>>>Think like a project manager
Hi there
Would you like my secret to launching businesses, hosting successful events and selling out new services? You might think it is some convoluted, highly technical and complex piece of software, but alas. Put simply, I think and act like a project manager. That’s it!
The core of my daily, weekly and monthly planning and organisation process is a project management approach.
The women I work with every day as a holistic business coach have clarity around their end game. They want successful, sustainable businesses, working with people they genuinely like while providing a service that they wholeheartedly know serves a greater purpose.
That’s their goal - but how to get from a starting point to a lucrative outcome such as a new business, event or service? Enter project management.
Often, project management is seen as a skillset utilised by the construction industry or technology companies. While project management is central to these industries, it’s used, sometimes almost subconsciously, across many sectors and fields. In my restaurant days, project management was the cornerstone of our success and I wouldn’t have been able to run any of my tourism focussed businesses without that approach.
In this context, however, as female soloprenuers, we’re not building a hospital or a piece of software or even a dinner service. Our ‘projects’ are basically a cohesive plan of the actions required to create a specific outcome, be it a new business, a new service, an event or getting a new product to market. Our projects have a defined timeline (eg launch by EOFY) and clear scope. Project management is focused on locking down the tasks and activities required to meet our end goal.
I believe the project management approach is such an under-utilised methodology for female solopreneurs. It’s an approach that’s grounded in solid action and is based uponeffectiveness and sustainability. It involves thinking ahead and preparing for roadblocks with clear tasks and timelines. Project management provides a way to manage time and track ongoing issues as well as celebrate wins along the way.
Think of it this way - your big picture is your end game. Beyond the big picture, the detail is where the action lies. A detailed action plan, with timelines, will help you steer around time constraints, work
commitments and your competing priorities to get to the end game.
The plan breaks down the elements of your project into the specific tasks, sub tasks and deliverables to drive your project. A clear understanding of all the details will inform the timelines. My advice is to track back from when you want to launch, align that date to the amount of tasks to complete your project, and see if you have built yourself enough of a buffer to allocate your resources appropriately - particularly important when your main resource is you!
Sometimes when I raise project management as a tactic to achieve more, the response isn’t overwhelmingly positive, particularly from people who see themselves as creative, big picture thinkers.
However, that’s quite limited thinking, and there’s no reason why the big picture (your why, if you will) can’t coexist with the detail required to meet it. In fact, I believe it is essential to your long term success to not only have a working understanding of the detail, but to embrace it.
The clarity that comes with project management enables people to achieve their goals with far less interruption and surprises and with a marked probability of success. There’s not much I love more than working with a female soloprenuer to nut out the detail of a solid
project plan to get them to their end goal. If you have a project you’d like to take out of your list of goals and into a solid plan of attack, please reach out.
To your success…
