Smart Women and the Game of Entrepreneurship

A few days ago, my 7 year old daughter came home with what I thought was a challenging school project---designing and creating her own game from scratch. Jenna was stumped at first. She came up with a few ideas but then quickly gave up as she found some “glitches” in her plan. This got me thinking about Smart Women and the game of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be fun, exciting, challenging and risky all at the same time—just like any other game we play. There are days when I’m on top of the world because everything is working out just the way I had planned and, there are days when I want to crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head because it feels like every move I make or card I play turns out to be ones that don’t move me forward at all. Jenna’s game will be graded on several factors; easy for anyone to understand how to play, organized and neat presentation, and of course, turned in on time. If you want your business to get high marks and become successful, there are several questions that you need to ask yourself: 1. Decide what game you’re playing. What type of business do you have or want to have? Is it something that the marketplace needs? Are there other people doing the same thing or a version of your business that have been successful? Jenna sat down in her room and I put her favorite games all around her---Chutes and Ladders, Sorry, Trouble, etc. This exercise helped her to see how other games were put together in terms of pieces, die, cards and rules. It’s always a good idea to research other people who’ve been successful in your industry. It’s not to copy what they’re doing but to see similarities—what’s working, what’s not working. 2. What’s the object of your game? What product or service are you offering? When your ideal client makes a choice to work with you, what will they receive at the end of your time together? This is critical to your business process. Helping the client understand how they will be better or different after working with you is of high interest to them. 3. How do people play your game? In other words, how do they work with you? Is it in person? By phone? Online? Do you offer packages or bundle services together? You have to make the access to your service easy for the client. 4. Make the experience rewarding! People want to enjoy the relationship they develop when working with someone. Price is not always the major factor in why people buy. They want to work with someone who has the expert knowledge they need and who will make the process enjoyable. Jenna created a game called, “Math Baseball.” It’s a game that she knows a lot about and enjoys playing. The rules she made up for the game are both fun and challenging involving some risk. Sounds a lot like the game we play called “Entrepreneurship.” Anything is possible. Everything is waiting for you. *****