Reporters from all over have had some type of sound bite regarding the t-shirts the US Women’s soccer team. The shirts said ‘Greatness has been found’ and sports writers and enthusiasts are lining up to take aim at the perceived lack of humility. As a woman operating in a male dominated industry I have to say ‘Why should they be humble’? Here’s what I have been able to take … [Read more...]
Why are you important?
As we create our businesses more often than not we get caught up in the day to day firefighting strategies. What we don’t do because there isn’t enough time in the day, no one has figured out how to clone ourselves and/or we don’t see the immediate value is define a future strategy. It’s easy to spend so much time in our businesses that we don’t work on them, so here are a few … [Read more...]
Let Your Business Grow
We all need a little help along the way. Making the decision to go out on your own is difficult but a ton of fun if you do it correctly and have the right pieces to the puzzle. Women are becoming more prevalent as entrepreneurs, it can be a very empowering thing to have your own business and be successful at it. It doesn't matter what your business is, you can make it work, … [Read more...]
How Solopreneurs Market Online [Infographic]
How do solopreneurs market their businesses, products, and services online? What's working and what's not? A new infographic created from data found in a 2012 study of solopreneurs in the United States is shown below. Based on this research, solopreneurs are happy with email marketing and content marketing, but there is a lot of room for improvement in web design. However, … [Read more...]
What’s a “GUTSY CHICK”?
When I was working on the cover for my new book, “GUTSY: How Women Leaders Make Change”, I spent time with the designer looking at all the overt and subtle meanings of the word "GUTSY". Karrie, www.karrieross.com, asked me what the smallest visual I could think of to demonstrate what "GUTSY" means. I sat with closed eyes and saw a hand with elegant long fingers and well … [Read more...]
Is it time to stop running your business?
There are things in life that are inevitable, love, death, taxes and the failure of a business. Knowing that doesn’t make the pain any easier to deal with so if you are facing the decision of when to quit and when to hang on, I have four pearls of wisdom (ahem, at least in my mind) for you to consider. Did you give it your best shot? Hindsight is 20/20 and when making the … [Read more...]
Where’s the help?
In every city across the country scores of small businesses are encouraged to seek help at small business development centers, with SCORE counselors and attend small business workshops put on by their local economic development office, but where is the help? Routinely I’ve heard that the advice given was generic and general and really didn’t help them run their business once … [Read more...]
The Myth of Talented Applicants
Yesterday I had the wonderful experience of attending a STEM collaboration workshop and the one question that kept running through my mind was, is it really a lack of talented applicants or are small businesses just inept at using technology to help us recruit the right people? Here are the three things that stuck. Talent is a Myth Talent is subjective at best and if … [Read more...]
JC Penney: The Aftermath
When JC Penney introduced their new pricing plan, I had reservations about the long-term success. Apparently I was right on target with everyone else, so as the retail giant gears up to revise the strategy here is what fellow entrepreneurs can learn. A confusing strategy is a bad strategy Anything that requires multiple explanations should be … [Read more...]
The Church of Business
Starting a business is optimism incarnate and we have all had that moment when the question” what are you working on now?” seems to be an indictment of our failure as an entrepreneur. I’ve noticed that there are some silver linings when warm leads dry up and you have to roll your sleeves up to stay in business. You learn what you are made of Failure isn’t for everybody … [Read more...]