motherswhowork.co.uk profiles a lot of business women every year – it’s what inspires other mums who are thinking about starting their own business. One of my favourite interviews to date is with Emma Whimhurst author of BOOM! 7 Disciplines to CONTROL, GROW and ADD IMPACT to Your Business.
- Emma describes herself as an “ordinary woman who has achieved etraordinary results” and says everyone can also achieve success
Emma, 42, became a self-made millionaire from the success of her biggest enterprise to date – Diva Cosmetics, which she set up when she saw a gap in the market for colour cosmetics in the late 90s, and sold in 2003.
She’d had 10-year career at Revlon, Emma seized the opportunity to nurse her entrepreneurial itch and Diva Cosmetics was born. The business rapidly became the leading supplier of own labelled colour cosmetics to the majority of high street chains including New Look, Monsoon Accessorize, River Island, and George@Asda.
Emma is an original mumpreneur, starting Diva Cosmetics from home with her first-born on her hip. The business rapidly grew to accommodate a full-time team of twelve with offices in central Bournemouth. She sold the business in late 2003 – a conscious decision by Emma to grow her family and take some time out. Emma is now a mum of three children aged 10, five and three years.
She now works as a motivational business speaker and business turnaround expert, broadcaster and is a TV personality.
I interviewed Emma to talk about her new book, but I also got some business coaching thrown in, too! Every year, I get approached by book publishers to review new must-read business books. And before I’ve even finished skimming the book for the first time the boredom sets in because it feels like deja vu. Nothing different essentially besides the title of the book. That’s the difference with Boom!. Emma’s entrepreneural nouse means that the book comes from experience and tried and tested methods.
“The difference with Boom! versus other business books is the way it is written, which is a dip in and dip out type book,” says Emma. “I wanted something that would be an easy read that gives trememdous value. Yes, you can read it from cover to vcover, but you can also dip in and out of the parts that are most worthy to you.”
In Boom!, Emma talks about the seven disciplines that entrepreneurs should use everyday to guarantee business success. “The disciplines are habits – not rules that you should do day-to-day in your business.”
“A lot of the success depends on the mindset. Regardlesss of where you are working, you need to manage yourself and adopt business practices as if you are working in a large organisation,” says Emma. This is sound advise, especially for business mums, as a number of us run our businesses from home using any available space we can find – from the kitchen table to the spare room office.
Two elements of business planning that can be the biggest hurdle for many start-ups can be getting our heads around business planning and marketing. But once you have completed your first business plan you’ll find that it’s not as daunting as you thought it would be.
“What mums are very capable of doing is multitasking and researching – there is a plethora of information on the internet, but fundamentally, they need to think about what they want to get out of their business,” says Emma.
“Forget the word marketing, think – what’s going to get my business to work fundamentally. Think sales – how am I going to get people to buy products from me?
“One thing about motherhood is that it makes you very resourceful. The firrst time you’ve given birth and they say ‘here you are it’s all yours’, what do you do? You ask. When you have that first night and they don’t sleep you ask. We are presented with new situations every day and we deal with it.
“When you write your business plan, what you are saying is where I want to be. Think about your strategy. It’s like your satvav – you know you want to get to Edingbrugh, and it tells you the route.
“Where people go wrong with business planning is they write it, show every one and then leave it. But if you do what you’ve always done you’ll get the same result.
“Your financial planning says what you need to do make your business a success. So, if the first month didn’t generate any sales, you look at your marketing plan and see where it went wrong. Then you can see that ‘we’re getting people through the door, but we’re not making the sale’ – and ask yourself what’s wrong. You’d then review that on week four. If you’re on a tight business plan you’d review it every week.
“You’ve got to be at that level of micro planning – review review review and then plan again. If you’re not succeseding, change something, the first step to changing something is not hanging up your boots. It’s too easy to pass on the responsoiblility for failure to someone else. A business plan is not for anyone but yourself. at some point there has to be some form of review.
“When you work corporately you are constantly being monitored. When you start your own business it doesn’t mean that changes.”
As a mum herself, Emma knows the steep learning curve that comes with having children. She says those survival skills that we put to use from the very first day our first child is put into our care is testament to the fact that mums have a natural ability to cope in the business world. “Mothers are resourcesful – we are still responsible for the home on a daily basis. If women applied those skills to their business there would be far less the amount of failure.
Emma’s book BOOM! 7 Disciplines to CONTROL, GROW and ADD IMPACT to Your Business can be purchased on www.divapublishing.co.uk.
Find out more about the book at www.BOOMpreneur.co.uk.
