How to Perform a SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business Idea

If you have an online business idea, chances are that you want to protect that idea. You will also want to do anything and everything you can in order to make that business strive and thrive.

Using a SWOT analysis for your online business idea is a great way to assess your business idea. First, however, let us examine what a SWOT analysis is. Put simply, it involves assessing these factors:

Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats

A SWOT analysis is valuable in evaluating a product, service, new business endeavour or even an employee.

Strengths – By evaluating your company’s strengths, you do yourself a great service. By looking through a microscope into what is working, you can enhance that performance and its progress and multiply it.

By mimicking a proven formula that already works, you increase your success two-fold. You can also pinpoint specific areas of success and magnify them innovatively in order to grow those strengths.

Weaknesses – The whole point in evaluating weaknesses for your online business idea is to eliminate or at the very least minimize them. Weaknesses are in every aspect of business and if unaddressed, those weaknesses can fester and grow. Eliminating or minimizing those weaknesses will keep them from detracting from your success in an online venture.

There are two major categories of measurement – internal factors, which are within the organization, and external factors, which are outside the organization – with strengths and weaknesses belonging to internal factors.

Opportunities – Evaluating opportunities is useful in seeking knowledge on how those opportunities are useful to gain momentum for your online business endeavours. Taking advantage of any existing opportunities and expanding them to greater heights will provide more success for your business idea.

Threats – Evaluating threats in the environment is crucial to the success of your online business idea.

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SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Opportunities and threats belong to the external factors category. If you are on the lookout for threats, warding them off before they occur is key to maintaining optimal success as a line of defence for your project or business.

Evaluate your online business idea for its strengths by highlighting the areas that receive the most positive response. If you have done a test market on a product or service or have a website with a comments section, check to see where the positive highlights are for your online idea.

Evaluate your online business idea for its weaknesses by answering a negative comment on a website, asking for the opinions of others, and checking the competitions’ websites.

Seek out new and innovative opportunities based on existing ideas that you can expand. Search out opportunities within other businesses to grow and expand your own.

By utilizing a SWOT analysis, you protect and enhance your online business idea.

SWOT Analysis for Your Online Business

Hello, August!

August has arrived! Summer is nearing its end, so let’s take advantage of the month.

August

How to Make Your Business Stand Out from the Competition

Since the creation of the internet and social media, hundreds of thousands of businesses have emerged. Of course, you want your business to stand out head and shoulders above the rest. How do you achieve that goal? There are several ways to make your business stand apart from the competition but you have to start by evaluating your own business.

Stand Out from the Competition

Evaluate Your Own Company

It is often very easy to compare your company to others. The tendency may be to think that they do something better than you. However, it is most important to start from within. Looking within your own company is the place to begin.

Look at where you have been static – Take a good long look at where you have been static in your own company. Has your company become stale and outdated? Is there room for something new and innovative? Can you improve a product or service?

What can you reuse – Is there a sales letter that you can re-circulate or a product that you can enhance in order to gain new clients and customers?

What needs recreating? – Is there an area of your business such as reorganizing one of your departments? Perhaps management and assistant management need to put better communication policies and procedures into place.

Does your product or service live up to today’s standards? – Look and see if your product or service lives up today’s standards. Once you have evaluated this, take a look and see if your product or service is trending according to today’s standards.

Where do you stand with social media? – If your website does not incorporate social media, then it is time to include this all-important aspect into your business. Many times a customer will immediately leave a web page if he or she does not see social media buttons.

How can you reach more clients? – Investigate how you can reach more clients. Perhaps you need to set up a Facebook fan page if you do not already have one put in place. Check to see if you are responding to comments that visitors leave on your webpage if you have one. Engaging with clients is a sure-fire way to bring them closer to you rather than alienate them. Reach out to other businesses and blogs to create a sharing opportunity on each other’s web sites through guest blogging or blog rolls.

Today’s business is extremely fast-paced and moves at a rapid speed through change. Keeping up with those changes is the only way to stay ahead of the competition.

Taking a look at all these things in your own company is the foundation of a company that is capable of standing out from the competition.

Stand Out from the Competition

Affirmations for Starting a New Business

Affirmations for Starting a New Business
If you didn’t’ already know, I am a huge fan of affirmations and use them as part of my daily morning routine. They were especially helpful when I first started coaching. Not only did they help make major shifts in my mindset they reminded me that I have started and ran a successful business before, why should this one be any different?

If you are just starting out with affirmations, I recommend you speak the affirmations out loud for about five minutes – three times a day, morning, midday, and evening. An ideal time to do this is when you’re putting on your makeup or doing your hair so that you can look at yourself in the mirror as you repeat the positive statement. Another option that helps to reinforce the new belief and would be easy to do at work is to write out the affirmation several times in a notebook. Notice over time as you write it if your style of writing changes. This could be a clue as to how your mind perceives the new concept.

Here are a few of my favourites to get you started.

Affirmations for Starting a New Business

Hello, July!

Hello July

11 Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

Working for yourself isn’t all rainbows and unicorns, sometimes it is just as hard as working for someone else. It’s up to you to determine whether the good outweighs the bad and if it is something you will be able to accomplish. So, it’s good for you to know in advance what the pros and cons of working for yourself are so that you can be realistic about what you’re getting yourself into. Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

Cons:

Work and home-life often collide: Due to the lack of planning, and no clear picture of work versus time off, you’ll find yourself working odd hours. This will be to accommodate both, the needs of your family and your business. Because of this, you may feel overwhelmed and feeling as if you never have a day off.

You’ll do a lot of work for free: Much of the work you do for your business is not billable, therefore will feel like free work until you start making a profit. It can be hard to push yourself to do things that aren’t producing income right now, but you must push through so that you can keep your business running smoothly.

Family will ask you to do stuff (“since you’re not doing anything”): Not just family, but sometimes friends will start to depend on you being there for them when they didn’t while you were at your 9-5 job. They might ask you to help them out by watching their child, who’s not feeling well, so they can go to work. Family members might stop helping out as much around the house because you are home all day. It can be never-ending.

You’ll crave being out of the house: Sometimes, when you go out, as you’re on your way home you’ll get the distinct feeling you’re going to work. You will want to do anything but go home, even grocery shop.

Stuff will distract you: Without a direct supervisor, even the most studious and organized individual can go off the rails due to the internet, television, pets, that pile of dirty dishes in the sink, just stuff around to distract you from work. It’s up to you and only you to set up a good working schedule to help you avoid this.

Pros:

No more living by the clock: If you arrange your business right you can wake up naturally without an alarm forcing you to get up when your body isn’t ready. You can also go to bed when you want to as well. It’s freedom very few have, to not live by the clock.

No more traffic jams: One of the best perks is not having to be caught in a traffic jam during rush hour when you need to pee! You won’t have to do that anymore and it will be a small blessing, most especially on bad weather days when everyone else has to trudge through the snow or the heatwave.

Fewer work-related interruptions: Office chatter can get overwhelming at times and it can be difficult to get work done due to them. Be honest, did you ever really get work done due to a meeting? 9 out of 10 times, during the meeting you’re thinking about how you could be getting work done, instead of talking about it.

You really CAN work in your PJs: Oh yes you can. You can wear PJs, yoga pants, or a moo-moo; no one cares. You can even get inspired right out of the shower and work naked if you want to. It’s your business and your house.

A flexible schedule: If you have a parent-teacher meeting you don’t have to ask permission from a superior or manager to attend. If you want to get your hair done, take the time to get it done. Whatever you want to do during the day is up to you – as long as you find time to also get your work done so you can get paid. Your schedule is your own.

You can eat healthier – Going to a 9-5 job, often causes you to eat out for lunch five days a week. That can not only be super expensive, but it is also very unhealthy for you. Working at home, you can take the time to prepare healthy lunches for yourself or eat leftovers from dinner the night before. Save money, and save your life.

Working from home offers many benefits and, like everything, a few drawbacks. It’s up to you to determine if you have the disposition for it. You’ll need to be able to rein in family and friends who want to take advantage of you, as well as taking a good look at yourself, to stay on track for creating a healthy and profitable home business.

Pros and Cons of Working for Yourself

Hello, June!

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp – Now Available!

Blogging is a great way to grow your reach and engagement with your target audience. It’s also fun and easy to do and frankly, it can be quite profitable if you do it right. I invite you to join me for 30 days, inside the TVS Workshop for my Blogging Bootcamp. I’ll have a fresh new post for you each day that will help you accomplish two things:

1. Give You Plenty of Ideas for New Content to Help You Become a More Consistent Blogger

My first goal with this challenge is to give you plenty of ideas for things to blog about. Sometimes it is hard to come up with something fresh and unique to write about. So, when you’re stuck with writer’s block or just feeling a little uninspired, look no further than these quick and easy content posts.

Use them right away, or file them away for those days when you’re struggling to post consistently.

2. Tips, Strategies, and How-To Info to Help You Become a Better Blogger

My second goal is to help you and challenge you to become a better blogger. We all have things we can improve and strive to do better. Every other day I’ll have a new tip, idea, or strategy for you. Try them as we work through the Bootcamp and start incorporating as many of them as possible in your blogging.

The reward will be more engagement, more traffic, and more subscribers and hopefully, at the end of the day, more cash in your pocket – results will vary of course, but I promise to share my best stuff with you.

30 Day Blogging Bootcamp

How This Will Work

Once you sign up, each day for the next 30 days I will send you an email and share either a content or strategy tip with you. If you haven’t already, become a member of New Entrepreneurs Workshop in to find inspiration and discuss each day’s content with others that have signed up.

So don’t wait and start building your blog and your confidence online. Learn how to provide consistency, easily keep your commitment and find clarity.

I think you’ll love getting into the habit of blogging consistently and you’ll be amazed at how much your audience and your traffic will grow in those 30 days.

As an added bonus – be sure to bookmark 52 Blog Ideas for your business, to help you with some great content ideas for your blog!

Blog consistently with confidence by signing up for the bootcamp.

Build a Business, Not Another Job

Build a Business, Not Another Job
During this crisis, many people dream of working for themselves, being their own boss, and having the freedom to only take on clients and projects they love.

What they don’t realize, though, is that there is a huge difference between building a business and being self-employed. Because business is an art-form.

This is something I learned the hard way throughout my last 20 years of being “self-employed.” A term I no longer use, and you shouldn’t either.

Business owners scale their income. Self-employed people trade dollars for hours.

Business owners leverage the skills and talents of others. Self-employed people rely only on their own skills.

Discouraged yet? Don’t be. Every business owner started out self-employed. Just don’t stay there. These tips will help you build a sustainable business instead of just another job.

Don’t Try to Do It All Yourself

Building a sustainable business requires that you leverage the talents and time of others. While it might seem cost-effective to simply do everything yourself—especially in the start-up phase when you likely have more time than money—it’s a path to burnout and stress.

Instead, separate your tasks into those that you love and are especially suited for (such as marketing) and those you dislike and aren’t good at. Then make a solid plan to get those that you aren’t good at off your list of things to do. If you feel like you can’t afford to outsource it all right now, start with what you tend to procrastinate the most on, even if it’s just a few hours each month.

Don’t Allow Yourself to Work All the Time

The trouble with working at home is that you live at work. And that means that there’s no clear line in the sand between your workday and your home life. No transition from one to the other.

Since there’s always work to do, it’s easy to find yourself working every available moment—often to the detriment of your family relationships.

You can help avoid this by:

Setting—and maintaining—clear work hours
Having an office with a door you can close when you’re done
Scheduling time for family and other activities
Taking time for yourself

Vacations and Downtime Are Important

Don’t create a business that requires you to be “in the office” every day. At the start, you may need to be available more, but you should definitely be planning for the day when you can be “off the grid” for extended periods of time.

Have trusted virtual assistants who can handle things when you’re not available
Leverage automation tools such as autoresponders and auto-webinar systems
Create repeatable systems so you’re not always re-inventing the wheel

While you might not be able to hit the road with no internet access for weeks at a time, at the very least you should be able to reduce your workload to a daily check-in.

Sound impossible? It’s not. With some forethought and planning, you can create a team—and the systems they need—to successfully run your business without becoming overwhelmed and overworked.

Business is an art-form, it takes practice and consistency to ensure it’s a success. Go inside the studio and look into my Art of Business Startup Program. It is a crash course on starting your own company off on the right foot. This 5 module program walks you through big-picture dreaming and planning by helping you create a business plan, define your purpose, set goals and build a strategy.

Be sure to follow the Studio’s Facebook Page! We’d love to hear from you. The page is a free space where you will find business-focused training and support for female entrepreneurs, as well as inspiration and Studio updates!

Build a Business, not another job

Want to Do Your Own Business Branding?

Do Your Own Business Branding!

When you do your own business branding, you need to remember it is so much more than your colours and your logo but choosing colours to represent you and your company’s image is usually where more people start in the branding process. There’s no shame in choosing your own brand colours instead of hiring a designer but it’s not exactly simple. Let’s dive into an explanation of the colour wheel and how it can help narrow down your colour choices.

A colour wheel consists of colours with the following distinctions: primary, secondary, tertiary, complementary, and analogous.

Primary colours are those which cannot be achieved by mixing other colours together. Red, blue, and yellow are primary colours.
Secondary colours are those which can be made by mixing two primary colours. Orange, green, and purple are secondary colours.
Tertiary colours are created by mixing primary and secondary hues together
Complementary colours are located at direct opposite ends of the colour wheel and
Analogous colours appear close together on a colour wheel

How does this help you and your small business? Go to the Canva colour wheel and take a look. You probably have an idea already of at least one colour you want to use in your branding, so find that colour/hue on the wheel. Now, look at the four colours next to it. Those are analogous colours that will look appealing when used together. Or find your first colour and look at the colour directly opposite. Those are complementary colours which will also be appealing together. If you use the accompanying drop-down menu, Canva will have selected the secondary colours in the above distinctions for you.

Once you make a decision on colours, Canva will show you the HEX codes for each colour. Write those down in a safe place so you use those colours consistently with your website, social media pages, and products without having to look them up numerous times. (I have them in my daytimer, sticky notes on my desktop and my business binder.)

As the famous artist, Marc Chagall once said, “All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites,” and this is certainly obvious when looking at the colour wheel itself. Choosing complimentary or analogous colours in a family that represents you and the image you want to portray is the first step toward branding your company.

Want to Learn More About the Psychology of Color? Join My Webinar…

Did you know that different colours evoke different emotions? Did you know there are warm and cool colours? Inside the TVS Workshop Facebook Group, you will find the “5 Free Tools to Build a Beautiful Brand,” training. Where I delve a little deeper into the psychology of colour and what exactly the terms “warm” and “cool” mean when speaking about colours. I’ll also show some examples of well-branded websites and share my favourite free colour wheel tools! Register here TVS Workshop.

P.S. Don’t forget to take a peek at this great article on defining your brand identity!

Defining Your Brand Identity

Do Your Own Business Branding