The BOSS Network Blog

Have you heard the saying “if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know if you’ve got there?” Well it’s particularly true in business. Your lack of clarity around your vision or what success looks like for you could mean make or break for your business. When potential customers, staff, investors and peers ask you about your business you need to be able to paint a picture of where you are at and where you are going. So ask yourself “what does success look like for me?” You may have a business plan, but this is different. This is the dream, the potential, the aspiration, the ideal. This will inspire others and yourself. It will help to make your dream a reality. Success for you should be a holistic picture of work and life. If you don’t know what success looks like, you could end up:-       Taking on many projects unclear why because you are not sure what you are trying to achieve       Losing customers because they are not su...

* Struggling to balance a budding entrepreneurial business with being Mom? * Torn between family commitments and work? * Thrust into the role of breadwinner when your partner has been laid off, retired or become ill? * Non-existent work life balance?   You are not alone, around 40% of women in the US are the breadwinner, and the number is growing. There’s been a lot of talk about the ‘End of Men’ and women being ‘The Richer Sex’, but it’s not all power suits and top jobs. Rhonda, a successful businesswoman, working in a male dominated environment, with a child under one year old sums up the challenge of being the breadwinner eloquently: “By being a working career woman or career mom, I’m trying to get the best out of both worlds. I’m trying to be true to who I am, not to who other people want me to be or what people think people I should be. And that is difficult” Jenny Garrett, executive coach and author of Rocking Your Role, the ‘how to’ guide to succes...

As a women’s entrepreneurship coach, I am a big believer in setting goals and creating plans to execute on those goals.  But alongside the goals and plans, you have to be willing to step away from the day to day for brief periods and assess how the business is delivering against your long term vision.  What do you see for your company in the next 10, 20 years?  What are you doing to reach that goal? It’s too easy to get bogged down in the day to day work and become comfortable with your current income.  I just spent a week with my bookkeeper to get several expense reports finalized.  (And I consider myself semi organized!  Lol)  When you have a steady stream of clients or customers, it’s a common trap to focus only on the “get done now” tasks. Even if your sales are not where you desire, you can still get too focused on the daily work of finding immediate customers.  How often do you spend pitching to larger clients that require a ton ...