After You Work for a Genius, Can You Go Off On Your Own?

Marilyn Van Alstyne (pictured) left working for P. Diddy and started her own business, EMVE Management.  Here's how her thinking went.

“After realizing that I worked alongside Puff for 20 years, I started to think to myself, if I worked for a genius and he has built all of this, what can I build on my own?” After long days of self-reflection, Van Alstyne did what millions of people yearn to find the courage to do: She quit her job.

Keep in mind that Marilyn started working for P. Diddy as an intern and felt she had landed her dream internship.

While still in high school, Van Alstyne traveled 1.5 hours each way to the Combs Office in Manhattan. Back then Uber did not exist, and taxi cabs didn’t come to her neighborhood, so she did what needed to be done.  While only being compensated with two tokens and $5 a day, Van Alstyne dedicated her life to being one of the most reliable and respected women at Combs Enterprises.

She did it all:  answered phones, reconciled accounts, everything to grow a business.  After 4 years, she became an employee. The rest is history.  Did she have doubts before she left?  You bet.

“For a while, I’d ask myself, what if I do not make it? Now that there is no Bad Boy or Puff to lean on, can I do this on my own?” pondered Van Alstyne. 

Read more to learn what happened with Marilyn and how she shares her top 3 money lessons.

For Randi Zuckerberg: Goodbye Facebook and Hello RtoZ Media

Mark Zuckerberg's eldest sister Randi starts her own business:  RtoZ Media - a social media company.

In August, Randi Zuckerberg, 29, quit her job at Facebook, where she had been among the first two dozen people hired. Most recently, she was the director of marketing. In its early days, Zuckerberg was a buoyant presence, representing her reticent brother to an eager press. Later, she earned attention (not always favorable) singing at company functions with a band composed of colleagues. And she came up with the idea for Facebook Live, the social network's video channel, which has featured interviews conducted by Facebook executives with Oprah Winfrey and President Barack Obama.

Learn more here.  Illustration credit:  RtoZ Media homepage.

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!

Explore Other Options: Start a Business

Whether you are based in the United States or the UK, why bother waiting it out on a promotion?

Study: Women overlooked in the UK for promotion in recession.

Don't let it happen to you. Explore other options. Get going. Start a business. Promote yourself.

Time To Go Independent

Oppenheimer & Co. banking analyst Meredith Whitney (pictured above) -- known as the woman who moves markets -- is leaving to start her own business.

Now the question I have to ask is this: Did she leave because of a financial meltdown -- in spite of it -- or, neither?

Quote from Meredith:

"I don't want to work for anyone else anymore, and I want to broaden what I do."

Other interesting parts to the article, "Meredith Whitney: A league of her own," published in Fortune's CNN Money.com:

The firm that bears her name will be grounded in her research (her "true passion"). But it won't be just about issuing notes to clients. She eventually intends to advise companies as well. And in March, she will be on a steering committee to advise the G20 on how to respond to the credit crisis.

As head of her new firm, Whitney, who currently hosts gatherings in her home where professional women can swap ideas and hear thought leaders, plans to host a "salon series" in her offices with writers, government officials, regulators, and business luminaries. It could be a big value-add for clients who want access to bold-face names and original ideas.

Based on her good looks and obvious talent, I vote she takes her business immediately to television. Check out her new firm: Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC.

And let's applaud Meredith for having the courage get going with her own business!

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.

Big Business Tactics for Small Outfits

Many entrepreneurs start their own businesses to escape the confines of corporate life. Yes, and that's why we're here! As a result, few bring that structure to their own operations.

Read more here.

Starting a Business? Begin With The End In Mind

This is the fourth column of a new series of weekly Q&As in which entrepreneurs featured in the Women Entrepreneurs Special Report at BusinessWeek answer questions submitted by readers. This one focuses on how you can be sure you are ready to start your own business.

Separately and from the book "Women Who Changed The World:"

Chapter 43
Germaine Greer

If a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run? ~ Germaine Greer