by Julia Pimsleur, author, speaker and coach, and the founder of Little Pim

No matter what size your company is now, growing it in a smart, lean way and recruiting the best people is – or should be – one of your top priorities. Maybe you’ve already started building your team, or you’re just beginning to think about making your first big hire. Either way, establishing your company’s core values helps you make smarter decisions in moving your business forward and creates a foundation for your company’s culture.

by Julia Pimsleur, author, speaker and coach, and the founder of Little Pim

Many of us do not love selling, and may even avoid getting better at it, even though we also know it’s one of the most important – if not THE most important – keys to growing our companies. Very few businesses making under $1M in revenues can afford a senior sales team so for now anyway, you ARE the rainmaker. Whether you can find and close deals really, really matters.

In my last few blogs, I focused on two of the key things you need to get right if you want to grow your business in 2017: setting your strategy and relentlessly executing your plan. But no matter how well we plan, no matter how hard our teams work, there will be setbacks along the way.

Developing your entire marketing strategy, including your brand, messaging, copy, social media, and PR, can feel overwhelming and prohibitively expensive. In the early days of Little Pim, I know that when faced with the marketing dollars I could spend, I wanted the Italian leather boots and all I could afford were the discounted canvas Keds! But there are ways to ramp up your marketing without ramping up your spend. 

Do you ever feel like you could be making more progress in your business, or like you sometimes get off track and then have trouble remembering the main things you should be focused on as you climb the entrepreneurial mountain? Do you ever wish you had someone with whom you could celebrate the big wins and who would be there to cheer you on when you hit the deep potholes?

When did you last take a proper one or two-week vacation? One where you didn’t check email and created space to remember who you are as a friend, traveler, lover, wife, mother or whatever other parts of your identity are meaningful to you? I just came back from a two-week vacation with my boys in Europe, and I want you to have one too. It’s good for your health, your family and yes, your business.

You’ve probably heard the word on the street: investors typically have no interest in service businesses because they don’t scale easily. While scaling a service business comes with its own challenges, it’s not impossible. 

Do you ever feel like no matter how much you get done in a day, your to-do list keeps getting longer and longer? In a culture and society that’s obsessed with being busy and “swamped” with work, I often hear something along the lines of this from women entrepreneurs: “I’m so overwhelmed I don’t know what to do next.”

Can you unplug completely and do it with confidence? Will your business run without you? There’s only one way to find out.

I’ve coached and worked with hundreds of women entrepreneurs making between $75k and $750k in revenues, and in my book Million Dollar Women I profiled women who successfully built multi-million dollar companies. When only 3% of women entrepreneurs are reaching $1M in revenues, we know that the women who make it “big” are more the exception than the rule. So exactly what is getting in our way of catching up with men in turning our business ideas into ones that make bank? 

When I started considering fundraising for Little Pim many years ago, I was instantly overwhelmed by everything I didn’t know and had so many questions that I didn’t know who to ask. Many of the women I speak to today have the same questions and fears....