Women entrepreneurs…you deserve more attention than you’re getting!  Free PR can be much more effective than paid advertising.  And there are a lot of media folks just waiting to write about you and your company.  All you need are the means and methods to pique their interest.

These ten free PR ideas will help you and your company get seen, get more leads, get more customers and grow your business!

The webinar, part of our Alpha Mare Academy, is free and takes just 25 minutes. Once you’ve watched it, post your own “most effective PR tips” in the comments section.  Let’s all learn from each other!

I grew up in southern California, about an hour from the great beaches at Newport and Laguna. The rite of passage for teens in my part of the world was to get your drivers license the day you turned 16, then load up your car with friends and head to the beach.

That’s how we all spent our summer weekends — at the beach. We listened to rock and roll on our transistor radios. We slathered our skin with a combination of baby oil and iodine, to get that perfect tan. We sprayed lemon juice in our hair, because it was supposed to give us natural blond highlights.

But going to the beach wasn’t really about getting a tan.  It was about meeting boys!

I was a good swimmer and enjoyed a brisk dip in the Pacific. But most of my girlfriends didn’t go in the water much. Why? Because if the point of going to the beach was to meet boys, you didn’t want to do that with wet hair.

One late summer day, I broke the first rule of water sports. Tired of being hot and sticky (and not having met any cute boys), I went for a swim.  Alone.

I swam out a ways, kicked around just enough to cool off and looked back to shore. I had a hard time seeing where my friends were perched on their beach towels.

I started swimming toward the beach, kicking and stroking until I was out of breath, but it seemed like I was getting nowhere. I swam harder, until my legs and arms burned. Exhausted, I tread water for a minute, to rest and once again check my bearings. Nothing on the beach looked familiar.

What I did see was the lifeguard station. Flapping on top was a red flag. That flag meant riptide.

Now I was a little scared. I realized I was caught in a strong undercurrent that was pulling me farther out and farther down the beach, no matter how hard I swam.

Once again, I began swimming hard and once again I wore out. As I tread water, a large wave tossed me around and when I surfaced, strangely I ended up next to a young man in the water. Yes, one of those cute boys we’d love to meet. But not this way!

And you know what I did? I very politely asked if I could just rest on his arm for a minute. Now here I am, drowning, and still too prideful to ask for help.

My rest was brief because another wave separated us. And after another hard swim toward the beach and getting nowhere, I finally did what any sane person would have done 30 minutes earlier. I waved my tired arms and yelled for help. The lifeguards, trained to look for fools like me, spotted me, and a big hunk of a guy came out to rescue me.

I learned an important lesson that day: working hard doesn’t always get you where you want to go. Working harder isn’t always the answer.

Sometimes you have to ask for help. Sometimes you have to admit you’re not Superwoman. Darn, I hate it when that happens!

Sometimes, it’s time for a new strategy.

Working with female business owners, I see many women just like me. When the going gets tough, they apply more steam, more will power. When a problem arises, they work harder to solve it. They work until they are exhausted.

The most important thing we need to learn in business is HOW to solve the problems and challenges we face. Working harder isn’t always the answer.

If you are in the weeds (well, not if, but when), instead of applying more steam, do the counter-intuitive thing. Back up and take the longer view.

So let me show you how to break the cycle. I’ve put together a short webinar (35 minutes) to explore the ways you can start working smarter, start thinking differently and start leveraging what made you a business owner in the first place: You!

Download this free worksheet first, because it’s the tool that will save YOUR life (kind of like that handsome lifeguard!)

How Do You Know You’re Winning If You Don’t Keep Score?

In sixteen years of working with women entrepreneurs, I think the comment I’ve heard most often is, “I just don’t like numbers.”

So many women believe they’re bad at math, or just don’t like it, that they avoid learning about their business financials.

So I’ll get right to the point:  if you don’t understand your numbers, you’re sunk.  And that’s silly, because you don’t need to be an expert in math to learn this.

So jump in!  Learn how to keep score and increase your profits with my free webinar.

Make sure to download your free handout before watching the webinar.

WEBINAR NOTES

Key Strategic Indicators are:

• The things you need to measure daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually.
• The signals that tell you if you’re going in the right direction or wrong direction
• The information you need to make good, timely decisions

Why bother?

• Helps you spot trends to take advantage of
• Helps  you prevent serious problems
• Helps  you create efficiencies
• Helps  you increase productivity
• Helps entire team know the results of their efforts

Are you measuring the right things?

• Short Term Measures vs. Long Term Measures
• Input Measures vs. Output Measures
• Basic Financial Measures
• Non-financial Measures
• Profit per “X”

What to ask yourself:

• What results do I want in 90 days?
• What results do I want in 1 year?
• What results to I want in 5 years?
• What activities cause sales?
• What activities cause increased expenses?
• Which numbers make profits increase or decrease?

Which 3 key measures will you commit to track?

• Any activity that causes sales (weekly)
• Total expenses as % of total revenue (monthly)
• Marketing as % of total revenue (monthly)

Create a simple dashboard that’s updated weekly

Businesses don’t succeed or fail without clues

Keep score!

Commit to measure three things for three months

Financial measures

• Gross revenues
• Net revenues
• Cost of goods/services sold
• Gross margin (total sales revenue – cost of goods sold ÷ total sales revenue)
• Gross profit
• Mark up percentage
• Percentage of uncollectables
• Commissions
• Labor costs as % of sales
• Assets to liabilities ratio
• Receivables (and as % of annual revenue)
• Sales days of receivables
• Selected expenses as % of revenue (what’s your Achilles heel?)
• Dollars in reserve
• % of billable hours actually billed

Marketing

• Marketing dollars as % of total sales
• Website hits
• New e-news signups per week/month/year
• Open and click-through rates on e-mail marketing
• Number of social media followers
• % response rate on direct mail or email
• Number of event registrations (and % of total invitees)
• Number of networking events attended

Business Development

• What causes sales?
• Number of phone calls, appointments, proposals, etc.
• Number of sales
• Number of new clients
• Average sale per client
• Number of clients
• Number of referrals
• Lead or proposal conversion ratio
• Days to close leads
• Customer retention rate
• % of complaints
• Lifetime value of a customer

Operations

• Dollars generated per square foot
• Payroll as % of sales
• Number of billable hours
• Billable hours as % of total billable hours available
• Benefits costs as % of revenue
• Delivery costs
• Shrinkage (in dollars & % of inventory)
• Days to shipping
• Sales per square foot
• Inventory
• Shipping costs (and as % of revenue)

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate good advice!   Learning from others saves me precious time, money and heartache.  It’s a great feeling when you know you avoided a pitfall that would have certainly ruined your day, your week, your month.

I want you to have that feeling. From my 16 years experience working with women, I’ve put together 10 of the most common mistakes women business owners make.

Don’t waste needless time and money tripping on cracks in the sidewalk when I’m putting up a big yellow sign that says “Walk around this hole in the ground.”

The best part is that all this wisdom is free!

So watch the webinar, then share the love…post one of the mistakes you’ve made in the comments section, so other women can learn from you!  We’re all in this together, right?