How to start a Woman-Owned and Woman-Operated business.

We are about to embark on an interesting, exciting but scary journey. Our team is an all-female team, small but feisty, group of creative thinkers who crave a challenge. The idea came to us in the midst of the pandemic. Our founder Anesu, has always had a dream to start her own marketing and design studio. She has been working long days, and nights for the past 5 months to bring her vision to life. Starting any business is time-consuming and thrives on consistency, commitment, a lot of patience, and willfulness. There are many things we have learned since embarking on this journey that we want to share with you. This article isn't exclusively for female entrepreneurs, but for anyone embarking on a journey of building a successful business. Refer back to this resource if you need to, for your reference. There are some very useful tips we share that you can use at your disposal. Let's dive into it:

The Power of List-Making:

With anything you do, it is easy to lose sight of what you are trying to accomplish. We found that list-making was, and still is the core of our success. This is how we got to where we are today. Managing client projects and in-house projects does not come easy. We looked into using a project management platform and we found Asana through G-Suite when we set up our inboxes. Asana was great, very organized, and user friendly. Our only issue was, it was way out of our budget––but we almost used it for its value. That was until we discovered Click-Up. We use Click-Up to manage our workload and it's free! We think Click-Up is great for any team or type of business. It will keep you organized and on track with your tasks.

Research:

Research as many platforms as possible. Find what works for you. Do this to get the most out of your budget. Never settle for something that you feel is way out of your budget. Yes, your first year of business might leave you in the negative but it is also important to cut costs where possible. Our team looked into Honeybook. It's a great platform to manage your invoices, your sheets/finances, and contracts. We cut costs by using Google Sheets to keep records of client payments and expenses. For our documents and agreements, we used PandaDoc and it's only $19 per month for their basic plan versus paying Honeybook's $49 a month. But Like anything else, use platforms you feel work best for you. This is just what worked for us.

Consistency:

And Like anything in life you have to give it your all and work at it daily without giving up.

Setting goals can be intimidating and at times can make you feel like throwing the towel in. See it as your motivation and use it to keep the "go-getter" flame burning in you.

Content Creation:

Why is creating content so important? Imagine how much more relevant you are in a conversation if you participate. Content creation and strategy is the same thing. It is the reason why we write blog posts and why we post on social media. Posting content on social media several times a week is time-consuming but rewarding. We use Canva to help us crank out designs for social media. It helps things move along faster especially because of its drag and drop feature. Canva however, still needs a skilled graphic designer but user-friendly for those without graphic design experience. You can definitely see the difference in a skilled designer's work. We have created and helped some of our clients with Canva templates specifically for this purpose.

Our goal is to help small businesses like ourselves flourish and grow. Contrary to popular belief, there is room for everyone here. Ask yourself what you can bring to the table and how you can do it better than others doing the same thing. We would love to hear from you if you just started a small business and tell us how it's going for you. Check out our services page for more information on how our team can help you bring your vision to life. We have helped our clients with website design, graphic design, digital marketing, social media management, copywriting and so much more. Contact us via email at marketing@workwithderive.com and tell us about your latest project. We'd love to help!