bgenest, Author at Barbara Genest

August 9, 2022

Six Apps to Stay Organized and Productive as an Entrepreneur

Using tools to streamline your project management, accounting, and other business systems can save you time and important resources. Many of these tools are either free to use or low-cost — making them a highly valuable tool to add. Not only that, tools can keep you more organized and productive, and save time creating value for your target audience.

Here are six apps to stay organized and productive as an entrepreneur:

Monday

Monday is a powerful business tool that can handle anything you need, from marketing to project management or sales and customer relationship systems. Automate any task you need, create quarterly road maps, and keep up with your project deadlines all in one interface.

Zapier

Zapier is a task management tool that not only organizes your tasks but automates them. Zapier integrates with many other important business tools such as Trello, Gmail, Facebook, and more. Create a zap to get tasks done for you automatically. When you create a zap, it creates an action that a trigger starts. A trigger first happens, causing the zap to do what needs to be done for your business and telling the zap what to accomplish. For example, a new lead follows your Facebook page, the tripper, Zapier then automatically sends an email to follow up. The action produced by the trigger can be changed for whatever you need to do.

Canva

Canva allows you to create as many graphics as you need to build and grow your business. Their monthly pro membership is affordable and will enable you to use as many images as possible to create profitable products or interactive and informative content. Create eBooks, Pinterest posts, flyers, presentations, and more.

Expensify

Keep track of your business expenses, receipts, business credit cards, and more all in one place with Expensify. A tool that manages your expenses to use your time where needed most.

Calendly

Calendly is free online scheduling software that helps to eliminate back-and-forth communication and make scheduling appointments more manageable and effective.

Trello

This is a free project management tool that helps to keep track of all the resources required for projects. It can also assign tasks, communicate with your team, and get project work done with an easy-to-use interface.

Give each of these tools a try if you want to run a more organized, productive, and streamlined business as an entrepreneur. These tools solve common problems that many entrepreneurs have to deal with, such as tedious or time-consuming marketing tasks. Allowing tools to take over these tasks and other difficult ones provides you more time to perfect your craft and be more successful as an entrepreneur.

August 9, 2022

The Technology You Should be Taking Advantage of as an Entrepreneur

Using technology can help you reach your customers easier and more efficiently as an entrepreneur or small business. It can also help create more valuable products or services and improve customer service and communication. In other words, technology is a business partner or tool you can’t or don’t want to refuse.

Here are the different technologies you should be taking advantage of as an entrepreneur:

Chatbots and Other Customer Service Tools

Improving customer service is important for retention. However, all the best marketers know that keeping a customer is more manageable than finding new ones. This can simply be done by using chatbots and other automated tools that help to answer questions or even schedule meetings instantly should they need more help.

Project Management Software

Keeping a project organized is essential to making the most impact and benefiting your target audience. Project management systems like Trello and Asana ensure you meet deadlines and get the work required to produce and complete a successful product.

Marketing and Finance Tools

Tracking your finances is important to the overall success of your business. It helps to be sure you pay the right amount of taxes and have enough income to continue. Wave accounting and QuickBooks online are just two examples to try.

Cloud Technology

Today, most businesses generate a lot of content that requires storage and processing power. This can take up a lot of space, be expensive, and be hard to manage without a proper IT department. Dropbox and Salesforce are two examples of cloud services that allow you to store important data such as client information and more.

Automation Tools

Automation is key to saving time as well as money. So many tasks are essential to how your company runs, but they really don’t need human interaction to get it done. This is why tools such as Zapier can be so beneficial. They help automate tasks, so you don’t have to do it yourself.

Data Tracking

Data tracking is important to help keep track of your marketing and overall results as a business. For example, compare sales numbers per quarter to see which marketing strategies impacted. In addition, using data can easily save you time and frustration as you learn how to communicate with your target audience.

Each of these tools or technology helps you better communicate with your target audience, improve your products, reach a wider audience, and increase your overall success as an entrepreneur. While technology can be beneficial, it is important to note that it is only as valuable as the user. In other words, don’t expect the technology to work for you without learning how to use it first. Take your time implementing each of these different tools to see which ones provide the most value or are worth your time implementing.

August 9, 2022

Why New Entrepreneurs Should Be Keeping Up with Technology

Not taking the time to learn the technology your customers or competition are using is a big mistake that can lead to failure. Technology adds convenience for your customers and your business overall. Pretty much every part of your business can be improved with technology.

Here are four important reasons why new and old entrepreneurs should be keeping up with and using technology:

To Improve Communication, Products, and Services

Proper communication is key to understanding your target audience and producing the value they need or want. If you ignore good communication, you are only creating a poor experience for your target audience. Obviously, this does not support the growth of your business. In fact, one negative customer experience is all it takes to avoid your company altogether. In other words, if it is too difficult to read your content, find your products, or communicate with your business at all, your customers will likely head over to your competition.

To Improve Brand Awareness and Relevancy

Ignoring new technology can easily put you behind your competition. If you are not willing to try the new tools your customers are using, you will have difficulty reaching them. If your customers don’t know you exist, you can’t expect to grow a profitable business.

To Save Resources and Streamline Success

Trying to do all the work yourself as a new entrepreneur is a common mistake many make. It can be easy to do as it costs money to use tools or hire others to get the work done. However, many of these tools have low-cost options to get started and make it easier and faster to generate more income. On the other hand, when you try to do all the tasks yourself, something is likely to suffer that can easily hinder your results or make it slower.

To Build and Grow Your Business Faster

Technology makes growing your business easier and faster as it can do tedious and receptive tasks for you. For example, keeping up with daily posts on social media websites or your blog. However, most success comes from delivering consistent value, which technology can do more efficiently.

As you can see, technology makes it easier to build relationships, build brand awareness, streamline your income and grow your business faster. Don’t let your competitors outshine you by making it easier to communicate with your target audience. If you don’t use the tools or technology your customers are using, you will likely be seen as irrelevant.

August 8, 2022

Five Ways to Get Funding for Your Business Idea

Funding is a key part of the business. Only a few profitable business ideas can get started without funds or minimal funds. If you aren’t in the entrepreneur world, be sure your finances and funding are transparent and planned out first. Otherwise, you will fall into the many other businesses that fail in the first year due to poor cash flow or finances.

Here are five ways to get funding for your business ideas and avoid becoming a common statistic:

Use Your Own Funds

Keep a full-time or part-time job until you are fully ready to make the leap. The most common way people get funding for their business is to save as much of their current funds as possible. Once you have proper savings and can replace your bills through your business, it is safer to transition from a full or part-time position.

Ask Friends and Family for Donations

Friends and family will be happy to help if you don’t spam it. Allowing them to invest for a portion of the future profits can also show your appreciation, even if it’s a small percentage.

Preorders

If your business model uses products to grow your profits, then utilizing a preorder model can fund the creation of the product and show your customer’s interest. This is a common way to test if a specific product is viable or not. If the pre-orders are too low to produce the final product, you can return the funds and start a new idea.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is another common way to find funds as an entrepreneur. Platforms such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter allow you to share your business idea and products to reach global investors. Crowdfunding offers one of the best ways to reach many different people around the world and avoid using bank loans. The idea is to provide additional rewards in exchange for an investment. If they reach their investment goals, the business will honor the rewards usually in a product. Users can also provide a donation without anything to support the business idea.

Small Business Bank Loans

Lastly, another way to get funding is by asking a bank. The small business microloan program offers up to fifty thousand dollars to help with start-up costs.

When you first get started, funding will be difficult to find. However, it will get easier as you take action towards your business plan. Furthermore, using other options such as a small business bank loan can also be a great way to get your business idea up and running faster.

August 8, 2022

The Money Management Tips You Need as a New Entrepreneur

The number one reason many businesses and entrepreneurs fail is due to poor money management or understanding of finances altogether. In fact, lack of funding is commonly reported within the first year. However, poor money management can easily be avoided by taking the time to understand business finances and personal finances.

Here are five important money management tips to follow as a new entrepreneur:

Be Aware of and Keep Up with Taxes and Other Business Fees

Don’t mistake ignoring your taxes and other business expenses until the last minute. This can easily set you behind as you can easily rack up fees. Entrepreneurs and business owners must pay their taxes as they go. This means you will not need to pay your taxes quarterly and file annually instead of just annually like you may do as an employee. Employers pay these quarterly taxes for you, which can easily be missed as a new entrepreneur.

Keep Business and Personal Finances Separate

Get a business or separate bank account as soon as possible. This way, you know exactly what expenses to report when filing your annual taxes. You also want to be sure you are not spending any of your business income on personal projects. Not only that, it will make it easier to offer refunds should your business require it.

Keep Clear and Proper Records from the Start

Implement the right controls and tracking processes from the start. This means getting used to asking for receipts and storing important financial documents. It is easier to start with the right system and method than implement it later, as many transactions and other financial data can get lost.

Utilize Accounting Software or a Bookkeeper

For success, opt for accounting software like QuickBooks or Xero. These tools streamline the accounting process and make hiring a bookkeeper easier. If you are not an accounting professional, it is always best to use tools and engage those who have the experience to avoid mistakes.

Build an Emergency Fund

Your emergency fund should now include personal and business requirements for at least six months but even better if you can save for a year or two. This way, you can give your proper business time to build and be ready for any emergencies or mistakes should they happen.

Don’t let poor money management be why you have to go back to being an employee. With the right tips and understanding of what it takes to finance a business, you can be sure you make it past your first year and don’t become a statistic. All it takes is knowledge and a solid business plan to discover what it takes to fund your business idea and more.

July 31, 2022

Four Ways to Improve Your Entrepreneur Network

If you want to legitimize your brand or business and stand out against your competition, you must network. Networking is key to finding your target audience and growing a sustainable business. Finding your target audience is a never-ending job as an entrepreneur. Thankfully, networking can make this job more manageable and less demanding.

The following are four ways to improve your entrepreneur networking skills:

Join Social Media Groups

Facebook and LinkedIn offer many different groups within just about any industry or niche you can think about. Being active in these groups helps you learn more about the individual people that make up the industry and what types of problems they need help with. Not only that, but it also fosters new relationships and helps to find connections you can use to collaborate with to share even more valuable and powerful content.

Attend Relevant Events

Look at your local community college to see if there are any events in your industry to attend. This is especially easy for those within the arts and cultural sector as many cities host events downtown to support local artists and small businesses. Facebook has an option to search for local or virtual events.

Have Something to Offer

In other words, if you are only there to take from them, you won’t be able to grow an authentic network. People attract others because they have something valuable to offer. However, you must be careful not to offer too much, you will simply be taken advantage of. It would be best if you found the right balance. If you give too much, they will likely start expecting it. Be sure the relationships you see are genuine before spending too much time. Unfortunately, many relationships in business are just business, so it is always best to protect yourself first.

Maintain the Connection

Once you find the proper networks, you must do the work to keep the relationship going and strong. The stronger the contection with your network, the more likely they will collaborate with you and introduce you to more people within the industry. You also must be prepared to do the same. This can also look like commenting on other creator content as soon as it goes live or sharing their information through your email marketing campaign without expecting anything in return.

As you can see, networking is a lot easier than you think. All it takes is being active within the right communities and fostering a genuine and beneficial relationship between you and the other party. But, unfortunately, if other entrepreneurs can sense you are just looking to steal their audience instead of providing the benefit, it’s unlikely they will join your network or collaborate with your brand.

July 31, 2022July 31, 2022

How to Gain Experience as a New Entrepreneur

Believe it or not, you can become a successful entrepreneur without experience. However, gaining experience can provide more confidence, perspectives, and knowledge to produce better products, services, or valuable content for your target audience. Not only that, but it helps increase your exposure and creditability as a business or someone within the industry. The best way to install trust within your community is to prove why you are the best to help, which is best done by sharing your experience.

The following are four ways to gain experience within your industry as a new entrepreneur:

Communicate with Your Ideal or Future Customers

Believe it or not, simply communicating with your target audience or ideal customers will help you gain more experience within your industry. When you communicate, you learn more about their needs and desires while gaining new perspectives about the industry. The more you understand what your customers want or need, the more likely you will impact. In other words, you don’t need hands-on experience to know what is valuable as long as you listen to your audience.

Take a Part-Time Job

To gain experience, try it for yourself. For example, get a part-time job or go in full-time just to learn. While the goal is to get away from being an employee, that still doesn’t mean you can’t make a temporary sacrifice to gain all the knowledge you truly need to succeed. Social media assistant or personal assistant positions are just a couple of examples that can help build your skills as a new entrepreneur.

Get Started

To gain experience, do the work. You don’t need to have all the knowledge or know exactly how everything works to start a business. In fact, simply getting started is by far one of the most common ways many successful entrepreneurs believe they made it. However, you can realize success without action, and there is no other perfect time than now.

Find a Mentor or Coach

Finding a mentor or coach willing to teach you everything it takes to grow a business is a great way to avoid many people’s common mistakes on this journey. It can also provide you with the confidence and courage you need to get started.

Overall, gaining experience as a new entrepreneur is not difficult. It only doesn’t seem very easy and out of reach because it’s different and requires going against your comfort zone temporarily. However, gaining experience can help improve your skills and knowledge within the industry to provide additional and more efficient value to your target audience.

July 31, 2022

The Importance of Social Media and Entrepreneurship

Did you know over seventy percent of consumers are willing to make a purchase or work with your business due to a personal interaction on social media? Furthermore, roughly eighty percent of marketing experts today report social media data essential to making decisions and running their company. In other words, without social media, they wouldn’t have the success they are seeing today.

Reasons social media is important as an entrepreneur:

To Communicate with Your Target Audience

In this century, you will not be successful if you don’t use your customers’ platforms. Social media is one of the most popular things to do on the internet. If you want to find your target audience and communicate with them effectively, you must use their platforms.

However, you can’t just use any social media platform you want. First, you need to be sure the one you choose is where your target audience is. For example, if your business targets those between sixteen to thirty-four years old, TikTok is likely a great social media platform to reach them.

To Keep Up with Industry Trends

People use social media to share anything they care about or are interested in, making it a great tool to discover trending topics within your industry or market. This requires paying attention to your customers’ content, what content they engage with, and what they say, such as the hashtags they use.

To Increase Brand Awareness

It’s simple. People can’t find your online business if they don’t know you exist. Having a website is one way to do this but relies on other marketing strategies like search engine optimization to get your target audience to find you. Social media can easily boost your brand awareness by exposing what you do and how you provide value in more than one place.

To Keep Track of Competition

Finally, but certainly not least, social media makes it easier to keep track of your competition. Keeping track of your competition is not to be used to copy. Instead, it is used to understand your target audience better and improve your own products, communication, and marketing strategies to make a more significant impact.

Overall, social media is a must-have marketing tool for all entrepreneurs. Social media, such as Facebook or Instagram, helps find more of your target audience, keep up with industry trends, and further increase the awareness of your brand. It can also make communication with your customers easier and help you stay ahead of your competition as you can more easily keep track of them.

July 31, 2022

Six Marketing Tips Every New Entrepreneur Needs

Understanding marketing is essential to your success as a new entrepreneur. Marketing is how your target audience finds you. Without marketing, you won’t gain the exposure to grow a sustainable brand or business. Marketing is how you gain the trust of your target audience by showing, telling, and proving that your products, services, or business are there to support them.

The following are six marketing tips every new entrepreneur needs to get started right:

Focus On Building Relationships with Your Target Audience First

Before you sell to your audience right away, learn to build a strong relationship first. This is possible by sharing valuable content through videos, opt-ins, or an email campaign. In other words, the freer value you provide in the long run, the stronger the relationship becomes — making it easier to market your products at a later time.

Share Engaging and Valuable Content

No businesses today, online or off, can survive without content marketing. Without content, your audience will not understand the type of value you provide. This can be done through blog posts, videos, pictures, or even sharing user-generated content.

Don’t Skip Email Marketing

Emails offer the highest return on investment compared to all other online marketing strategies. There is a myth that email marketing is dead, but this is far from the truth, with nearly three hundred billion emails being sent around the world today. If your customer doesn’t have social media yet, they have email. Email marketing is powerful because it is a private and intimate conversation — making them likely to purchase a product from you if they really understand its value.

Set Up a Business Blog

A blog or website is the only way to have sole ownership of what you share and sell to your customers. If a specific social media platform disappears, you won’t reach those customers. However, you know this won’t happen since you control your blog. Making it easy to get your customers or target audience whenever you can.

Use Social Media

You can’t avoid social media. Even just one social media account can sky rocket your reach and exposure as a brand. Did you know that nearly four billion people worldwide use some form of social media? This means your potential to reach your target audience is almost limitless.

Get Help

Marketing is one of the first places beyond accounting to make room for a proper budget. Marketing helps you reach certain revenue goals and reach your target audience quickly and effectively. Without marketing, it is unlikely your customers will find you very easily.

Marketing doesn’t need to be complicated. As long as you create content that your target audience needs or wants, you will likely be successful. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs make mistakes that can hinder their success by ignoring customers’ needs or not taking the time to share your value. Without marketing, you won’t prove that your business is worth its time to your customers.

July 31, 2022

Why Project Management is Key for Entrepreneurial Success

Project management is all about the steps, resources, and other requirements it takes to complete an important project for your business and target audience. Without project management, you likely are not providing as much value as you need to grow a sustainable business. Value is key as you won’t gain the revenue to support your life or business without it. Value is what draws customers and revenue your way.

Here are four important reasons why project management is key to entrepreneurial success:

To Stay Within Budget

Not having the funds to support your business is a big reason many new entrepreneurs fail within the first year of business. However, with proper project management strategies, you can stay within budget and understand precisely the funds you need to be successful long term. Sound project management includes future projects and possible obstacles to determine better the resources you need to be successful.

To Stay Consistent

Consistency is important to build trust and credibility in your business. If people don’t trust you or your content, you won’t create a profitable business. The more consistent action your audience sees, the more reliable you become. Reliability is what leads to necessity. If your audience knows you will share a blog post full of valuable information every Wednesday, for example, they will likely show up more consistently. Adding this to their daily routine, they will expect it or rely on it to help them through their day due to your consistency.

To Stay Organized

Being organized is important to communicate a clear and valuable message. If your target audience is constantly confused or distracted by information or things that are not important, you will have a difficult time retaining them. The proper organization also ensures you reach important deadlines, stay within your budget, and only offer information that is relevant to your project.

To Stay Relevant

If you never finish projects or finish them too late, you likely will miss out on many meaningful business opportunities. This is why project management includes deadlines to keep you on track. Staying relevant is key to solving the many problems your customers are dealing with daily. Solving problems or providing value is essential to business sustainability.

As you can see, project management is essential for the overall success of your business. It helps keep you consistent, organized, timely and can save you on many important resources, including time and money. Each of these components is required to deliver a product or value your customers will g