequently turning to him for support.
Another option to consider would be an intern, someone who is just learning and can help you kind of get started.
Think about all the people in your life, people that you know that would be willing to help, cause all you have to do is ask. Don’t be afraid of a “no”. You want to consider what labor you can eventually hire out. Once you’re solvent you’re going to have money that you want to reinvest and put back into your business and get to the point where you can hire out these other tasks, this labor, and possibly even the service that you do, so that you can just be a business owner. It just depends on what role you want to play.
Those things if they’re set up ahead of time are going to help you in the future, cause once your business gets rolling, you’re on this moving train and it’s hard to jump off and think about other options. But in the beginning, if you take the time to really look at it and consider what resources you have at your disposal, it’s going to give you that strong foundation.
Resource Category 2 - Physical Items
Most businesses require special, well I shouldn’t say most, some businesses require specialized tools to do their work – hardware, a unique piece of software, or a machine designed to do a certain task.
And then space or land, for now you could just have your computer and be in the corner of your room, like we’ve talked about.
One of the reasons I encourage you to start a service business is because of the limited investment in equipment. You don’t have to have an office, you don’t have to have retail space. It can just be a laptop in the corner in your bedroom, which I’ve done before.
You can run a successful business with next to nothing, some people do it with just paper and pencil, but you’ll likely have a computer, if you’re listening to this podcast, or access to a smartphone, and a small corner to conduct the administrative part of your business and that could be all you need. But take some time to consider what you need and what you already have, as far as physical items.
Some creative options would be buying second-hand, borrowing until you can buy. In the beginning, try to do without until you need it, but you also want to be prepared for when the money starts to come in. You want to know – what’s the first thing that you would buy? Something that will put your business forward.
I started my business on a refurbished Mac laptop that served me well, and actually I still have to this day. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. So ask around, talk to your friends, talk to your family, see what people have that you could borrow, barter, purchase for cheap. There are a lot of options, check second hand stores like I said, or just go without in the beginning and then make sure you’re prepared for when the money starts to come in – what’s the first thing you’re going to buy?
Resource Category 3 - Finances
Okay, the third category of resources are finances, and this is a big one. I have a very detailed set of spreadsheets for you to figure this out. So make it easy on yourself and head to refinedbydivorce.com/getstarted to get your free Entrepreneurial Discovery Packet.
We talked about it before, but basically this is a way for you to determine if entrepreneurship is right for you, and figure out all of these resources and your finances, and that is a huge piece. You’ll have a jumpstart, so get that packet and fill it out, it’s totally free, and if you have questions on it, you can contact me via the website, or you can find me on LinkedIn @tracisimkins
Resource Category 4 - Time
The last category of resources is Time. Treating your time as a resource is very important, and it took me a long time to learn this lesson. The cost of time is measured in terms of another resource, so it needs to be considered alongside labor, energy, land, if you are trading your time for money you just want to be as effective as possible.
I used to believe that if there’s something you can do yourself, you do it, and the more that I’ve realized how finite time is, and how precious and valuable time is, because it truly is limited. Every day that goes by is one less day on this Earth, and it takes a long time, well it took me a long time to learn that, and I don’t know if it took you a long time, but it took me a long time, and once you learn that, you have less of it! It’s frustrating.
You can always make more money, but you cannot get back your time. You’re not limited by how much money you can generate, so it really takes a switch in the way that you think about it, the way that you think about time, the way that you think about finances and understanding that with time being limited and money not, you want to use your time wisely.
Although in the beginning, I teach my clients to bootstrap, to do it yourself, to you know, be scrappy, once you are bringing in an income, you want to start to delegate.
Anything that you can delegate for less than what you can generate is what you delegate out. And that can be anything in the business, but also anything in your personal life. And that’s another lesson that took me a long time to learn. These things that take up our time in our personal life that aren’t aren’t important to us, as far as it’s a task that has to be done, but it’s not, it’s not something that you have to do. You can delegate it out. To have someone come clean your house is a luxury, but it also for me is a necessity at this point.
When you are just fresh out of a divorce and trying to figure out How am I going to make money? How am I going to take care of my family and take care of myself? One of the best things I can tell you to do is to take a look at your time and money and switch the way that you’re thinking about it.
Customers
Customers are the 4th part of a business. Without paying customers, you do not have a business. When you’re just starting out, it can be difficult to anticipate any information about your potential customers, but it’s important to do your market research and figure out who you want to sell to, who wants to buy from you, what they need, what they’re willing to pay for, where are they, how can you find them, how can you reach them, how can you bring them to you. I just threw a lot at you, but we have access to everything right at our fingertips. If you have a computer and internet service, you have access to all of the information that you need.
You want to look at other businesses that are succeeding in that area, which ones have failed and why, you just want to be as best prepared as you can be. You don’t need to know everything, it doesn’t all need to be set in stone. There is a point where you’ve got to take action and you’ve got to just start moving the business forward because if you don’t, you can get stuck in that perpetual planning phase, which I’ve done myself, so you don’t want to be there, you want to do your research and then boom, make your choices and move on.
You may have heard the term ICA which stands for Ideal Client Avatar, who is your dream customer. Many successful entrepreneurs have used this technique and they swear by it. Once you have all of your research done, the idea is to invent a profile of an ideal customer for your service, complete with a name, location, age, occupation and backstory.
You can get as detailed as you want, everything you can think about this person, what movies they love, what books they read, and so on. Like I say, you can be as detailed as you want, but the more information the better. In fact, I have my clients spend a good deal of time on this, probably, well, much more than they want to, but not more than they should, because the truth is, it works. When you’re writing copy for your website, blog post, or an ad, you write it to that person. You are talking to that person.
If you haven’t heard this before, it can sound like you’re excluding everyone but the one imaginary person you’ve made up in your head, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to attract the attention of anyone who identifies with aspects of your ideal client.
The goal is to attract the attention of anyone who identifies with aspects of your ideal client. It can also help you decide where to market, where to network, where to put your time and energy, in order to attract customers to you. Your customers are a very precious resource, I mean everything is important obviously in business, but if you don’t have customers you don’t have a business.
You definitely want to spend the time up front to define who you’re going to sell to, what you’re going to sell to them, and how you’re going to find them. A lot of people will say when you’re starting a business you want to have, you want to be everywhere. I definitely disagree with that approach. You want to know – where would your ideal client live? Do they live on Pinterest? Do they live on LinkedIn? Where are they? And that’s where you want to be. The goal, like I said, is to attract the person that needs your service and is willing to pay for it and able to pay for it. It’s almost like a matching game, right? We want to match your service up with the person who needs it and can pay for it. In a world of noise, speaking to someone based on their interests is going to make you stand out. You just want to be clear on your purpose and your goals, and having laid a strong foundation, you’ll be solid, you’ll be ready to go, you will be able to make money, you will be able to support your family, you will open up a new world that you maybe didn’t even know was possible! Please reach out if you have any questions, any concerns, I’m here for you. And remember, time is finite, use it wisely my lady! All right, have a great week!
Love In, Peace Out.
Bye.
