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.

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.