Online Business & the Mid-Life Woman: the 3 Biggest Challenges
2020 — the year that a whole new wave of professionals and experts have suddenly found themselves without a job and needing to create new income. Not what any of us envisioned last December 31st!
Statistics show that more women than men are being impacted.
A lot of these ‘accidental entrepreneurs’ are suddenly find themselves having to bootstrap an online business to take a proactive path to continuing their career on their terms and to create an alternative income vehicle.
For the mid-life women experiencing 2020 impact, there are a unique set of challenges. Here are the 3 biggest:
The Tech
Rule of thumb: Do not wade into your new online business with tools and platforms that are going to drive you crazy! You will want to put the largest portion of your energy into your business and your clients so you want to avoid having technology that is going to suck the joy out of your day.
Start with the level of tools that work with your comfort level. If you feel you may not have a strong tech background, you may want to start out with the simplest suite of tools that will work for your business. Get comfortable with them and get your business stable. The “Essential Tools for Online Business” guide shows you a simple suite of tools to get started that I have chosen for clients.
To assemble the suite, I kept my favorite tech-shy clients in mind and aimed for the best tools for the job that were easy to use and were most affordable. You can download your own copy and get your business tools in place.
Later, as your business grows and you want to take the training wheels off, you can gradually adopt tools with a bit more complexity that enhance the customer experience and streamline your operation
If you have a lot of experience with tech and a good comfort level exploring new software, a great resource to find the tools for your unique business is the Capterra website. Capterra lets you research from literally thousands of business software options covering every imaginable business function, showing you features, pricing, alternatives, reviews and even let’s you do side-by-side comparisons of your final choices.
The Overwhelm
Being a mid-life gal means you have a lifetime of expertise and knowledge to share, which is awesome. That actually makes it harder to have clarity on what your new business should be offering and how.
The biggest vector of overwhelm usually stems from the tension between 1) wanting to include all the important professional skills we can offer potential clients and 2) the workload that grows exponentially with each separate skill or modality we include in this new digital entity we are producing.
The learning curve is steep enough already for the new online biz-builder; the best way to minimize your overwhelm is to focus yourself down on just your main offer for the first iteration of your business. You can add more later once you’re launched and comfortable.
The second way you can reduce overwhelm is to have a coach or mentor who has been down the same road you’re navigating. Often, what can bring you to tears of frustration and confusion as someone new to all this, can be quickly and easily solved by a knowledgeable support.
Don’t try to do it all yourself!
The Loneliness
Mid-life women have a different experience in building our online business than someone a couple of decades younger. Guaranteed, the Millennials and Gen Zs have at least a few friends who are doing some kind of online commerce. They are much more widely connected to other ‘digital natives’ doing a variety of things with the latest online platforms and are, on average, part of at least a few digital communities.
Humans seek the comfort of community — other people with whom we can share our interests, our passions and our challenges. This is especially important when you are starting a new endeavor. It gives us encouragement, reinforcement, support and supplies a reassuring subconscious validation: I am not a crazy person; this is a ‘thing’!
The best solution for the challenge of loneliness is to find community. Find a mastermind group. Find a mentor. Even if it is strictly virtual, this is your psychological lifeline as you go through the challenges of creating your business. Your real-life friends and peers will probably have zero context or understanding if you try to talk about your new undertaking.
Speaking from experience — both mine and most online associates — it can be isolating. You want to share in your wins, your challenges — to toss ideas around and get feedback. Without a community of like-minded entrepreneurs, you can find yourself feeling — as much as none of like to admit to it — lonely!
Forewarned is forearmed
Knowing ahead of time what bumps in the road to expect can help you prepare, cope and mitigate.
If you’re in it for the long haul, here’s some advice:
Take advantage of any shortcuts you can, don’t try to do it all yourself and find your community.
Originally published at https://www.ofcoursepro.com.
