You read the articles and see women, just like you, happy and successful in their business and you wonder to yourself, “how did she do it?” You are willing to take the journey, you just don’t have a map. Each business is different, but there is a common path many go through. Let’s explore this path so you can move from “wannabe” to business owner.

1. Idea

You say to yourself, “I know I want to start a business, but how do I figure out what kind of business to go into?” Every business starts with an idea, but where does the idea come from? A good place to start is regular brainstorming with a friend. Find someone you would possibly like to go into business with and go have coffee/lunch/tea together perhaps weekly. Discuss business opportunities you find interesting. Think about your world and problems that you and your friends have. Create a wish list. By consistently bringing your brain back to thinking about ideas, at some point an idea will stick. It doesn’t have to be a grand “I have a million dollar idea” lightbulb moment. It can be as simple as you think it is interesting and it just won’t leave your brain, you keep thinking about it. The funny thing to remember is that the idea can likely pop into your head when you are doing something completely unrelated and outside of the brainstorming session, so be sure to have a way to capture ideas. You can carry a notepad, text yourself, leave yourself a voicemail, whatever works for you.

When you have an idea that sticks, take the time to describe the pain the future customer has and develop your concept to solve that problem. You solutions should give your customer a transformation experience. Show them how they can do it with your product or service and how it can make their life easier, happier, have more confidence, or create wonderful memories.

2. Business model

Ok, you have an interesting idea. Take some time to think about your business model. How are your customers going to interact with you to receive your product or service? You can take a look at how your competition delivers their product or service. You can look at different industries and modeling after a leader it that industry. An example of this is the founders of Rent the Runway wanted to be a “Netflix for dresses”. How can you be the __________ of “your industry”?

3. Environment

Most people are not going to be able to just jump into taking full-time action on their new idea, so how do you do start without putting everything at risk? You find an incubator environment. This could be taking a college course on entrepreneurship, an actual business incubator, or working with a coach and starting your business part-time on the side. Choose an environment that supports you with access to resources so you can receive feedback, insights to overcoming obstacles you will encounter and additional motivation to keep going at the times when it seems difficult to continue.

4. Deadline

Give yourself a deadline to make a decision on whether you are going to go for your business full-time, keep it part-time or if you are going to walk away. This will become important in the next step.

5. Action-Feedback Loop

Time to put your idea into action. You will want to start with the smallest, least risky version of your idea. If you are building a website, it will have the basic functionality needed to get the idea out there, but not all the bells and whistles. The concept here is to test if the market place wants what you have to offer.

This is where you go out into the world and make offers to potential customers. You observe your results and ask for feedback from both those who buy from you and from those who don’t. You take this feedback and you change your product or service to make a better version of it. You then take that version to the market place, getting one step closer to your dream.

Repeat until you reach your deadline in Step 4.

During this process it can be helpful and eye-opening to talk with investors, even if you are funding it all yourself. The feedback you will get from investors is valuable and is a way for you to further define your business and brand.

Starting your own business can be fun, is often a lot of work, and will stretch you in ways nothing else can. I wish you all the best on your leadership journey.

Creativity and innovation are the lifeblood of a business. The public likes new things that make their life easier, fuller, happier. We are constantly striving to reinvent ourselves to attract new customers. But what do you do when you are seemingly stuck with no new ideas?

Join a Mastermind group

From the late Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich, join or start a mastermind group. When 2 or more like minded people gather to discuss an item, more ideas flow than when one attempts to do it by oneself. To start a mastermind group, invite people in your life that love to give their constructive opinions and ideas and call it a brainstorming party. When you meet, state your outcome desired and set the ground rules. No idea is stupid and there is to be no judging. It may take a little to get it going. Throw out an idea and have the team bounce ideas on it. They can add to it or go off on a completely new tangent. Be sure to capture the ideas – on paper, in a mind map, in a spreadsheet, on video, anything really just so they are captured.

Online Brainstorming via LinkedIn

There is a section in LinkedIn called Answers. You can post a question and have the LinkedIn community throw in their ideas. If what you are trying to be creative on is proprietary, you may have to pose the question in more general terms, but the answers can help you then brainstorm either on your own further or with your team. Now, go an find a question you can answer to give back to the community and to see how others answer the same question.

Take a class

By taking a class on something that is completely new to you, you get your brain thinking in different ways. This is the key to creativity, seeing the world in a different way. It can be any class. In fact, something completely unrelated to what you are working on is better. After the class, you can ask yourself what would happen if you applied what you learned in class to what you are working on. See what your brain comes up with, have fun with it.

Go to lunch

Take someone in your network to lunch, preferably someone not in the same industry as yourself. As I stated earlier, the point of these exercises is to think differently. People in the same industry tend to see the world in the same way. Ask your lunch partner curious questions about what they do. Ask them what they like about what they do, what they would change, what they would ask for if they had a magic wand. Step into their shoes and see the world from their eyes to gain a different perspective.

Go Stuff Hunting

This one is pure fun. Go stuff hunting. You don’t actually have to buy anything, just hunt. Go to an antiques store, a garage sale, or a flea market. Look at the items. Now, image using that item for something other than its originally intended purpose. Play with it. Then, when you get back to your office, look at your project and do the same exercise.

The key to all these tips is to gain a fresh perspective on what you are doing. Let yourself have fun and dream a little. You just might surprise yourself on how creative you actually are.

When my daughter was young, her favorite movie was Finding Nemo by Pixar and Disney. It is a very quotable movie and has lots of life lessons. One of my favorite quotes is by Crush, the sea turtle, “Do you have your exit buddy?”, when Marlin and Dorie were about to exit the EAC (East Australian Current). It turned out to be a very bumpy exit, but, because they had their buddy, Marlin and Dorie were able to negotiate it more easily. This scene wonderfully illustrates my belief in the buddy system. In fact, the whole movie underscores the beauty of the buddy system within the movie and by the fact that it was produced by a partnering of Pixar and Disney.

Having a buddy on our journeys make us more productive, make our celebrations sweeter, and our challenges easier. So, do you have your accountability buddy?

Who can be your accountability buddy? I am going to suggest that it not be our significant other. It is not that they can’t do the job. It is just that that relationship is, by definition, very intimate. It is hard for our significant other to be objective especially when the changes we are going through change their world too. It is more useful to have a third party as our accountability partner. So, who then? It can be a trusted friend, a mentor, or a coach, among others. What is most important is the qualities of the person and our relationship.

Qualities to look for in an accountability buddy include:

• Are they trust worthy?
• Are they objective? Are they disconnected from the outcome we are trying [to] achieve?
• Can they show us other ways of looking at things that we might not see?
• Are they supportive in their approach? Since they are going to have us recognize alternatives and hold us accountable to producing results, their approach needs to be supportive so we can do the work.
• Are they firm? Will they push us to be the best we can be, and help us get out of our own bad habits?

One last thing to look at when choosing an accountability buddy is the system to be used to keep us moving forward.

Are we going to use the accountability buddy’s system? When we sign up for a coach’s program, many times they have a program that walks us through a transformation. These systems can range from very structured with a lesson plan with homework assignments laid out. One attends or reads the lesson, does the homework, and meets with the coach to review the homework and work out any challenges. Other systems are less structured with a general guideline for each session but allow for more free flowing direction of goals and tasks.

Are we going to use someone else’s system and work with a “classmate”? A classmate is someone who is also using the system produced by a third party. The author the system may or may not be involved. This can be a cost effective way to get started. Note that you are both students and the transformation may not be as quick using this method.

Are we going to use our own system and have our buddy be a way to stay on track? We can have our own system that either we created or a third party created, but we want someone to hold us accountable for results. If we go this route, we will want someone who is skilled at asking thought provoking questions such as a mentor or a coach. We will need to explain the system if it is one we create ourselves or inquire if the accountability buddy is familiar with the third party system. This is a great way to test out our own system or use a system of someone who does not provide coaching on their system.

The cost of working with an accountability buddy ranges from zero to thousands of dollars depending on the buddy’s experience, system, and availability. A good way to get the best of both worlds is to find a coach that has a system that interests you, join that coach’s group coaching and have a fellow group member be your accountability buddy. The group coaching will have a system and should have office hours. If you and your buddy have questions that you can’t answer for each other, you can attend the office hours to have the questioned answered, but you don’t have the expense of one-on-one coaching.

Being a solo professional is not for the faint of heart. You are responsible for absolutely everything in your business from operations, finance, marketing and sales and management. The buck starts and stops with you.

Why do you want to be a solo professional?

This is the first and most important decision. If your reason for being a solo professional is to earn lots of money, you have some more thinking to do. Do you like you as a boss? Do you like you as an employee? Because you are going to be both. You are going to need to be a self-starter because you won’t have a boss giving you projects or tasks to do. You need to have discipline to do the tasks that need to be done to generate income, even the ones you don’t like. Well, you might be able to outsource many tasks to virtual assistants, but ultimately the responsibility is yours. If your why is because you want more control and you are willing to learn whatever it takes to have that freedom, you have a good start.

Where will you work?

This will largely depend on the type of product or service you will offer. Some are conducive to working from home, others are not. If you will be spending a lot of time on the phone with clients, be sure to have a quiet, private place to conduct business. There is nothing more annoying than being on the receiving end of a phone conversation with a ton of background noise like someone calling from a coffee shop. If you need to be around people, even if you aren’t working with them, consider finding a business incubator to rent a desk. The incubators share common space like conference rooms and sometimes a receptionist for a monthly fee based on time used. Think of them like a gym membership for your business.

How will you market yourself?

You must have a client base. No clients, no business. If you are beginning with an existing client base, you have a good start. Notice, it is just a start. You will need a constant flow of potential new clients coming in your door each month. You must have a solid marketing strategy to move your prospects through your sales funnel to becoming paying clients. You will want this mapped out as much as possible before you venture out on your own.

How will you manage cashflow?

As a solo professional you do not have a steady paycheck coming in, therefore you must think about how you are going to smooth out your cashflow. Some weeks are going to be full of income, others will not. You will want to determine a budget for yourself and stick to it. You may be tempted to spend when money is flowing easy, but don’t. Have a system of saving revenue receipts into an account and then pay yourself into another account from which you pay living expenses. This will help you weather the slow times much easier.

Facebook has a new format – the Timeline. You may have loved the old format. You may your page set it up to maximize your social media presence in the old format. You may not have. Either way, this is a fabulous opportunity to refresh your brand and take advantage of the new Facebook Timeline format. Let’s discuss 3 ways you can do that now.

The Cover image size

The Cover image is the banner for your Facebook page. This is a great time to have it coordinate with your website banner. You may or may not be able to port over your website banner to be the Cover. You may have to tweak it a bit. You will want it to be 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. That is the obvious technical aspect. Here is the secret: you will want the top slice of 50 pixels tall should be a blank, no important information. Why? Because a funny thing happens when people go to your page, the Facebook menu (where the search box is) can float over your Cover. If the visitor scrolls, they can see the whole Cover, but how many people are going to bother? So, start your branding in your image 50 pixels down from the top.

The Cover image content

Again, the Cover image is your banner. You could put a nice picture of you or some pretty landscape, but you are missing a marketing opportunity. Put your logo or your picture in the Profile image. Put your company’s highest selling value in the Cover. Have pictures of your products. Have a call to action. Make sure that your Profile picture doesn’t cover up the message so keep the lower left hand corner of your Cover blank. Your graphic designer can get this all together for you, but you have to know what you want to present.

Hidden marketing opportunities

There are 2 hidden branding opportunities: Photos and Basic Information, About. The Photos section is a great place to place photos that sell – think of this as electronic flyers or postcards. Have an easy to read image with a call to action. The Basic Information, About gets shown under your profile image and above the About link in the header. The visitor has to actually click About in order to see your Company Overview, Basic Information and Contact Information. If you use a call to action in the About instead of the traditional “this is what we are about” statements, you put that screen real estate to better marketing use.

It is our responsibility as businesses to use change to grow our business and improve the lives we touch. By embracing the Facebook Timeline format change, we can boost our marketing efforts and enhance our interactions with our prospects and customers.

You are staring at a blank wall or blank piece of paper. You are wondering, “How am I going to take my business to the next level?” You are asking yourself, “How can we make more money?”

All of this requires creativity, new ideas, new ways of doing things. You have it within you but how do you get it out and into action? Here are three simple steps to use.

Catapult yourself out of your comfort zone.

Ah, the comfort zone. It is, by definition, comfortable, warm and cozy. It is where we feel strong and safe. It is where we know what it takes to get results and we can do it. It feels good. It feels right. But it is a trap. If we stay there too long, we get soft and bored. Bored? Yes, we are creative beings. We need to create. Doing something we are good at is fun for a while, but then we start looking for something new to learn and do. If you throw yourself outside that comfort zone, you go into creative learning mode. You become aware solutions and opportunities that were always there, but you didn’t see before. Try something new. Get uncomfortable.

Don’t do perfect.

We have all been there. We want to be perfect. Add just one more feature. Tweak the color just one more time. Would different font grab the prospect’s attention more? But in reality, getting the new product or campaign out the door and getting feedback from the customer is more important than perfection. Do we need to get things right? Yes. If someone’s life or bank account is on the line, you better be as perfect as you can be. But, most of what we do does not require that level of perfection. Perfectionism is a form of procrastination. Back to the comfort zone, try something new. Risk failure and looking foolish. Get the website launched. Test the results. Make changes. Don’t wait for it to be perfect before you do. Let good enough, be good enough.

Hold your feet to the fire.

When you decide to jump outside your comfort zone, you need to have a way to keep you outside it. It will feel uncomfortable, again by definition. You are going to feel awkward as you are learning a new skill or doing something different. You are going to most likely make mistakes. This doesn’t feel good. You need a way to keep on with it, someone or something to hold you accountable. It works in our personal live as well as our business life. Take cleaning the house. What is the best way to ensure it gets really clean? Throw a party. Yup, you will make sure it is clean. What can you do to make sure you stay outside your comfort zone until you see results?

By trying something new outside your comfort zone and not expecting perfection, you spark your creativity. By putting in a system to hold yourself accountable for results, you are more likely to see it through to new results. The fun thing is that when we master that new approach, we have built a new section to our comfort zone thus expanding how we can make more money and we have taken our business to the next level.

You have to have a dream to start your own business.

There are man ways you got here include you got laid off, you want to start a second career in a completely different field, your kids are leaving home, or your kids have grown where you have more time to yourself and you want to be financially productive but not necessarily go work for someone else.

But now you are staring at a wide open world and you don’t quite know where to start.

Here are three steps to get you started.

1. Find your purpose

You are going to need a Big why. Starting your own business is going to involve a lot of work (even if you love it), some doubt, and some fear. If you have written down your “why”, your purpose, you will have more courage and strength to get through the tough spots.

2. Pick your idea

You will need some sort of idea. There are tons out there. Your idea doesn’t have to be brand spanking new. In fact, you are going to want to look at markets that already have a lot of customers. Pick a market, an idea, and put your personal spin on it all. Brainstorm with trusted friends. In that way, your idea will be unique, but you will be able to find clients more easily.

3. Sell to your first client

You will need your first client, some one who actually pays your for your product or service. This is a way to try out your idea in a low risk way. The key is to get out there and for someone to buy from you. With that first sale, you will gain a ton of experience. You will learn what the client likes, which features are valuable, which features are a waste of money to provide, and how to better market your product/service. None of those items can be imagined. You have to experience them.

Once you have your first client, you then can decide if you want to scrap the idea or start scaling your operation. You might find out that to provide your product/service you will have to work hours that don’t work with your lifestyle. You might find out that although you like the product/service you provide, it is not what you want to focus on for the next 5 to 10 years or more as a business. You might find out that you need to build your team quickly because you have hit a sweet spot between the market and your passion and you love the business even more.

The only way to know is to get out there and try it.