Push Yourself To Grow Your Business

Here's a look at Europe's perspective (from an expert -- Paula Fitzsimons, Irish national coordinator for the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor and director of Ireland-based Going for Growth, a business consultancy) on women, entrepreneurship, business ownership and growth.

An excerpt:

But if you want to make a significant contribution to economic growth, innovation and productivity, those [women-owned] businesses must become capable of growth. It's quite clear that Europe needs more 'gazelles' – i.e. companies capable of significant growth – and the point we're making is that we need to encourage women to not only be self-employed but to break the barrier to employing one or two people, or to move further if they're already significant employers.

In short, we should be pushing for them to have a growth aspiration at the earliest possible stage. They must have this initial strategic positioning.

Read the entire interview here.

Do you need to be pushed to grow your business? Do you think this is a trend indicative to the United States too?

Don't Sell Yourself Short: Break Out and Start a Business

Who are we kidding? If you act like an entrepreneur while employed at a large corporation, guess what happens? Your ideas are taken and the next thing you know, you're fired. Who needs that?

One of the single greatest lessons in life is to find out what makes you happy or come to life (passion) and oftentimes it starts with learning first what makes you miserable.

I agree with Janice Bryant Howroyd (pictured) at being the entrepreneur of your own career but if you are going to "be" than "do." Do the business. Start it.

Read more here. Within the article, be sure to focus on Ms. Howroyd's backstory:

Ms. Howroyd is an entrepreneur in the traditional sense. She said she left Tarboro, N.C., in 1976 to work for a brother-in-law’s talent agency in Los Angeles and two years later started her own small employment firm, ACT•1.At the beginning, she said, she played off the fact that “I was a minority-owned business in two ways, as an African-American and a woman.”

Boost Your Business

One way to boost your business is to look for organizations, such as Gateways to Entrepreneurial Tomorrows, Inc. (GET), who help minorities start, run and grow businesses.

Take Mabel Lopez of Poughkeepsie who is a successful protege of GET's program. Lopez is an event planner whose business is Lasting Impressions by Mabel.

Mabel Roman-Lopez has been planning events for nearly a decade.

Lasting Impressions by Mabel opened as the result of an inner desire to help people bring to vision a special event they want to mark in their lives.

Mabel has planned many memorable events, from baby showers to bridal showers, birthday parties, to festivals and corporate luncheons. From the spectacular to the simple. Mabel has the creativity and personal service for anyone wanting to create a magical event.

She launched her own business with help from GET.

Learn more here.

From Singer to Producer of Flavored Vodkas

Thirty years ago when Miyoko Yamakawa traveled from Japan to America, her dreams of becoming a singer were put on hold when she married a top Japanese chef in New York City, and moved to Rockland County to raise a family.

A year after the move, the family -- the Yamakawas -- opened Maiko 2, a New City restaurant where her husband Jiro cooked and Miyoko sang for customers on Friday nights.

Jiro created a drink and customers loved it which was a strawberry vodka that people asked for and wanted to buy it.

Slow forward 20 years in the restaurant business, the family sold Maiko 2 and began bottling Jiro's creation.

Guess who is figuring things out at this stage? Miyoko Yamakawa is along with her husband and she is seeking help from a Small Business Center -- a great place to get free advice on how to start, run and grow a business.

Here's a quick look at some of the areas where Miyoko is getting assistance:

START-UP HOW TO: Step 1: Think like an entrepreneur

STEP 2: What kind of entrepreneur are you?

STEP 3: Ways to raise money to start your small business

STEP 4: Refine you business concept, develop your pitch

STEP 5: Step 5: Keys to your success; choosing where to work from

STEP 6: Polishing your business plan; where to go to get advice

Read more here. Their launch site, Me Oko, appears to be here. Another iteration is here.

And as for help on your own business, you might check out whether you have a local Small Business Center in your area.

The Official Escape From Corporate America Blog Has a New Look

We are pleased to unveil our re-design to the official Escape From Corporate America blog (www.EscapeFromCorporateAmerica.com). Let us know what you think of it. We welcome your feedback! And be sure to check out all the resources featured on the right sidebar.

ESCAPE From Corporate America!

What It Takes To Become a High Performance Leader

Wrote this article for American Express OPEN Forum to help folks fulfill their own version of the ideal, fully developed high-performance leader.

Here's the lead:

Achieving high performance in tough times is a serious challenge small business owners face. The ultimate goal may be extraordinary business performance, but you can still get comfortable and slip into mediocrity. To obliterate status quo, do you have what it takes to become a high-performance leader? Ten traits characterize the people who do.

See what you think. Hope you get some value out of it. We will add the feature to our blog's e-library on the right sidebar.

"10 Traits of High-Performance Leaders"

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!

Making the World a Better Place

Turtle Wings is born. Let me give you the lowdown.

As senior vice president of international marketing for CitiFinancial, Elizabeth Wilmot (pictured) had traveled the world and had seen some of the huge used-electronics dumps that have been created in nations such as India. She also had experienced the difficulty of trying to recycle a computer herself. "I thought to myself, 'I would pay somebody to pick this up and recycle it and scrub my data off of it,' " she recalls. Thus the idea for her company, Turtle Wings, was born.

Back then, Elizabeth was a single mom, quit her job and used savings and home equity to start the business in 2004. The company, once run out of her kitchen, now occupies two warehouses and 12 employees serving households, corporations and government agencies.

Read more about Elizabeth's successful leap from Corporate America to business ownership here.

Yummynosh

Don't you love words that catch your attention? You must read this entire article, "Feminine Mystique: Why More Women Are Applying For MBAs" to get the drift of how the ending from one of the graduates goes like this:

'What women want is to be treated equally'

Kuldeep Brar, 35, recently finished her executive MBA at Cass Business School. She is working in marketing at the school before setting up her own business.

"I come from a marketing and sales background in the City, so for me Cass was a natural fit. It was accessible – I could walk to it from my job at St Paul's – and its reputation for evening and weekend teaching attracted me. I wanted a flexible course.

There were quite a few women on my course, from a wide range of backgrounds. We had some pregnancies, so the flexibilities of managing work and home life mattered.

Earnings? The women on the course were just as hungry as the men. I didn't notice any difference in the calibre, and the expectations reflected that.

I think what women want more than anything else is to be treated equally.

I'm hoping to start a business in a completely different direction – home-cooked, healthy, delivered foods. I'm calling it 'yummynosh'. The MBA has given me the confidence to do that."

Although I had already started my business, that is exactly how I felt after I completed my MBA: loaded with confidence and lots of great ideas.

To Kuldeep Brar, I say: "You go girl!"

One Room, 40 Employees = Poised for Growth

After working public relations for Vera Wang and Ralph Lauren, 43-year-old Tory Burch launched her first store in New York in 2004 with her then-husband, venture capitalist Christopher Burch, who remains co-chairman.

"I worked out of my apartment for the first two years. Then we went to one room with about 40 employees." ~ Tory Burch, The Wall Street Journal (9/8/09)

Her small but growing firm -- sales topping $200 million a year! -- operates 20 boutiques and sells to 450 retail locations, such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Read more about what moves paid off for her this year and how the downturn has affected her business plans here. And don't miss the part on "Where do you see future opportunity?" (Hint: international expansion).

Being Yourself Is Back In Style

It's hard to equate music entertainers with entrepreneurship but there is a whole lot of similarity in that women entertainers, just like women entrepreneurs, are forever fighting for their right to be who they are and profit from their endeavors in the process.

Take Miranda Lambert (pictured), and the comment she made below in an interview with Whitney Pastorek, Entertainment Weekly that is oh-so-entrepreneurial:

You just rattled off the list of the men you hung out with at the ACM Honors. You seem to actually fit in pretty well with the Nashville boys’ club. How did that happen?

It is harder being a woman. This is a man’s business—it really is. Even just being the only girl on the bus. But I feel like it’s changing. We’re starting to show our colors, the girls are. I think a lot of the music I love is real music. It’s about real life. It’s about drinkin’ and cheatin’ and church—things that people really do. For a little while, I don’t know that a lot of women were singing about that. But that’s what I sing about—real life. Maybe that’s why I fit in. I think just being yourself is back in style, finally. I think Jamey Johnson’s a classic example of someone else who’s just saying, “Here I am. Like it or not, I don’t care. This is what I do.” I think it’s working because people are ready for it.

Read the entire interview here.

Paths to Success

Five successful women business leaders (not all business owners by the way) discuss their paths to success.

Eight (8) fabulous tips here:

1. "I've had to reinvent myself at my current position. Anytime you have to break out of your role, you reinvent yourself. In these economic times, reinvention is something we all have to become familiar with. As the market changes, the value we bring to the table changes as well."

2. "It's not about the degrees I have; it's about the skill set I have."

3. "Have an extensive peer network, what I call relationship capital.

4. "You have to connect with others. We spend a lot of time doing good work, but we need to take time to let others know you're doing good work. Get out of your comfort zone and get out there."

5. "Embrace your differences. We are not men -- we should celebrate that. We bring a lot of emotional intelligence."

6. "Don't be afraid to pick a field that's dominated by men."

7. "Is their balance in our life? There's no such thing."

8. "You can have it all -- just not all at the same time."

Read more here.

Beat the Recession: Do Your Own Thing

Our new economy is encouraging experimentation and the one thing (among many) that we've learned for sure when starting a business is the importance of being accessible.

Phoebe Howard (pictured), an interior designer in Atlanta and owner of four retail stores in the South, admits that clients are buying less these days, doing smaller jobs and taking their time with projects.

For Mrs. Howard, 51, that has necessitated being more aggressive and more creative, trying to make her work accessible to a larger range of people. She has started hosting more in-store parties and events and is writing a blog, www.mrshowardpersonalshopper.com, with the help of a young employee. She didn’t know what a blog was until a few months ago, but now, she says, she plans to get acquainted with Twitter and Facebook.

Read more here.

How to Achieve Double-Digit Business Growth

Just finished this article for American Express OPEN Forum on, "5 Actions for Double-Digit Business Growth."

I hope you find it useful.

Realize a Dream

Lee Anne Carmack is doing a job she loves.  She launched Yardsalefrog.com March 6th.

Giving her son’s eulogy and encouraging others to do something they always wanted to do gave Carmack the motivation and the focus to start her own business.

Read more here.

Big Boost to Women Entrepreneurs in Technology

A nice boost from Lockheed Martin to the tune of U.S. $30,000 will help a new website, Multinational Development of Women in Technology (MDWIT), become the place for women entrepreneurs to communicate and share information. It plans to use social media tools to facilitate communication between entrepreneurs and sponsors or partners that can help them.

As the MDWIT CEO says, "We're looking at the latent potential in women."

Baltimore-based MDWIT has also received some funding from Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, the Maryland departments of education and business and economic development, and the governor's Work Force Investment Board.

Read more here.

Additional resources for women in technology:

Women In Technology

Women In Technology International

Are You Profiled on Wikipedia?

Beat the odds. Do your Wikipedia profile now.

Study: Women and Wikipedia Don't Mix

More here.

Is Your Business Scalable?

Victoria Colligan (pictured), founder of Ladies Who Launch, argues that there is a difference between starting a "lifestyle business" and starting a business for "lifestyle reasons."

See whether you are agree or not here. And let us hear from you based on your own experience!

Recession-Proof Your Life: Start a Business

When things get tough, you don't have to stop living, rather, you can start a business and start planning -- for the future!

Read what creative and enterprising women are doing at, "Women Starting Recession Businesses."

Women entrepreneurs beating the recession and mentioned in the article referenced above:

Christina Catalano (GotSqueakers on Twitter)

Lolly O'Dorisio who plans to turn her living room into a boutique four times a year.

Mira Masukawa (her blog can be found here) with two patented products that can be found at her firm Mira Lucky.

Congratulations and best wishes to all!

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.