Successful Blog

3 Ways Successful Women Entrepreneurs Apply Work Ethic

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Katie Donnelly

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Women Entrepreneurs and Work Ethic

There’s a lot we can learn from successful women entrepreneurs. Although there are many routes toward becoming a successful business woman and supporting workplace diversity, one thing all top entrepreneurs have in common: a tireless work ethic. As Margaret Thatcher once said, “I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”

3 Ways Successful Women Entrepreneurs Apply Work Ethic

Here are 3 lessons we can all learn from successful woman entrepreneurs who know how to apply a strong work ethic to achieve their goals.

Take initiative and follow through.

A 2011 Zenger Folkman study that surveyed 7,280 leaders across a wide range of successful organizations found that women excel in many leadership categories, outperforming men much of the time. In fact, the two categories in which women outscored men most dramatically were taking initiative and driving for results. It should come as no surprise that taking initiative pays off. Women entrepreneurs do not wait around for a lucky break to come to them. They identify opportunities, take initiative and follow through to achieve their goals.

Do whatever it takes.

To make it to the top, you will have to put in long hours. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used to put in 130-hour workweeks at Google, including regular all-nighters in which she slept under her desk. She managed to avoid burnout by being invested in — and keeping a positive attitude toward — her work. As she told Joseph Walker, “I don’t really believe in burnout. A lot of people work really hard for decades and decades, like Winston Churchill and Einstein . . . Burnout is about resentment. It’s about knowing what matters to you so much that if you don’t get it that you’re resentful.”

In addition to putting in long hours, sometimes entrepreneurs have to be willing to do work that no one else wants to do. Especially when you are first starting out, you will probably have to put in some grunt work before you can move up.

Practice self-development.

Finally, always be willing to practice self-development: women who are always looking for ways to improve have an advantage in business. The Zenger Folkman study also found that women were more likely than men to seek out personal and professional development. Katy Cowan, who runs the PR agency Boomerang and founded the online community Creative Boom, identifies a “willingness to learn” as one of the “top ten traits of successful, creative businesswomen.” She writes:

You cannot rest on your laurels when you run your own business. The creative industries are always changing, so you will constantly need to keep up and innovate. Successful female entrepreneurs know this and will work hard to learn and improve all the time. They’ll read books, go to workshops and be willing to learn from others.

There is no secret recipe to becoming a successful female entrepreneur. However, this combination of working hard, putting in the time and always being willing to learn something new has propelled plenty of women to the top.

Author’s Bio:
Katie Donnelly is a freelance writer in Philadelphia, who wrote this post on behalf of Navex Global, a leading provider in ethics and diversity training in the workplace.

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How Wall Colors Can Help You With Some Common Blogging Problems

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There can be different solutions to a problem. Some are closely linked to the problem itself, while others are totally detached, hence difficult to figure out. Many a times, we get so fixated with the problem that we fail to see a possible solution, just because it isn’t directly related to the problem. For example, people looking to lose weight will find it hard to find the problem or its solution in anything else but diet, failing to see that it is the lifestyle that’s contributing to the problem. While improving on your diet might be of help, you cannot take care of a problem until you adopt a multifaceted approach. In other words, you shouldn’t really be looking for the magic formula for any problem because it usually takes small steps at various levels to deal with a problem.

Blogging is fun, but only as long as you are not doing it for money. As soon as you start going for that, you will have to face some tough competition which is getting intense day by day. In order to bode well, you will have to put your best foot forward. If you are blogging with certain goals in mind, there are some problems that you are going to face, and the sooner you can deal with these problems the better.

Not that changing the colors of the walls will sort out these problems, but it can certainly help. As earlier suggested, you need to adopt a multifaceted approach instead of going berserk with one single solution. Following are some common problems that you can face as a blogger, along with some tips on how painting your walls with a certain color can be of help.

Procrastination:

This one has been my personal “favorite” and knowing that most bloggers are doing it from the comfort of their homes, it’s a given that putting off important tasks on tomorrow, and then the day after tomorrow, will be on top of the list of common problems faced by many bloggers. You can create dozens of to-do lists for all you want, but when it comes to acting upon your plans, you will find yourself getting indulged in some random tasks instead of working (in fact, these to-do lists will start to be counter-productive after some time).

There are, of course, other solutions to this problem, but having certain shades of red in the color mix of your interior can be of help. Red color comes under the fire elements of feng shui, and it is bound to give you some much needed energy boosts. You can use this energy to get out of your comfort zone. Painting the walls with red color will keep you on your toes, which is a must for all bloggers to survive in a fast paced blogosphere.

Stress & Perfectionism:

There are two types of stress, you get stressed when the workload is hard to manage, you have got too many things to worry about, there’s some problem that you cannot sort out despite trying your best, and the likes. Stress resulting from these problems is normal, and it will keep coming and going with the passage of time. But then there’s the 24/7 stress that comes from being a perfectionist. For some reasons, this trait is considered a plus point but the downsides can easily outweigh the plus points.

For example, being a perfectionist you will pay unnecessary attention to details that doesn’t really matter, it might be a good thing if you were directing a motion picture or composing a song, but there are many aspects of blogging that don’t really warrant getting stressed day in and day out (except of course the content or blog posts where you need to be spot on). If you are stressing out all the time to the extent of getting depressed then that is certainly not a very healthy habit at all. Apart from other solutions, you can also paint your walls with light blue or green color. Having the soothing colors like green or blue will help you to relax, feel fresh, and help you unnerve in those situations, when you are getting bogged down by the small things.

Writer’s Block:

I am not really sure what exactly causes a writer’s block, but it usually occurs when I am trying to think a little too hard. There are certain topics that require lots and lots of mental labor, and apparently, when our mind gets tired from all that labor, it simply refuses to respond in the way we want it to be (working as a “state within a state”). You might be able to pull off a couple more reps with your tired bicep or chest muscles, but there’s no way that you can “force” your mind to come out of writer’s block. Therefore, if your blogging topics require lots and lots of research and thinking, you can get some help by painting your walls with white or light yellow colors, which will help you think more clearly.

In addition to help you develop a more uncluttered vision, it will keep you calm. Not only that, but yellow can be the reason why you’ll be looking to complete your work in time, and get out of the room after the working hours, given that some shades of yellow can start to agitate after some time.

Need I say more?

Arba Hana loves to write on interesting topics related to blogging and work from home. If you are looking for marble tiles for your home or office, you can visit the following URL and find the tiles in different colors: http://www.discountgranitedirect.co.uk/marble-tiles.

Know lots of things

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Rosemary O’Neill

Know lots of things

Intellectual curiosity is a hugely valuable asset for entrepreneurs and small business owners alike. Stoking the fires of learning should be a lifelong, never-ending quest, and the input to your brain should be much more than just a steady stream of blog posts and Pinterest photos.

Last night, I was working on the NYTimes crossword puzzle (on my iPad—I’ve finally given up my beloved paper copy) when my 8 year old son came over and asked me what I was doing.

As I was explaining how crossword puzzles work, I realized that the fundamental skill for doing a crossword is to know a little bit about a lot of things. Random opera characters, book titles, TV shows from the 50’s, words from your Barron’s vocabulary tests in 8th grade, all of these things lay the groundwork for being able to solve the puzzle.

The conversation with my son left me wondering whether, in this age of immersion in blogs, rapid-fire videos, and Tweets, we are going to lose the ability to do the New York Times crossword.

Are we going to lose our broad curiosity about things that don’t relate to Facebook or smartphones? Does that also hinder our ability to patiently noodle through complex problems with multiple layers of connection?

Our challenge in 2012 is finding the long, difficult knowledge rather than the quick hit. Let’s make sure that we still listen to a full length symphony, read War and Peace, visit the Louvre. And let’s not stopping doing the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. In ink.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Thank you, Rosemary!

You’re irresistible!

ME “Liz” Strauss

Running a Business Successfully in a Challenging Economy Using Small Town Rules

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It goes without saying that the past few years have been “the worst of times” for many small business owners. Uncertainty, lack of resources, lack of revenues… we’ve seen it all. Many businesses have completely disappeared. Yet there are those that have survived and even thrived during these challenging times. What’s their secret?

Two of our Sobcon community’s best, Becky McCray and Barry Moltz, have written a new book titled, Small Town Rules: How Big Brands and Small Businesses Can Prosper in a Connected Economy. In it they share some of the time-tested strategies that small, rural businesses have adopted to weather the storms (figuratively or literally!) and even grow.

That’s why we’re so excited to have Becky and Barry on our November 15 Sobcon Twitter chat to discuss some ways that small and online businesses can restructure, retool and refuel for success during economic challenges. Here are topics we’ll be discussing:

  • What is Planning for Zero and why should you do so? Shouldn’t you plan for growth?
  • You suggest spending brains before bucks. Ways to do that?
  • How does one keep focus when pursuing Multiple Lines of Income?
  • How do you know whether to keep going or go out of business when times get tough?
  • Is a “Connected Economy” only social media? What about offline?

BARRY J. MOLTZ founded and ran small businesses for more than 15 years. He has since founded angel investor groups and funds and advised the Angel Capital Education Foundation. An Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame member, Moltz’s first book, You Need to Be A Little Crazy, has been translated into four languages worldwide. His second book, Bounce! Failure, Resiliency and the Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success, shows how to come back from failure and develop true business confidence. He is also the author of BAM! Delivering Customer Service in a Self-Service World. He has appeared on TV and radio programs, including The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, MSNBC’s Your Business and The Tavis Smiley Show, and hosts his own web radio show, Business Insanity Talk Radio, with guests ranging from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh to Guy Kawasaki, Craig Newmark, and Seth Godin.


BECKY MCCRAY is a small town entrepreneur, with a cattle ranch, a retail liquor store and other businesses in Woods County, Oklahoma. A recognized small business and social media expert, she has spoken internationally to over 100 conferences on small business, rural issues and social media, including SXSW Interactive, BlogWorld Expo, the International Economic Development Council, 140 Characters Conferences, Revitalize Washington, and the Michigan Small Town and Rural Development Conference. She publishes one of the top 20 small business blogs in the world, Small Biz Survival, focused on small town small business and has been featured in Inc., The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Entrepreneur magazine. In 2011, she was named one of 100 Small Business Influencers, and she is listed as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women on Twitter.

What do they have in common?

While Barry Moltz lives in Chicago (population about 2.7 million) and Becky McCray lives in Hopeton, Oklahoma, (population about 30), they do share some common characteristics.

Both are entrepreneurs. Barry has had three businesses of his own. Becky started her first business in junior high school, and currently owns a liquor store and a cattle ranch along with her husband. (She also has a number of smaller side businesses.)

Both talk openly about success and failure. Both have been fired. Both have gone out of business. Barry has been kicked out of business by his own partners, and he sold his last business during the Internet bubble of 1999. Becky has run for public office and lost, started businesses that went no where, and has succeeded in building stable businesses in times of intense economic turmoil.

Barry also brings experience with large corporations through his time with IBM. Becky adds experience in agriculture, nonprofit and governmental organizations.

They wrote the book by collaborating almost entirely online, meeting in person only a few times.

We look forward to seeing YOU on on Sobcon Twitter chat on November 15th, 2012.

Made It Your Business to be Insured?

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For many men and women, opening and running a small business is a lifelong dream.

According to the Small Business Administration (SBA) there are some 27 million small businesses scattered across the nation, with anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of all new jobs created nationwide tied to small business.

Whether it is a company one has started fresh off the ground, inherited from a family member or purchased from someone else, their blood, sweat and tears will likely be poured into it over time.

But what happens if they do not have the proper small business insurance in place?

In what can seem like the blink of an eye, all those dreams of being their own boss and making a go of it as a business owner can be wiped out.

In order to avoid such a scenario, ask yourself a very simple question. Am I properly insured to the point where my small business could withstand even the smallest of claims? If the answer is no, make it your business to get properly insured.

It all starts with preparing for the everyday risk that something could go wrong, meaning you could end up on the wrong end of a claim, a claim that has the potential to be quite expensive for you and your business.

 

Do You Know All the Things That Can Go Wrong?

While the possible scenarios are just about endless, some of them include:

  • The work you do for a client ends up causing them a business interruption and/or loss of money;
  • Someone comes to your business for a consultation, product or service. While there, they are injured in a fall or other accident;
  • One of your employees is attacked in your office parking lot while going to their car. You were told several times that the area had little or no lighting and was unsafe, yet you never did anything to correct the problem. In turn, the employee sues you to cover their medical bills and emotional suffering;
  • You or one of your employees are driving to meet with a client or make a delivery. During the time, you are involved in a vehicle accident and the other party is injured;
  • The legal or financial advice that you provided a client does not work for them, meaning they may turn around and sue you and your business;
  • A fire or storm causes major damage to your office space and equipment. As a result, you lose the ability to work for days, weeks or maybe even longer. Can you survive financially with your small business in limbo?

No matter what the potential claim may be, it has the makings of putting you and your business at risk of going under should someone be successful in a court judgment. Without small business coverage, you risk losing everything.

As you may or may not imagine, there are a number of coverage types available for your company, including:

  1. Business property insurance (covers the business property you rent or own, including the equipment inside);
  2. Liability insurance (protects you and your business against accidents to third parties, including personal injuries and should a fire break out in your business and damage nearby properties);
  3. Home-based insurance (provides you with coverage should you run your business from home; most homeowners policies do not protect you against home-based business losses);
  4. Commercial auto insurance (offers you protection when you have any business vehicles that are used on a regular basis to go meet with clients and/or deliver goods and services).

There is little to no doubt that some small business owners will feel paying premiums for insurance is cutting into their revenue, so why have it in the first place?

Keep in mind that an uninsured loss can be much more expensive to your small business over time than paying a monthly, quarterly or yearly payment for small business insurance.

At the end of the day, are you willing to take the risk of not being insured?

Dave Thomas has more than 20 years’ experience as a writer, covering a variety of topics to help your small business succeed.

 

 

How Internet Business Changes with Video Chat

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Jason Phillips

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What Offline Businesses Know

Small businesses have always been built on customer relationships. Strong relationships with your customers mean stronger stability for your business. Mom and pop stores on main street have lived off this truism for years and they continue to do so because so called brick and mortar businesses deal with customers in person every day. In many ways, customers are their business.

The Limits of Internet, Email, and Text

What internet businesses have forgotten, however, is that dealing with customers is their business too. That means that whatever Internet business you are in, dealing with customers is what you are all about.

Internet businesses, for all of their convenience and stocking capability, have always had been at a disadvantage from local brick and mortar businesses due to the lack of credible customer relationships. When a customer shops at a local business, they have the advantage of asking for a sales associate from behind the counter when they have a question or concern and a real person will show up and help them out. In addition, the customer and sales associate can build a solid relationship with each other over time. This means that if the customer is familiar with Jane because she was kind and helpful last week, he can come in the next week with his concern and ask for Jane again with a good reason to believe he will receive the same quality of service.

This kind of long term personal relationship model breaks down over the impersonal Internet.

Email and text chat have been the mainstay of customer support for most online businesses, but customers can’t connect to a user name the way they can connect to a face. For all the customer knows, a different representative could be using the same name each time and the customer would never know.

There is something about face to face communication that builds a connection between people that email and text can never do. While brick and mortar may have had the monopoly on this face to face personal touch to customer service in the past, video chat is quickly evening the playing field.

How Internet Business Changes with Video Chat

Have you ever noticed how a little baby will stare at your face for minutes on end while you hold them? This early staring at people’s faces is a developmental stage that is vital to all humans. This trains us to distinguish the thousands of different facial expressions and subtle emotions that are communicated through face to face communication. Text chat and email certainly can’t come close to this level of communication. And while voice communication provides the addition of voice inflection, it still comes nowhere close to the depth of communication achieved by face to face communication.

This is why video chat is vital to your online company’s customer service strategy.

The text based, impersonal and anonymous nature of the internet is changing under us with the advent of video chat. The internet is about to become a much warmer place because of the depth of communication now available between people.

The bottom line is that video chat is a great thing for your online business because it begins closing the gap between brick and mortar customer service and online customer service.

Make no mistake; this is going to be a challenge for some of us to get used to. After years of sitting, and maybe even hiding behind email and text, we are going to have to get back to the basics of good old person to person communication. We need to relearn good eye contact, good clear speaking and the elimination of all those “ums” and “ahs”.

Author’s Bio:
Jason Phillips shared this post. Jason is a freelance writer who enjoys the challenges of creativity and attention to detail. His articles on webcam chat are really appreciated by his readers. Jason always tries to provide unique and interesting content in his articles.

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