Entrepreneurship Web Summit for Women: Conference Summaries

These short series of entrepreneurship web summit for women were brought to you by Morgane FEVRIER, business mentor and personal development coach for women entrepreneurs.

This French entrepreneurship web summit for women took place in March 2020 over 10 days with 3 web conferences each day. Please note there was and is no replay option for these. Consequently,  I will only share with you the ones I have attended.

The conferences address 3 essential and complimentary themes; namely business, well-being, family and relationships.

In this blog post, there are summaries of 4 conferences from the entrepreneurship web summit for women.

1. How to authorise yourself not to be pigeonholed by society

authorise yourself not to be pigeonholed by society

Sabine ZAHNER is the first  speaker from the web entrepreneurship web summit for women. She is a freelance photographer, a Chi Nei Tsang  therapist and personal development coach.

She gives you tips to find out what motivates you and what projects you should go for.

To figure out these, you need to start asking yourself :

What works for me ? Does it work for me?

In other terms, she advises you not to accept every single client proposals, but instead follow your gut feelings and your values. Connect yourself with your body and emotions. If your body and emotions feel it’s not the right timing, project, it is best to let it go. If you have difficulties doing this, reconnect and touch your body and learn to breath. You can also go for belly massage to help your digestive system when you feel under pressure.

She believes you should take decisions based on how enthusiastic  you are about a specific project. For example, if you have zero interest in the final products or feel the client isn’t paying you enough, it is worth to turn down the request. This way, you free up time for a new client, for which you may get more interesting projects.

Don’t under-estimate either networking and connecting with potential clients. Sometimes, this can happen over an informal meeting. Take a little step and make a small choice daily to keep you motivated.

2. How to confront your fears to create your ideal life

confront your fears

Aileen VALERE GILLE is from Belgium. She worked for 5 years as a career adviser and 12 years as charity business manager (HR, budget, recruitment).  Then, she trained in kinesiology and various coaching and holistic methods.

She gives you few tips on how to confront your fears. She advises you to try out kinesiology and group psychotherapy, in order to manage your insecurity feelings.  For that, you need to ask yourself these questions:

a) where do these fears come from? You need to try and understand them

b) what are the other thoughts to have?

Similarly to Sabine, she places the importance in your intuition into your business and life. To do so, you need to pay attention how your body is responding to various events. She feels you should give yourself small challenges without beating you up either.

 You need to loosen yourself up by taking a light approach towards life. She also recommend you to switch business only if you have enough funds to quit your normal daily job. She, herself, took a while to go full-time entrepreneur. Initially, she worked full-time, then part-time, until she felt ready to quit her daily job to go full-time freelance.

3. How to use your quarter century life crisis to think finally about what you really want 

quarter century life crisis

Mylène MARVIN worked in Human Resources and has followed and tested coach trainings. She is now a life coach and therapist specialised in career and life transition, who helps her clients to manage better their emotions and know themselves better.

She believes you need to overcome the idea that a permanent contract is a secure employment. However, she thinks that security does help you to question yourself about your achievements.

Similarly to Aileen, she thinks you shouldn’t quit your job too quickly and take time to think about your project. Instead, you should look into temporary entrepreneurship relief (ie unemployment benefits paid out for a year). Some companies also offer mutually agreed termination of contract, in other terms, a kind of unpaid leave for ‘business creation’. If your company does not offer such option, then you will need to keep working and saving money for your start-up.

She has launched a Youtube channel called ‚quarter century life crisis’, in which she views this crisis time as an opportunity to specialise yourself, follow your path and avoid repressing your emotions.  It is a point in your life where you can ask yourself : ‘what do I want ? Why am I here ?’

It is a good time to dare doing a useful job, beng authentic and following a small step that will make sense to you.

When it comes to your business, it is important not to view everyone as competitors, but instead exchange with your competitor.s and help each other out, even you have the same job and target.  Indeed, working in partnership (2 people) can be rewarding, when it comes to, for example, organising a big event. It lightens the workload and makes you feel less isolated.

4. How to find and maintain a good work/ life balance

work and life balance

Marie-Agnès JAMBARD is an energy psychotherapist and reflexologist.

She has had multiple freelance jobs such as beautician, salesperson, old age and disabled people carer before she launched her business in energy therapy and reflexology.

In this visioconference, she is giving us tips to lead a successful and balanced personal and professional life.  She feels we should focus on 3 points helping us to find a balance :

a) Assess yourself

Where am I in my professional life? Do I feel nourished? Do I feel fulfilled? This is a start where I question myself.

b) Identify difficulties I encounter in each of these areas (professsional/personal).

Welcome these difficulties, do not avoid them. Nothing is fixed, you need to reassess yourself regularly. Avoid putting yourself last and do not limit yourself.

If you have issues in all areas, start with the personal ones. Every starts from yourself and the need to be aligned, in agreement with oneself.

You need to start getting to know yourself by knowing your needs and expressing them. Everything that we live outside starts by oneself. Assess what suits you and do not cut spontaneity. Find what livens you up.

c) Confront and reconnect with yourself.

Listen to the life intelligence which carries you. Listen to it and trust it. Connect yourself to your intuition. Let it go of the classical conditioning. Allow yourself to be ‘you’ and show the example. Get out of the beaten tracks by forgetting limiting beliefs and old ways of functioning.

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WordPress – Search Engine Optimisation beyond Yoast plug-in

I recently joined a friendly and interesting networking meetup group in Dublin. It was organised by Marcin Kilarski, Rodolfo Melogli and Amit Wadhwa. They talked about WordPress Search Engine Optimisation beyond Yoast plug-in.

The presentation was given by Peter Lawless, sales and marketing expert, coach, mentor, trainer, TV & Radio presenter and published author. He is also a business founder.

It was followed by a Q & A by a panel of WordPress Search Engine Optimisation experts with:

  • Amit Wadhwa (Founder, Lead developer at xava.ie)
  • Rodolfo Melogli (WooCommerce expert at businessbloomer.com)
  • Peter Lawless (Search Engine Optimisation and Marketer at 3r.ie).

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In summary, the meetup topics were as follow:

• Is WordPress without SEO like a Shop in the middle of a Forest?

• Is an SEO Plugin, such as Yoast the answer to all your problems?

• How to Set SEO Titles in Just Two Steps

• The 3 Cardinal Sins of Black Hat SEO

• 5 SEO DIY Tips beyond Yoast

• “If you had just 15 minutes to SEO a website, how would you spend them?”

• The Financial Case to Hiring an SEO expert – (Our Secret SEO ROI Calculator).

Please find the slideshow presentation below as well as additional information from the Q&A :

 

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‘Think like a customer’ means that you should use simple everyday language to write/talk to people.

He gave an example of the ‘Green eggs and ham’ children book written by Dr Seuss, which is using 50 words or less. In other terms, do not use over-complicated and sophisticated terms such as ‘refrain from..’.

What are ‘meta tags’?

Meta tags are used in HTML and XHTML documents to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata. For more information on how meta tags can impact SEO, have a read of this article:

http://www.wordstream.com/meta-tags

Choose wisely your categories in your articles to reflect the content of your posts.

Regarding the 5 Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) DIY tips, keep in mind that you have to give something of value to people. It can be free information to get them interested in our products or services.

For those who work as event organisers, you need to act as a go-to-place like Trip Advisor by helping people looking for your service.

When it comes to the call to action, make sure it’s available on every page. The call to action displayed on the home page shouldn’t be a sales one. Instead, it should be a form to fill in and provide contact information. Ensure you clearly explain to your customers what you want them to do and why.

As you start writing, podcasting, filming, focus mostly on content first and SEO second.

Be aware of cultural differences in terms of languages (eg different slangs in the UK, US and IE). Thinking about the customer language helps to get people to convert more easily. You can also link your .com website to your other sites. Before you start, ask yourself the following questions (find your niche):

What is the main goal for my blog? What kind of information do people look for? Which parts of my service do you like most? 

Then, follow these steps:

  1. Create content suitable for your audience (long for Business to Business and short for Business to Customer. Complex topics generally require longer content)
  2. Ask customers if they want to buy
  3. Collect addresses.

Pay attention to the design of your site by UX testing.

For example, avoid heavy high-resolution pictures. Too detailed pictures do not tell the story and add loading time to your website. When designing your website, visualise the customer journey through the following stages: excitement, knowledge and learning.

You also have the option to use advertising to boost the visibility of your blog or website. Keep this option as a cheap and short-time solution.

If you go down that route, you can kick off an Adword campaign for 3-6 months. It will drive more traffic. Remember to do some split tests for your meta description/title. The most clicked ads should become your headlines. Do not ever pay someone to be linked to someone else’s website/blog!

Another better option is affiliate marketing as it’s far more valuable than advertising.

Nonetheless, SEO is your best bet for a more long-term strategy.

For a better SEO optimisation, use a long-tail description with minimum 3-4 words. You can also boost your visibility through a joint press release for example.

When you set up your Google Business account and blog/site, make sure your contact details are consistent with all 3rd party websites: name, address, phone number.

Add a picture that Google will link to google map. You must have as well a table of content  (map.xml) with no duplicated content. Make sure to add appropriate tags to the sitemap. Otherwise, you’ll have to have a good navigation menu.

When you monitor your traffic, you can monitor your clicks. You can also check your Google ranking with:

Finally, you can calculate how much your SEO is worth with this tool:

http://www.3r.ie/website-success-calculator/

Do you have any questions? Any tips you’d like to add to this? Let me know by leaving a comment below!

Start-up: Learn How to Pitch your idea to investors

I attended on 12th June 2017 a presentation and workshop on how to pitch an idea for entrepreneurs. Not only have I learnt a great deal but also the host Adeo Ressi from Founder Institute made everyone feel comfortable by joking all the time!😂

idea pitch

The Founder Institute is a global idea-stage accelerator and startup launch program helping entrepreneurs ‘with the structure, training, mentor support, and global network needed to start an enduring company’: http://fi.co/users/1329971/edit

So, Adeo Ressi started his talk by stating the five most important rules to follow when pitching your idea to potential investors:

  1. Show confidence. This is valid for any kind of enterprises you want to launch!
  2. Don’t make excuses for not pitching your ideas!
  3. Avoid superlatives/adjectives
  4. Use data, in other terms, be factual. Back up your ideas by showing you know your audience needs (demographics, size, geolocation…)
  5. End strong by stating clearly what your ask is! Why not leave with a slogan, for example.

He started with the basics, i.e the opening line you need to master for each of your pitch:

‘My company is [name], is developing [a defined offering], to help [a target audience] [solve a problem with the secret sauce].

It sounds easier than it is, so keep in mind these further tips when you are working on your opening line:

  • Be prepared to bring up a defined offering to the table, keep it clear (articulate, especially your company name!) and short!
  • You also need to specify your audience (age group, education level…) and what they truly want!
  • Never lie but don’t tell the whole truth easier. Remember the point about confidence?😉

Then, Adeo went into more general tips on how to get a higher visibility and brand awareness. He advised all entrepreneurs to find a prominent lead by doing research to figure out who might need your deal and by exploiting your networking opportunities through the following sites:

  • AngelList
  • Linkedin
  • CrunchBase.

Remember that your chosen lead must have time, money and expertise to help you out. You may need to repeat the pitching process up to 60 times to get one lead.

Now, let’s enter into the nitty-gritty of the pitching process:

  1. Meet as many people as you can
  2. Send invitations for coffee
  3. Keep updated with news
  4. Meet potential leads at online and offline events
  5. Send invitations to longer meetings once you have broken the ice with one lead
  6. Ask for funding
  7. News update again.

Remember not to over-sell yourself and that the goal of each meeting is to get to the next meeting. You need to build relationship and trust.

Prepare a one-page agreement with those who have shown interest in investing. Remember, the real investor will be the one you come towards to and pitch your idea to, and not the other way around!

When approaching someone about to invest in your company, ask for a little less than you wanted and explicitly ask if they want to be your adviser and lead the round.

When pitching, think about what the focus of your offer/service/product is on:

  1. A vision
  2. Problems/Solutions
  3. Traction/Interest (eg raise money for a business milestone that generates revenue).

Finally,  according to Adeo Rossi, the hardest business areas to pitch for, as investors are harder to convince to invest in due to the high risks are Travel, Music, Sports, Wine.😓 So, keep that in mind and find a complementary service that could add additional value!

 

Funding and Financial Sustainability for Non-Profit Organisations in Ireland

I attended an event advertised on Facebook and organised by Bluefire Dublin called ‘Igniting Change: Funding & Financial Sustainability‘ on Thursday 29th June 2017.

The event was aimed at voluntary and community organisation, social-enterprises, individual artists or community-based project managers, and small-medium NGO’s.

financial sustainability

Bluefire organises ‘igniting change series’ every last Thursday of each month: http://bluefiredublin.ie/our-programmes/igniting-change/

financial sustainability
The guest speakers at the event were a mix of social entrepreneurs and funding bodies:

• Ian Oliver (far right on the picture) from Centre for Creative Practices
• Eoghan Ryan (far left in the picture) from Social Innovation Fund Ireland
• Hazel Hill (right next to Eoghan) from The Community Foundation for Ireland
• Naomi Murphy (left next to Ian) from Connect the Dots

The purpose was for attendees:

  • to be aware of what is required to start up a successful business and
  • to know how to get grants from organisations supporting social entrepreneurs.

It started with a talk from each speaker, followed by a workshop and a networking session.

1. Eoghan from Social Innovation Fund Ireland:

Before launching Social Innovation Fund, he founded his own not-for-profit, Reimagine Cork to tackle issues around homelessness in Cork. Understanding the needs for Not-for-Profits, he felt he could help entrepreneurs best and joined Social Innovation Fund.

The company’s mission is to provide both funding and non-financial support to social entrepreneurs. It has also partnered with the government and every given Euro by SIFI is matched by the government.

Eoghan’s first advice was to think about ‘why’ you want to start up a company and why his company would fund you. He also strongly recommends:

  • having a clear plan in place,
  • having a good value proposition,
  • showing confidence
  • having good management skills.

When filling forms to apply for funding, keep it simple and answer the asked questions.

2. Hazel Hill, Marketing Executive and Programme Leader at The Community Foundation for Ireland:

Her organisation offers both open grants and private grants. The latter ones are given on a project basis with an end date. The organisation offers funds for mergers (shared between teams) to highlight the importance of collaboration and partnership between organisations.

You will be asked about what will happen at the end of the project to gauge how sustainable your business model is.

Her first advice was to not manipulate your core mission value (reason for existing) to get funding. Instead, only apply to relevant grants that fit your organisation. She also advised to:

  • have a clear mission statement,
  • document your research by backing up your project with analytical reports,
  • listen to your community/audiences’ needs,
  • take any constructive feedback on board
  • understand the impact your company will have.

3. Naomi AND MERISSA from Connecting the Dots, a start-up focusing on the community engagement in Dublin: 

Their company started off when there were many unoccupied vacancies in Dublin during the crisis by putting on events with artists, engineers, researchers. Over the time, they worked on a process for events’ organisation, i.e on improving the engagement with attendees, corporate donors.

Naomi’s advice was to volunteer for different organisations and network that way before you start up. She has been helping a lot at ‘Happenings’ organisation.

It is also important to speed up processes with a technology enabler. They are currently working on a software service (SAAS) application (transferring processes online for co-working events), in order to gain time and increase income streams and viability.

4. Ian AND his wife Monica from Center for Creative Practices, a company helping creative artists to come up with a more sustainable model:

His first advice was to start with a small plan before building a full-scale model and revisit this plan when necessary.

Instead of going through a lengthy business plan, they worked on a one-page business model. It detailed their business model and value proposition:

  • the company’s purpose,
  • what problem it is trying to resolve and,
  • the solution offered.

His first business model focused on having a cash projection, i.e ticket prices’ sales and getting people to utilise the space to generate further money. He feels it is best not to be over-reliant on grants for the day-to-day running of the business.

5. participants needing help on setting up their organisations, PLEASE get in touch with the following bodies:

 

 

 

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