Category Archives: Workplace Insights

Get the insights and develop the skills you need to find and get the job you want at the salary you deserve.

Stand Out! How To Broadcast Your Compelling Story

Ok. Let’s say you want to change jobs.  Or impress a potential client.  Or let someone you met at a loud and crowded networking Happy Hour get to a know a little something more in depth about you, beyond your business card and the fact that you were sipping your white wine while everyone else was knocking back a boatload of Glenlivet Scotch, so you possibly know a lot more about them than they do about you.

Do you send them an email with your resume or cv (curriculum vitae) attached?  I don’t think so.  The CV was introduced in 1902.  To put that in context: Ford Motor Company was founded in 1903; the Model T was introduced in 1908. You don’t want to be caught using out of date technology – you want to be on the cutting edge.  And you don’t want to be sending a document that is D.O.A. ( dead on arrival). One recruiting company founder called the classic, old fashioned resume ” a “career obituary” that becomes outdated the minute a candidate punches the send button.”  That is because it doesn’t continuously evolve and reflect your achievements and your career in real time with live links to what you’re doing now.

The solution, clearly, is an online portfolio, which highlights your strongest value proposition. It can encompass presentations, graphs, video, audio, work samples, scanned documents … a body of work which shows you in many dimensions and can include your reflections and how your work has deepened and progressed, something an old style resume could never do.

So, if we agree you should have an online portfolio, how do you go about getting one?

Well,  you can produce it yourself, although it may be a smoother and more effective process to get some professional help, particularly if you are time crunched or your tech skills are limited or you need some guidance in how best to showcase your skills.

One key thing to remember is generic resumes are used to eliminate people. “Until the development of résumés in an electronic format, employers would have to sort through massive stacks of paper to find suitable candidates without any way of filtering out the poor candidates. The Employment Management Association in 1997 reported that the average cost-per-hire for a print ad was $3,295, while the average cost-per-hire with the Internet was $377.[4] This in turn has cut costs for many growing organizations, as well as saving time and energy in recruitment. Employers are now able to set search parameters in their database of résumés to reduce the number of résumés which must be reviewed in detail in the search for the ideal candidate.” Although an online resume is less expensive for companies to review and therefore to your advantage, the more generic the resume, the more you fit into a cookie-cutter format, the easier you are to eliminate, even without a thorough examination of your qualifications.

Some companies who produce online resumes say they exist for the candidate’s benefit, but often their business model is based on the fact that corporations, not candidates, are where the big money is, and their actual customer is HR.  Follow the money. Do you think VC investors put millions of dollars into free software to help you get a job, impress a client, hook a networker or otherwise serve your interests ? That would sure be nice, but no. They serve large corporations.The real purpose of some of these providers is to help HR do a better job of weeding out and eliminating candidates before the interview, thereby reducing hiring costs and saving millions of dollars for large companies. And AdvancingWomen.com is all for corporations increasing efficiency and saving money. However, what you want is to get  in the door and into an interview so you can land the job. And what corporations really want is to hire the best people so they can offer the best and most competitive product or service.

So AdvancingWomen.com believes it is in the best interest of both the large corporations and the candidates to build and review individualized portfolios focused on the business case for your value to a company.  Technology which accelerates the process and costs less can be a very good thing.  But, as we’ve seen in recent weeks, decisions are made every day which can be either very profitable or very costly, far more costly than hiring decisions, which are after all, like career portfolios, a bottom line investment. Portfolios which more fully display a candidate’s true value can be critical to both parties.

It is your responsibility to create a portfolio which will fully showcases and broadcasts your own value.

AdvancingWomen Career Portfolios can help with that. Our career partners have developed best practices in effective portfolio design over the last five years, producing portfolios that have helped hundreds of executives and professionals get jobs.  We can help you.

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My Mother, My Mentor: The Perfectionist Goal

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My Mother was not an entrepreneur, but she taught me some things that still are with me today and guide me in business as well as other areas of life.

My mother was a perfectionist.  Long before laser levelers, every picture or painting in our home hung perfectly straight, centered or lined up by countless measuring of rulers, yardsticks and tape measures.  Forget that “eyeballing”.  That was for a different breed.  My mother wanted it straight, and that meant measured and verified straight.

When times were hard, in the beginning of her marriage, she went out and taught school to help support the family. When times were very good, she made the home and family her work.  That meant the silver sparkled and the mirrors gleamed.  And she intended that her children should shine too.

When I was in the eighth grade, we were given an art assignment that lasted over the whole year.  We were to take each age of art, from cave to contemporary, and create a scrapbook with essays of each period and it’s major artists. This was accompanied by copies of major paintings by representative artists and our comments on them.  Ultimately, it became a challenge to look at the paintings and figure out what was unique about them as our paintings started to number in the hundreds. This process of just looking at the paintings long enough forced us to begin to see them and understand them on a different level.  When most of the other kids turned in their scrapbooks  they were meager books an inch or so thick.  Mine, however, with my mother spurring me on each evening, turned into 5 huge volumes, 6 to 8 inches thick, with hand painted cover sheets for each period, featuring such elaborate items as the crown jewels of England, or an 18th century coach.

Did I become an overachiever ?  Did I have a choice?

My school actually created special awards for some of the things I did which were pretty much “over the top”, like how many tickets I sold for events, which really had nothing to do with my education.

But what I learned was to put in the extra effort to do things as well as I possibly could, to go beyond expectations to achieve another level of results.

And I tried to instill that in other colleagues.  I had a surgical clinic and recovery villas with a partner in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato Mexico.  I would tell the maintenance staff I wanted the silver to sparkle and the mirrors to gleam so that when clients walked in they would have to put on their sunglasses.  I knew I had succeeded when I heard the staff start training new employees by telling them, in Spanish,they : “wanted the silver to sparkle and the mirrors to gleam so that when clients walked in they would have to put on their “anteojos” (sunglasses).”

Although we had the best surgeons in Mexico, one of whom held the top position in a U.S. surgical association, many clients told us: ” As soon as I walked through door, I knew this was going to be where I wanted to be”.  Why?  Perfectionism. If you’re conscientious about the small things it conveys the message you will be conscientious about everything.

How does that apply to the Net or to blogging?  I think it applies to all business and careers.

You are trying to “brand” yourself — to unearth what is different and unique about you that your competitors don’t have. That could be whatever your talents, abilities and professional skills are — let’s say you’re creative and know everything about web design or fund raising or estate planning —plus — you will always go the extra mile.  You will come up with concepts or research no one has ever heard of; you will track down that lost document; you will work late in a crunch, or get a project completed and executed over a week end if a client’s website has crashed.  That can be the strongest part of your brand.

My mentors with my art project were both my mother and my teacher and many lessons flowed from that. On a personal level,  It transformed me into a life long art maven, haunting the best museums in the U.S. and wherever I traveled in the world, learning even more about aspiring to be the best. I also learned to solve problems in businesses by just looking at them long and hard enough.  At the dawn of the Net there was no choice but to learn html coding.  I just looked at it long and hard enough until it became clear to me how to do it…at least until newer and easier processes came along.  And I’ve continued daily to strive to do my best in business, where, like life, you always fall short, you never reach perfection but the sense of gratification and fulfillment is in the constant striving.

If you don’t have a mentor who inspires you with ambition to do your best, get one.  If you’ve had one, pass it along and become a mentor.  If you need one and are still looking, let AdvancingWomen.com be your virtual mentor. Write and tell us what you need to know and we’ll try to help. And please do share with us your lessons and your thoughts.

For more, read:

Entrepreneurs: Set Sail, Watch Out For Dragons
My Father, My Mentor : The Entrepreneur Seed
Match Your Entrepreneur Story
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Entrepreneurs: Set Sail, Watch Out For Dragons

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Sharing entrepreneur stories is one of the best ways possible for all of us  to  both sharpen our skills and be encouraged by the experiences of others on the same journey.  Once more Scott Allen, in his entrepreneur blog, has unearthed some jewels among entrepreneur insights and guideposts in Startup Stories #2.

Taken together, the following tales might well form a path for a determined entrepreneur.

Let’s start with Denise Hall who, in My Entrepreneurial Mother Story , “tells how, at the “ripe old age of 36″, she went from “unemployed, homeless and pregnant” to a director of a consulting firm focused on performance improvement for corporations.”

“What I have learned” she says ” is that being opportunistic and bold will get you so much further ahead, and will point you in directions where you can work out the rest! …One of the main responsibilities of my life is to set sail, strive to ‘do it my way’ and, in essence, enjoy the ride!”

The important point here is to set sail.  As someone once said, there is magic in beginnings.  Don’t wait for that perfect moment or perfect opportunity.  Start from where you are with what you’ve got.  So you don’t get discouraged on the journey, it may also help to remember you can’t start from where you want to be, you have to start from where you are.

When Hall was asked: Where do you see yourself in 20 years’ time? She responded: “Swanning around the world as I please, playing grandmother, receiving bucket loads of passive income, and being healthy, wealthy and wise! “”

I want to emphasize that passive income goal.  One of my entrepreneur father’s mantras was “Always create passive income.”  That stood right along side, ” Always have a least 3 businesses ( which we might now call revenue streams) because there will never be a time when one of them isn’t doing badly.”  And “You have to be around money to make money (  ie.  you have to be engaged with a market that ( wants and ) can afford what you’re selling. Don’t go to a down and out burg that industry has by passed long ago, with a dwindling and aging population, to try to sell those hot Lamborghini sports cars or the latest and coolest tech toys.  Your odds aren’t good.)

The clear point of the passive income goal is that someday you might be too sick or too old or, for some other reason, unable to get out there and toil at least 8 hours a day, so it’s a good idea to have a way to support yourself under those circumstance.

So how do you start creating a passive income?

Working At Home To Build Passive Blog Income And Giving Up Full Time Job Pay -

A young “recovering attorney” talks about: Looking To the Future – Sacrificing Some Income Now To Build Up My Online Blog Businesses and Incubate My Other Real World Ventures

He says: I’ve come to realize that the key to building wealth and reaching financial prosperity is to build up multiple streams of alternative and passive income, apart from your primary full time employment. Otherwise, you simply run the risk of living your entire life trading hours for dollars. Passive income generation through methods such as blog income or stock market investing help to get around the finite time problem by allowing you to generate income even when you are not actively sitting and working at your office desk.” ( Ed. Ok, we get it: this is not a good time to mention the stock market.  But, long term, it offers value. Think bonds. Or think CDs or savings accounts. Think cash.)

We vote for that – building up passive income and multiple revenue streams.  Although it’s not an easy assignment and can take quite a while.  The addendum to that is that if you build a business and develop an exit strategy, you can sell your company and the money you make can be converted into your passive income

The Dragons – Tim Berry explains the metaphor, “no dragons yet.” He tells a story of a software developer working for him on a new product. When asked him how the project was going he answered:

“Well enough, no dragons yet.”  When pressed he explained:

“Well you see, it’s like when Columbus set out sailing west towards what he hoped was India. All the time he was sailing west he had his plan and his calculations and what he thought would happen, but, in the back of his mind, most people thought that he was going to drop off the earth and fall into the mouths of dragons.”

“Software development is like that. You think you’re going to reach land, but it’s possible you’ll just fall off the end of the earth, into the mouths of dragons.”

Actually, AdvancingWomen.com thinks all business is like that.

There are dragons everywhere and, if you haven’t run into one yet, you will. The trick is to be on the look out for them, to spot them early when they crack open their shell and jump out onto your desk. Stare them down and tackle them then. Wrestle them to the ground while they’re small before they grow up to be Jurassic Park sized monsters blowing fire in your face.

So in a nutshell, be bold, set sail in your business, strive for 3 or 4 passive income streams and keep fighting off those dragons while they’re hatchlings.

For more, see the following, or send us your story and we’ll share it with others. The more we share, the more we learn:

My Father, My Mentor : The Entrepreneur Seed

Start Your Own Small Business Using More Ingenuity, Less Cash

Match Your Entrepreneur Story

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Six Degrees of Separation- Land A Job Through Volunteering

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Six Degrees of Separation- Land A Job Through Volunteering- AdvancingWomen.com.

According to Judith Luther-Wilder, CEO of Women Incorporated, a company she founded, “Everyone, including the pet pig, has written a book about networking. Twenty rules do not work. Each community is different… At its best, networking is exploring personal interests.”

Luther-Wilder puts a great deal of emphasis on connecting between volunteering for an organization and networking. When you volunteer for an organization, you will instantly have something in common with the others in it, and that will be an initial bond offering a comfort zone to get to know them better. If contemplating a career change, volunteering offers the individual the opportunity to learn and be appreciated, at the same time while providing the environment to decide if this is really the change they want to make. An oriental studies major, Luther-Wilder credits volunteering as starting point for every amazing job she has had.

Opportunities exist in volunteering that may not be available in the traditional corporate environment. She was speaking, as a volunteer, about war crimes to an audience that included Peter Sellars, the director of the Los Angeles Opera. Impressed with her abilities, Sellars proceeded to offer her the job as executive director of the LA Festival. This was a position that neither her academic training nor prior job history would not necessarily have “qualified” her to obtain through traditional channels.

Lee Bright, President of Bright Marketing International and Director of Marketing for The Food Show, teaches a seminar entitled, “Building a Relationship in Five Minutes or Less.” Bright has an amazing ability to draw out people, and she truly listens to what they are saying. One of the keys to networking Bright says is, “the ability to make a person feel they are the only people in the world. What people remember about you is how interested you were in them.” Everyone likes to talk about themselves, especially their favorite things whether it is their business, children, issues, or hobbies.

“If you are genuinely interested in someone, it will show,” a belief Bright and Luther-Wilder share. “People do not like to be worked,” contends Luther-Wilder. “Networking is not a volume business. When there is a connection it is because of a commonality of interests.” Reciprocity is another element that needs to be emphasized. If someone asks for your help and it is something you can do, do it.

She tells the story of a friend who sold real estate, who started out volunteering for local political candidates and non-profit agencies dealing with women’s issues. She discovered she loved the advocacy and fundraising. Through the contacts she made in these two areas, she was able to leave real estate for a career in the non-profit world as a development consultant

How Volunteering Can Help You Land Your Next Job,

In this post, author, Rebecca Metschke, notes “You can use volunteering as a means to help ( explore you next career opportunity). Rest assured: volunteering will not eat up all your time (which means you’ll still be free to pursue other avenues which can help you to with your search concurrently) – depending on the organization, you may find ample opportunities to help in the evenings or on weekends.

Choose the organization wisely. Keep in mind where you want to go and what you want to accomplish with your career. Consider how the job will help you sharpen your skills, or provide you the opportunity to learn new ones. Once you’re there, see if you can get on a planning committee or figure out some other means to broaden your exposure within the group and build your network. Never underestimate the fantastic connections you can make as a result of your volunteer work.

If you’re already volunteering, look at your organization and your job from a different perspective. Suppose you’ve been donating your time at your church – or at the art museum – or at your local school. Now that you’ve been laid off, think about that volunteer role and how it relates to your career. How can it help you with your job search? What new skills might you be able to learn? Have you actively networked with people there? If you’re looking for work, have you let these people know about it?

Your volunteer experience may also lead to a full time position with the organization to which you’re donating your time. When a position opens up, a volunteer can be the perfect fit. You’re a known commodity. You’re familiar with the project. You understand the nature of the foundation or non-profit or school or campaign (fill in the blank) from the inside. You get the idea – they’ve already taken you for a “test drive” and they like what they see.

Volunteering can be a win-win. It gets you out of the house, you’re making a contribution – and you just may find your next “day” job in the process”

Synchronicity, six degrees of separation, networking; it is all about people connecting and remembering that perfect source can come from anywhere.

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Two Career Speed Bumps And How To Route Around Them

You are smart, you are capable and you tend to rise in whatever organization you join.   But as you rise, you will almost inevitably bump into two common dynamics which can form a significant speed bump in your upward progress:

1. The time wasters: where you are asked to “help out” and be a “team player” by doing someone else’s work for him.

2. The hollow assignments: where your obvious ability and the respect you command will get you placed as committee chair with endless meetings which demonstrate sound management but, in fact, provide cover for decisions made elsewhere by those who really have the power

One of the first rules of getting ahead is learning to work on your own goals. All too frequently women are asked to “help out” at work, and they accept, even in instances where they will get no credit, and will have less time and energy to devote to their own goals. One key to avoiding this dilemma is to be very clear in recognizing which are important goals for you to accomplish and which are merely draining your energy because someone else, who actually is responsible for the task, expects your help and urges you to be a “team player” or ” a corporate nurturer”, similar to the cub scout den mother baking cookies for all the troops, except this man is not your child. Don’t do it.  We have offered some techniques for effective turn downs below.

Regarding the second speed bump, “hollow assignments” and their consequences, we noted in Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » Feminist law prof glass ceilings, one anonymous law professor recently posted this:

“After tenure, feminist law profs throw their hearts and souls into being good citizens of their institution, hoping to do their part to  help shape an environment that promotes excellence and diversity and humanity and other good values – and hoping to break the glass ceiling in law school leadership that has generally not included many women.   But their institutional good citizenship backfires:  (Ed. they suffer other consequences) or their time may simply get wasted, as they are rewarded for the leadership with ever-more committee chairs and endless meetings that give the appearance of faculty governance but simply cover over decisions made elsewhere by those who really have the power – and who tend to undo or undermine the hard work and bridge-building of the feminist law prof — either out of retaliation or incompetence and dysfunctional management….”

It is not just female law professors who suffer from this situation.  Unfortunately it is the same in many institutions.

AdvancingWomen.com believes there is a remedy for each of these situations.

First, look for an ideal workplace where you’ll be appreciated and have the opportunity to thrive. Look for a place that supports your values and values you as an integral part of the organization. Companies like Eileen Fisher, Inc, have a a mission to encourage individual growth, collaboration, and social consciousness, as evidenced by her generous benefit package and work environment.  Her motto: “We want employees to love this place.”  That’s  the kind of employer attitude you should be looking for.

Second, if you have landed in a company which distinctly does not have this winning attitude, you can try to improve the situation through negotiating. You might want to view change and your evolution into reaching your full potential within your company as a continuous, ongoing negotiation with the forces of status quo , exchanging and interchanging differing interests and value systems to try to bring your view and your company’s view closer together, to “level the playing field” for yourself.

Identify what, precisely, you want from your organization and decide how much you’re willing to give to get it, in terms of time and hard work. Then ask for it. On that list should be “no hollow assignments”.  “If you give me something to do, then give me the authority to do it.”

Keep pressing your point. Finally, keep delivering benefits to your organization, so you will be building a career “bank account” for negotiations that you can draw on in the future.

Ditching the time wasters

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“, author Steve Covey suggests a way to say no without offending. ” Of course, I’ll be happy to do anything you want me to do. Just let me share with you my situation.” Then you map out in great detail your many projects, pressures and deadlines.

Although it is far better to avoid draining tasks which don’t support your career goals, there’s also a second or fall-back approach. Agree to help but negotiate for something you want in exchange. ( This will also serve to place more perceived value on your time, as it will not be free but must be paid for with something in return). You say, “I will do what you’re asking under the following conditions…”, then set them out. You may want a newer computer, more staff, a rescheduling of due dates on some of your projects…… whatever you decide would make an equitable trade. If the person has nothing to offer at the moment, if for whatever reason, you decide to acquiesce anyway, your final position is to say, ” O.k., I’ll do it this time, but you owe me one.”

On the rare occasions I’ve been willing to do this, I always say:  ” Ok, now I’m going to do what the guys do.  I’m going to do it, but you owe me.”  Somehow this seems to make it crystal clear that I’m giving something of value and they are pleased as punch to accept it, and the barter method has been further legitimized by the fact that “the guys do it”.  In other words, we are playing by the “old boys network” rules, but so what if we are improving our workplace and leveling the playing field for ourselves?

To read the whole Feminist Law Professors Post,  go to Feminist law prof glass ceilings

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Two Women, Great Legacies

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Two Women, Great Legacies -Concurring Opinions.

posted by Danielle Citron

AdvancingWomen.com would like to pay tribute to two women pioneers in journalism.  We hope their values will inspire others to “make a difference”, as these two women did.

“This week marked the passing of two women journalists who pioneered great change in their times. According to The New York Times obituaries section, Nancy Hicks Maynard, the first black woman to be a reporter at the New York Times, died at 61. Ms. Maynard joined the New York Times in 1968 where she stayed until 1974. At the Times, she reported on race riots, student takeovers at Columbia and Cornell, and the death of Robert F. Kennedy. She also wrote for the paper’s education and science news departments. She founded the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, which has trained hundreds of minority journalists in the past 31 years. Ms. Maynard and her husband, Robert C. Maynard, a columnist for the Washington Post, bought the financially-ailing Oakland Tribune in 1983. The Times reports that her interest in journalism was sparked after a fire destroyed her former elementary school in Harlem. Outraged by the way her community was described in the press, she “decided she could make a difference.” Indeed, she did.

And so did Mary Garber, a journalist who first began covering athletics more than 60 years ago when female sportwriters were barred from press boxes and locker-room interviews, who passed away on Sunday. When Ms. Garber began her career as a sportswriter, the craft was dominated by men. Coaches treated her badly, her fellow sportswriters ignored her, and professional associations excluded her. But she perservered, first covering high school sports and then on college athletics. She also highlighted the acheivements of black athletes in the 1950s, in particular at Winston-Salem State, a time when “news about black people ended up on the Sunday newspaper’s ‘colored page.’” The Hall of Fame basketball coach Clarence Gaines told a reporter in 1990 that “We had outstanding athletes . . . and Mary came to write about them when no one else cared. Mary was always trying to help the underdog.” She later wrote for The Twin City Sentinel in Winston-Salem and The Winston-Salem Journal. In 2005, at 89, she became the first woman to receive the Associated Press Sports Editors’ Red Smith Award, presented annually for major contributions to sports journalism.”

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7 ways I’ve Almost Killed My Business

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7 ways I’ve almost killed FreshBooks.
Mike McDerment is CEO and Co-Founder of FreshBooks , an online invoicing and time tracking service that helps professionals in over 100 countries save time, get paid faster, look professional and focus on what they love to do — their work.

Mike McDerment

As AdvancingWomen.com‘s President/CEO, and a serial entrepreneur with a long string of businesses behind me, I’ve had the opportunity to kill a whole list of businesses and, believe me, it’s not as hard as you might think.  Here are a couple of points that Mike makes that reverberated most with me:

Thinking we had to spend more than we did.  It is always tempting to think there are “silver bullets” that will create instant success, but that is totally discredited by reality.  If there is any kind of very slow motion “silver bullet” , it is the opposite: it’ hanging on to your money so you can keep slowly and painstaking building your business based on the value you provide. ( And I speak as one who survived the dot com crash and a whole host of others in various industries, each thought to be a catastrophic devastation and they were, for those who had no cash left as the dust settled.)

You may find it hard to believe but there are individuals with $100,000 a month income who find, at the end of each month, they’re spent more than that. There are businesses in the same position. No matter how much cash comes in, it’s always possible to spend more. Master your cash flow if you want to survive in business, because without cash, no one cares if you’re worth a million dollars on paper or in widgets, the doors will shut and you will be out of the game. If you get a handle on the dynamics of your cash flow, that act alone will both improve your business and improve you as a manager, the beginning of a very positive and powerful cycle.

Here’s an excerpt from a list of ways that Mike McDerment says he almost killed FreshBooks over the years:

1. Thinking we had to move faster than we did
I remember back in 2005 feeling that if we did not blow our lights out and spend every penny we had on marketing “right now!” someone would obliterate us. … Turns out I was wrong.

2. Placing my faith in a spreadsheet
Rocking a spreadsheet is important in my books – it gets you thinking about your business. But trust me, whatever numbers come out of your Excel jockeying, they’re wrong. If you saw our business plan from 5 years ago you’d see what I mean…

It’s really easy to stare at a spreadsheet and say, “that’s it! I totally get this business…I understand how it all works and look at that year 5 revenue!”, when the reality is it will take 10 years to get there, cost you twice as much as you thought, and you’ll probably be running a totally different business by the time you get there. All of that is okay in my books, just so long as you don’t actually delude yourself into believing what the spreadsheet tells you.

3. Thinking we had to spend more than we did
There is something about the act of spending money that breeds confidence – don’t ask me why. Just because you are spending money does not mean things will work out like you modeled them…There are no silver bullets, so don’t kid yourself into thinking there are.

4. Placing my faith in consultants
Nobody cares about your business as much as you do, and frankly people who are smart – consultant/MBA smart – don’t know your business as well as you do despite the fancy words and references to past success. Don’t kid yourself into thinking a consultant knows your business better than you.

5. Underestimating word of mouth
This one is sort of tied to number one. It takes *years* to generate word of mouth – it’s a slow build, but slow burning fires burn the hottest. So be patient and do your best to take care of your customers/users even if you can’t find a way to measure the ROI.

6. Believing we could not get this far without doing “x”
I remember talking with people back in 2004. Many believed we could not get anywhere without signing a “deal” with a “partner” or taking “VC money” or “whatever”. Here’s my advice: sign the right deals with the right partners at the right time for the right reasons. You can build a business without being forced to work with the wrong people at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. The choice is yours – don’t forget it. Opportunities will present themselves if you keep your feet moving and you string together a series of small successes…

7. Doubting ourselves too much
Over the years I’ve met a lot of smart people and I’ve invited them to tell me what they think. For years people did not “see it” and that exacted a toll on my confidence. Doubt is born out of fatigue and loneliness, and there is a lot of both when you are running a start up. Hang in there and keep your feet moving – there’s still a lot of time for you to change the world. “

AdvancingWomen.com seconds that motion about not doubting and keeping the faith.  Building a business is a long haul, sometimes exhausting but also exhilarating.  If you had the drive and determination to start your own business, and you’re showing any traction at all, just hang in; be vigilant about the downside and the upside will take care of itself; do all the little things right and the big success will come.

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Tough Times – Real Jobs You Can Get Right Now

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Real Jobs You Can Get Right Now | Business Pundit.

Ok.  AdvancingWomen.com totally gets it: many of us do not want to go skulking out into this shell-shocked market looking for a job.  Who does?  It’s going to be raining pink slips out there.  HR people are going to be downright gloomy, maybe even sulky; in any case, it’s doubtful they’re going to be boisterously welcoming new, perfectly talented people into jobs when many are trying to off load the perfectly talented people they already have employed.

However, facts are facts, and we all might as well face them.  If the downturn in the economy and credit markets has affected your job and your income, you will need a plan. If you are not able to stay rooted in your present job or quietly get snapped up by a competitor, perhaps it’s time to look at fields that are still in need of talent, no matter how dire the financial markets.

Lela Davidson, reports in the Business Pundit ,”according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (we all trust the government right now, yes?), these are your best bets through 2009:

Jobs You Can Probably Get Today
These positions require only a short to moderate period of on-the-job training:

    • Personal and home care aides
    • Home health aides
    • Medical assistants
    • Social and human service assistants

    • Gaming       surveillance officers and

      gaming       investigators
    • Pharmacy technicians
    • Dental assistants

    • Gaming       and sports book writers and runners (is this legal?)

Jobs You Can Get in Six Months:
These jobs require a post-secondary vocational award.

    • Manicurists and pedicurists
    • Makeup artists, theatrical and performance
    • Skin care specialists

Jobs You Could Have Next Year:
If you already have some college and really got on the ball you could finish up the Associate degree it takes for the following jobs:

    • Veterinary technologists and technicians
    • Physical therapist assistants
    • Dental hygienists
    • Environmental science and protection technicians, including health

If You Already Have a Degree:

These jobs require a Bachelor’s:

And here are the hot jobs if you have a Master’s degree or higher:

    • Veterinarians
    • Mental health counselors
    • Mental health and substance abuse social workers
    • Marriage and family therapists
    • Physical therapists
    • Physician assistants”

AdvancingWomen.com wishes you the best of luck.  As we all know, markets sometimes turn around as quickly as they flounder so times could change.  If you have any interesting experiences to share in the job market or searching for jobs, please share them with us.

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Business On The Net: The Morphing Imperative

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AdvancingWomen.com

The cold hard truth is , when you start a business, on the Net or off, you never know what’s going to sell and what isn’t until the market tells you, so be prepared to listen.

In The Risk of Assuming the Market wants “A”, when it Really wants “B” – The Entrepreneurial Mind, Jeff Cornwall describes the process:

We enter the market with a plan in hand.  It is a plan that we may have agonized over for weeks, months, or even years.  We have done our research, created a carefully thought out marketing plan and operating plan that both help justify our financial forecasts.
And then a funny thing happens.  We assumed that the market wanted “A”.  But, if we listen carefully, we often find out that it really wants “B.”

That’s the critical juncture at which we have to not only listen to the market but act on what it tells us. In many cases, it may just require moving the spotlight from one corner of your display window to another, showcasing a different aspect of what you’ve proven you can do and for which you are recognized. The trick is to look very carefully at what your expertise really is and move in that direction, not away from it.
From the beginning, many successful web sites continued to morph their business models, searching for and migrating to just the right combo of ingredients to continue approaching success. Savvy web businesses who’ve adopted a process of continuous change thrive and prosper, keeping a step ahead of either the slow erosion of changing markets and business models or the savage and tornado-like devastation that sweeps periodically through the Net and elsewhere .

Google started with search and had to have a light bulb moment to connect it with advertising and roar on to commercial success. Ebay.com’s auction site was so successful, it took over Paypal.com, not a big leap since it was already supplying much of Paypal’s revenue through its transactions.  It merely moved from making money off being in the middle of one type of transaction to another.  Amazon.com started selling books moved into lawn chairs, jewelry books, groceries, and hundreds of other items, then stepped up to a new, possibly transformative model by developing and offering Kindle, it’s ebook reader which allows you to get a book with the click of a button.

An example of somewhat more extreme and for many years continuous morphing is that of Beyond.com. A business to consumer software site, Beyond.com in the late nineties, had already spent $125 million on a TV ad campaign to familiarize consumers with its software. When the business to consumer model seemed to flounder all across the Net, Beyond.com decided to ditch the model and move towards business to business. The question was how?

The answer for Beyond.com, provides a road map as to how a dot com which is either floundering, stalled, or stuck in the wrong business model, can become unstuck and get moving down the road again. Beyond.com took their dilemma to branding experts Barbara Zenz and Stephanie Paulson of The Stephenz Group  currently ranked as/ the number one advertising agency in Silicon Valley The course they recommended to Beyond.com management consisted of four essential steps:
1. “Assess the company’s business model and understand where it is today. What is the vision and focus of the company?
2. Look at the brand it has already established…..and translate that into the appropriate message for a new market: the business customer.
3. Assess the audience. What are the business objectives and sales goals?
4. Then build the communications strategy.”

Beyond.com decided to leverage its existing knowledge and experience of selling online by targeting CEOs and executives of manufacturing companies who wanted an online presence to sell their products but didn’t want to undergo a long learning curve developing their storefronts. Instead of selling software, Beyond.com now used direct mail to sell their expertise to manufacturers touting the logic of outsourcing to “e-Stores by Beyond.com”. The pitch to businesses was “Why reinvent the wheel? Let Beyond.com build and manage your eStore for you.”
Beyond.com’s morphing continued.  They went on to become what they describe as the world’s largest network of niche career communities, powering thousands of job sites, apparently with success.
Beyond.com recognized, at their core, they were essentially a technology and networking platform. They chose to sell their expertise and the use of their platform to different communities, first those who wanted store fronts, second, those who wanted job boards.
Of course, no direction is guaranteed to be the correct one or to prove profitable. The simple answer to “How to keep up in a demanding and continuously evolving environment ?” is that a business has to look deep inside itself, to know and understand its own culture and capabilities and decide for itself which business model it will be capable of fulfilling and which will bring it success. And, if one model doesn’t work, a business must try to conserve its cash to be able to reach for another. As ITT’s late, great manager, Harold Geneen, used to say: ” Once you understand a business problem, you must keep trying until you find a solution. If you try 47 times and fail 47 times, you must try the 48th time, and if necessary, the 49th and 50th time. You have no choice but to succeed.”
The other lesson to bear in mind, in these expensive Net times, the most critical and succinct business advice of all: “Never run out of cash”. If you do, they take you out of the game and then there is no further opportunity for change, and no possible redemption, except as a phoenix rising from the ashes, as a new business altogether, which is the ultimate change.

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What’s Risk Got To Do With It?

What’s Risk Got To Do With It?

In order to succeed, you have to take a risk.  Many studies of entrepreneurs show they come in all shapes and sizes with all different kinds of temperaments and work habits.  Some are detailed planners; others fly by the seat of their pants.  Some are methodical, others impulsive.  But the single critical trait every entrepreneur has is the willingness to take risks.

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Hear that?  In order to take that first anxiety provoking step to start your own business…. or even go out on a limb in your career in order to reach the next level….. you have to take a risk.  You have to take that leap of faith believing that “when you jump, the net will appear.”

Traditionally, boys and men are encouraged to engage in a wide variety of risk-taking endeavors and have plenty of opportunities to do so. Girls and women, however, are encouraged to conform and play by the rules.

No matter how successful we get, we all eventually hit the edge of our comfort zone, limiting our ability to take risks.

For some this zone is smaller than others. That learned behavior of conformity combines with the self-limiting beliefs we’ve adopted over the years and holds us back from taking even the smallest of risks.

What’s exciting is that now, more then ever, women are well poised to break through these cultural and gender stereotypes. We CAN change our behavior and challenge our limiting beliefs.

Risk is an opportunity to shift your thinking and stretch out of your comfort zone; the willingness to try a new behavior or a different thinking style. The more risks we take, the higher our chances are of being successful. And the more personal success we experience, the more confidence we will feel.

Every time we step into fear or away from comfort, we grow, learn something new about ourselves , adapt and express our potential more fully.

So instead of seeing risk as a hurdle, a mountain to climb or a barrier to your success, AdvancingWomen.com invites you to look at risk as your ally. Taking a risk is a chance to build trust in yourself and allow yourself to show up and passionately claim who you really are.