Thanks to DELL (for their great innitiative to bring entrepreneur women the right exposure and support, and empower women entrepreneurs to grow) and TheNextWomen, we can read interviews and get inspirations from these amazing entrepreneur women.
As the fabulous The NextWomen DWEN Interview Series draws near
its close, we'll be bringing you some of our favourite gems of wisdom
from the series, focusing on certain key subjects. This week's hot topic
is: how to scale your business.
"My advice to
entrepreneurs for growing their business is make sure you are building
something that someone wants. It sounds simple but you would be
surprised at how many products I see where there is no market need/
want.
"My second piece of advice is to surround
yourself with the brightest, most committed people you can find to
advance your business. There is no substitute for smarts and passion".
Myrtle Potter, Founder & CEO, Myrtle Potter & Company, LLC & Myrtle Potter Media, Inc.
"My
suggestion to reach business scale quickly is to understand the key
success factors needed for your business, and then to hardwire that
success as much as possible so it is always in place. For example, are
there some key partnerships that can bring this value? How can you
harness the ecosystem that already exists rather than creating it from
scratch?"
Michelle Bonat, CEO and Founder, RumbaFish
"Invest
in your people! We don’t follow economic trends and corporate standards
by downsizing or cutting back on benefits every time there’s an
economic bump in the road. Everybody at NOVA gets health at 60 days. We
are one of the few companies that pay 100% of health insurance, even
when rates increase by double digits every year. We gave people raises
and increased 401k matching at the height of the recession. Why? Because
the people that work here and live our mission are what make NOVA a
great company. Every day, I get letters praising our customer service
reps, our engineers, the person answering the phone.
My
advice to entrepreneurs? Remember that there’s nothing more critical
than the people that make up your company and invest in them".
Sue Chen, Founder & CEO, Nova Medical Products
"The
key to our growth has been executing against our core differentiators:
Ensuring that people enjoy working with us, and delivering better
results than our competitors. Our smaller size is actually an advantage
for us. We can be more nimble, more client-focused, and more high-touch
than many of our competitors. In a difficult economic climate, clients
are more interested in a recruitment solutions provider who can deliver
demonstrable results than they are in a 25-year-old brand name.
"My
advice for other entrepreneurs is to invest in the very best people you
can possibly afford, and invest in the tools you need to grow. When
you're growing quickly, and every team member has to wear different hats
and really pull their weight, investing in top-notch people will make a
huge difference to your success. Investing in the right tools may mean
investing in technology, or even office equipment. If you're spending
15 hours a week running to Kinko's or waiting for your internet to get
fixed, it's time to invest in a proper printer or a new IT provider".
Virginia Poly, President, Poly Placements
"Make
sure you have the foundation in place—the right people, the right
funding and the right technology—and then stay focused".
Heidi Messer, Co-Founder, Collective[i]
"First,
you need a business model that allows you to scale. If your existing
business model can’t do that, consider an aspect of your business where
this is possible and experiment with that part of it.
For
example, we initially only offered “classroom” courses, where students
physically attended courses in our training rooms. However, this is
limited by the availability of those training rooms. That’s why we then
created our online courses, which still provide students with the same
“classroom” experience but it’s all done online. In this case, we are
not limited by factors such as venue availability; there is unlimited
potential to scale".
Valerie Khoo, Managing Director, Sydney Writers’ Centre
"Map
out where you want to go and reverse-engineer how to get there in terms
of time and resources. This applies particularly to people – what are
the skill sets you are going to need as the company scales and how do
you plan for that. Building a management team is a very difficult thing
to do, but is absolutely critical to getting to that next level".
"Leverage
technology to get you there. There are so many ways you can use
technology to scale and gain efficiencies. The biggest area we have
found technology has allowed us to grow in recent years has been through
social enterprise. Finding more effective ways to communicate across
the company, share success stories and collaborate on projects becomes
really important as the company expands".
Catherine Graham, Co-Founder Commonsku & Managing Director RIGHTSLEEVE
The Dell Women's Entrepreneur Network (DWEN)
celebrates the wonderful accomplishments of women in business, whilst
looking forward at how we can progress and learn from each other.
Natural networkers and relationship builders, women have innate flair
for entrepreneurship. With DWEN, Dell is helping women in business to
expand their networks while offering technology capabilities designed to
help them innovate and grow their businesses.
The
NextWomen is in partnership with DWEN to bring you a series of 40
interviews with the world's most influential female founders, investors
and decision makers: The NextWomen DWEN Interview Series.
Source: TheNextWomen
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