Episode 28: Womeneur: Helping Female Entrepreneurs Get Their Complete Business Sh*t Together

Sharon Beason is no stranger to the business world, having run three successful business before launching her current business, Womeneur. She is a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur and started her career as an account, thinking that would be her lifelong career. However, like most of us entrepreneurs, she started to feel enslaved and stifled by the corporate world.

Sharon is the queen of seeing a problem and creating a successful business to solve that problem or fill a gap. She has a keen eye for understanding what people need, sometimes even before they know they need it. I had such a great time speaking with Sharon and she shared so much valuable information in this episode. Don’t forget to go check out her book The Entrepreneur’s Startup Gameplan: 12 Months of Actionable Tips, Advice & Strategies to Plan, Launch and Grow Your Business Successfully as well as everything she’s doing at www.womeneur.com.

Will there ever be a “right” time to leave my job to start my own business?:

This question plagues anyone who has a dream of going out on their own. Almost every entrepreneur that I’ve spoken with that has started out in a corporate job said that they agonized over this exact issue. Sharon shared that in her mind, there really never will be a “perfect” time. She said that everyone wants to find a balance between security and bravery but when it comes down to it, it’s always going to be a leap of faith.

Sharon knew that she would probably still be a bit nervous about the transition but to help combat that and get ahead of the fear, she started to save like crazy. She had a game plan. She knew she didn’t want to quit and just place her dreams in the hands of fate. To her, that meant a few things…

creating a budget
Looking at how much she could take from her salary each month to put away in savings
Really taking a look at what she needed each month to survive and live comfortably so she had an idea of what she needed to make before she could leave her job.

Approaching and gaining sponsors:

As I mention in the episode, this can be an award and sometimes tricky thing to approach. If you’re a blogger or a podcaster, you want people to want to sponsor you and help monetize your content. However, Sharon shares that there is an art to approaching sponsors.

1. Create a media kit

A media kit is a branded presentation that tells the sponsors all about your company, what you do, some analytics on how well your blog, website or podcast is doing, what you have to offer, your sponsor or advertising rates and why they should work with you.

2. Put together a list of business that you want to work with and that align with your brand’s mission.

You don’t have to only approach big, huge brands so don’t be afraid of approaching smaller business.

3. When you decide the brands and business you want to work with, go on their website or social media and try to find the person who is in PR for that business. That’s probably the person you should be calling or emailing. (LinkedIn is a great place to find them because a lot of companies list all of their employees and their titles).

TIP: If you can find it, ALWAYS include the person’s name that your contacting

Create a template email that can be customized to send out to these brands. Make sure it sounds like you and aligns with your brand so companies don’t immediately spot it as a canned email with no personality. This will save you tons of time and make sure that each email you send is branded and consistent.

Key qualities Leadership:

Authenticity
Ingenuity
Being open to criticism
Good listening skills
Being Observant
Leading with your heart

Instagram: Post less, engage more:

Trying to crack the code of Instagram can be maddening. You try all different kinds of tactics but nothing seems to work as you want it to and Instagram goes from being fun to being a major pain. Sharon suggests that you stop working about posting multiple times a day to grow your account. She says that you should focus more on engagement rather than posting all day long. By engagement, she means actually interacting with other people on the platform. Take the time to like and comment on other relevant accounts, respond to your comments and take the time to look at people’s bio and actually address them by their name in your comment.