Live the Life You Want: Start a Business

Award-winning journalist and best-selling author Jean Chatzky talks with Victoria Colligan, co-founder of Ladies Who Launch about her company, which provides a social network for entrepreneurial women, and about why and how women make the decision to launch their own businesses.  Victoria says that more women are starting their own businesses in order to live the lives they want.

Read the entire interview here.

Photo courtesy:  Leah Jones (Ladies Who Launch Evanston)

From Corporate Life to Sweet New Business

According to Oprah Magazine (February 2012):

... eleven years ago, Casey Hickey's work wasn't so delicious.  As director of development for a San Francisco-based medical society, she spent her days in a windowless office.  "I was proud of what I did," she says, "but my self-expression was limited to fund-raising propsoals and spreadsheets."  Hickey spent her free time reading cookbooks; when she baked a wedding cake for a friend, a chef attending the reception was so wowed that she suggested Hickey rethink her career.

The rest is sweet history.

Learn more about Casey Hickey, Chocolatier, Owner of Twenty Degrees Chocolates (pictured).

Do It Oprah-Style: Be a Real Person

If you are trying to build a foundation for your business, why not do it Oprah-style by acting, thinking and speaking like your target audience? In other words, be a real person -- step into the shoes of your client, connect on a personal level and then create a community just for them.

Read more about what I am referring to here.

Pictured: November edition of Oprah magazine.

Keep on Trucking Women Entrepreneurs

This is such an inspiring story of how a woman, Cheryl Womack (pictured), goes from being a mom to running a business (at the same time of course), to making the business a huge success, to selling it, and eventually ... starting a nonprofit called The Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World. She's an amazing woman and a role model for us all.

Quick snapshot:

One of 11 children born to Panamanian immigrants, Womack first made her mark with VCW, which sells insurance to independent truckers. That company, which she started with just $17,000 in 1983, was worth more than $100 million when she sold it in 2002. Currently, she manages a nonprofit called the Leading Women Entrepreneurs of the World, helping others on their way up. Married and the mother of two, Womack recently pledged $2 million to build a women's softball field at her alma mater, the University of Kansas.

Read the full spread (including viewing the slideshow) over at Oprah.

We need to get Cheryl to contribute over at Women Entrepreneurs GROW Global (WEGG)!

Power Girls Follow Their Instincts

Power girls, better known as women who have escaped corporate America to become entrepreneurs (like Oprah), have incredible instincts and go with their gut when making big decisions for their company. It goes like this: Find it. Trust it. Use it.

Like many of the great moguls of our time, today's new modern women entrepreneurs follow their gut when it comes to their companies. I've heard stories of instincts driving everything from major business decisions to where or when to travel, hunches that turned out to be great ideas, and examples where "just having a feeling" turned out to be a key factor in shaping someone's work or life. It's something I can definitely attest to. Many of my biggest achievements started from a feeling that if I took a leap, I'd be right.

Got a hunch or a great feeling? Then go for it. Don't let anything get in your way to make EXTRAORDINARY things happen in your life.

My mantra in 2009: Be the change you want to see!