by Luci McMonagle | women entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs usually prefer to fly solo and consider themselves as self-sufficient. But it does get lonely this way at times. Every genuine woman entrepreneur needs advice and opinion, an alternative perspective, encouragement, and even pep talk. As more and more women are starting their own businesses, they are looking for ways to learn new skills, increase their potential, and improve their business and life. Here are 5 ways a coach can help you and your business:
Smoothens the Transition
When an entrepreneur is leaving behind the cushion of a secure job and starting a business, it can be incredibly terrifying and unnerving to go through a radical change like this all alone. You may have no idea what’s next. Self-doubt, double-mindedness, frustration, and self-esteem issues are frequently experienced at such a stage and lead to cold feet, procrastination, failure to launch, or quitting midway. A coach also helps in facilitating this transition process through ironing out fears, realistically setting goals, and helping in goal achievement.
Facilitates Self-Discovery
Coaching helps you discover the one thing you were born to do and to help you do it better than others. A coach can help you discover and nurture your natural talent, gifts, recognize your unique strengths, set a vision, and achieve goals. He or she can help you set a path for yourself and business and follow it in a disciplined manner. Not just newbies, a coach can help a woman entrepreneur with an established business in figuring out new directions and reaching the next level.
Nurtures Mindset Change
Progress cannot be achieved through fixed mindsets. Sometimes you need a new level of thought, awareness, and approach to tackle an old problem, and a coach helps you do exactly that through perpetuating a mindset change. He helps you achieve a breakthrough. He helps you replace you limited mindset with a positive, liberating, and growth-oriented mindset: scarcity with abundance, a consciousness of lack of resources with sharing, networking and collaboration, inadequacy with self-sufficiency, etc.
Recognizes Your Barriers and Self-Saboteurs
Most of us keep working hard to improve our business, money issues, and our relationships but we encounter failure in all areas due to our blind spots. The right kind of coach can help you discover the inner energy blocks, old beliefs, guilt, shame, realized and unrealized fears running in your background and stalling your personal and professional progress. These are the things all of us are not able to discover and fix on our own; even if we able to do so, it takes a lot of time. A coach diminishes your learning curve. The coaching helps you pursue your dreams of financial independence in a guilt-free way.
Makes You Accountable
We all want success but self-destructive habits, indecision, lack of commitment stall us from being productive and successful. When there is no boss around to hold us accountable for our results, it’s natural to let ourselves go and get digressed from our goals. A coach helps us set a clear path, lays down milestones, and makes us accountable to achieve them. He also gives clients the skills, methods, and systems to improve performance and productivity.
I am Luci McMonagle, a Miracles Abundance coach. Through powerful questions, self-analysis, and reflection, tough love, humor, face reading, I help women entrepreneurs figure out what they truly want, what works best for them, and ways they can get it. Just like all clients are different; all coaches are not alike. They work in different paradigms. For any coaching experience to be successful and fruitful, there needs to be an absolute right match between the client’s needs and the coach’s offering. There needs to be a level of comfort and then trust. I offer a free session to prospective clients so as to let them experience my coaching style and determine whether there is a good fit between them or not. I believe that magic and miracles truly happen when there is that right fit.
Go ahead! Check out my training calendar, find a vacant slot and mark it. We will sit and talk heart to heart and try to determine what is it that’s holding you back and what you truly need right now to get ahead in your business and in your life: system, tools, referrals, resources, and more.
by Luci McMonagle | women entrepreneurs
The Dalai Lama stated at the Vancouver Peace Summit in 2009: “The World will be saved by the Western Woman. ” (watch my exclusive YouTube episode on this) Every time I think of it, I get goose bumps. I find this prophecy evocative, powerful, uplifting and promising. It is a prediction that has come true and is still unfolding. That’s why I believe the future truly belongs to women entrepreneurs. Just see the following statistics:
- According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) survey of 2016, women’s entrepreneurship rates have increased 13% when compared to the male entrepreneurship which has shown a 5% increase.
- The fact that CNBC’s Upstart 25 list has strong female representation, in diverse areas like neuroscience, finance, retail, products, services, social missions, is indicative of their all-rounder progress and success.
- The 2016 Kauffman Index of Startup Activity indicates that 40% of new entrepreneurs are women.
This trend is not on the rise in just the USA alone but is common in many countries. Experts have determined that the factors that have contributed to the recent spike in women entrepreneurship trends are: evolving technology, better funding options, better role models and mentoring opportunities. Following are the reasons behind this strong trend:
Better Funding Opportunities
Lack of Funding has been an issue that women entrepreneurs continue to face; however, there certainly have been improvements in this respect. Many organizations have invested in women ventures because they believe that women running small businesses pose a low credit risk, are likely to repay loans, and have a strong tendency to reinvest their profits in family and community for betterment. Techpreneurs have a greater advantage on other types of women entrepreneurs, as being in the Silicon Valley gives them a better access to start-up capital. Crowdsource funding is also a good source of capital for women entrepreneurs. Venture-backed funds which are headed by women are more likely to invest in women entrepreneurs. Last but not the least, women entrepreneurs have a better chance of getting loans from their family and friends when compared to their male counterparts due to stronger interpersonal relationships and bonding.
Technological Advances
Entrepreneurship and Technology is the combination that has helped women give a whole new meaning to the term ‘breaking the glass ceiling’. For decades, women had to quit their jobs and put their careers on the back burner due to the need to take better care of their families. However, technology and the role it is playing for women entrepreneurs has enabled them to get back into the workforce, on their own terms. The access to mediums like emails, facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Instagram, Pinterest, etc, is allowing women to tap into the global marketplace. A laptop lifestyle is powerful, profitable, and liberating.
Better Role-models and Peer to Peer Mentoring
Women entrepreneurs are no longer lonely in their journey. Media and technology have played a great role in highlighting the achievements of women entrepreneurs and showcasing their work, which has helped women entrepreneurs emerge as inspiring role-models. When these women candidly share their triumphs as well trials and pain in the entrepreneurial journey, they inspire other women to do the same and bear the challenges encountered on the way. Besides inspirational figures, women entrepreneurs also tend to act as great mentors giving solid advice in areas like finance, investing options, networking, support mechanisms, technology, etc. I would add personal and professional development coaches to this list, as they help women entrepreneurs realize their true potential, overcome doubts and inner barriers, and stay on track.
Therefore, the time to become a woman entrepreneur has never been more ripe and right. There are opportunities that already exist there and those that are still unfolding. It’s just a matter of finding yours. As an Abundance Miracle Abundance Coach, I have been helping women realize their true bliss and run profitable businesses they are proud of. Check out my coaching calendar and mark a date for yourself. Together, we will find out ways for you make 2017 your most profitable year yet. With personalized and detailed assessment, advice, and recommendations, you will get with me all the resources you need to get your business off ground and make it soar.
by Luci McMonagle | Luci's Blogs
Landing new clients is tough but keeping them 100% happy all the time is even tougher. If you have just started out your business and are selling a service, you are bound to come across situations eventually where a client is less than thrilled with your service. If you are the type who feels uncomfortable in confrontational situations, and if this is the first time this has happened, you are bound to feel irritated or angry for having to justify your work or your stance. However, learning to deal with unhappy clients is a maturation phase for every woman entrepreneur. Here is what you need to learn and to do:
Do the Spade Work before Starting a Project
In most cases, a client’s dissatisfaction is the result of miscommunication or a mismatch of expectations from either side. Therefore, communicate clearly with your client at the start of the project in order to understand what he/she is looking for. Try to quantify the expectations in form of milestones and deadlines. Get things in writing and share them mutually.
Keep Communicating
Resist the client’s attempt to break off communication when he/she is angry. Keep talking to him/her in order to pinpoint the real reason behind the anger. Start out with a neutral statement such as “Let’s talk about this! Let’s go over what has happened and see where the problem is.” Don’t adopt a confrontational statement like: “It’s not my fault!” The impression that you are listening is usually enough to cool down an irritated and angry client and engage in negotiation.
Find Out the Reason
Sometimes the client is unhappy with the customer care service and not the service itself, such as a delay in communication, a missed milestone. If you or someone on your team have messed up somehow or missed a deadline, accept the responsibility and own the mistake. Don’t try to shift the blame or pretend that nothing is wrong. Find out which aspect of the project is causing the problem.
Offer a Solution or Make Amends
Offer to rectify the mistake immediately. If it is too late and fixing the mistake won’t help the client, and then be willing to make amends. It can be a full refund, a small gift or a free service offer. An angry client may make you feel that it won’t make a difference but it will make an impact in the retrospect.
Learn From Your Mistakes
Every mistake gives you a chance to learn and grow as a business. For instance, when a project doesn’t go well, you may realize that the unsatisfied client might not be the right fit for your business or service to begin with, and the problem was thus inevitable. Or you may realize that the expectations were misunderstood. Thus, you learn that you need to screen your clients in a better way instead of saying yes to everyone or everything.
If a dissatisfied or angry client still chooses to walk away, let it be. It is not the end of the world. Remember the reason why you are in the business; it is to do what you do best and not just to please people.
I am Luci McMonagle, the Abundance Breakthrough Coach. I can help you unlock the power of words so you can communicate with your clients better. Get in touch with me today!
by Luci McMonagle | Luci's Blogs
Cold calling makes most of us women entrepreneurs feel self-conscious and vulnerable. It’s like putting ourselves out there for unnecessary rejection. Most of us consider cold calling technique to be intrusive, unfeminine and useless. If you share this perception, then you would most certainly wait for business opportunities to happen and will miss out on a lot of possibilities. The truth is that cold calling still has immense potential. So if you have a service of your own and are looking for a breakthrough, cold calling prospects becomes all the more important. Here are 3 ways you can adopt a whole new attitude towards cold calling and discover astounding success:
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by Luci McMonagle | Luci's Blogs
Women have been underestimated for a very long time. Gender inequality has lead women to believe that they cannot succeed in a world that is controlled by men. It is important for them to understand that they will face challenges at every point in life.
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