More Than WE Know

It’s been an inspiring week for me and I hope to share some of that inspiration with you in this week’s round-up of exciting articles on the web.  So without further ado, let’s get started!

One of my favorite sources of inspiration, Christine O’Kelly, from Self-made Chick wrote a great article on breaking out of her comfort zone to reach new heights in her article How I’ve Been Holding Myself Back and How to Avoid Stagnation in Your Business.  Christine’s article is a reminder that we sometimes need to let go of the comfortable and familiar in order to achieve our next level of success.

A brand new source of inspiration for me this week is Stephen Hopson from Adversity University.   A little over ten years ago Stephen was a successful Stockbroker on Wall Street. One day he walked away from the glamour and money (not to mention the long hours and high pressure)  and devoted his life to motivating others!  And if that isn’t inspiring enough - Stephen has since become a much sought-after public speaker - despite the fact that he has a profound hearing loss! 

Stephen says ”Trust that bigger things are in store for you if you listen to your intuition, take action and believe that things will work out despite lack of clear supporting evidence.” 

Another frequent source of inspiration for me is David Bohl who usually writes on his blog Slow Down Fast.  However this week I found him guest writing on Dumb Little Man with an article called Don’t Let it Be Boring - Let Life Excite You!  Nothing more I can add to a title like that!

It might seem odd to find inspiration in an article that is talking about the possbility(reality?) of a recession.  But I liked the positive focus that Gavin Ingham put on his article Selling in a Recession - Why Some People are Going to Crash and Others are Going to Fly.  

I liked the fact that Gavin reminds us that even when dealing with a situation that seems outside of our control, such as the economy, our reaction to it is still very much within our control.  Focusing on what I can control, always helps me cope.

And the last item is a treat - a blogtalk radio episode with Wayne Hurlbert interviewing Dawn Rivers Baker.  Dawn is an expert on microbusinesses.   In this interview Dawn describes the rapid growth of entrepreneurial non-employer businesses including who they are, their business styles, and their niches & industries.

Since this category includes many Women Entrepreneurs, this interview is all about you and the significant impact you have on the US economy.  Listen directly or download the mp3 file to listen later.

This week’s reading really energized me! It’s great to see so many people taking charge of their lives - I hope you’re feeling it too!

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Working On Your Company Rather Than In It 

(Guest post by Julie Lenzer Kirk)

When I started my business, I was one of “them.” As a software programmer, I developed roughly 50% of our initial product release elbow-to-elbow with my programming staff. It was clear we were all in it together and shared a great deal of the successes and bumps in the road.

As my business started to grow, I realized I had to pull out of my role as programmer and transition to the CEO. Unfortunately I had no idea what this meant. Over the subsequent seven years as we built our business to multi-millions in revenues, I learned many valuable lessons about how to make that transition. The following, taken from my book The ParentPreneur Edge: What Parenting Teaches About Building a Successful Businesscan help prepare you to make the successful transformation into the company’s leader.

1. It is more important to be fair than liked. When I was working at the same level as my employees, I was part of the gang. When I began to extract myself from the day-to-day development of our products I began to realize how alone I was. I was often faced with tough decisions that one way or another would upset someone. For example, while we believed in providing flexibility in our work arrangements, not every position in the company afforded the same flexible work possibilities. While a programmer may be able to develop software from home, an office manager hired to answer the phones would have a hard time fulfilling his duties working from home. While it was a clear business decision, my office manager wasn’t thrilled with it.
2. Find and use outside advisors. The saying that it is lonely at the top is true. It is especially hard if you started out as a doer in your company. Finding and using outside advisors whom you can use as sounding boards helps mitigate the growing isolation you can feel as your company begins to grow. Likewise, if you feel lost in your new role and unsure what you should be doing like I did, an advisor can help direct your focus to the aspects of your business that require your leadership to move the company forward.
3. Hire for cultural fit before skills. Many skills, with the exception of highly technical disciplines, can be taught and refined. Attitude and work ethic, however, rarely change over time. I learned the hard way in building my management team that just because someone has a fantastic resume and all the right skills, their methods and approaches may not be cohesive with your company’s culture.
4. It’s not personal, it’s just business. I agonized over every decision I had to make that impacted an employee. Even when a decision was clear, I felt I was letting people down if I had to disapprove their request or, worse, let them go. Likewise, when someone quit or had a problem with a decision I had made, I took it personally. I learned quickly that growing a business in that manner would be not only painful but counter-productive. After all, employees will ultimately do what is best for them no matter how loyal they appear. While it is good to consider the impact of your decisions on your employees, you should ultimately do what is best for the business.
5. Embrace “no.” If you’re not hearing “no” from customers, your not going after enough work. We used to boast about our 100% proposal win rate but the truth was, we weren’t going after enough new opportunities. The odds are that if you are pursuing enough work, you’ll get rejected. Oftentimes, you can learn as much or more from a lost contract that you do from a project you land. Likewise, if you’re not turning any customers down, you don’t have a strategy. Saying “yes” to any work that comes your way can leave your business unfocused and diminish your odds for strategically positioning your company for future growth.

By taking the above lessons to heart, you will position not only your company but yourself to support the growth of your company while keeping your sanity in tact.

Deleegation is the key to success.

I know many Women Entrepreneurs don’t want to hear that and don’t believe it - but it’s true. As long as we try to do everything ourselves - we limit our effectiveness.  We are constrained by our own time, talent and energy.  And we put a limit on how big our business can grow.

When we delegate - we increase our power and our productivity. We leverage other people’s time, other people’s talent and other people’s energy.  We take the limits off of our success.                                    

Reasons I hear for not delegating are:

• money - it’s cheaper to do it myself
• skill - no one else can do it as well as I can
• time - I can do it myself faster than explaining how to someone else

All three of these reasons are limiting beliefs that will get in your way of achieving success.

Money - You may believe you are saving money when you do everything yourself. But in reality all you are doing is wasting time and energy.   That time and energy could be spent on doing more profitable and more important tasks for your business.

Skill - It may or may not be true that no one else can do the task as well as you can. But even if it is true, the question to ask yourself, is “does it matter?” As heretical as it sounds - not every task needs to be done to perfection.  Some tasks just need to be good enough.  Anything more is a waste of time and energy. 

Time - Time is important. It is your most finite resource, even more than energy and money. You can increase your energy level, and you can make more money - but you only have a limited amount of time.  The only way to increase time, is to use other people’s.  And the only wise way to do that - is to invest the time upfront, once, to get their help.

In the coming weeks, I’ll discuss more about how to decide what to delegate, and who to delegate it to. 

In the meantime, let me ask you - what is stopping you from delegating for success?

Photos by jsc*

Recently I wrote two posts about the pros and cons of blogging for small business:

Why Your Business Might Benefit from a Blog

Why Your Business Might Not Benefit from a Blog

So, when I came across this example of a small business using a blog to connect with its customers, I wanted to share it with you as an example.

The Houston Online Furniture Store  has a great inventory, in a populous area with a strong online and offline presence.  It does have one challenge: the store sells modern, contemporary furniture in…Texas….an area of the country not usually equated with sleek, Danish, modern furniture.

That’s why the blog is such a great idea for this small business.  The store owner is using it as an opportunity to educate his potential customers about the exciting possibilities of a different type of interior design.

Recent blog entries:

• highlighted the design beauty and practical characteristics of cement floors
• provided tips on where to get the increasingly popular mid-century classic furniture
• disclosed the hottest new color trend in Houston

Even if you are not in the market for bar stools, dining chairs or leather couches, it’s worthwhile checking out Houston Online’s  blog for some ideas on how you could incorporate this low-cost technique into your own marketing strategy.  

What do you think? How could a blog help you educate your customers and create a bigger demand?

(Sponsored Review)

One of the areas that almost every Women Entrepreneur I speak to feels they should be doing more of, is Networking.  We know it’s important for our business’ growth and development, but since it is not urgent, it tends to get pushed to the bottom of our to-do lists.

Networking online can be less time-consuming than networking offline.  But it can also be hard to know where to start. And of course it can also be a bit scary.  If meeting new people online seems intimidating to you, then it might be better to start by using the internet to reconnect with people you already know but have lost touch with.  

One tool I recently became aware of is: The Online Alumni Community.  Since I attend many classes online, my first assumption was that it was an alumni community for people who attended school online.  But in closer inspection I found that its scope was much more broad.

It has groups from a wide variety of  colleges.  Some I took at closer look at were:

• Aakers College Alumni Group
• Howard University Alumni Group    
• Harvard University Alumni Group
• Stanford University Alumni Group

In addition to the group forums, there are also places to post messages, events, videos and questions.  There is also a place to post alumni blog entries.    

This almuni social networking site is new but there seems to be quite a bit of activity on it.  There are multiple videos scattered about and quite a few participants listed. Most of the participants appear to be within 10 years of college, which makes sense since it is appealing to people who are used to online sites like facebook and myspace.

As I’ve discussed in the past, the advantage of smaller social networking sites is that sometimes it is easier to develop more intimate and personal relationships. Many people have become disillusioned with the larger networking sites in which you find that you have thousands of “friends” without knowing who any of them really are.

Reconnecting with your old network can broaden your social circle. The more people who know about your business, the more opportunity you will have to grow and expand.

After reviewing Online Alumni Community, I would feel comfortable recommending it to women entrepreneurs who attended or graduated from college within the past 10 years or so.  It could be a good way to get back in touch with friends from the past or maybe even make new friends based on common interests.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts: How comfortable are you with networking online? Do you feel more comfortable with the idea of reconnecting with people you already know? What sites do you use?

(sponsored review)