Women Supporting Women - Not!

It was a revelation to me, a few decades ago, when it began to dawn on me that women do not support other women in the business world. The past almost-20-years at the helm of Atlanta Women in Business have provided ample proof (they have also provided some wonderful contradictions of the phenomenon).

So, now I am reading Leslie Grossman's blog post about a conversation between Gloria Steinem and Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo and find out that women do not support each other in religious institutions either! Women who have money to give to religious institutions would rather give it to those led by men than those led by women?

Most of my clients, as those who are familiar with my business know, are men. On a daily basis, I observe men recommending other men for jobs, connecting them with experts whose services they need, giving them networking tips, following up with them - even years later - when a relevant issue emerges. Women? Not so much. What's wrong with us?

Money, money, money . . .

Spring is on the way and businesses all around me are showing new determination for growth, expansion and optimism. A lot of them are looking for money; many are not sure where to start.

My advice, for new start-ups in the Atlanta area, is to first of all go to the March 16 “Stepping Up To Business” event at Cobb Galleria. I am certain there will be important information disseminated, and the networking will be excellent as well. Who knows – one might even find a partner, affiliate or new client there!

A few years ago, I attended an event about investing and entrepreneurship at which Eugene O’Malley, Managing Partner of Cobblestone Advisers, was the keynote speaker. Wisely, to help people remember, he has come up with an approach he calls BE SMART, an acronym in which each letter represents a specific task or process the business owner must carry out when in pursuit of capital. The other day, looking at his hand-out again, I focused on the “S” – Spoke & Wheel: get to know the top 50 influences in your community. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

I also like O’Malley’s “M” – Management Team, and will write about that some other time.

Atlanta Women in Business – Loans, Inc., meanwhile, continues to move ever closer to opening its doors for loan applications. Be patient a little longer, please.

What Do Entrepreneurs Need?

Yesterday, I got invited to yet another event with a motivational speaker and could not help but think that entrepreneurs do not need motivation and inspiration (they are born with it!), although a little coaching is often a good thing. What we need is practical stuff! What’s the best SEO strategy, how can we make our web sites more visitor-friendly, what’s the best way to find our perfect markets, is self-publishing a viable option, who is an expert on video production, does it make more sense to add an employee, engage the services of a VA or outsource certain tasks, should I use QuickBooks or hire a CPA . .?

As an entrepreneur, what is your most pressing issue?

Running a Profitable Business

You have probably received the same sort of letter from your accountant that my CPA sent me and all her other clients the other week. It has to do with a new law that gives the IRS the right to ascertain that tax preparers maintain client files that show complete and accurate income and expense details.

It all makes perfectly good sense to me – reporting gross receipts, mileage expense recording, charitable contributions’ receipts, etc., etc., etc.

One sentence in particular stood out for me: “The IRS expects you to make a profit in 3 out of 5 years.”

That seems like a no-brainer to me! If your business cannot produce a profit in 3 out of 5 years, you ought to close its doors, or make such changes that will get it to be profitable again in no time at all.

I hope your business has been profitable in 2010 and will be so again in 2011!

Practice What You Teach!

The other day, in a local art studio, I picked up a flyer for a “Marketing Online Workshop” – very basic stuff (web site, blog, social media), a reasonable fee, and an instructor whose name I had not heard before. A few minutes’ search told me that neither teaching nor online marketing are her areas of expertise. I have no questions about her effectiveness and success as a business owner and suspect that she is very good at what she does, but I wonder why an online marketing course should be taught be someone who launched her own blog in January 2009, has posted only 4 times (most recently on January 16, 2009) and has only 1 “follower” (herself).

Shouldn’t we all, as business professionals, practice what we teach?

Three “Networking” Failures – and how to avoid them …

You probably know people who believe that “networking” does not work. You may even think so yourself. You’ve been to a networking event, not met anyone of interest to your business or career pursuits and not been able to sell anything. Why do that again? It does not work, right?

Several years ago, I received an e-mail from someone who had recently attended a networking event I had organized. “I will never come back,” she wrote. “Every time I go to a networking event, I make a sale. Yours is the first event where I did not sell anything.”

This was for me a unique experience: the first such e-mail in more than a decade of offering networking opportunities. But the sentiment the writer expressed has not been unique.

Here are the three common networking failures, and what you must do to overcome them.

Not showing up. You join organizations – professional groups, referral clubs, Chambers of Commerce – but you only sporadically attend, or maybe not at all. You cannot expect business, or referrals, from people who do not know who you are, or what you do, or do not feel a connection with you. Solution: attend as many of your organization’s events as you possibly can.

Not participating. Showing up is not enough; you’ve got to participate! Serve on committees, volunteer for tasks, such as staffing an event’s registration table or introducing the speaker, or host something, e.g. a fundraiser for the organization. Solution: become known, make yourself visible, and contribute to the organization’s success. “What goes around, comes around” – trite but true!

Expecting to make a sale. Networking is about meeting people and creating relationships. It is very much NOT about making a sale! Solution: participate in conversations, get to know others in the room, ask questions, listen to answers, detect common interests, send a note in the mail, suggest a coffee or lunch to talk more about those common interests (maybe you are both runners and you discovered she, like you, had run the Peachtree the past two years and you had both been thinking about the Boston Marathon for next year). She works in HR for a manufacturing company and you work in finance for a staffing agency. Over the course of getting to know each other, she may mention to you that her company is planning to add a dozen or so temps for a special project. You get the picture?

Networking is an excellent practice for growing your business or advancing your career. Do it the right way. Avoid the failure traps, and you will succeed.

Art & Business

Rosa Jang is one of the artists at Tannery Row; I purchased this pressed-flower collage from her yesterday. There is amazing art being created at Tannery Row and I love going there (not often enough, unfortunately).

Living History

This blog has been suffering from inattention because it is gardening season in my part of the country and every minute I am not indoors working for my clients, or in meetings with them at various locations around town, I am in my garden!

However, yesterday I had such an extraordinary experience that it's got to be mentioned here.

I had an interview with a businessman whose on-line bio I have been commissioned to write and who is a living piece of Georgia history, with family roots that include a Revolutionary War spy, a colorful, notorious pirate, a justice on Georgia's original Supreme Court, a Native American adoptive mother, and a whaling ship – wow! And that's only the beginning. I am encouraging him to convert this oral history into a book. To be followed by a Hollywood script?

"I Can Do It!" Oh, really?

I met an extraordinary woman the other week. She owns a farm, with horses and goats, meadows, a pond and herbs. She grows incredible produce and handcrafts fragrant, organic soaps.

She does not have a business card (at least not at the event where I met her and we were two of more than a thousand people in attendance); her brochure is unattractive and lists “new” products for 2003 (I kid you not!) and her web site has that painful appearance of a home-made effort by someone who is not a designer, developer or writer; there is no mechanism for buying the soap.

Why do so many business people – women in particular – think they can do it all themselves? Making the product, keeping the books, finding the markets, selling products and collecting payments, cleaning out the manure, growing the herbs, mowing the meadows, tending to the livestock – and then designing and launching a web site that does nothing for the business?

It’s a puzzle to me. One I encounter frequently.

Another woman, owner of a professional services firm – with employees! -- with whom I had a telephone conversation a day or two ago, confessed that she is “not in love with writing”, even though she does it all the time – newsletters, promotional pieces, her web site and her blog. She’s got it figured out, though. Her passion, she has discovered, is mentoring and inspiring others. She is working towards having an office manager and a few more service providers in her growing business, so that she can go on the road for speaking engagements and workshops. And, she wants to hire a writer (that’s why we had that telephone conversation).

This is the idea: in your business, do what you love best and what you’re good at (“follow your passion”) and farm out the rest. It’s the only way to grow a business and achieve more than middling success.

Welcome!

After having been an "Atlanta Biz Woman" for a while, I founded Atlanta Women in Business in 1992 - a membership organization of business, career and professional women that provides networking and educational opportunities.

Over the years, this organization has had its ups and downs (know of any that have not?), and today we are once again on an upswing, with new members, new interests, new initiatives - and a few discards. With regard to the latter, we are not necessarily doing away with our annual Results Count award, but I will give up its web site.

That is a "less". Now a "more": we have started a book project in which all members can participate (limit: 20 - first come, first in!) as chapter authors. The project is under the leadership of Angela Durden, a writer herself and a longtime member of our organization.

I have a wonderful Advisory Board for Atlanta Women in Business this year: Patricia Bowen (like me, an international business woman who is choosing to stay closer to home these days), Pamela Van Fleet (banker) and Jennifer Wightman (project manager for a technology company and, like Pam, one of our career members). That reminds me, I should explain what I mean by "business, career and professional women". Business women are entrepreneurs, working for themselves, either by themselves or as employers of others; career women work in the corporate world, and professional women are members of what is generally considered "the professions", e.g. attorneys, engineers, physicians, scientists, etc. The breakdown of these groups within our organization is roughly 40%, 50%, and 10%.

There is, by the way, a membership application form on our web site - in case you'd like to join us. You are welcome!