To Share or Not to Share? What a Question!
As successful business owners and corporate executives, many of us struggle with finding a good balance between being fierce leaders and taking the glory and profit of our hard work versus sharing the profit and the responsibility of the risk. Over the past few years, I have been involved in several initiatives, some small, some large, where some of the ventures died before they saw the light of the day, as people around the boardroom struggled with, well, sharing the pie! In the beginning, the honeymoon-stage made everyone feel like the sharing was fine. However, as negotiations became tighter, you could feel the tension in the atmosphere, as the refinement of the deals and the desire to take it all became more tangible. Let’s do the math: if I have a pie to share and this pie represents 100 pieces and you and I decide to split the pie in half, we would both have 50 pieces each, correct? If we then invited others to play with us and we decided to divide the pie into five equal parts...
Author: Dr. Gabriela Cora

Dallas Business Journal Interview
Lisbeth McNabb, 47, has more than 20 years of experience working in high-growth environments -- and she wouldn't have it any other way. A couple of months back, she left a two-year CFO position at Match.com to found w2wlink.com, a Web site geared toward professional women in times of growth. In early 2008, she plans to launch a networking concept on the site, where women fill out confidential profiles and w2wlink.com matches them in appropriate groups. Why women, and why now? McNabb says the marketplace is ripe: There are more than 34 million professional women in the United States, and 70% to 80% of small business launches are by women. Their buying clout tops $2 trillion. "I'm leveraging a lot of realities," she said. "The market is gigantic and the buying side is very compelling." McNabb was interviewed by Correspondent Karen Nielsen. Q. What's it like to go from a Fortune 500 company to an Internet startup? A. I'm very atypical for someone at a Fortune 500 company. I...
Author: Karen Nielsen

Tips on Building Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty is an area about which professional women have a special understanding. Women being generally relationship oriented and social in nature have an inclination toward maintaining and building good relations.  For more information on relationships as a factor of importance to women in the workplace, see In the Company of Women, (Heim et al.,Tarcher, 2003). "The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer." Peter Drucker, Brainyquotes.com. Coffee shops, hair salons, and restaurants have long used the buy one or buy some number, get one free program to much success. Hallmark Card’s customer loyalty programs have become well known for successfully driving repeat customer business in times of fast emerging competition on the Internet. New ways to build customer loyalty develop with new ways to track it as well as with the development of new kinds of technologies for product. The best ways to create customer loyalty programs start with knowing your customer and know...
Author: Jean Lewis

7 Strategies for Leading in Times of Crisis
As successful executives and business owners, we are "entrepreneuring" 24/7. We wake up with a full schedule of things to do and, as professional women, we juggle our personal and our family’s activities as well. Whether man-made or natural disaster, while unexpected events may be catastrophic in nature, it is the emotional intensity that may overwhelm our senses and good judgment. To best cope with the emotional intensity of crisis so that we may lead effectively and stay calm, here is a quick checklist.  It will enable you to set up a solid foundation on which to stand firmly grounded,  as well as to operate best when the pressure is on. Strategy #1: Assess the situation. If you are facing an unexpected event, whether it ranges from a catastrophic-like event to the loss of a significant family member or friend, ensure your own safety, your family’s safety and the safety of those who work with you. You cannot blink in choosing people first. Strategy #2: Concentrate on your "here an...
Author: Dr. Gabriela Cora

Women on Boards Equal Strong Financial Performance
Fortune 500 companies with the highest representation of women board directors attained significantly higher financial performance, on average, than those with the lowest representation of women board directors, according to Catalyst’s most recent report, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards. In addition, the report points out, on average, notably stronger-than-average performance at companies with three or more women board directors. The study, which is the second of Catalyst’s Bottom Line reports, looked at three critical financial measures: return on equity, return on sales, and return on invested capital, and compared the performance of companies with the highest representation of women on their boards to those with the lowest representation. “Clearly, financial measures excel where women serve on corporate boards,” said Ilene H. Lang, President of Catalyst. “This Catalyst study again demonstrates the very strong correlation between corporat...
Author: Site Contributor

3 Ways to Get the Credit You Deserve
How to view it: Men are really good at taking credit for everything. Women are not so good at taking credit for what they deserve. When I give workshops on secrets to getting ahead for women, one of the hardest exercises for participants is what I call "the owning your own worth exercise." It actually is very simple. The participants have a few minutes to write down their thoughts about what makes them great or valuable in a specific work context. Then she must stand in front of the group and tell the group in a first person declaration. "I am a great sales person because …" For many women, this task might as well be walking on hot coals. On the other hand, it is also very common that when a woman is given a compliment at work about her success, her immediate reaction is to say something like, "Well, I could not have done it without Jenny and the team." A common and pleasant ritual among women is the "No, it’s not me, it was you." Exchange. It goes like this: MANAGER: Great Job Be...
Author: Robert Schwarz

Be Heard in Meetings: The Art of Interrupting
Many women complain about the difficulties they have in being heard by men in meetings. When we learn to understand the gender differences in a positive and constructive light, we can learn new ways to increase the effectiveness of our communication that will increase our productivity and success. This four part series of articles is geared to helping professional women communicate more effectively during meetings so that they will be more successful in having her ideas accepted and utilized. Four skills will be discussed, starting with the art of interrupting for professional women. How to View It: The first specific skill that professional women need to learn is the art of interrupting. This is hard for women, because as a group they are interested in sharing and listening. The custom for women is to listen with the understanding that after someone is done talking it will be your turn. This behavior pattern begins in very early childhood. When women talk with each other the custom...
Author: Robert Schwarz

The 3 Ds of Leadership for Professional Women
As professional women take on the task of leading teams, mastering the 3 D's of team leadership: Decision-Making, Delegation and Diplomacy allows them to fulfill their roles in impressive fashion. For professional women, there is an emphasis on the Delegation "D," because they often believe they have to prove their value by doing it all themselves Decision-Making Decision-making is at the core of team leadership. The best skill team leaders can develop is that of helping a team build consensus to make decisions. This is both an art and a science. It is a skill that can be taught and improved with practice. Solely the leader must make some decisions, but when working with teams, it is important for morale and motivation to involve team members. In Alan Weiss’ "Best Practices Consulting Seminar," he identifies five approaches to decision-making. The skill is in knowing when to apply each of the five following approaches: 1) The leader makes the decision by herself with no input from ...
Author: Skip Weisman

The Risk of Heart Disease in Professional Women
Heart disease is the number one killer of women, and with the pressures that professional women face, heart disease is an especially important issue to that subgroup in particular.  To some of you this may come as a shock, but I assure you, this is nothing new. In fact, over the past decades while the death rate for heart disease in men has been declining, for women it is increasing.  There are many reasons for this discrepancy, including the fact that women have not been included in major studies looking at heart disease.  Even to this day, on average, only 25% of studies on heart disease include women.  Needless to say, women need to know their risk and how to do something about it, so they don’t become just another statistic in this epidemic that was once known as only a man’s disease. It was recently overheard that, "the more women live like men, the more they are going to die like them."  There are multiple risk factors that lead to heart disease besides age and family history, s...
Author: Suzanne Steinbaum

Make Networking a Way of Life
In this economy in which large companies are growing at a slower pace than in the past and given the highly transactional marketplace, workers are changing jobs more frequently either by choice or by necessity. People who previously have targeted only large corporations are looking elsewhere, often to smaller companies. This job climate makes networking even more important. Now, more than ever, it is a necessity, not an option. But because time is truly a precious commodity for many professional women, networking, unfortunately, has often been put on the back burner. The busier the woman, the more networking has lagged behind in priorities. Often it has been done only sporadically for a pointed purpose. Or it has been done in an ad hoc way when convenient. In both cases, women have missed tremendous opportunities to grow their careers exponentially. Professional women can no longer afford to neglect this critical, strategic career builder. There are many preconceived notions about ...
Author: Marny Lifshen

5-Question Self-Quiz: Cholesterol and Professional Women
Super Basic Heart Health Quiz for Professional Women Professional women are especially in need of having their awareness raised on the importance of caring for their hearts, as heart disease is the number one cause of dealth to women, and professional women balance unique work-life issues and deal with enormous amounts of stress daily.  Brighten your heart by taking a moment and letting yourself do this quick little 5-question care-for-your-heart self-quiz, and and then if it raises your awareness, go ahead and pass it along! Answer the following questions True or False (T or F) as of one year ago. 1. ___I know my blood pressure. 2. ___I know my cholesterol. 3. ___I know my LDL. 4. ___I know my HDL. 5. ___I know my triglycerides. Bonus___I know that drinking more than 2 diet sodas a day is not healthy. Scoring: Give yourself one point for every question that you answered "True." 1 = Not good enough, but glad you knew one of them. As you can see, the very basics of heart heal...
Author: Suzanne Steinbaum

Blood Sugar Facts for Professional Women
When did diet soda become a healthy food? I think it was sometime in between the commercials of skinny women drinking the pink cans from the 70s and the fabulous super-models slurping down a silver can in the middle of tumbleweeds in the dry west. So, a little diet soda in the middle of a cubicle can’t hurt, right? We can’t exactly emulate their lives, so why not at least drink what they do? As busy, discerning professional women, we can choose to buy products and brands that reflect our self-identities that also do not risk our blood sugar levels going into pre-diabetes states. Well, here’s the reality. It all comes down to sugar. How you metabolize it and how much you eat of it does have something to do with it. As sugar gets eaten or drunk or ingested by whatever means, the body releases insulin. Insulin helps metabolize the sugar and bring the levels down. When you eat a simple sugar, like those found in cupcakes or white pasta, these insulin levels go up and up and up. And, over ...
Author: Suzanne Steinbaum

Professional Women Be Heard: Repeat from a Different Angle
In part one of this four-part series on techniques for professional women, I discussed the importance of professional women learning how to interrupt when in meetings with a lot of male energy. We stopped at the point at which you have made your first foray into the fray and your ideas have not been immediately accepted. So now we move on to the next phase. The art of repeating from a different angle So what do you do if your ideas are ignored or discounted? How to view it: The male culture is based on cooperation by competition. I know this seems like an oxymoron to the female perspective. My son just got X-Box 360 live. This allows him to play interactive computer war games in a virtual world against other people (95 percent of them are male). He is in heaven! From the male perspective, the best ideas are forged in the crucible of competition. So the men expect the other players, including themselves, to fight for their ideas. Whereas the female perspective is, the best ideas are ...
Author: Robert Schwarz

The Four Magic Numbers for Professional Women's Heart Health
Professional women are busy. We have lists upon lists upon lists. I have a Palm Pilot, cross referenced with my Blackberry and detailed in my Filofax (yes, very old school) for just about every task that needs to be done. Each meeting has an alarm synchronized to my watch, each deadline is highlighted in yellow and every event for my son is in iridescent blue. As professional women, this is simply part of who we are. Get out a red pen, because there is something to add to your to do list. Every year, at least once a year, from age 20, it is time to get your cholesterol checked. You might as well make it February. Years ago, Hallmark declared it official Heart Month for Valentine’s Day, and now in 2008, it is Heart Health Month for awareness and prevention of Women and Heart Disease. Like I said, get out your red pen. It is time to make a doctor’s appointment. You need to understand your risk for heart disease and checking your cholesterol is one of the first pieces of information you...
Author: Suzanne Steinbaum

2 Steps to Effectively Communicating Your Analysis
How to view it -- Step 1: The key words here are "my" and "analysis." Let’s start with the word "my." Focusing on "I" or "me" is not the lead value for professional women. For women, supporting the group or the team is big. In the last twenty years corporate America has talked a lot about teams and team building. But the fact is that men tend to focus on individuality. Team sports have "stars". Everyone knows Tiger Woods or the Gold medal winner. But no one knows the #20 ranked golfer in the world or who won the bronze medal in anything. Men tend to do individual tasks in teams. It is the exceptional team where people truly think in terms of we rather than I. A man’s sense of self-esteem comes from doing. He thinks, "I am valuable based on what I do." That is how they tend to think about others in the work world. How to do it: So If you want your ideas to be valued, you need to claim ownership to your work. You must get comfortable saying the words "I" and "my," "I crunched the numbe...
Author: Robert Schwarz

Business Travel Made Easy
Cancelled flights …  lost luggage …  presentation programs that won't run …  the list of potential business trip challenges is virtually endless. In fact, when it comes to business travel, it seems that problems and delays are the norm, not the exception. The key is to be prepared for anything that comes your way. Only then will arriving at your destination be as simple as your morning drive into the office. Unfortunately, most business travelers are unprepared for even the smallest of travel glitches. And although they may have made numerous business trips in the past, each with its own problem or two, people still don't plan for setbacks when the next trip rolls around. As a result, they get frustrated when traveling and view business trips as a hassle they wish they could avoid. If you have to travel for business, take the approach that everything will go wrong. That way you're prepared to handle whatever comes your way and no challenge will derail your business plans. Following a...
Author: Christi Youd

You’re Ready to Sell … Now What?
Now that you are ready to spin off a business unit as a business leader or to leave or transition out of your own business, how do you do it? It is a question that many executives and women business owners ask – but often when it is too late. Whether you are ready to move on to retirement or a new business, a successful exit strategy should start three years before your target exit date. Many companies are forced to sell without an exit strategy because of burn out or financial issues. When you sell your business without a plan, you run the risk of falling hostage to poor financials and bottom-feeding buyers. The sale of a business should be a planned process to yield a business owner the highest possible price for her company. I see business owners make the same common mistakes when it comes to planning for the next phase of their businesses. The good news is that with a bit of planning, these "land mines" can be avoided. Don’t become emotional and overprice your business. ...
Author: Julie Gordon White

Creating an Exit Plan for Your Business
It is estimated that somewhere between 7 and 20 trillion dollars of value in businesses will change hands in the next 10 - 20 years. All business owners will exit their businesses at some time. The question is not if but when and on whose terms? Now is a good time to review your "exit plan." There are several good books for business owners and leaders seeking more information on exit plans.  Consider John H. Brown’s  How to Run Your Business so You Can Leave it In Style or Richard Jackim’s  The 10 Trillion Dollar Opportunity. Each gives the business owner or leader an overview of how to plan for the opportunity to "monetize" the investment they have spent their life’s work on. Brown now heads the Business Enterprise Institute (BEI), a network of professionals who practice exit planning. Likewise, Jackim heads the Exit Planning Institute (EPI.) Much more information is available from their Web sites; BEI’s www.exitplanning.com and EPI’s, www.Exit-Planning-Institute.org. A High Level L...
Author: Simone Velasquez-Hoover

Self-Quiz: How Ready is Your Business To Go International?
Many businesses are profiting from the vast opportunities that international business affords due to the increased convenience, ease and access to which the online era has opened the floodgates. Have you considered taking your business international? To better understand what issues your business needs to consider, go ahead and take the 6-Question w2wlink Self-Quiz below. Instructions: Answer each question True or False by circling T or F. T   F   My product or service is currently used by people in most cultures around the world. T   F   I don't need to translate my markeitng and sales material into another language. T   F   We have determined wheterh the currency will be an issue in our pricing. T   F   My business has conducted market research on international competitors and found opportunity. T   F   My business has researched the needs of prospective customers and confirmed demand for what we offer. T   F   We have investigated relevant regulatory...
Author: Jean Lewis

National Conference
NAWBO 2008 Women's Business Conference -Together: Rising In 2008, women business owners will create a rising tide of entrepreneurship, shaping the larger business environment as they build greater success for themselves. Uniting around their common goals, these powerful women will define new standards of ownership and prosperity, changing the social, political, and economic landscape forever. In celebration of this rising change, NAWBO is holding its 2008 Women’s Business Conference June 12-14 at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix. This premier event will draw women entrepreneurs from across the country looking to grow their businesses, advance their leadership skills, and create lasting change in the business culture. Make plans now and plan to attend this essential event.  For more information: www.nawbo.org/section_70.cfm 
Author: Site Contributor

The Three Rs of Business Success
 Building a business can be a challenge during the best of times. However, professional women can smoothly manage business and even build when crises and surprises happen, as long as their focus is on the customer. The key is to concentrate on the 3 Rs of your business: 1. Retention - Keeping your existing customers by making sure their experience is phenomenal. I was able to create a fabulous experience for my telephone company customers. I targeted people, who had been disconnected before and were not used to getting great service, and made it fun for them. They line up to pay their bills each month in order to play the promotional games like Spin the Wheel - for money off of their invoices – or enter to win a plasma television. 2. Reactivation - Your easiest customer to sell is one that was a previous client. Reach out to your old customers and win their business again. I send out an "apology letter" to old clients saying, "I am sorry for anything that went wrong. I would like to ...
Author: Richelle Shaw