As WPO members will tell you, the founder’s journey is often oversimplified, the path from a scrappy startup to a profitable business frequently boiled down to a few moments of inspiration that make founders look like magicians. As this article says, the narrative glosses over the frequent moments of uncertainty that founders go through.
Learn more and remember to focus on what matters.
Many businesses today are grappling with declining revenues, stagnant pipelines and reduced conversion rates, making the need for transformation even more urgent.
As this power shift accelerates, businesses must rethink their branding, marketing and customer engagement strategies to remain relevant today.
Here are six key strategies that Ali Payani believes can help businesses navigate today's uncertainties and emerge stronger.
Women President Organization (WPO) members are also demonstrating a range of leadership strategies under pressure. Their responses along with the U.S. CEOs, reflect not only the complexity of executive leadership but also the deep interconnection between business strategy and geopolitics.
As President and CEO of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) for more than a decade, Pamela dedicated her life to lifting women business owners up to unimaginable heights and building bridges through every connection she made.
Our condolences and love go out to Pamela's family at this sorrowful time.
Rest in Power (RIP) dear Pamela. May the lord receive you in the same fashion you received us – with energy, enthusiasm and care.
Maria was the CEO of a rapidly growing tech startup in the genomics space. She was curious, confident, open to new ideas, and comfortable being challenged by her team—all qualities that had helped her build the company from nothing into a 30-person organization with millions of dollars in venture capital funding and a consumer-facing product about to be released. And yet, even as things seemed to be going exceptionally well, key leaders were starting to leave—and the board brought in a clinical psychologist to figure out what was going on.
When Maria received feedback, she said, "“My ability to make decisions is a strength. And they’re good decisions! I don’t see the point of going around in circles once I know the answer!”
Well not everyone is perfect. Learn more of how Maria's strengths turned into weaknesses. Every gift has a curse.
Despite facing systemic barriers and discrimination, women, like many WPO members, have continued to break through glass ceilings and pave the way for future generations.
Explore and celebrate these women entrepreneurs who have left a lasting impact in our business world.
We are proud of longstanding WPO Chicago member Ellen Wheeler and wish her many more accolades in the future for her important work.
Learn more on Foley’s 2025 Chambers rankings - https://lnkd.in/g9G5ExdS
New partners Jesse Neil, Brent Bowman, and Jon Gaston join the firm from Holland & Knight LLP. The group advises clients on a variety of regulatory, transactional, and tax issues. Additionally, two Foley litigation partners, Kevin Hyde and Lauren Loew [WPO Chicago II chapter member, pictured], will work from Nashville to help establish and grow the office.
Read the news release here. Our congratulations to Lauren! We are so proud of you.
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| ©2025 Laurel J. Delaney. All rights reserved. |
“Their leadership demonstrates the profound economic and societal impact of women at the helm. With a strong commitment to innovation, purpose, and people, these companies exemplify the essential role women-owned and led businesses play in building a more sustainable and inclusive economy. This recognition is more than a milestone—it’s a powerful affirmation of the transformative influence women have in shaping modern business.”
In times of national grief or uncertainty, music has often been the thread that stitches people back into community.
Some of our greatest American leaders knew this. Long before neuroscience could explain it, presidents were turning to music to steady a nation, calm collective nerves, and kindle hope.
Today, on Memorial Day, I invite you to use music to connect across generations and reflect with purpose.
As the new tariff regime reshapes the global business landscape, resilience should be at the top of every executive’s and business owner's agenda.
Learn more here by reading the full report.
So how do you tell great stories, particularly great business stories? Here’s how to make your narratives more persuasive.
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Oh, and you might still be able to attend if you move on it now. We have 16 Chicago members attending and I can't wait to connect and learn together.
The program takes place from May 7-9, 2025 at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa.
See you in San Antonio!
And so a side business becomes a multimillion-dollar business. It's called Quiet Town.
CR is for everyone involved in commercial creativity, anywhere in the world. They share insight and inspiration across disciplines and borders, connecting brilliant minds to make brilliant things happen.
Learn more how creative thinking and design make businesses and brands more successful, dynamic and engaging for audiences.
What they discovered along the way was there wasn't an event that brought together different buyers, suppliers and vendors focused on luxury weddings.
So Grinnals and Arce established a conference to do just that: Engage! Summits, now a multimillion-dollar brand.
Find out more here.
Smart, driven women, like WPO members, always support other smart, driven women.
That’s why many generative AI platforms allow you to create custom AI assistants: what ChatGPT calls a “custom GPT,” Claude calls a “Project,” and Google Gemini calls a “Gem.” These assistants store elements of a prompt that you might want to use over and over so you don’t have to include them every time you ask the platform to help you with your recurring tasks and challenges.
A word of caution, though: Don’t overwhelm agents with an excess of information. With too much context, your agent may be a jack of all trades, but a master of none.
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| ©2025 Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global®. All right reserved. |
At SUCCESS® magazine, they celebrate women through their annual Women of Influence awards campaign, recognizing trailblazing women who are not only shaping the present but are also laying the groundwork for future difference-makers to thrive.
Discover who these women are here.
These changes have raised alarm bells for businesses relying solely on social media to drive sales. If a social platform goes down, so does any business heavily reliant on that platform. With the shifting reality of social media, developing a marketing strategy that doesn’t rely on social media is the safe option.
Try your hand at reducing your dependency on social media with a new marketing strategy. Here are some ideas.
These celebrated founders know all too well the challenges business owners need to overcome to grow flourishing companies--and the role persistence plays in success. These seven Inc. board members analyzed Inc.'s Female Founders list and highlighted stand-out honorees who they believe exemplify the key principles of entrepreneurship.
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We need to focus on empowering women with the resources, strategies, and mindset shifts to break through this threshold and increase that number. Once you breakthrough, WPO is the organization to join to keep growing. All WPO members generate more than one-million in annual revenue. Average revenue of member companies is $15.7 million.
More women making $1 million in business means more wealth, influence, and opportunity for women to lead and inspire future generations of entrepreneurs.
With a workforce of around 8,000 and a global sales and services organization operating in more than 140 countries, Kaeser is one of the world’s leading manufacturers and providers of compressed air solutions and services.
Together with SAP, Kaeser wanted to improve data quality and optimize its core business processes. “AI was on our radar screen back then, but it wasn’t our starting point,” recalls Dr. Norbert Enge, chief business consultant for SAP Business Transformation Center.
The proportion of SAP Business AI in Kaeser’s data project rose from less than 10% in the first year to over 30% in the third. Today, the team is now 100% focused on SAP Business AI and has developed 12 specific use cases targeted at adding value for customers.
Discover more at the Fast Company article.
Be careful how you approach this. You don't want a rush to nowhere.
So what’s coming in 2025? We’re going to ignore the obvious here: You can bet that agents and smaller, more efficient, language models will continue to shape the industry. Instead, here are five alternative picks from the MIT Technology Review AI team.
The question becomes: How you plan to strengthen your people in 2025?
To learn more, access the entire article here.
Business owners are pursuing growth even in uncertain times.
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| ©2024 Laurel J. Delaney. All rights reserved. |
Many point to multiple factors, rather than a random rise in popularity, for the success of Bluesky. X has been dealing with mass exoduses, the largest of which involved 115,000 people who left after the election.
The surge has coincided with not only the election month, but also a change in the X user agreement that went into effect Nov. 15, which includes legal ramifications.
I [Laurel Delaney] am on Twitter but I have also setup an account at Bluesky.
What would you do if your business took off? Are you ready?
Fast Company spoke with six women entrepreneurs who have created thriving small businesses. Some of these businesses add a dash of beauty to the world through flowers or jewelry, some offer joy with artisanal treats, and still others make life easier for new moms through the cutest kids PJs or functional breast pumps.
But they all have commonalities that began when the women first turned their passion projects into viable incomes.
Here, they share the stories of founding their businesses—and the moments they knew they’d made it. It boils down to: What does success as an entrepreneur look like?
“Women entrepreneurs are leading with passion for their business, confidence, and optimism for the future,” Peterson-Sheptak, head of Business Banking at PNC, said. “We need to make sure we have the resources and people to support their success.”
She has deep expertise in providing strategic counsel on issue-based communication, crisis management, market entry and corporate reputation across diverse industry groups.
Margery founded APCO in 1984 and transformed it from a company with one small Washington office to a multinational consulting firm in major cities throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
Read the interview with Margery conducted by Vanessa Ogle at Medium. Rich in detailing and incredible insights are shared.
Here’s an overview of traits and practices required to succeed as a leader today and a look at the factory model that can help aspiring managers ascend.
But bosses, too, can face their own share of challenges navigating tricky relationships with people they manage. So what do you do when you have to deal with a toxic employee?
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| ©2024 Laurel Delaney. All rights reserved. |
When Jim asked to explain what would protect his company from the inevitable assault by huge companies with deep pockets and vast preexisting customer sets, he said: “Inertia! Our competitive advantage is their inertia. By the time they wake up, the game will be over, and we will have won.”
WRONG.
Jim states: "It doesn’t really matter who gets there first, so long as you figure out a way to produce a better solution, doggedly persist in bringing that solution to the world, and continually improve. And if you happen to have the misfortune of being first, of being the early leader in market share, then keep in mind that someone—right now—is learning from your mistakes."
Read the full article here for context and understanding.
Thus the creation of the Nipple Bra, which the company released alongside a campy faux-educational climate video starring Kardashian, and a pledge that a one-time donation of 10 percent of sales would go to the charitable network One Percent for the Planet. The then $62 bra went viral and sold out in less than a month.
This is how you come up with an idea and launch. Mind you we are not Kim Kardashian but we can still come up with great ideas and execute them. Why just look at all the successful WPO members!
Read the entire article here.
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Here are four lessons leaders can take to guide their teams when disaster strikes.
He goes on to say, "I realized that we were an interdependent network of relationships. And they cared about us. They didn’t want us to die. It changed Whole Foods forever, because from that point onward, we began to take seriously each one of these different relationships and to try to do right by them, to create value consciously for all these different stakeholders."
Read the full interview here.
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| 21st Annual WPO Chicago Summit 2024 |
Allison Maslan, CEO of Pinnacle Global Network (https://pinnacleglobalnetwork.com), was recently named “One of the 10 Women Entrepreneurs to watch in 2023”, by Forbes Magazine. She is the Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author of, Scale or Fail, which is endorsed by Daymond John and Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank. Allison’s built 10 successful companies over the last 40 years.
Here's what we learned from Allison:
If you, the CEO, are still rescuing projects, deadlines and micro-managing team members while chasing after clients, you are not going to be able to scale. Instead, you are choking the growth of your company.
It is critical that you become 'un-required' in your business and build a team-managed company that can flourish without you there. It is also important that you expand to a more scalable model that can multiply your impact, profits, and the number of people you serve.
In addition, she showed us:
I'd like to thank Foley & Lardner for hosting us – especially the extra assistance from Partners Lauren Loew (and Ellen Wheeler) along with their assistants Lorri Kilavos (and Cynthia Bailey).
Our Steering Committee members get a big shout out for their help:
Huge thank you to Allison for sharing her experience with us.
Gratitude to all for achieving a super success at our 21st Annual WPO Chicago Summit 2024! A few photos can be found here.
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