Friday 28 October 2011

A new enterprise for a new economy

Hi,
Against the doom and gloom of the GFC emerges a surprisingly good news story – the growth of the ‘enterprise culture’.  At the forefront of this rising tide of self-employment and small business ownership women firmly stand, with stats for last year showing twice as many businesses were started by women than men.

From mothers juggling babes and business at the kitchen table to the ‘one - woman show’ running a restaurant or retail outlet to the woman at the helm of a large business there’s a stampede of women creating new business.

Born from seeds of initiative and self-reliance this powerful movement is committed to creating a business culture based on our values rather than the predetermined values of the existing business structure and culture. We’ll do it our way …. whatever that way is!  Whilst this ‘new economy’ is exciting, edgy and offers women enormous opportunity it also contains greater risk and insecurity.

In a speech recently I stated that I didn’t think SHE Business would have existed 10 years ago, maybe not even 5 years ago and I believe this to be so. We are very much a new enterprise, a business club for entrepreneurs and businesswomen offering distinct products and services to the forerunners of this new economy.

Next month we officially launch SHE Business and we do it with our partner Women in Focus and alongside two great leaders,Avril Henry and Dr Helena Popovic who are guest speakers at our celebratory and powerful event, Fearlessly Creating.

Our wish is for you to join us - why?

  • To be inspired to greatness in 2012
  • To access cutting edge research and thinking in Leadership – both personal and professional
  • Connect with members and guests of SHE Business
  • And discover this new enterprise - SHE Business


Fearlessly Creating
Date:  Wednesday December 7th 2011
Time: 9.15 – 1:00pm
Venue:  Chatswood Golf Club



Cost:
$65 - Members
$77 - Non members


Includes champagne and fruit mince pies 


BOOK HERE
 

For further information visit our website shebusiness.com

Monday 10 October 2011

List'em Up

List’em up…

Have you noticed how human beings love lists? There’s the famous The New York Times Bestseller List, Fortune 500(American corporations), the Forbes List of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women (including three Australians … can you guess who?), and the Guinness Book of Records, which is one long list.

There are multiple lists of 100 all-time favourite movies, greatest songs, albums etc, so I wasn’t surprised when I came across the list of 100 entrepreneurs who didn’t complete college.

Some names you’ll recognise immediately such as Steve Wozniak (Apple), Vidal Sassoon, Richard Branson, Jerry Yang (Yahoo!) and Walt Disney. You can click here for the complete list.

So if a college degree isn’t essential for entrepreneurial success, I became keenly interested in discovering the attributes that are. In my research I came across more lists, more than half a dozen that laid claim to containing the essential attributes for success. The one I liked most read as follows:

ATTRIBUTES OF SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENEURS:

1.     Inner drive to succeed
2.     Strong belief in themselves
3.     Search for new ideas and innovation
4.     Openness to change
5.     Competitive by nature
6.     Highly motivated and energetic
7.     Accepting of constructive criticism and rejection

Having reflected on this list for a few days, I decided that each of these attributes contributed to a clear path of thought; uncluttered by any murky waters of doubt, it allowed the entrepreneur to ask just one question:

How?  Could ‘How’ really be the entrepreneur’s best friend? 



It certainly confers certainty and opens the creative hatch.  So I'm giving it a go, I’m taking ‘how’ into every aspect of my life – health, family, business – and whenever I sense overwhelm or a challenging scenario, I can play this trump card, focusing my attention on just one inevitable outcome, success … I just have to find out how!

‘How’ … do you like it?