Video of Interest: Follow Your Interest

As a business owner, what do you care about?  Who do you follow?  What do you want to know?

Follow your interests (e.g., @WomenPresidents).   Keep discovering and growing.

Posted by:  Women Presidents' Organization Chicago

Commentary of Interest: The Power of Persuasion; Does It Sell Anything?

Are you advertising with your business?  Yes, remember that good old-fashioned way of getting the word out to a large number of people about your brand via television, print or radio?

Or maybe you've switched to heavy use of social media platforms like Linked In, Twitter and Facebook to boost the star marketing power of your business.  Have these platforms rewarded you in some fashion with having the most number of fans -- say with new business?

Clearly, as business owners, we need to revisit the whole point of social media and social networking:  to sell a product or service.

Read:  Just How Influential Is Your Social-Media Program if It Isn't Helping To Sell Product? ~ by Rance Crain

Posted by:  Women Presidents' Organization Chicago

Article of Interest: How Reframing Behavior Can Lead To Organizational Change

When business owners talk about change, they usually have a desired result in mind:  wake people up a bit (change the company culture), a better approach or relationship to clients, a focus on profit instead of just revenue.

Sometimes a given situation merely calls for new behaviors and a change in practice.  Learn the secrets on how to make it happen:

"That's the Way We (Used to) Do Things Around Here"

White Paper of Interest: Life After Exit

Most business owners reach a point when they are ready to exit from their baby, the business that is.  In Chicago, with three robust chapters, we generally have at least one or two members in each chapter who are positioning to sell their business.

The itch to exit starts with getting weary from doing the same thing (the passion is lost), a readiness to retire or the contemplation of an offer from a buyer that you cannot refuse.  Whatever the reason and whenever the point in time, one needs to prepare well in advance.  Doing your homework matters and so does finding out how others handled the sale of their company, which might resemble a circumstance similar to yours.

Esteemed fellow WPO Chapter Chair Barbara Roberts (Zenith group), authored a 38-page "white paper" for the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School: "Life After an Exit:  How Entrepreneurs Transition to the Next Stage (immediate download of PDF file)."

For the paper, Ms. Roberts interviews 23 entrepreneurs who sold their company for $10 million to $970 million.  The interviews are about how they experienced the sale and how they learned about wealth management.  The interviews also cover how they had transitioned to the next chapter of their lives.  The "white paper" includes what they did well and what they wished they had done better before, during and after the sale.

If you have questions about the white paper or would like to contact Ms. Roberts to attend an event when she will be speaking more about the themes of paper, feel free to connect with her directly here.

Posted by:  Women Presidents' Organization Chicago