Women Entrepreneurs: Don't Hold Back

Women-owned businesses are still small compared with businesses owned by men. Why and what needs to be done?

Dr. Sharon Hadary (who I know and respect tremendously for her research work on women business owners), provides wonderful insights in this contribution for the WSJ on what you should be doing today to jump-start your business onto a fast-growth trajectory. Be sure to also take a good long look at the numerous comments -- very striking -- especially from men. Sharon does an excellent job responding to each and every one of them.

Read the entire commentary published in The Wall Street Journal here. And I vote that Dr. Sharon Hadary runs a new blog just for women business owners for The Wall Street Journal!

Pictured: Dr. Sharon Hadary

Something You Already Know: In Corporate America, Women Have a Tough Path to the Top

I can't believe I've been sitting on this since January -- goes to show you how buried I am in work (productive work)!

A study shows a large gap in perceptions among the sexes in who has more opportunities for advancement -- men or women?

Do we care?

I mean ... isn't that part of why we started a business in the first place -- to escape from these ridiculous perceptions (realities!) in the workplace?

Gosh ... I bet this is something that bores you to tears (or -- if you are living and breathing it in Corporate America -- frustrates the daylights out of you):

In reality, women represent a much smaller portion of leadership roles in business.

When you run your own show, you are the leader in business. Am I missing something?

Read the entire article: "Study Asks: Who Has an Easier Way to the Top?"

Posted by: The official Escape From Corporate America blog

Starting a Business Is Not Always a Walk in the Dog Park

Amy Nichols (pictured with her doggie pals), a former telecommunications sales executive, is the founder of Dogtopia, a national chain of upscale day-care centers for dogs. Her blog can be found here.

Ms. Nichols always knew that she wanted to care for animals. But, after college, she thought she should get a "real job."

Following in her father's footsteps, she chose telecommunications. In the late 1990s, she built a career working for a number of the big players: Bell Atlantic (which later became Verizon), Cable & Wireless USA and XO Communications. She moved up the ladder, starting in sales support where her job was to find outside contractors to install the purchased phone systems.

But she says after a while, the thrill of the chase left her "feeling empty," and she was ready for something else. She decided her next act would take her back to her first love—something involving pets, something that she could develop herself, and something that would allow her to bring Griffin, her Boston terrier, to work.

Learn how Nichols's telecommunications background contributed to her success as a business owner here. Fascinating story.

Photo credit: Kevin Wolf, WSJ

Find Creative Deals To Start Your Business

This article is about how to launch a small business on a shoestring but the following excerpt particularly struck me:

Yafa Sakkejha (pictured) made a deal with her father that’s enabling her to get House of Verona, a summer health-retreat business, off the ground. He agreed to “incubate” her fledgling company by giving her rent-free use of Blue View Chalets, his winter ski-resort property in Canada’s Blue Mountains, for the first year and by fronting some of her larger initial expenses.

Ms. Sakkejha is using her savings to repay Blue View half of the expenses it incurs for her and hire health experts, a fitness trainer and caterers. If [Laurel here ... WHEN] her business takes off, both parties win. She begins to build her own business, and her father gains a summertime revenue stream from the property.

There's another example cited within the article about Christine Marchuska, who started an eco-friendly fashion label, cmarchuska LLC, in November, using $40,000 in savings and severance she got after being laid off from Wall Street.

Find out what she did along with other visionaries to strike creative deals in the rough and get their businesses going!

Fewer Working Mothers is Bad Business for Restaurants

Attention restaurants: Start wooing women entrepreneurs and their families!

Read more here about how the restaurant industry is concerned over the trend that harried working moms isn't growing like it used to.

On Diversity, America Isn't Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth Is

Are there pay discrepancies between men and women in corporate America? If you guessed yes, you guessed right. And unfortunately, we -- the women -- lose. That is, if you work in corporate America. Fortunately, I don't.

And that's why entrepreneurship is becoming more and more attractive to corporate folks the longer we go without closing the gender pay gap.

Read more here.

Quoted from the article:

Diversity is good for the bottom line because it enables them [business chiefs] to recruit the best talent, enlist broad thinking and reach diverse customers world-wide.

What Women Want

I was going through a pile of newspaper clips last night and stumbled upon this one. It's only about a half-year old. My how time flies and how much things have changed since this was released! See what you think. We do rule. Too bad not many folks know how to woo us.

Work Life Balance

I am so tired of issues pertaining to work life balance for women at the top of the ladder. Have you ever seen an article, "What It's Like for Men At the Top of the Ladder? Is work-family balance possible?"

Why can't we focus on just getting things done? Isn't that what entrepreneurship is all about?

All The More Reason To Become An Entrepreneur

When Valerie Frederickson, a Silicon Valley human-resources consultant, heard Hillary Clinton assert that she could "take the heat" after getting pummeled by opponents in a recent debate, she recalled the times in her own career when a roomful of men disrespected her.

Once, at a national sales meeting for a large construction-products company, a male colleague passed around photographs of her in a bikini that he'd secretly taken on a prior business trip. "Instead of quitting, I focused on being better, on outselling the guys three-to-one," says Ms. Frederickson, who later founded her own firm, Valerie Frederickson & Co.

This is why we started this blog. Go Valerie! Stop worrying about gender and move on to doing your own thing.

Five Ways Working Mothers Can Carve Out Some 'Me-Time'

Contrary to what this article purports, I believe all women, whether employed at BIG companies or running their own show (business), should create a:

"to stop" list!

Now go carve out time to carve your pumpkin. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Still Celebrating Our Freedom

WSJ's Simona Covel gets tips from Ms. Lexy Funk, CEO of Brooklyn Industries Inc, about tips for small companies looking to outsource their e-commerce. It's worth a minute. Be sure to click on: Outsourcing.

Photo credit: Laurel Delaney, Chicago, IL (7/4/07)

Finally, Women's Wear for the Hard-Hat Set

Wouldn't you think that means us? Well sort of. In case you missed this article in the WSJ May 17th by Christina Binkley, check it out for yourself. It's about women in blue-color trades who can't get enough pink. I find that hard to believe but well, what do I know? Besides, it's not a sexy pink, it's a masculine pink (see crewneck shirt pictured from Carhartt's) ... basically clothes I wear as a woman entrepreneur when I'm not in front of clients -- sans hard hats.

If you want to skip the piece, jump to these Women's Work Wear sites:

Carhartt

Tomboy Tools

Charm and Hammer

Wolverine

Dickies

Blessed With a Genius for Publicity

In case you didn't catch the book review in this weekend's Pursuit section of the WSJ on "Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America," pickup a copy (not available online yet). The reason is because it talks about someone you may never have heard of (I hadn't!) yet quite possibly she was responsible for starting the women's movement: Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). Here's what was so striking about her:

She was a brave transgressor of gender norms.

True, 50 years before Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique," McPherson cast aside her apron (and rid herself of a pesky second husband) to pursue her calling. "God, she believed, wanted her to exchange domestic life for the pulpit," Mr. Sutton writes. But she also deployed traditional feminine wiles, exploiting personal details to win public approval. Broadcasting live from her nuptial boudoir just a day after marrying her third husband, for example, she treated radio listeners to the sound of their enthusiastic kisses. When the marriage failed, she churned out "sacred operas" whose lyrics read like lachrymose sympathy cards: "Do you live in a castle of broken dreams, / Where Giant despair and his dark horde teems?"

McPherson's life story tells us less about flouting gender norms than about navigating celebrity's treacherous terrain.

She was way ahead of her time and talk about pure entrepreneurship in its highest form. More can be found about Aimee here, here and here. Photo gallery is here. Fascinating person. By the way, that's her pictured at 51 years old.