More Than WE Know

Wuvit?? Green Daisy?? Pretty, young, blond, smiling mom??

I have to tell you:

When I first picked up this book Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You Can, Too! with its flowery pink and green cover, I assumed that it was going to be one of those sugar-coated success stories telling how with a little cock-eyed optimism and bit of a spunk, you too could become an overnight business success, while also raising adorable home-schooled children, building a perfect marriage, cooking gourmet meals and keeping immaculately waxed floors…

…and I almost put it back on the shelf.

But they always say not to judge a book by its cover - and this is no exception.

Instead of a saccharine sweet story about a too-perfect princess, I found a true, edge-of-my-seat, gripping page-turner of a book about a down-to-earth woman, with a great idea, a lot of passion and little business knowledge, struggling to keep her family one step ahead of the bill collector.

Kim Lavine takes her readers every step of the way from her initial sales out of the back of her truck to her first trade show, her quest for exposure on QVC and her roller-coaster ride with venture capitalists. Along the way she learns the ins and outs of product manufacturing, shipping, wholesale and retail merchandising. She encounters many great mentors and almost as many hustlers and opportunists.

Over the three year period that she builds her business from the kitchen table to a multi-million dollar enterprise she also deals with a special-needs son, a terminally ill mother-in-law, and an out-of-work husband, all the while teetering perilously close to bankruptcy and financial ruin.

Kim is unafraid to tell you her doubts and fears. She reveals the dark moments when she considered giving up and declaring bankruptcy. She shares the frustration she and her husband felt as they slowly learned to work together and gradually grew to appreciate the strengths the other brought to the business.

Kim admits the regrettable times early on when she made parenting decisions that favored her business over her children. She shares the vow she eventually made to never again apologize for being a mother in business.

By the end of the book, you are cheering for this hard-working woman and wishing she could be your best friend.

Not only is this book a fascinating read of the inside story of the start-up of a multi-million dollar enterprise, it is also a great reference book. Kim provides pages of practical tips concerning how to deal with lawyers, manufacturers, bankers and investors. She provides forms, websites, and glossaries of business and financial terms.

She shares all of the mistakes she made, money she lost and decisions she regrets, so that you won’t have to - or so that you won’t feel so alone or foolish when you do!

And in case you’re wondering: Kim’s business is called Green Daisy and her multi-million dollar product is a wuvit - a fabric-covered grain-filled spa pack that when heated in the microwave gives off hours of moist heat, or when frozen becomes a no-drip ice pack. Kim even makes a wuvit for children - Sleepy-head Fred and has expanded into totebags and pajamas.

Kim Levine, Mommy Millionaire - Her products are great, and her story is definitely not to be missed!

(p.s.- in case you’re wondering - nope, I’m not affiliated with Green Daisy in any way - just converted from a skeptic into a fan!)

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One of the key challenges of running a small business is cash flow. The opportunities abound but you don’t always have enough cash to take advantage of them:

• You have orders piling up, but not enough cash to buy raw materials
• You could be more productive if you had better equipment, but can’t afford the investment
• You could get more done if you hired an assistant, but you don’t have enough money short-term to make the payroll.

These are the challenges faced by the Women Entrepreneurs I work with. These are also the challenges faced by the entrepreneurs who come to the Kiva organization.

Kiva is a non-profit organization that connects entrepreneurs in economically depressed areas with people like you and me.

Kiva partners with local micro-finance institutions to identify entrepreneurs who would benefit from a short-term micro loan (usually $150 -$1200 USD paid back in 6 to 12 months).

These loans help the entrepreneurs grow their businesses and obtain sustainable success.

While Kiva works with both male and female entrepreneurs, microfinance investments have traditionally helped Women Entrepreneurs. Many organizations find that women are very responsible about repaying the loans and invest the profits in ensuring a better life for themselves and their children.

According to Kiva:

“Microfinance programs have generally targeted poor women. By providing access to financial services only through women—making women responsible for loans, ensuring repayment through women, maintaining savings accounts for women, providing insurance coverage through women—microfinance programs send a strong message to households as well as to communities.

Many qualitative and quantitative studies have documented how access to financial services has improved the status of women within the family and the community. Women have become more assertive and confident. In regions where women’s mobility is strictly regulated, women have become more visible and are better able to negotiate the public sphere. Women own assets, including land and housing, and play a stronger role in decision making.

In some programs that have been active over many years, there are even reports of declining levels of violence against women.” (CGAP)

The women themselves report increased confidence and levels of self-esteem as they develop control over their own lives.

Kiva accepts loans of $25 USD. You select the entrepreneur you want to help, track their repayment process and get reports on their business progress. When the loan is repaid, Kiva returns your funds or enables you to re-loan the money to another entrepreneur.

Women Entrepreneurs have the ability to change the world, More Than WE Know.

Women Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneur-wannabe’s that I work with have various motivations for wanting to start their own business.  The most common reason I hear is that they want more flexibility in their schedule. This is especially true for women with children.  The desire to work from home and integrate their children into their work-lives is a strong motivator.

However, I also hear from many women who are concerned that they don’t have the proper skills.  They think that this option is not available to them because they have little or no experience in running a business. 

In my opinion,  raising children is some of the best training for running a business that a person can have. While anyone can take a class in accounting or marketing,  real hands-on leadership experience is much harder to come by.  A woman raising small children is immersed every day in a leadership program which provides valuable training in becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Successful entrepreneurs should be able to:

1) Deal calmly with crises – whether it is a delayed product shipment or a stolen bicycle, unexpected crises are part of life. Moms have the ability to keep everyone calm, focus on the big picture and strategize a solution.

2) Multi-task – Moms are the original multi-taskers, juggling dinner, ironing, feeding the baby and helping with homework. This makes them perfectly suited for simultaneously making outbound calls, responding to email and approving a marketing campaign.

3) Soothe angry customers – Moms have much experience dealing with tantrums, outbursts and tirades. While they can’t send angry customers to their rooms, they can listen empathetically, give them space to calm down and get them focused on solving the problem together.

4) Negotiate – Moms instinctively know which items are negotiable (15 minutes past bedtime, an extra dessert) and which are not (coming home after dark, riding bikes in the street). They know when to give in, and when to stand firm and how to bake a bigger pie so everyone gets a piece.

5) Delegation – Any mom knows that it’s more important that her son makes his bed than that he makes it perfectly. Progress rather than perfection is the key. Whether dealing with her children or her employees, she knows that by giving them both the task and the responsibility, she frees herself up to contribute in ways that only she can.

So, the next time you start to doubt whether you have the relevant experience necessary to run your own business, remind yourself that you already have your MBA – Mom’s Business Administration degree!

Ask yourself: Are you earning all you can with your small business?

Do you give as much value (or more) as your competitors but consistently charge less than they do?

Do you fantasize about starting your own business or expanding the one you have, but stop yourself from doing it because you worry you might fail or look foolish?

Do you have so many projects and ideas that you don’t know which one to start on? Or you work on all of them at the same time, never really finishing any of them?

Do you put everyone else’s needs ahead of your own - Spending only your spare time and left-over energy on building your business and advancing your skills?

Do you dread looking at your financial statements, bills and invoices? Do you hate following up on overdue payments and deadbeat customers? Do you avoid negotiating for better deals with suppliers and distributors?

If so, you are probably not earning all that you can with your business.

You may recall that recently I wrote an article on negotiating fees in which I reviewed the book Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation–and Positive Strategies for Change

That book pointed out that our tendency to ask for less during negotiations translates to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost in income over a woman’s lifetime.

Similarly, Barbara Stanny’s book Overcoming Underearning(R): A Five-Step Plan to a Richer Life and her companion CD Guided Exercises for Overcoming Underearning point out that many of the reasons that people underearn are due to habits and beliefs about money.

Barbara Stanny’s father was one of the founders of H&R Block (he was the “R”). As a result, Barbara inherited a sizable trust fund. You would think that Barbara, of all people, would have no money issues; but the opposite is the case.

Barbara had many of the same challenges that the rest of us do - believing it was somehow inappropriate for a woman to focus on money, feeling that her contribution was not valuable enough to be compensated for, and having difficulty distinguishing between intelligent and foolish risk-taking.

It was only after Barbara suffered financial setbacks due to her beliefs about money that she realized she could help other women ovecome the same challenges. She has written several books, including an interesting study of high-earning women,Secrets of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life that help women overcome their issues with money. She has become known as the Leading Authority on Women and Money.

This is powerful stuff. It’s especially relevant to Women Entrepreneurs. Despite a more even playing field, WE still tend to earn less revenue, make less profit, set smaller goals, take fewer risks and sell our companies for less than our male counterparts.

This is in spite of the fact that WE know WE work just as hard, have just as much passion and just as much talent as the next guy.

I’m determined to get to the bottom of this puzzle. Over the coming weeks, I’ll continue to research the differences in the way women and men approach our business, our finances and our life.

WE work too hard to earn less than WE deserve.

What about you? Are you an underearner? Do you think you should be earning more than you do? How is your relationship with money holding you back from earning your full potential?

The best hurdlers clear the hurdles - but just barely.

Think about it - the most efficient way to clear a hurdle is to give it just enough effort to get over it - and no more.  Otherwise, you’ll run out of energy long before you run out of hurdles.

In fact, my father used to tell me the story of the Olympic hurdler from Ohio, Harrison Dillard. It seems that Dillard used to practice hurdling by placing a quarter on the top of each hurdle.  If when he cleared it, he also knocked the quarter off the top, he knew he was using his energy as efficiently as possible - to clear the hurdle - but just barely. 

So, what does this mean to Women Entrepreneurs? 

Plenty!

Think of all the hurdles you’ve had to overcome to get where you are in your business. Consider how many more still face you up ahead.  If you give too much energy, too much time and too much emotion to each and every hurdle you meet, you will soon run out of steam.

Instead, consider the hurdles you face - how high are they really? Do you really need to put as much energy into this particular sale, this particular tax form, this particular complaint?

I’m not advising you to ignore them - just to give them enough attention to resolve them - and no more.

Remember - Growing a business is a long distance race with frequent and unexpected hurdles.  Conserve your energy and keep your eyes on the road up ahead. 

How do you deal with the hurdles you face? Are you giving too much energy to each and every one? Or are you pacing yourself for the long haul?

For more information see:

Successful Women Entrepreneurs Don’t Strive for Perfection