When I first started my entrepreneurial journey I went from working in a friendly, family like team to working ‘all by myself’ *cue Bridget Jones singing said song, surrounded by a pack of dogs.

I don’t think I realised quite how lonely it could get but thankfully I met my ‘biz bestie’ at the end of my second month, TF! I really don’t know how I would have coped if I hadn’t had that support right at the start.

So I wanted to offer any other gals who are feeling the lonely chill my top tips on how to find your new bestie.

Here goes ladies,
3 Actionable points on how to find your biz bestie…

1. Network, network and then network some more

This year I’ve come to realise that I’m an introvert and an extravert. When I go to an event, I like to go on my own and partly because most of my friends aren’t interested in the biz things that I am. Mainly though I go on my own to push myself out of my comfort zone so that I have to mix with other women rather than only talking to my friend.

To do this though, it means that yes I actually have to talk to strangers and that can be bloody scary! But I find that they’re also just as nervous to start a conversation, so by just offering up a friendly smile or a ‘are you on your own too? Great, I’m Liz’ the ice is broken and BOOM you’ve made a connection!

Exchange numbers, send them a message and get a date in the diary to meet up for coffee.

2. Join An Online Program

I’m all in when it comes to coaching. I think that getting coaching isn’t just for athletes to make them better athletes, it’s for people like us wanting to improve certain aspects in our lives. I can’t tell you how many lovely women I’ve met through coaching programs I’ve been in. Really they’re just totally on my wavelength and so friendly and supportive.

3. Online Memberships & Facebook Groups

There are so many great membership sites, my favourite one being The Female Entrepreneur Association, Carrie Green the founder is incredibly warm and totally gets what starting a business from nothing looks like, because she’s done it! As well as being full of incredibly helpful tips on how to grow your business through a number of different ways there are enormous opportunities to connect with like minded women.

Facebook has so many groups that are just full of women like us who have started businesses and are feeling the effects of working by themselves. I’ll put an index below of some of my favourite groups. When you’re in the group, write a post and say you’re looking for a biz bestie or an accountability partner and boom, twenty people will reply instantly.

One thing with all of these things I’m mentioning… You have to make the effort to keep it up. Be consistent with keeping in touch if you really want it to work. Relationships take time and effort but the rewards are so so worth it!

My story…

I met my biz bestie, Sarah Alford through the lovely Kat Dever, who was my coach on a coaching program I’d been in *see point 2 ‘Join On A Online Program’. I was designing Kat’s website and Sarah was doing all the tech, link up wizardry behind the scenes and it was love at first site! Gettit, love at first sight/site?!? ;-p haha sorry

Sarah’s gift is for copywriting and also having mad tech skills, a match made in heaven. She’s the yin to my yang. Our skill sets work so well together. Sarah is the expert copywriter that my clients speak to as part of my package; ‘The VIP Brand Experience’. She helps them to get real clear on who their clients are and how to tell their audience exactly what they do, and other cool copy stuff.

After 8 months of virtual friendship we met in person and it felt like we’d met already a hundred times. We spent a weekend together planning how we were were going to take our businesses to the next step, we followed Amy Porterfield's ‘Plan Your Next 6 Months, Marketing Plan’ and Femtrepreneurs Podcasts all about Blogging. I’ll write a post on exactly what we did sometime soon.

Regardless to say both of us want to blog more, so we can share how we’ve grown our businesses from the very start and the little tips and tricks we’ve learnt along the way.

This post is one of my favourite tips…. GET YOURSELF A SARAH, we all need a cheerleader to boost us when we’re down and raise us when we’re high!

Add some structure.

After spending many a Facetime call getting to know one another and telling each other our entire life stories we’ve now put a structure in place to our phone calls. We still talk pretty much everyday BUT NOW…

We talk every Monday morning at 9.30am for an hour. We set our intention for the week and make a list of what we’re going to get done. We have it in our shared Google document and we tick it off the following week and create our next week and so on.

I can’t tell you what having this support system has done for me and my business. When I’ve had a shit day and feel like nobody else gets it, she does. When I need cheering up, she’s there to say I’m the best and not to sweat it. When I’ve had an amazing win, she’s whooping me on. It’s the absolute best.

SO IF YOU’VE NOT GOT A BIZ BESTIE, GO FOLLOW MY STEPS AND GET ONE NOW!!!!

Definitely consider me as one of your biz besties too, I wanna be your biggest cheerleader! I’m all about growing a network of other badass women in business so please do get in touch with me and we can hang out virtually too!

Let’s get started by you dropping me a comment below to tell me your experience as being a solopreneur and if you’ve found your bestie, how you did it?!