Tag Archives: women in business

by | December 25, 2015 · 5:00 am

It’s Never Too Late:  Pursuing Your Dreams Through Life

Dreams

Growing up I had big dreams, and don’t we all?  From ballerina to movie star to maybe even first woman President, my dreams ran the gamut.  For many years I actually pursued my dreams of being a professional actress and even earned some money from acting jobs.  But alas, over time I realized the life of a starving artist just wasn’t for me and I moved on.

Dreams die hard, though, and through the years my creative self has continued to bubble up in various ways.  When my children were young I owned a small business franchise that offered classes for parents and their toddlers.  The classes were focused on nurturing socialization and movement but also included music and dance.  Leading the classes gave me an outlet for my performing skills and used my musical theater training experiences.  Owning a business also taught me some real-life skills in marketing, networking, accounting and personnel development.  I gained confidence and built my self-esteem in ways I never imagined during my acting days.

Once my last child was in school I decided to return to graduate school to earn a degree in journalism.  I had always loved writing and finally decided to honor another long-shelved passion for the written word.  I chose to focus on broadcast journalism because, again, it gave me a chance to use my performance skills.  It was in grad school that my world really changed.  News writing came naturally to me and for the first time I felt that my work really matched my inner self.  Journalism fed my natural curiosity about the world and the things that both unite and distinguish people from all walks of life.  I love telling stories and giving a voice to those unable to speak for themselves and writing and journalism continue to fulfill me.

Looking back over the years I have come to realize that each thing I pursued built on skills, interests and dreams that came before.  What seemed like random changes at the time now make sense and I see my varied professional choices as logical expressions of pieces of myself.  If I could give my younger self any advice it would be: “Trust yourself and honor your dreams and passions.  Don’t be afraid of making a mistake.”  As I think now about the next phase of my life I am encouraged and fueled by this life lesson.  The things that bring us joy are worth pursuing with drive and passion.  And it’s never too late to dust off an old dream and figure out how to integrate it into a mature life.  What are your dreams?  What are you waiting for?

About Barbara Dab

Barbara Dab is a journalist, broadcast radio personality, producer and award-winning public relations consultant. She is the creator of The Peretz Project: Stories from the Shoah: Next Generation.  Check it out at http://www.theperetzproject.com  If you are, or someone you know is, the child of survivors of the Shoah, The Holocaust, and you would like to tell your story please leave a comment and Barbara will contact you.

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by | December 15, 2015 · 5:00 am

3 Mistakes of Networking

NetworkingNetworking is a skill that must be developed, as I learned the hard way when I started my own business. Based on my experiences, I’ve developed a hit list of networking mistakes. Here are my top 3:

Mistake #1: No preparation. A mistake I made early on was not thinking about what I wanted out of the meeting.  Was I expecting to walk away with a new client?  Could the person I was meeting connect me to someone I wanted to meet?  Who did I want to meet? Was there someone in my network that I could connect to the person I was meeting?  In other words, I didn’t prepare properly. I learned my lesson.  Now when the other person says “so how can I help you,” I whip out my list of 3 – 5 names to which I’d like to be connected.  It all starts with preparation.

By now, everyone knows that LinkedIn and Facebook are great resources for gathering information about people. I want to know if we have any common interests or experiences. I also look at company websites to see who they target as customers to see if there are ways we can help our mutual businesses.

Mistake #2: No show.  It can be a challenge to schedule a meeting because anyone you really want to meet already has multiple obligations making it difficult to find an open date.  But if we’re agreeing to meet it means we both expect to get something of value from the meeting.  So not showing up is bad. I’ve waited at coffee shops for people who never showed and never called to let me know they couldn’t make the meeting.  It’s hard not to take it personally.  To limit the no show problem, I confirm via email a day or two before the scheduled date.  When I’ve screwed up and missed a meeting, I’ve emailed or called the other person as soon as possible to apologize.  I want to limit the damage done to my reputation.

Mistake #3: No referrals.  I’ve lost count of the coffee meetings I’ve had where the other person offered nothing. What was the point of meeting if you’re not prepared to make connections? One of the most effective networkers I know goes into each meeting expecting to connect the other person with at least one person in his network.  Even if he doesn’t get any referrals, he’s helped the other person achieve a goal.  My networking improved when began using the same approach. If I can help others achieve their goals, I will eventually be rewarded.

As I continue to hone my networking skills, I’m sure my list of networking mistakes will also be refined. Meanwhile, I continue striving to avoid committing my top 3 mistakes of networking.

About Norma Shirk

Norma started her company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, to help employers create human resources policies for their employees and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to have structure without bureaucracy. Visit Norma’s website: www.complianceriskadvisor.com/.

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by | November 3, 2015 · 5:00 am

The Perils of a Family Business

William Marshal

Working for a family business can be difficult because family businesses seem to inevitably degenerate into factional fighting. Loyal workers are dragged into the family’s feud and must be clever at balancing the competing interests of the various family factions.  A perfect example is the career of William Marshal, who served a series of English kings between 1170 and 1219.

William Marshal worked for the family business known as the Angevin Empire, which was founded by King Henry II of England and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Marshal began his career as one of the household knights of Eleanor. Since Eleanor fought frequently with her husband, her knights risked loss of property and life depending on how the marital feud was progressing.

Marshal became an expert at balancing the competing family loyalties. Henry II and Eleanor rewarded Marshal by appointing him to serve their son, Henry (Henry the Young King). Young Henry also fought a long bitter feud with his father that ended only when Young Henry died. At that point, Marshal could easily have found himself stripped of all his property and exiled from England. Instead Marshal was welcomed back into the family business because King Henry II couldn’t afford to lose such a skilled knight and diplomat.  Marshal remained loyal to Henry II during the feuds that Henry fought with his other sons, Richard the Lion-Hearted, Geoffrey of Brittany, and John (signer of the Magna Carta).  Marshal survived to serve as a senior advisor to both Richard and John.

When John died, Marshal ensured that John’s son inherited the English crown. With a child on the throne, the family business was inThe Greatest Knight
deep trouble and England faced a hostile takeover by French barons. Most of the English barons sided with the French, but Marshal, who was in his 70’s, sided with John’s son. Marshal personally led the English army that defeated the French.

Why should we care about William Marshal today? Anyone who has ever tried to climb the greasy career pole in a company will recognize the situations faced by Marshal. He dealt with crazy bosses such as King John, who was crazier than the Mad Hatter. He survived back-stabbing colleagues who tried to destroy his career in an effort to advance their own. He had to reestablish his career each time a new king took the throne. Through it all, his competence and skill made him indispensable to the family business.

William Marshal was a “company man” long before that term was coined and he survived family feuds spanning decades. An excellent biography of William Marshal is, The Greatest Knight by Thomas Asbridge (2014).

About Norma Shirk

Norma started her company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, to help employers create human resources policies for their employees and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to have structure without bureaucracy. Visit Norma’s website: www.complianceriskadvisor.com/.

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by | June 23, 2015 · 3:00 pm

Erratic Bosses

General Custer

Erratic bosses are a disaster in the workplace. Occasionally they are deadly as some cavalry troopers learned in the summer of 1876.

In the summer of 1876, three cavalry columns chased Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians across the northern Plains into modern-day Montana. The goal was to confront the Indians, beat them in battle, and force the survivors back to their reservations.

One of the columns was led by “General” George A. Custer whose actual rank was lieutenant colonel. Custer had been temporarily promoted to general during the American Civil War and was a bona fide hero of that war. But by 1876 his antics had severely dented his career prospects.

He was a shameless self-promoter which irritated his military bosses. His troops were disenchanted with his habit of ignoring the rules personally while enforcing them against his subordinates. Then he annoyed President Grant by testifying to Congress about corruption in the Grant administration. (Publicizing dirty linen never wins favor with the boss, especially when it’s true.) Grant fired Custer as commander of the 7th Cavalry and Custer had to beg friends to help him get reinstated.

So when Custer went on patrol a few months later he was trying to restore his career prospects. Custer arrived at the Little Bighorn River (a/k/a the Greasy Grass) near the Indian encampment and immediately disobeyed his orders to wait for the other two cavalry columns. He also ignored the reports from his Indian scouts about the size of the Indian camp. Indian warriors numbered between 1000 and 5000, depending on which source you read.

On June 25, 1876, Custer ordered an attack on the Indian encampment and rode into history. Cavalry forces totaled 500 men and 208 died with Custer. News of the defeat ruined the July 4th centennial celebrations back east.

Custer is a hero today because his widow lived until the 1930’s. She spent every waking moment blaming others for the defeat and insisting that Custer was the greatest hero of all times. She ensured that Hollywood’s version of the tale would show Custer as the hero.

What’s the moral of the story? Erratic bosses are bad for employee health, although, fortunately, it doesn’t usually get them killed these days. Erratic bosses damage a company’s bottom line by destroying employee morale and lowering productivity. They also thin the ranks as top performers vote with their feet, leaving only demoralized or unmarketable employees.

About Norma Shirk

Norma started her company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, to help employers create human resources policies for their employees and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to have structure without bureaucracy. Visit Norma’s website: www.complianceriskadvisor.com/.

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by | April 14, 2015 · 5:00 am

The Other Side of the Couch – How to Say “No”

Stress

Every now and then a period of time arises in my life that results in hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth, accompanied by thoughts such as, “How could this have happened again?” and “What were you thinking?” and “Were you even thinking?”   This is usually the result of having said, “Yes,” to too many different projects, all of which for some odd reason all need to be completed within the same (already packed) time period.   This is what I used to call in my college days a “Pressure Period.”  The perplexing part of this for me is that I am light-years past college, and the same kind of thing keeps on happening on an all-too-regular basis.

I have strategies for dealing with it when it happens – chunk it down, one step at a time, do the next right thing, this too shall pass.  All of these strategies work to some degree, and the period of time passes and it all gets done.  However, what I want is a change in the pattern.  I want it NOT to happen.

To make that happen, I have to be really honest with myself and with what I am committing myself to taking on.  For example, I am currently the president or leader of three organizations – two are local and one is national.  I didn’t plan to be the one in charge of these groups all at the same time – it just turned out that way.  It’s as though when I am asked to take a certain role, everything other than my ability to do the job and my desire to do it well and my knowledge that I can do it well recedes.  I can only see that one thing that is ahead of me  All the other things that I do are not present as I contemplate this possibility.  I do choose to say yes, and I often say it quickly, without taking time to consider the impact on other areas of my life.

The result of this pattern is that I stay very busy.  I am sure that staying busy is serving some purpose in my life, but I won’t know what that purpose is unless I allow myself to become less busy.  Becoming less busy is going to involve saying, “No.” – and saying no is a skill I need to practice.

So – here are some ideas I plan to try:

  • Say maybe.
  • Sleep on any decision.
  • Make a blanket rule about saying, “Yes,” to anything at all for “x” period of time, no matter how good it sounds.
  • Be ok with changing my mind.
  • Understand that I am not the only person who can do a task. I am not irreplaceable (Wow – how arrogant to even think such a thing).
  • Breathe
  • Be compassionate to the part of me that wants to say yes, and curious about what it would be like to be less busy.

I will let you know how it goes.  In the meantime, I’d better get busy….!!!

About Susan Hammonds-White, EdD, LPC/MHSP:

Susan is a communications and relationship specialist, counselor, Imago Relationship Therapist, businesswoman, mother, and proud native Nashvillian. She has been in private practice for over 30 years. As she says, “I have the privilege of helping to mend broken hearts.”  Contact Susan at http://www.susanhammondswhite.com

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by | March 31, 2015 · 5:00 am

DIY vs. Outsourcing

DIY vs. Outsourcing

Abigail and Bob started their business five years ago after being downsized from corporate jobs.  Until recently they were the only employees, working long hours and outsourcing specific tasks to free-lancers (a/k/a independent contractors).  Now they want to add employees to prepare for several new customers.  They believe replacing the free-lancers with employees will allow them to streamline processes, speed up response times and become more profitable.

Refugees from corporate America, Abigail and Bob want to avoid bogging down in bureaucracy, but they also know they need some administrative structure. They are smart, educated individuals, so they begin researching HR issues and employment laws. They quickly feel overwhelmed and confused.

As small business owners, they know how to change tack quickly when something isn’t working, so instead of becoming HR compliance experts, they take a phased approach.  First, they decide on their philosophical approach to employee and HR issues. They want their policies to have a positive spin, rewarding employees for initiative and good performances as opposed to punishing them for mistakes. Next, they identify all the tasks to be performed by each newly hired employee so that accurate job descriptions can be created.  It’s impossible to hire the “right” employee if no one knows what skill set that person should have.

With this initial phase completed, they are ready to move to the next phase which is to select an HR consultant to assist with implementation.  By hiring an HR consultant who is a subject matter expert, Abigail and Bob will get solid HR assistance while freeing their time to run their business.

These types of issues arise every day for small business owners who must weigh the pros and cons of DIY versus outsourcing.  Is your company growing? Are you making changes and facing this kind of decision?  For those who decide to outsource, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor helps small business owners like Abigail and Bob to create HR policies that are appropriate for their company’s size and then serves as a resource to their staff as the policies are implemented.

About Norma Shirk

Norma started her company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, to help employers create human resources policies for their employees and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to have structure without bureaucracy. Visit Norma’s website: www.complianceriskadvisor.com/.

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by | March 3, 2015 · 5:00 am

Build a Team of Leaders

Building A Team

One of the most effective team leadership outcomes you can facilitate is for everyone on the team to end up thinking and acting like a leader. It may seem counterintuitive, especially if you’re focused on making your mark by asserting your own unique version of leadership. Therein lies the paradox that alludes many leaders: Your ultimate success will be based on the success of those on the team you lead, not on your solo contribution.

But why should you have to foster a leadership spirit in your team? What keeps people from exercising leadership on their own? I once heard John Lachs, a Vanderbilt University philosophy professor, explain it by describing how passivity creeps into organizations, sapping them of leadership, energy, and ultimately, performance.

Dr. Lachs told the all-too-familiar story of trying to return an item to a retail store, only to be stymied by a passive clerk who cited the rules and regulations restricting her ability to help him. She missed a great opportunity to be exceptional at her job by making a positive difference to a customer. She could have solved another person’s problem, represented her organization well, and made a good impression on her supervisors. Still, accomplishing all of that would have required more effort and responsibility on her part. It would have required she act like a leader by taking ownership of finding a solution. She would have had to take the customer’s request to a higher level and lobbied on his behalf. Instead, she took the easy way out by telling Dr. Lachs she could not accept his return.

If you’re not vigilant, that passivity may show up on your team. Despite what we might like to think, we’re all vulnerable to the temptation to operate more as a dispassionate role or title than as an engaged human. That’s because professional roles are circumscribed, neat, and we can often hide behind them, just as Dr. Lach’s clerk did. Interacting as our real selves requires more from us. It demands we invest ourselves emotionally and take responsibility for outcomes, without any clear indication that we will benefit from doing so. No wonder, “that’s not in my job description,” slips out so easily when one is grousing about having to do too much.

Obviously, you want your team to resist the siren’s call of passivity. These are the behaviors and attitudes you want to foster:

  • Take responsibility.
  • Take obligations seriously.
  • Try to outperform your colleagues.
  • Reach beyond your role.
  • Embody this statement: “I’m ready to serve and will do the absolute best I can.”

Just how do you foster these behaviors and attitudes? Here are some ideas:

  • Make your expectations known.
  • Model these same behaviors and attitudes.
  • Recognize and call them out when you see them in others.

Make it clear that you value leadership and expect it from your team. If they are up to the challenge, you will see the effects in their overall performance, and, instead of your raising the bar for them, they may just start raising the bar for you!

 

About Dr. Debra Fish

Dr. Fish is a consulting psychologist whose writing and work focus exclusively on helping individuals and teams lead more effectively. Her firm, Fish Executive Leadership Group, LLC, counts among its clients everything from Fortune 50 corporations to small, privately-held professional service firms.

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Photo credit: iStock_team meeting_rawpixel.jpeg

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by | February 24, 2015 · 5:00 am

How Can I Run My Business With All These Distractions?

?????

Sondra’s business grew rapidly in the past 18 months as she expanded product lines. Then she added three new employees last quarter when she opened a second store.

With two retail locations and a constantly expanding line of products, Sondra can’t keep up with all the details. She is constantly bombarded with employee requests for time off from work and yesterday several employees came to work with ripped jeans and t-shirts which is not the image Sondra wants to present to her customers. The employees say they thought the dress code was casual.  This morning she spent an hour sorting out a dispute between two employees.

Now it seems one of the new employees at the new store is not working out and should probably be fired, but  Sondra needs time to read the store manager’s notes to verify the grounds for terminating employment. Then she needs to hire a replacement.

Sondra’s been delaying taking action because she hates these administrative tasks. But she also knows her business is getting stuck because she’s stuck making up the rules as she goes.  She knows she can’t procrastinate any longer. She considers hiring an HR consultant to fix all these HR issues. Then she realizes that hiring a consultant would be a waste of money if she doesn’t first decide what she wants, so she wades into the details that will fix her employee problems:

  • Step one is to revise the job description for her store employees to ensure the next employee has the qualifications she needs.
  • Step two is to create a list of what constitutes proper attire in the work place.
  • Step three is to create a time table for each work day so that employees know when each work shift begins and ends and the consequences of showing up late (or not at all).

Then Sondra asks her store managers to review the new rules. Based on their suggestions, she decides to add a dispute resolution process to make sure future employee disputes don’t escalate. Now that all the basic details have been hashed out over several weeks, Sondra can hire an HR consultant to actually create an employee handbook for her business.

Every small business begins as Sondra’s did, with informal employee and HR policies. As the business grows and adds employees, it is necessary to create administrative structure to ensure the whole business runs smoothly. Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor assists business owners in creating HR policies appropriate to their company size so that business owners like Sondra are free to actually run their businesses.

About Norma Shirk

Norma started her company, Corporate Compliance Risk Advisor, to help employers create human resources policies for their employees and employee benefit programs that are appropriate to the employer’s size and budget. The goal is to have structure without bureaucracy. Visit Norma’s website: www.complianceriskadvisor.com/.

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by | February 17, 2015 · 5:00 am

Building a Following: Attraction Rather Than Promotion

Bates Nursery 1

David Bates is a nurseryman who grew up in a family business, Bates Nursery and Garden Center, begun in 1932 by a savvy woman, his grandmother, Bessie Bates.  He is also my husband of 30 years so this interview was convenient. I am awed by the way he made something where there was nothing and I thought you might benefit from how David embraced technology to expand his customer base with social media, and writing a weekly newsletter that is received by over 11,000 readers.

David had about 2,500 subscribers prior to 2009 and wrote only sporadically.  During a rough patch, after he had sold the business and then had to take it back, there were limited financial resources for conventional advertising.  He began looking for ways to expand his customer base.  The fact that customers tend to age, and with many of his customers in their early 60’s, it became apparent that there was a need to attract new and younger customers for the long haul.

Conventional at first, the newsletter featured only garden tips.  David needed wider parameters than exclusively writing gardening tips for the weekly newsletter. “Seasonal reminders are a good thing but I needed more content and began to inject more of myself into the newsletter, making it more personal.“  The newsletter has proven to be worth the effort, based on the response he gets from customers.  “I write them as though I am writing to one person.  When people receive it, my hope is they feel as though they are getting a personal note from me to them.  Consequently, I think people feel more comfortable with me and respond the way one friend does to another.  I am a person who has gone through a lot of bumps in life; the things I write about along those lines tend to be the posts I get the most response from.  They often don’t have anything to do with gardening.“

More on David’s writing process and social media in my next post.

About Renee Bates

Renee is an artist focused on growing a newfound ability to express herself through oil painting, recently leaving her role as executive director of the non-profit Greenways for Nashville to pursue art and product development. Renee likes being in nature, hiking, birding, and working in the garden. Married to David Bates of Bates Nursery and Garden Center, she appreciates that the legacy of the 3rd generation business was begun in 1932 at the height of the depression by a savvy woman, Bessie Bates.

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by | February 3, 2015 · 5:00 am

Flying Solo:  Pros and Cons of Being Self-Employed

Flying Solo

I am self-employed.  Notwithstanding a part-time hourly gig, I am entirely responsible for my work product, time management, working conditions, clientele and income.  In the past, I spent years working in a corporate environment; a place I learned is not for me.  But being my own boss is not without challenges, either.  Thankfully, I have my supportive HerSavvy friends to help me over the rough spots and to celebrate my victories big and small.  In fact many of us are self-employed, leading one Savvy gal to refer to us as her “advisory board.”  I LOVE IT!!!!  Indeed there is a veritable font of knowledge flowing through this group so I decided to ask the question: What are the pros and cons of being your own boss?  And being the generous women they are, they gladly opened up and shared some of their lessons learned.  So, in no particular order, here are some answers from our HerSavvy Advisory Board:

“For what it’s worth, I love being self-employed because I have complete and utter creative and aesthetic control over my products and how they are presented, marketed and packaged. There’s no group that has to sign off on my new collection or the colors of my logo. I also enjoy being able to accept challenges and quickly modify offerings/policy based on client feedback. What I often struggle with is switching between the creative (right brained) responsibilities and the business/analytical (left brained) tasks. I find that to be most effective, I often need a bit of space between the two.”

“What I like – no issues with changing schedules as needed.  What I don’t like – being all things – custodian, bookkeeper, office manager, marketer etc…until and unless you have funds to outsource all this, it is a lot of work to wear all these hats.”

“Practically, my biggest hurdle to overcome was technical support.  I had resources to address all the legal consulting issues specific to my profession.  It was having/maintaining the technical tools that was tough. In a broader sense, I had to critically analyze my greatest weakness(es) and find outside resources to bolster my practice.  It takes a critical, objective eye and the willingness to admit that ‘you can’t do it all.’  That can be very difficult for some people. For me the biggest pros were not bowing to bureaucratic requirements that got in the way of serving my clients and freedom to set my own hours, focus on the type of law I wanted to practice, etc.  I also had greater freedom about setting my rates and even accepting consideration other than money.”

“Pro: You are your own boss.  Con: You are your own boss.  But expanding on the Pro side, you have flexibility with your time.  Even though all of us that are self-employed put in many hours each week we can take the time to go to that special family event or take our vacations on our schedule and not someone else’s.   And on the Con side being your own boss means you wear many different hats and that can be stressful and very tiresome at time.”

“Pro: Flexible schedule.  Con: Having to keep a watch on every piece of the business (i.e., billing, scheduling, business filings, etc.); not having anyone else to help manage those things.”

“Pro: I absolutely love the ‘Flexibility’ of being self-employed!  Con: The need to continuously look for the next job!”

“I thrive on the accountability of it. You do good work for a client you get rewarded; there are not as many variables between you and the work you do, unlike in a large corporate firm where the performance or needs of partners. etc., may affect you. I like control so this allows me maximum control over my work and reward. On the other side it is occasionally lonely. While your employees may be friends with each other, as their boss I could not have the same level of camaraderie. This is especially true in a small environment when you have 2/3 people working for you.”

So, there you have it, straight from the mouths of the most successful, motivated, intelligent, passionate, creative and amazing women I have ever known.  If you are self-employed, let us know your pros and cons and how you keep it all together.  Stay Savvy, my friends!

About Barbara Dab:

Barbara Dab is a journalist, broadcast radio personality, producer and award-winning public relations consultant. She currently hosts two radio shows locally in Nashville, TN. Check out her website athttp://www.zoneabouttown.com.

Barbara is also creator of The Peretz Project: Stories from the Shoah: Next Generation. Check it out at http://www.theperetzproject.com If you, or someone you know, is the child of survivors of the Shoah, The Holocaust, and would like to tell your story please leave a comment and Barbara will contact you.

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