Get Unstuck Program

Pursue what you are born for.

Our Get Unstuck program is off to a great start. The conference call on Friday, 8/28 at noon CDT was at maximum capacity so I tried my best to take a couple of you one-on-one to brainstorm about steps you might take to get you where you need to be with your life and your business.

For those who were on the call or a one-on-one with me, thank you for sharing. I truly enjoyed meeting you. I hope our connection was beneficial to you. I'll try to schedule a call like this once a month because I sense there is a real need amongst all our readers and, at the every least, it's a great way to realize that you are not alone with your ambitions.

Next call: September 28th at noon CDT. If you are interested in participating, email me early to ensure you make it in (ldelaney(at)laureldelaney.com). For now, happy Sunday.

Women Entrepreneurs Take The Lead

Here are some of the reasons why women entrepreneurs are taking the lead in our economy.

Get Unstuck

Stuck in a rut? Hate your boss? Hate your job? Hate your life? Every moment of being stuck is a lost opportunity.

Pursue what you are born for.

This blog serves as a resource to women who want to Escape From Corporate America and we always encourage you to move forward even when everything seems to be headed in reverse.

Need help? I am setting up a conference call for one-hour on Friday, August 28 at 12:00 p.m. (noon) CDT for the first 20 women who are interested in chatting about steps to take toward starting a business. We will discuss some of the challenges you face and how to overcome those obstacles in order to get unstuck.

If you are interested in participating (no cost to you other than the call), email me at ldelaney(at)laureldelaney.com and I will send you the call-in information. Look forward to hearing from you!

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.

Go After What You Want

Does It Take a Man to Add Star Power to Fox Business?

Would one of my female entrepreneurial readers please step up to the plate and contact Fox Business to offer your talent to increase their viewership?

Will it really take Don Imus (pictured) -- Mr. Lovable I am sure to so many women -- to lift up Fox's ratings? Oh puh-leeze.

For those unfamiliar, back story on Imus:

The talks with Mr. Imus would have been inconceivable little more than two years ago, when he was fired from CBS Radio after he was widely criticized for joking about the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” on the air. MSNBC, which like CNBC is a unit of NBC Universal, also canceled its simulcast of the show, saying that Mr. Imus “went so far over the line that it was time.”

About six months later, he was hired by Citadel Broadcasting to resume his radio talk show.

How fast we forget and how desperate some can be. Read this to believe it.

In Pursuit of Happiness Minus Money

Keeping momentum when a business slows down is not easy, especially if cash flow starts to dwindle. Take Joanna D'Angelo, owner of Tea Together, she had this problem, but not because business was bad, rather, she merely needed a bridge loan until her next busy season.

While shopping for loans last month, Ms. D’Angelo walked into Chase, a preferred lender of loans backed by the federal Small Business Administration, and walked out a short time later — minus any money.

“We tried a few other banks, but they all had impossible conditions,” she said. “We did not qualify for an S.B.A. loan, something they were very adamant about.”

According to Ms. D’Angelo, Tea Together failed to qualify at Chase because the business was fewer than three years old, though she did not know if that was the Small Business Administration’s or Chase’s rule.

Ms. D’Angelo joins other owners of small local businesses who are finding credit hard to come by, even with the help of federal stimulus money directed to help.

Read more here.

Photo from Tea Together shop.

The Official Escape From Corporate America Makes Top 30 List

We are delighted to announce that our official Escape From Corporate America (www.escapefromCorporateAmerica.com) blog is proudly featured on:

She Takes On The World
Top 30 Business and Entrepreneurship
Blogs by Women

We are honored and humbled to be among so many gifted women entrepreneurial bloggers.

Thank you so much!

Open For Business Despite Awful Economy

What's it going to take to bring our economy back to full health? Hold up a mirror. Yes, it will be folks like us: entrepreneurs and small businesses. We are the lifeblood to innovation and getting things done.

But with the support of the Small Business Administration (SBA), things can only improve. Read more here.

Additional resources:

Women Entrepreneurs || SCORE

More inspiration here.

The Art of Bootstrapping

Sramana Mitra showcases a dozen entrepreneurs and the lessons they learned while bootstrapping their way to success in her latest book, "Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction."

Find out how bootstrapped entrepreneurship is truly the weapon of mass reconstruction and how the twelve profiled entrepreneurs did things on their own terms through lots of hard work.

In a world filled with fear and uncertainty, this is surely a book that brings hope to all who aspire to run a successful business. So buck the trend, back yourself (whatever venture it may be) and read this book.

Control Your Destiny

There's so much talk about work life balance choices and how it's nearly impossible for women to get ahead (break that glass ceiling) in Corporate America when they take time off to have a family.

I chose entrepreneurship because I wanted freedom, flexibility, a creative outlet without restrictions and total control over my destiny. Part of the control is to select the stress level I am willing to handle (if I must) and balance it with the positives in my life ... family, good health and a positive attitude.

Read what Jack Welch recently told the Society for Human Resource Management at its annual conference about why "There's no such thing as work-life balance." Why Jack is talking about this and not Suzy, I don't know.

Let's turn to you. Are you able to have work-life balance as an entrepreneur? Tell us about how you juggle running a business, managing a family and nurturing your happiness factor.

Get Into Your Creative Cave and Produce

Entrepreneur Christina Aguilera (pictured) will spin tunes on her very own radio station set to debut tomorrow, July 31. The 24-hour online channel will be distributed across Clear Channel Radio’s “iheartradio” network, and will feature interviews, news, personal commentary from Aguilera as well as her favorite tunes.

The Associated Press interviews Christina and here's how she addresses the first question of how does a radio channel fit you?

Aguilera:

We moved into our new house about a year ago but since I started working on the record, I have a studio in the backyard … and it just has been so perfect for me to just wake up in the morning, put on my flip flops and sweat pants, and just go back in the studio and pretty much get into my creative cave and zone out that way, so it’s been really convenient. So the paparazzi have probably been upset with me. I know they told my husband, they’re like, “Is she every going to leave the house?”

You never know how creative entrepreneurial juices get flowing.

Read the entire article and interview here.

Close The Bedroom Door; Get To Entrepreneurship

It doesn't matter where you're based, entrepreneurship can take place anywhere at anytime.

Suzanne Kantra, who was laid off from an editing job in October, is running an online publication called Techlicious.com out of the three-bedroom apartment in Manhattan she shares with her husband and three children ages 1 to 7. When she's working in her bedroom, the door is closed. For her older children, "knowing I'm home but not available has been an adjustment for them," she said.

Sometimes the kids forget what that closed door means, and Kantra is interrupted anyway. One way Kantra tries to help them with the enforced separation is not to do any work around the time they come home from school. That way, she can give them all her attention as they tell her about their day.

Adapting to a home based business is a new way of life. Read how other women manage it and make adjustments along the way here.

Escape From Corporate America Adds New Article Resource Section

We've added a new feature to the right sidebar of our blog which highlights recently published work. Be sure to check it out from time to time for the latest information to help you grow your business. Here's a sampling of a few:

• 11 Tips to Help You Thrive After Losing Your Biggest Client
• A Business Carol
• Five People Who Live LOUD
• How To Build Trust
• How A Business Owner Can Sleep Like a Baby During Tough Times
• Turning Limes to Limeade: Entrepreneurship Can Surface in Many Ways
• Business Resilience Weathering Economic Storms

We hope you find them useful.

Women Entrepreneurs Ignore Recession

Is there an inverse relationship between the state of the economy and the number of folks looking to start their own business? Could be.

Take these Canadian women who are making the dream of owning a business a reality.

Inhee Lee, a 36-year-old recent arrival from South Korea, came looking for advice on how to take her business selling teddy bears online.

Judi Halla, a former personal trainer, decided she'd rather be outside walking other people's pets than inside getting the owners in shape; she's doing all she can to learn what resources are out there to launch her business.

And Merlinda Poon was looking for tips to take her invention to a new level. The 35-year-old computer scientist already has a business plan and a prototype for her device to assist the visually impaired scan and listen to documents. Now she needs to get patent protection, and find some funding.

Got the itch to start a business? You're not alone. Read more here.

What Talented Women Want

Journalists Claire Shipman and Katty Kay have co-authored Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. It's about what professional women want and how to chart a course to a more enriching and successful life. At the same time, it uncovers the phenomenal power that women have in today's marketplace.

If you want to take charge and change the way you live and work, read this book.

Estrogen Matters in the Real World of Work

When are folks going to stop spending money trying to prove to us that women matter in the world of work? They do. Got it?

The numbers make a compelling case. The studies Ernst & Young rounded up show that women can make the difference between economic success and failure in the developing world, between good and bad decision-making in the industrialized world, and between profit and loss in the corporate world.

Give me a break.

Their conclusion: American companies would do well with more senior women.

Does this sound a little close to home on what we have been preaching via this blog for five years? Hello Katty. Hello Claire. Hello corporate world. For goodness sakes, women, whether entrepreneurs or corporate execs = better performance all around for everyone, everywhere!

And let us not forget why women are leaving corporate America in droves:

In the interest of security, women used to be willing to channel their time, energy, and effort to the corporation's needs at the expense of fulfilling their own professional goals -- but no more. In starting their own businesses, they're seeking freedom, flexibility, recognition, more money, and opportunities to leave a legacy -- all of the things they once thought they would find within corporations. ~ Source: Escape From Corporate America (2003) by Laurel Delaney.

Read the entire article which includes reference to the Ernst & Young study: "Fixing the Economy? It's Women's Work."

Demystifying Judith Hill

Who was the mystery singer (and entrepreneur) who performed at Michael Jackson's memorial tribute? Judith Hill (pictured).

Born in Los Angeles – her mother was a Japanese immigrant and her father a member of a '70s funk band – Hill, who had planned on singing backup for Jackson's scheduled This Is It! tour at London's O2 Arena this month, was surrounded by musicians since childhood.

Another star is launched. Read more here.

Sample Judith's music here.

Be Happy. Rely On Yourself.

BusinessWeek's small business team keeps cranking out great articles, contests, resources and tips for small businesses. Here's an excerpt from a recent guest blog post, "Anatomy of An Entrepreneur," authored by the newest edition to the BW team, Emily Schmitt:

Carol Clark, who has founded four companies in her 62 years, also fits the profile of the typical entrepreneur in this study. She says she thrives on the risk involved in running her own company, which gives her the chance to earn more than a standard wage. Clark, who lives in Hattiesburg, Miss., co-founded a hang gliding school in Salt Lake City when she was 32 years old. Today she owns DigiDentist, a dental patient enducation software company that she founded when she was 55 years old. Clark is well educated. She holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from San Fransisco State University and started (but did not finish) master's work in speech communication at Oregon State. She says the thought of waking up at six in the morning to pull on pantyhose and sit at a desk appalled her. "I’ve had a lot of office jobs, too, and I don’t have a problem with authority per se, but I’m too smart to really work in a situation where it doesn’t demand the most of me," said Clark. Why does she love being an entrepreneur? "I think it’s the appeal of having to rely on myself." she says.

Read the entire post here.

Meet Michael Jackson's Female Lead Guitarist

Orianthi: "Michael Jackson was amazing. He had an aura about him."

VIDEO: Watch Michael Jackson's final rehearsal here.

Orianthi entrepreneurial? You bet. As unfortunate the circumstances, a star is born.

Pictured: Orianthi and Michael Jackson (may he RIP).

Correction 11/4/09: It's Jennifer Batten in the photo -- not Orianthi (please refer to the Comments). We changed the link above too! Thanks readers.