Sg2009wc:ceo

From She's Geeky Wiki

Title: Be Your Own CEO: Challenges and Opportunities for Female Entreprenuers

Session: 6-H Bay Area Jan 2009

Convener: Ida Rose

Attendees:

• Lisa, Jennifer, Terra (entrepreneur),
• Daniella, Ann Gaffigan (entrepreneur),
• Rhonda (freelance graphic designer),
• Maria Niles (entrepreneur, CEO), Alex,
• Lindsay, Christa, Jodi (entrepreneur),
• Stephanie, Tiffany (Founder of Dream Fish),
• Meredith (entrepreneur, CEO education consulting, boom boom),
• Namita, Helene (entrepreneur),
• Judith

Notes:

Ida left corporate america 8 years ago. She's the 2nd generation female entrepreneur in her family. She does marketing consulting.

Challenges: How to issue tax forms for contractors

Advantage: Its you who succeeds or fails, and its on you. Its the world you create and you are always employed.

Love for Entrepreneurship

Desire for success, self-motivated, toying with the idea of doing something insane.

If you don't put yourself out there, if you don't ask, you certainly wont get the work. You need to sell yourself, and tell the why they should hire.

Approaching individuals is easy, approaching businesses is difficult. Its hard to project yourself. You have to be good at everything if its just you. You have to do all the detail work to get the idea out there. Its really difficult to bring it all together.

Terra says she hired a virtual assistant to do all the scheduling, its easy to get people at flexible times and flexible rates. And, you're supporting another entrepreneur and cottage business. What is a virtual assistant? Someone who has the skills to be a secretary, who works remotely. Shes talked to her's twice, but mostly IM and email. You can go to e-lance. Test people, make sure they are working out for you. Judith has the assistant do the billing. Terra tells her assistant schedule her with all these people she wants to have lunch with, Terra's girl does all the scheduling for her. Having an assitant maybe validates you in a way.

Alex suggests "4 Hour Workweek" as a good book to read - Terra thinks its a hack, but maybe read it anyway.

Ann brings back up clients and attracting clients. For her it was all about the first client - the longer you have a credit card the better your credit but you always keep the first one - its the same for your first client. Treat them really well, as you get more successful, be more stingy with newer clients, but keep the first one happy, don't raise rates, credit them for good referrals. Its really important to hang on to your early clients.

If you want to serve big corporations, work with small vendor associations or network with qualified vendors, capitalize on their status - pay a fee for those relationships.

Whats the feeling when you're with a large group of male entrepreneurs? Alex says its how you position and feel about yourself. Its in our own minds. We are equal and if you have that point of view. About 5% VC backed companies are women owned and its 100% because of networking (says Terra). VCs want to fund connected people. Alex says you have to play the game, what are these people interested in? Research enough so you can talk !

Tiffany says the men she works with are much better about networking. They are very tacticle and transactional with who they are networked, whereas she feels she is much more focused on the relationship. Women are often afraid to ask for anything, but asking is giving another person a chance to give and afford possibilities. Some of this is in our own head to get out there and say "Hey can I get your business?" What do I need to do to be a valuable member of your team?

Stephanie is looking for a safe environment for feedback, when she's with men, and dynamics need to change, and she's not sure how to change the dynamics. Her vendors are making eye contact with the younger guys and not necessarily her, who is in charge. She wants feedback on fine-tuning her communication skills to redirect that contact back to herself.

Men often only communicate with only the men. You have to force yourself to talk (Terra). At McKinsey, you have to make a point in the first 5 minutes of the conversation, and it doesn't matter what point you make. Its that you make the point to get their eye contact, and their focus stays on you. The opening is key. Stephanie will forcefully interrupt the flow of conversation back to the original point.

There are different power positions in different situations, how to use your hands, how much you reach out to engage people - these are the suttle signals you must send. You have to be on the radar screen and assert yourself. "This is an interesting conversation, but I think we need to go back to the original conversation".

Alex has the ability to pull together disparate things, and women see where the commont things are. Daniela refuses to go into a meeting without an agenda, she wants to control it and own the meeting - have the agenda.

Lindsay suggest "Nice Girls Dont' Get Rich" and "Nice Girls Don't get the Corner Office" Christa suggests a career coach, her company did it for her. Career Coaches don't always understand tech femals because we're not necessarily from Venus.

Ann says you don't want to be a man, we have a lot of strength as a woman and the ability to gauge everyone in the room. Gauge everyone, she's found that some men are very open to work with women because they like women, and then there are the patriarchal types. You have to gauge that and treat each one differently. Don't be apologetic about being a bitch to the patriarchal types, you need to get their respect immediately. Be assertive, look straight in the eye. Spend your energy on them, talk to them in a lower voice. For them its important to get their respect.

When you are working for a big company, and you're working a lot of hours, cut down work to free up time to do things for myself. How do you start that transition? How do you break away? Just do it! Look at the leverage you have and how much you are making them, will they be able to replace you right away? Scope your roles and responsibilities. Rhonda suggests that we are all overachievers and we have to scope ourselves to back away.

Its hard to transition and do both. Just get out right away to get it up and running. How much do you need to save up? Sometimes its accidental and purposeful. Ida says its accidental. 6 months is a good estimate, business model, when you will make a profit.

Ann suggests that if a client wants you independent, and you don't have a noncompete clause, its totally reasonable to move away with clients. Noncompete is unenforceable in California. Trade secrets are enforceable, this is important if you try to manage starting a new business while employed. They may claim they own the contacts.

Laying out your business plan: 50/50 whether they have a business plan. Most of them have nothing written down since they're not looking for funding. You do need a budget though. Do they at least have goals written down? The most successful companies have 3 goals, or 3 phases of goals. make sure they're discrete.

Maria says she has goals and parameters, and budget. Business Plans are really important for flat rate services. Tiffany thinks its important, she uses the plan for her team and stakeeholder. Its really important that everyone understands where we are going but most of the work goes into the pitch and what the future looks like. She has a consulting arm, but the development software, its really important people understand the big dream. The other piece of business planning is the fundraising. What are the financials? Investors want to know this. Its hard to write out the details, she wished she had done more writing earlier because she spends all her time now to do operations.

Hire a lawyer and get it done right. For business at a really small point you don't need 40 hours of month of lawyer services. How do you get little bit of lawyer help? LegalZoom is pretty good, Judith is a lawyer. It depends on the amount of money you are liable for or can be in a suit for.

Terra's suggestions:

• Personal Asisstant: alinecryan@brigidconsulting.com Pat Solani (look her up on linked in)
• Attorney: Doug Mandell of the Mandell Law Group

• Women 2.0, Linked IN group and conference
• Astia
• Springboard Enterprises (dot org)
• FountainBlue Group "When She Speaks"

• Attorney: Jess Alvarado

*Taxes Accounting:  Dollars & Sense, Taxes & Accounting - Maria Niles: maria@consumerpop.com for contact details.

• Book: Selling to Vito, Sales training is good.