How to Grow Your Small Business as a Female Solopreneur

Being a solopreneur has several benefits. For instance, you have complete control over your company, you get to call the shots, and you don’t have to deal with shareholders or partners holding competing visions for your brand. You have the power to take your company wherever you want it to go. However, because you’re on your own, you have to be strategic about where you spend your time and energy so you don’t burn yourself out while scaling your business.

This is where it pays to invest in digital tools and online services. Compared to hiring employees or outsourcing legal and financial work to firms, taking advantage of these tools will help you save a lot of money as you grow your business! Here are some actionable tips from MagicPay to help you save time and grow your one-woman show.

Upgrade Your Payment Processing

Depending on the type of business you run, your payment processing methods could be out of date or holding you back. And today, a quality payment solution can be the bridge you need to keep everything organized behind the scenes. The days of cash registers are numbered. Now, merchants should be offering customers who wish to use credit cards the opportunity to pay through POS systems as well as wireless terminals. Mobile payments, recurring billing and even the ability to accept multiple types of currency are also critical. A credit card processing setup through MagicPay is a great way to update the way you take payments, giving you solutions you need to grow your venture.

Hire a Virtual Assistant

Many small business owners focus all of their time and effort on tasks that keep their business running, like preparing invoices, recording expenses, and managing inventory. While these tasks are essential, they take your attention away from growth projects. Farnam Street Media describes this as preventing pain over pursuing gain. Tasks that prevent pain are those that prevent the loss of something you have. These tasks never go away. “Gain” tasks, on the other hand, are those that move you toward something you want. These tasks don’t have due dates, but they are the ones that lead to positive business results!

The great thing about “pain prevention” tasks is that they can be delegated, freeing up your focus for “gain” projects. This is where it pays to hire a virtual assistant. A virtual assistant can take on all kinds of regular administrative projects from bookkeeping to customer support. Hiring a virtual assistant is the most cost-effective way to hand off your work demands so you can focus on growing your business. You can find virtual assistants on all kinds of job boards and freelancing platforms. You could even hire an assistant through a training agency!

Get an Advanced Degree

Okay, yes, you are managing a growing venture, and there’s a lot going on and a lot at stake. However, if business skills aren’t part of your career background and you’re learning as you go, it makes sense to go back to school. An MBA, for example, can help you grow your skills in key areas like marketing, financial management, communications, operations and people management. It’s an investment that will pay off for years to come. You can also find degree programs that allow you to work at your own pace. Having that kind of flexibility will make it easier to focus on the day-to-day of your venture. 

Outsource Content Creation

While virtual assistants can help you with a number of general business tasks, you may want to hire specialized freelancers for specific projects, such as content creation. Creating great content takes a lot of work. It’s one of those “gain” projects that take a back seat behind all of those daily tasks that keep your business running. Thankfully, there are countless freelance creators out there — writers, videographers, photographers — who can help you out!

Why invest in content creation? Trint.com explains that serving your target audience with valuable, tailored content is an incredibly powerful marketing strategy. Great content is authoritative, establishing your position as a trusted leader in your industry. It’s relevant to the needs and desires of your audience. It’s consistent with your brand identity and voice. A great content strategy should focus on delivering information that your customers really want, whether in the form of articles, videos, social media posts, or podcast episodes.

Streamline Social Media

Social media is a fantastic tool for promoting your content and spreading the word about your business. As Hootsuite explains, being active on social media will help you improve your business visibility, reach a wider audience, foster trust in your brand, and build meaningful connections with your customers.

But maintaining several social media accounts can be a full-time job in itself! Streamlining your social media strategy is essential if you want to grow your business without spending hours every day posting content and engaging with your audience. Thankfully, there are many social media automation tools available today, so you can put together your own time-saving toolkit. Some great apps to check out include Buffer, Sendible, Social Pilot, and CoSchedule.

Automate Customer Service

Social media isn’t the only thing you can automate. If you’re spending hours of your day responding to customer service emails, it’s time to onboard an efficient customer support system. Automated customer service tools can save you the cost of hiring employees to carry out support.

The tricky part about automating customer support is maintaining authenticity. The key is to help your customers find answers on their own. Creating a thorough knowledge base is a great way to do this. A categorized, searchable knowledge base will enable customers to find solutions much faster than they would by contacting customer service. Start by populating your knowledge base with articles that solve the most common questions you get from customers and consider adding a visual element to further engage your readers.

Scaling a small business on your own is a lot of work, so be sure to take advantage of all the tools and tech-based resources that are available to you. Freelancers, digital services, and automation apps will free up tons of your time so you can focus on the growth projects that will take your business to the next level!

Written by Katie Conroy