2 Girls and a Laptop

Helen and Jacqui and are the ‘gals' behind the laptop, they live with their families in Brisbane, Australia and collectively have over 35 years experience in sales and marketing. Their idea to help women in small business on their overall business strategy (in addition to all things marketing) came about while working with their social media clients and realising that many owners didn't have any type of business or financial plan in place. Many solo business owners also don’t have the budget for the ongoing ‘coaching’ relationship so they saw an opportunity to offer affordable and tailored action plans to help owners to define, create and implement their goals into actionable steps. They also offer group training in the form of workshops and webinars.

What prompted you to create a business from home?

We had a desire to work together (and for ourselves) mainly for the flexibility, for it to be on our own terms but also, after stepping away from our careers to become mothers we both felt the need to use our skills, experience and creativity again. We have young children (Helen, 1 and Jacqui has 2) and they are our priority. In terms of the 'working from home' part… we cant afford office space (well, we have a heap of other priorities before we invest in working space outside of home) so home it is!

In terms of the business itself, we saw an opportunity to affordably support small business owners with their overall business planning and strategy (in addition to marketing).

So many people we’d come across had started a small business doing something they were passionate about (which is fantastic!) but lacked the core business skills to see their business thrive. We help owners to define their goals and support those goals with a plan.

What does that actually mean?

Many business owners we work with struggle to grow the business strategically as they are too busy with the day to day tasks. We help owners work ‘on’ their business instead of ‘in’ their business. Any small business owner will know there are usually a gazillion things they could be (or people on social media tell them they should be) doing and we help them find the ‘low hanging fruit’. That is, the improvements they can easily implement to give them the biggest uplift for effort. We know our ideal clients are time poor and don’t have endless cash so we keep our engagements and workshops affordable and timely.

Do you have any tips for other women wanting to start?

We do! We have soooo many, in fact we have written a whole blog post about it here (link at bottom of article). Its important to be realistic about what revenue the business will provide you financially in the first 12 months. If you have unrealistically high goals and you don’t reach them, you may start to have a problem with mindset and negative self talk.

What challenges have you faced so far and how did you overcome them?

One challenge we have experienced and we are sure other small business owners do also is making sure you focus on the revenue coming in WHILE you are working on new products and other non revenue generating activities. Keeping that cash flowing is crucial. Whenever we have found ourselves distracted from our revenue targets we’ve pulled everything back into line by re-visiting our plan and priorities.

We both face the challenge of only working part-time hours which has hindered our growth and meant that we've had to be very selective about the opportunities we pursue which sounds like a negative but its not at all. Before starting the business we each sat down and wrote up our ‘Why’ and our own desires and needs when it came to business ownership and we separately had that having a work/life balance and spending time with our kids was #1 on our list of priorities and neither of us have strayed from this or regretted it.

How important is it to nail your business strategy?

As we are business strategists of course we are going to say it is THE MOST important thing. A brand person will tell you that brand is #1 and a finance person will tell you budgeting and forecasting is #1. But seriously, it really is THE MOST important thing. Having a plan and an intention (goal) of what you set out to achieve each period is crucial. Those goals and objectives then flow down into the rest of the business (i.e; sales, marketing and financials) and form the basis of those plans.

With your experience now, what would you do differently?

Oh, we’ve made a number of mistakes but we needed to go through that process to learn and grow. But I think the #1 mistake most of us make is under estimating the amount of work to successfully launch a new product or service. One example for us was rushing into launching a new ebook (while we were away on Christmas holidays no less). Whilst we had some of the mechanics and processes right, to get serious traction you really need ‘all hands on deck’ I think we pictured it as a ‘passive’ income, but there’s nothing passive about passive income - you still have to do a lot of work to get the sales rolling in!

WWW.TWOGIRLSANDALAPTOP.COM.AU

https://www.twogirlsandalaptop.com.au/blog/2017/12/11/thinking-about-starting-a-business-heres-7-things-you-must-do-first