This is a timely read on the topic of missed opportunity.
“I believe it’s not that women need more mentors; it’s that we need to change our relationship with mentors. Erin Wolf made the distinction, and I think it is very valid, that “Women get Mentored. Men Get Sponsored.”Read more…”
Share, Growth, Change, and Love for Young Female Entrepreneurs via the White House
Thursday, August 18th, the weekly initiative Champions of Change highlighted young entrepreneurs. I was honored to be among those chosen as a young American who is making an impact in my community. My community is that of young, female entrepreneurs. I am 26 years old, a wife, and a new mother. As an owner and the Director of Operations at Ovaleye Cloud Services I feel every day the challenges that all entrepreneurs face. I created Young Female Entrepreneurs to celebrate these challenges with others in my community.Read more…
Web design and development skills are a necessary component of all startups and businesses looking to increase their reach today. Shanda Foisy and Jaime Slutzky are two young women who are helping business owners turn their dreams into reality online. Jaime develops WordPress sites that are built with the needs of the fitness professional in mind and Shanda creates beautiful design for creative businesses. Both women are successful, love what they do, and building their business around their strengths and family.
On the advantages of being young in business when it comes to the design field:
“I feel (especially being in a creative field) that potential clients are drawn to the fact that I am in my 20′s – because they want that new, fresh perspective. I think it eases their fears of the final product turning out “dated” or “been their done that.” I think youth instills a sense of trust and a forward thinking nature.
There have been a couple larger, corporate gigs that I have not gotten and I wondered if it was because my age. But at the end of day – it probably wasn’t the right type of client for me anyway.”
On the advantages a young woman has when building her own business:
“I think I was born to be an entrepreneur! I took the leap out of a traditional job earlier this year and have never looked back. I find that the best part of being a YFE is that I get to balance business with family. I made the decision to be mom first and that has laid a foundation upon which to build my business. My clients know my priorities and while I complete all my projects on time and on budget, I do so while being able to get my kids ready for their day and partaking in their activities.”
This past Thursday YFE hosted our biweekly Twitter chat using the hashtag #YFEchat. The topic of conversation was on online marketing. We featured and had on hand, a YFE online marketing go to, Lyndi Thompson. You can find out more about her below (where you can also find some of her tweet-ggestions).
Add our next #YFEchat to your calendar here; it’s August 11th at 4pm PST/7pm PST and focused on the topic of Heroes and Mentors. Read on for a glimpse of what happened at the Online Marketing #YFEchat.
@lyndit Working for @BizeeBee SaaS (software as a service) yoga business management software startup. I am their Marketing “Buzz Bee” #YFEchat
@lyndit A7: At @BizeeBee we post at minimum once a wk if not twice. The team uses Google docs to collaborate on content. #yfechat
@lyndit For business owners interested in online marketing try out Google Boost or Adwords Express: http://ow.ly/5PZmd #YFEChat
@lyndit A3: Twitter has evolved to become a worthy channel for time. As far as spending Adwords/FB ads are traditionally where the $$$ go. #YFEchat
YFE will also be featuring a fashion blogger next week that will be helping those of us who build a business out of our home with a popular problem. Here is a hint.
“The point is to create jobs,” he said. “Jobs are the single most important underpinning for civil society and economic growth, and that is true whether you are in Ohio or Egypt, and the biggest driver of job growth is entrepreneurship.” Read on: Egypt’s Entrepreneurs Look Beyond the Revolution via the NY Times
Our Time was born out of ‘get out the vote’ efforts here in the United states, but is expanding the efforts to represent and support the under 30 population year round. Young Female Entrepreneurs who are under 30 and live in the United States will find their Buy Young Initiative interesting in that it promotes companies where the CEO is under 30 in an effort to highlight the job creation potential these companies have.
The founder (above in 2009), Matthew Segal, was quoted in Portfolio as saying…
“Young people are often overlooked as a voting block, but they’re never overlooked as a consumer block,” says Segal. “My goal in creating Our Time and Buy Young was to work with the private and public sector to save young people money, to find them jobs, and to start conversations about topics that are important to young people today.” Read more…
Segal goes on to say that young people are able to vote with their wallets and hope that Buy Young will encourage them to vote for companies that are more likely to create jobs for the under thirty unemployed. Find out more about the Buy Young Initiate and last week’s Our Time event in Washington DC below.
On Wednesday of this week the White House hosted a live stream of the Young Entrepreneurs Panel. Those on the panel representing the current Administration remarked at the beginning of the hour that this event was all about “what can we do to help you succeed.” There were 150 young entrepreneurs involved in the event who were creating 7,000 jobs and the hope was to figure out how the federal government could support them in a way that would multiply this?
Introducing the event was Matthew Segal co founder of Our Time and the Buy Young Initiative, encouraging young people to buy from under 30 founder companies.
Kicking everything off was a founder of Living Social, which started as Hungry Machine in 2007. He mentioned finding inspiration from the book The 4 Steps of the Epiphany. He followed the idea mentioned in this book by twisting their business model until they found something that worked. He encourage young entrepreneurs to be hungry; don’t settle, keep working, and be ecstatic about what you are going to do everyday.
Representing on the panel (most notably) came from the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the SBA (the US Small Business Administration). As far as the Export-Import Bank went many in the room had heard of it, but little had used. The bank’s core job is in lending bank supports us businesses and is all about jobs. This includes short term basis provides working capital, as you score additional contracts overseas and your bank is unsure of the risk that is where they come in, and export credit insurance and can now extend credit terms because the US gov is behind you.
SBA drove home the importance of small businesses in that half of Americans work for, or are small businesses and two-thirds hold private sector jobs created by small businesses. SBA does not do direct lending, but works through a network of over 600 lending partners across the country, while offering government contracting assistance, business development programs and a nationwide system of counseling.
Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) in his book, Anything You Want argues that we should only really do anything that gets a reaction of “hell yeah!” out of us. By saying no to anything that does not, we are then open to future opportunities we’re truly passionate about. Watch this video of an animated excerpt of the audio book. What have you said “hell yeah!” to lately?
Inc. Magazine announced their annual 30 Under 30 list . YFE wishes congrats to all of the young entrepreneurs who made the cut! Read on to find out more about what the list stands for, who is on it, and how you (as young female entrepreneurs) can use it.
How do you make the Inc. 30 Under 30 list? By being cool. Unlike making the Inc. 500, which is a straightforward revenue generated list, the 30 under 30 is much more subjective. Some of the companies mentioned are not even setup to generate revenue yet. This, however, in no way reflects their potential or current earning.
With the announcement of “the list” Inc. Magazine has in overdrive young entrepreneur content with a focus being on their 30 Under 30 list. In an article one of my favorite young entrepreneur commentator, Donna Fenn, wrote that it was a particularly hard year to narrow down the honorees with so many to select from. “Youth unemployment is around 19 percent” making entrepreneurship for many a much more attractive option than landing a good job. Of the thirty chosen, one third are majority owned by young, female entrepreneurs. Who are they?
The 2011 Young, Female Honorees include:
Birchbox by Hayley Barna, 27 and Katia Beauchamp, 28
There was 20 other amazing young, male majority owned companies, but that is not what we focus on here at youngfemaleentrepreneurs.com so you will just have to go check them out for yourself.
What can you take away from Inc. compiling a list of your peers to better your business and better the chance that a major news publication will look at you as being cool?
Solve problems in a unique way: YFE receives inquiries here and there from traditional media asking for names of successful young, entrepreneurs. When I list a few for the inquirer he or she will return the email apologize, but insist on a list of entrepreneurs who have annual revenues in the seven figure range. As Inc. points out, that for a young company, judging a book by it’s balance sheet is not always what it is about. Although money and investors are not necessarily defining factors here, being unique and going against the rules are. Many of these companies have either answered unique problems or answered common problems with unique solutions. Are you solving the same problem that everyone else is.. maybe even in the same way?
Network: Be present on social media and in front of influencers. Inc. Magazine didn’t just simply run a search and look for companies on their own. They did the leg work necessary to find companies that others also felt were worthy of the title. While a cool idea can spread like wild fire, it always helps to be approachable… or even reachable via social media and in person events. Meet and socialize with your peers; it never hurts (Pst* our YFE monthly online meeting is every last Wednesday of the month at 7pm PST. Reserve your seat).
Partner up: When looking through the list you will see “more than half of the companies having at least two partners.” Inc. points out there our generation is of one that is more willing to collaborate that compete. Inc. also argues with proof that the company that is owned by partners has a better success rate. Is that true for young, female entrepreneurs?
Don’t shy away from non profits: This year marked the first sighting of a non profit making the 30 under 30 list. As Inc. explained, from here on out there will be one spot reserved for the non profit who is going outside of the traditional model for raising and spending money.
Locate appropriately: Are you located in New York or the Bay Area? If so you are in luck! Anywhere else, not so much. Inc. noticed that “New York has been exploding in the past couple of years, giving birth to young companies in the fashion, publishing, and financial industries” competing with the traditional dot com area of the Bay Area. Would you move if it meant a better chance for success, or a way to move your amazing idea forward?
Bonus #6 for the web host in me– have a super fun and creative concept you want to work on? Get the domain.
Can you think of any way cool entrepreneurs doing their thing that were some how overlooked by the 30 Under 30 list? Comment up and let us know!
Have you actually started your business? Today I had the privilege of hearing Seth Godin speak in Seattle. Seth Godin is a best selling author of books like Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and his newest Poke the Box.
In Poke the Box he urges his readers to start something, he actually refers to it as a manifesto for starting. He argues that the reason too few people actually initiate is because of the fear of failure. Dealing with the fear of starting they will…
1. Hypergo: too many good ideas, or too busy inventing to instigate
2. Overstart: start a business and drop it and move on to others
He argues that it is easy to fall in love with the idea of starting… but never start. Leave a comment below and inspire someone, or connect with others who are in the place you are.
Have you started? What was your motivation for starting?
Haven’t started? Why not?
Young, female entrepreneurs rest assured, YFE has gathered the links you have been looking for to review over the weekend for your convenience below.
Derek Sivers (founder of CD Baby) in his book, 
A couple hours ago, everyone’s favorite 
