Women Entrepreneurs Click to return to entire list of articles specifically for women
"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."
-- Marie Curie, Scientist
Read The Power in a Gathering of Women by Eileen McDargh
Read Balancing Work and Home by Lata Tokhi
Read Stop and Smell the Roses by Sandy Karn
Read 3 Secrets of Establishing Yourself as the Expert of Choice by Marisa D'Vari
Read The Mompreneurs, Part 1 By Rob Spiegel
Read Women Entrepreneurs, Part 2 By Rob Spiegel
The Power in a Gathering of Women
by Eileen McDargh
Forget "fight or flight" as the only duo of responses in the face of stress. For women, there's a third response: "befriend". A landmark UCLA study turned five decades of stress research on its head with the revelation that a cascade of brain chemicals gives women a larger behavioral repertoire when confronted with stress. The hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress response in women. It controls the fight/flight response and, instead, encourages her to tend children and gather with other women.
Accordingly to co-researcher Dr. Laura Cousino Klein, now assistant professor of bio-behavioral health at Penn State, the study suggests that this "tending and befriending" response to oxytocin produces a calming effect. Although it will take new studies to reveal all the ways in which oxytocin encourages women to care for children and band together, it might also explain why women consistently outlive men.
I have addressed numerous women's conferences and corporate networks of women and I can attest to the observable behavior that participants leave these sessions feeling stronger, encouraged, and positive. I believe they also leave healthier. The famed Nurses Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends people have, they less likely they are to develop physical ailments and the more likely they are to cope better with challenges.
Sadly, today's busy agendas often find women canceling the most positive and healthy thing they can do: gather with other women to engage in the kind of "rapport" and "report" talk that hallmark feminine conversations. The corporate women's networks that generate the most return for the time and money investment allow for the nuts-and-bolts training needed for the business while also creating plenty of opportunity for mentoring, problem-solving and the informal sharing of personal issues.
Create a gathering of women and stand back. The energy reborn from conversation, caring, compassion and concern can move a community, a business, and a nation into a higher place.
(c) 2004, McDargh Communications. All rights in all media reserved.
Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE is head of McDargh Communications, a training and consulting practice founded in 1980. She's also an award-winning author, radio commentator, and on the Board of the National Speakers Association. Eileen can be reached at http://www.EileenMcDargh.com.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Balancing Work and Home by Lata Tokhi
Work is addicting...and more so when your computer is your office or shop! And while you spend hour upon hour to network with other netpreneurs and provide online customer services to your clients, you tend to neglect a dozen odd household jobs.
Hours seem to fly by when work online. As for your household duties, with great effort, you just take care of the most basic ones like fixing dinner, driving your kids to school etc.
Cleaning, Organizing, Buying Groceries, paying your bills, going to the post office etc. are postponed till the last hour. So how do your balance your work along with your home?
There are two important steps to do this. First, make yourself realize the fact that you HAVE TO take some time out for your home and there is no excuse in the world to avoid that.
Secondly, start organizing your available time. Here are some quick steps to help you balance your work as well as your home.
1. Divide available hours between your home and your work diligently.
2. Set timers when you are working online.
3. Maintain a 'To Do' list or a diary.
4. Picture yourself going through the troubles of paying your bills later than allowed.
5. Set aside some time for all those jobs which require you to go outside. For e.g. going to the market, post office, bank etc. Try to coincide these with each other. Say, for example, you could take care of these after driving your kids to school.
6. Make up your mind and start some kind of organizing/ decorating/ renovating activity around your house. These are so addicting that once you start, you will enjoy yourself a lot.
7. Similarly, take up your favorite hobby in the afternoon. You will love the change and enjoy getting creative.
8. Plan weekly activities. Take up cleaning once a week. Go for outings once a week. Call upon a friend once a week. This will help you maintain your social life as well.
9. Surf the net for information related to a hobby. This will get you started with that hobby and also give you the much needed break from work.
10. Surf the web with your hubby or children. Show them websites of their interest. That way, you will also get to spend more time with them.
Just like the old saying - 'You Eat to Live, You do not Live to Eat', I'll say
'You Work to Live, You do not Live to Work'. It's no use being successful on the cost of your home and your family.
The 'Dot Com Women' of today are not women who stay online for hours with a guilt feeling on the back of their minds. They are women with a strong desire to succeed in their personal and professional lives. And you are one of them! That's why you chose to read this, isn't it?
Good Luck with your efforts to striking a balance between your work and your home!
About the Author:
Lata Tokhi is the Founder and Editor of Dot Com Women, a premier women's website and fast-growing online community, and Celebrating Christmas, a resource for celebrating Christmas in style. Visit her websites for lots of homemaking and business ideas, free downloads, free Ezines and message boards for women to network and share.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Stop and Smell the Roses by Sandy Karn
"Stop and smell the roses!" We tend to agree with this adage,
yet most of us never do it on a consistent basis.
Some of us put too much emphasis on "stop." We believe that
to smell the roses we need to stop what we are doing.
Therefore we put off the smelling of the roses until we have
some free time. Of course in our contemporary world, we
seldom have any free time. So we put off smelling the roses
until vacation time or a tiny slice of family time.
Some of us are too particular about our "roses." Our culture
tends to position the rose as the ultimate flower expressing
beauty and romance. We often extend this to mean that anything
worth savoring needs to be very special and out of the
ordinary.
The secret is to develop the habit of noticing and enjoying all
the little things we experience or encounter as we go about our
daily lives. With practice, you can learn to find beauty and
pleasure in just about anything. Much has to do with the way
you choose to view things.
Do you like to eat? Do you enjoy your food? Well, you probably
enjoy the occasional special meal with family or friends or the
visit to a gourmet restaurant. What about the other times you
eat? Does the fragrant smell of dinner cooking give you pleasure?
Do you enjoy your purchase from the fast food restaurant or the
TV dinner you throw in the microwave?
If you take time to relax while you eat and really taste your
food, taking time to chew it carefully, you may find that your
level of enjoyment will increase significantly. You might even
reap some health benefits as well.
When you are traveling, whether by car or on foot, do you enjoy
the scenery? Take time to really look and you may find much
beauty to enjoy. Some places have natural beauty; others display
man-made beauty. Every place has some sort of beauty to offer
us.
Even things that are ugly contain elements of beauty in their
structure and design. Do you appreciate the changes in the
weather? Just look for the little things.
You probably talk to people many times each day. Do you enjoy
those conversations? Do you find time for a special conversation
with a friend? I encourage you to savor every possible pleasure.
Your goal:
To learn to really smell the roses on a regular basis.
The result:
You will find considerable pleasure each day in the course of
your regular activities. The elevated level of pleasure helps
to modify your emotional state, reducing stress and anxiety and
promoting a sense of well being and satisfaction.
Your assignment:
Take time this week to really notice the things around you as
you go about your regular activities, looking for things that
bring you pleasure and make you feel good. Then develop the
habit of noticing these things on a regular basis.
Wishing You the Very Best!
Sandy Karn, Results Specialist
Sandy Karn is president of her own company, Creative Results
Sources, Inc., a consulting and training company of over 30
years.
Take her Self Development Quiz! http://www.sandykarn.com/quiz/
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women in Business
3 Secrets of Establishing Yourself as the Expert of Choice by Marisa D'Vari
Have you ever felt a jolt of envy to see a competitor or even a
friend grinning up at you from a newspaper or trade publication?
Why him, and not me, we often wonder.
When you are interviewed by the media, you gain official third
party credibility. On a subconscious level, prospects, clients,
and colleagues may subconsciously believe that the publication or
show is actually endorsing your services and giving you the
golden seal of approval.
Receiving media attention is the quickest way to emerge as the
expert of choice, and elevate yourself above your competition.
And the great thing is that a single media appearance begets even
more media appearances. You don't need a high priced publicist to
become a media darling, but you do need to become proactive and
resolve to start now.
Here is an easy-to-implement 3-step plan that will have you
generating publicity in no time flat.
Step 1:
Buy a notebook and carry it with your everywhere, especially when
you read the paper or your trade publications. Journalists today
feature between 3-5 experts for every story to add a balanced
perspective, local color, and help the reader map t he anecdote
to his own experience.
Begin to write down the names and publications of journalists who
cover experts similar to yourself. Jot down the titles of their
stories and add this information to a database such as Act.
Write these journalists a four paragraph "introductory letter."
In the first paragraph, tell them that you are a fan and mention
a specific article by name. This flatters them, but more
important, shows that you actually read their stories and k now
the themes and issues they actually cover.
In the second paragraph, briefly discuss your area of expertise,
and offer yourself as a source for future stories. You may score
more points by mentioning that you are also a member of many
associations related to their beat, and that you can offer other
experts should they need them. In the third paragraph, you may
mention a few timely, relevant story ideas (see Step 2).
Then, in the last paragraph, mention you will call them to
discuss it further on a specific date, and do so.
Step 2:
Develop a running list of story ideas. With that same notebook
you take everywhere, begin to jot down story ideas as they occur
to you. For example:
1. Research you have done for a client. Can you turn this into a
case study or story idea?
2. Questions clients are asking you. Are clients all suddenly
asking the same question? This may be a universal concern
journalists want to know about.
3. Trade show gossip. What were people whispering about in the
halls? What can you turn into a story?
4. Trends. Journalists love trend stories. You are out in the field and read
an assortment of trade publications, but they are shackled to
their desk and rely on experts such as yourself to feed them hot
information and new trends. What's new in your field ? What do
you see for the future?
5. Observations.
In the course of your daily life, story ideas are all around you.
In the past, before directed awareness and your notebook, they
might have flown into one ear and out the other. Now, you'll
write these observations down and turn it into tasty m edia
morsels.
6. Evergreen stories.
Each year, the media needs to cover the same topics. If you are
an accountant, you know the media is going to want timely tax
saving tips, so score brownie points by giving the subject a new
spin.
Step 3:
Put yourself in the position of an editor, reporter, or producer.
Specifically, realize that:
1. They want news and information relevant to their audience.
2. They want "new news" if it could have been told last week, or
next week, it's low on their radar screen.
3. They prefer it if you put the story together for them. Instead
of just giving them a one-line idea, do the legwork yourself
and find sources in addition to yourself.
Score even more points by finding a source who opposes your point
of view, since journalists like to cover both sides of an issue
and love the tension created by controversy.
Becoming a media darling can build your business and give you the
"celebrity status" usually bestowed on film stars and
politicians. 95% of the trick is simply becoming aware of the
opportunities around you, and realizing that if an expert simil
ar to yourself was featured on a show or in an article, so could
you!
Download a complimentary 79 page ebook describing a multitude of
ways to build buzz for your business and read more valuable free
articles on publicity at http://www.BuildingBuzz.com or email
D'Vari at mdvari@deg.com
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Mompreneurs
By Rob Spiegel
This is the first in a two-part series on at-home women entrepreneurs.
Feminism is at the heart of the work-at-home movement. That may seem strange, since many associate the feminist movement with women moving into previously men-only professions such as engineering and high political office. Yet one of the major results of feminism is that both parents now work outside the home. In one generation, this has become so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that now when mom decides to stay home with her kids, her first thought is, "I better figure out some way to make money while I'm at home."
There are dozens of Websites full of work at home wisdom for moms: Mompreneurs (mompreneursonline.com), Work at Home Moms (wahm.com), BizyMoms.com (bizymoms.com), even Christian Work a Home Moms (cwahm.com).
I applaud the concept. I spent many years as a dadpreneur. If I wanted to spend time at home with the kids when my children were young, I had certainly better have some way to make a living while doing it. As I've discussed in this column many times, it's quite natural to work while taking care of kids. Human beings worked while raising kids for 10,000 years before the industrial revolution lured us away from home.
Part of the trick, is to move in and out of work over the course of the day so the kids are not neglected. Much can be done during naps, and even more can be down when your spouse comes home from work and takes over. Of course, if you don't have a spouse, the picture gets a tad brutal. I spent a number of years in that boat, but even then, there are tricks - like getting up at two in the morning so you have a four-hour stretch of sustained concentration. Well, not exactly concentration, but at least it's four hours of uninterrupted work.
Mompreneur is actually a copyrighted word. Yet, like Kleenex, it has moved into the vernacular because it's so descriptive. The term comes from the title of a book by Pat Cobe and Ellen Parlapiano, two friends - who also happened to be New York magazine editors - who decided to quit commuting to Manhattan and instead stay home with the kids and earn there. In addition to "Mompreneurs," the duo have written a follow-up, "Mompreneurs Online: Using the Internet to Build Work at Home Success," which was featured on Oprah.
Another benefit of feminism is that women like Cobe and Parlapiano, turn away from the workday world and enter the home business territory with some salable skills. I've seen some very creative twists by women who are determined to make their professions work in the home setting - like the teacher who finds work in online curriculum development. But even those who can't easily turn their outside career into an in-home business are still ahead of the game having spent time in business settings learning discipline, patience and time-management skills. And they also learned confidence.
Most women are much more methodical than men when it comes to launching an at-home enterprise. Men - including me - tend to be impulsive when starting a business. We plunge ahead and figure out where the levers and buttons are once the train has left the station. This is a version of the "I don't need to ask directions" cliché. Rarely has a man come to me for advice on how to start a business. I hear from enterprising women all the time. Men - and again I'm a culprit - tend to believe they're endowed with the ability to launch a business.
Women will ask everyone in town for information. They'll carefully read all the instructions. They'll pour over maps until they get a clear lay of the land. Then they'll move ahead to conquer with a smile and a support network.
There is an emerging belief that women make better entrepreneurs. The belief is supported by emerging research that we'll cover in part two of this series on at-home women entrepreneurs.
Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and The Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide to Internet Start-ups (St. Martin's Press). You can reach Rob at robspiegel@comcast.net.
Robert Spiegel, 505/275-2556 or email Rob: robspiegel@comcast.net
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women Entrepreneurs By Rob Spiegel
There is an emerging belief that women make better entrepreneurs. Whether they make better entrepreneurs than men is a tough call. What we do know from various studies is that women-owned business is on the increase. We know that women tend to launch service-based businesses. And while the number of women-owned businesses has been on the increase for more than a decade, the receipts from women-owned businesses falls far short of receipts from men-owned businesses. This article is part two of this series on women entrepreneurs.
Recent research presents interesting trends for women entrepreneurs. According to the Center for Women's Business research, the number of women-owned businesses in this country grew at twice the rate of all firms between 1997 and 2002. The Small Business Administration finds that women-owned businesses account for 28 percent of all privately-owned businesses and they employ 9.2 million people. They contribute $2.38 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy.
These positive statistics are cited frequently on business Websites for women. I sure they are meant to encourage and inspire potential women entrepreneurs into taking the plunge. There is however, a less positive side to statistics about women-owned business trends that are not often presented at the Rah-Rah Website. These statistics show that women-owned enterprises have not yet caught up to business norms.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) conducted detailed research on small U.S. business from 1990 to 1998. The research drew from a number of government agencies including the Internal Revenue Service's Statistics of Income Division. The SBA and IRS crunched data specifically to see what progress women were making on the privately-owned business field.
The results show that women are gaining in business ownership. The number of sole proprietorships owned by women grew dramatically from 1990 to 1998 in numbers, gross receipts and net income. The number of sole-proprietorships grew from 5.6 million in 1990 (which was 33.5 percent of the total) to 7.1 million in 1998 (which was 36.8 percent of the total). Big gain in number, but only a slight gain as a percentage of businesses in general.
The receipts from women sole proprietorships grew over the period from 15.2 percent of the total to 18 percent. That's a gain for sure, but when 36.8 percent of the businesses are women-owned and that chunk only produces 18 percent of the receipts, it's clear that women-owned businesses are not producing nearly the revenue of their male counterparts.
The SBA found that most women's sole proprietorships - 87 percent - are quite small, with receipts less than $50,000. The 13 percent that produced more than $50,000 per year accounted for two-thirds of the receipts from women-owned sole proprietorships. Only 2.7 percent of women-owned sole proprietorships produced $200,000 and above annually. Also, 70 percent of women-owned sole-proprietorships were in the service industries.
One statistic stood out as a potential answer to the disparity between the receipts produced by women-owned businesses and men-owned businesses. Two-thirds of women operators of sole proprietorships were married. This percentage declined slightly over the eight-year period. This likely indicates that many of the small sole-proprietorships owned by women are run by stay-at-home mothers who run a service-based company part time. The statistics don't clarify that, but it seems a reasonable assumption, especially with the widespread interest in home business among stay-at-home moms.
There are also statistics that indicate that women do not sustain a business as long as men. The SBA shows that more than 50 percent of start-ups are women-owned businesses. This has been the case for more than a decade, yet the total number of women-owned businesses is only 28 percent (36.8 percent of sole proprietorships). This seems to indicate that women come in and out of business ownership. Again, stay-at-home moms with a part-time business that is abandoned as kids mature could explain why the high number of women-owned startups has not lifted the percentage of women-owned businesses overall.
Rob Spiegel is the author of Net Strategy (Dearborn) and The Shoestring Entrepreneur's Guide to Internet Start-ups (St. Martin's Press). You can reach Rob at robspiegel@comcast.net or call him: 505/275-2556
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The ParentPreneur Club
Many of today's parents discover that working at home is the best way to raise a family and support them, too. Tips, tools and resources for busy moms and dads who work at home.
Work At Home Webpage
Work At Home Jobs & More.
Scam Free Jobs Scam Free Work At Home.
Home Based Business Opportunities Guide
Your Ultimate Home and Online Businesses Guide. Click here
Women Wanted!
Legitimate Home Based Business
A legitimate home based business opportunity in a well established company with the support systems and infrastructure necessary for an affiliate to build a good business over time.
SelfGrowth.com Self improvement and personal growth. Find a wealth of articles, message boards and much more!
MomsExpo has content that is updated daily. Find
resources for pregnancy, family, working from home, business ebooks, WAHM ideas, message boards, and our FREE MomsExpo
Magazine! Come visit us today.
www.MomsExpo.com
Dabbling Mum National publication for BUSY parents offers centers in party planning,
writing, building a home business, recipes, and parenting issues. Plus
book and video reviews and a free monthly essay contest with great
prizes.
Barrel-of-Monkeys.com - Multiregion / Multisystem Video Products: authoring, recording and multimedia presentation.
Home Work BureauFind out the ins and outs of working at home. Pre-screened job opportunities and scam alerts. Hundreds of pre-screened jobs available with little or no investment.
Baby Gifts from TakeAStroll.com - Unique Personalized, Keepsake, Handmade, Many One-of-a-Kind Baby Gifts!
Visit Take a Stroll today!
|
