Pitfalls for Aspiring Women Entrepreneurs – as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. I wanted to share with you a few pitfalls that a number of women entrepreneurs experience when they are trying to start their own business. First of all, not doing enough research; I cannot tell you how important it is to really understand your customers, your competitors, and your marketplace. Spend as much time as you can really researching these areas in depth, really understand what your competitors are doing, who they are, and everything you can about their business. You can learn so much from it, and it really helps you to kind of fine-tuning your own ideas and really see what the market is going to look like when you are ready to launch. The other thing is really understanding your customer profile. A lot of people are too broad in defining their customer. You might say that your customer is “women,” but that is a really broad category. Really try to fine-tune who you are specific customer is. Try to do a customer profile: think about everything about them; what they wear, what they dress, what they read, what shops they go to, what magazines they purchase, what schools their kids go to, what cars they drive-really try to understand your customer. A lot of people think it way too broadly, and then they really are not able to target them well, because they really do not know who their true customers are. Another pitfall I see is that a lot of people do not realize that when you start your own business, a lot of time, you are doing it alone. People miss out on having someone to work with, and they start it alone, not with a partner, and these happen to be people who cannot make decisions alone, and it really stagnates their process, and stagnates their ability to be successful. So, if you know you are a person like that, you know you need to work with somebody else, you have to balance ideas around, be sure to get a partner or a friend, someone you can work with, so you can do it together, or at least have some sounding boards that you can reach out to, to help you in your decision making and help you move forward. The other biggest pitfall is how long it takes to get things accomplished. I think a lot of starting entrepreneurs who start out have an expectation of how long something is going to take, and oftentimes it will take twice as long, so be sure to set up expectations clearly upfront that things may take a little longer than you expect. So, good luck starting your business, and I wish you great success.
