WELCOME TO ELEANOR’S BLOG
As a woman entrepreneur, your job is to build the business ONLY YOU can build.
The job of this blog is to give you the inspiration, tools, ideas, support and well-timed humour you need to see it through.
You’re not here to follow some else’s formula, toil for paltry money or coast below your potential.
I’m not here to enable mediocrity, enforce a culture of overwork, or present you with fluff and thinly veiled regurgitations of other people’s ideas.
If, having read this far, we see eye to eye, then I encourage you to IMMEDIATELY sign up for my newsletter. It is CONSUMED by thousands of intelligent women each week, including some of the best-known leaders and coaches in the women’s entrepreneurship space.
Why? Because it’s funny, smart and genuinely helpful.
IN THE MEANTIME, HERE’S WHAT YOU SHOULD READ FIRST.
HOW I TRANSFORMED MY WEEKLY CALENDAR
In 2018, I had 29 hours of scheduled time: meetings, coaching sessions, classes etc. Flash forward to 2021 and my unscheduled hours have dropped by 67% to 9.6 hours per week. My calendar used to make me want to cry. Today I have a lot of open, unscheduled time. It’s pretty awesome.
BIZ LESSONS FROM THE HIGHEST PAID HUMAN IN TELEVISION
Last year, the Judge took home a cool 47 million from her show, which has been in syndication for 25 seasons. This was ON TOP of the $100 million she commanded from CBS when she sold them her Judge Judy library (of shows she had ALREADY PREVIOUSLY SOLD THEM!). And lest you think you can’t teach an old dawg new tricks, last month Judge Judy took her cash machine, I mean, TV show, and sold it to Amazon, where soon people around the world will be able to hear her tell off unsuspecting cheaters, philanderers, petty thieves and various other hapless pseudo criminals.
THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF MY 2021 BUSINESS PLANNING
If you are like most entrepreneurs, you will fill your strategic plan with a lot of activities that produce very very VERY limited results… And you will likely devote too little time to the one thing that generates ALL THE VALUE.
DON’T CAST YOUR PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
Don’t waste your breath serving up your message and offer to the wrong audience because. Not only will they ignore, overlook or undervalue you. Their apathy or misguided criticism will crush your confidence and SINK you. There is no marketing tactic, launch strategy or copywriting formula that will help you if you are casting pearls before swine.
Then continue reading here:
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How To Work SMARTER
If you feel like you are constantly running short on time, and your lack of hours in the day is holding you back from creating the results you desire, please read this.
Part 2: Why I scrapped my (very good) book manuscript
Minions market and queens shape culture. The idea is that some people look for marketing gimmicks to help them “stand out”. Clearly, these poor souls missed the part in the History According To White Men class where Abe Lincoln told a bunch of other white men that you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.
Part 1: Why I scrapped my (very good) book manuscript
I completed the manuscript two years ago and submitted it to my editor. They were impressed and if you read my emails you can probably guess why. I have co-written many other books that have been shortlisted for major awards and sold well.
Minions “market”, Queens shape culture (instructions enclosed)
When you compare the marketing messages of your competitors and you honestly can’t REALLY tell the difference between any of them or, ( if you are being honest) YOU, then you all are upholding The Culture.
A clarification from your “racially ambiguous” scribe
Being bi-racial, being a woman of colour, is a huge part of who I am, was a major shaper of my experience growing up, and is therefore a big part of my worldview today. AND…for those of us who ARE bi-racial, there can sometimes be a distinct feeling of not belonging anywhere. Combine that with being an immigrant (which I also am), and you get potentially a lot of ethnic ambiguity…
5 signs you have an abusive relationship with your business
The sad truth is that MANY female founders have an abusive relationship with their businesses…and then they wonder why it isn’t growing faster/is so hard/is overwhelming etc.
For best results, embrace Baller Problems
Advanced niching happens when you get REALLY clear on the level of problem your target client needs to have in order to be “qualified” — or, to use a stronger word “worthy” of working with you.
When group coaching programs go horribly wrong
When you rely on someone else’s step-by-step formula. You lose connection with your voice, vision and unique thought process. And then you wonder why nothing you do is working as well as you think it should AND you feel so massively disconnected from your vision.
My biggest lesson from being an underpaid freelance writer
Freelancing taught me the single most important skill any entrepreneur must master if you want to have a snowball’s chance in HAIL of building a lucrative business: how to sell.
Why I can no longer get up early and grind
Shortly after giving birth to my first son,I figured out that if I was going to be the wealthy and influential woman I wanted to be, I was going to have to do the week. So for the ensuing decade, I did the daily rise and grind. I woke up at 4:50am, drank successive cups of coffee or tea, applied base of pants to seat of chair and pressed firmly. It worked. Here’s just a small taste of what my rise and grind sessions helped me produce:
5 Personal Updates From EB
What I’ve been up to this summer.
Why you need a “clean money only” policy
When you have a Clean Money Only policy, you design a world that allows YOU to earn, serve and flourish at the highest level…
Rather than twist yourself into a pretzel in order to fit into the rules, laws and norms of others. Women have gamely attempted to fit into the norms of “regular” business for decades now and, given the rates of stress, burnout, overwhelm and sustained corporate exodus, I’d say the “I’ll come to you” model is ineffective.
Why I Invented The “Jewel Business” Model
A “jewel business” is a company that fulfills the following 30/30/30 criteria: 30% revenue growth per year (until such time that the founder chooses to accelerate or decelerate growth); 30% profit margin per year; 30% open, unscheduled time for the founder. A jewel business delivers an optimal amount of cash, influence and autonomy to a founder courageous enough to build her business this way.
Rich coach, poor coach. Rich farmer, poor farmer.
If you sell a service or knowledge (i.e. most coaches, consultants and service based businesses), know that your service is the apple. If you are only selling your service, you are the farmer selling apples to the grocery store. There is no shame in this, but it’s not how you build wealth. If you really want to build wealth, you need to invest in ADDING VALUE.