More often than not during WPO chapter sessions members claim when running their businesses that they just need to get out of their own way to move the company ahead.
On May 6th, we sent out the following message privately to all WPO Chicago members:Many of you participated in the WPO annual conference in Chicago 2006 when we had Gary Hamel as our keynote speaker. According to yesterday's WSJ article he continues to be ranked No. 1 as an author, consultant and key influential business thinker.Afterwards, I followed up with the author of the article, Erin White, and mentioned how I had the great privilege of listening to Gary Hamel, Jim Collins and Malcolm Gladwell at WPO annual conferences over the past three years and that I am glad she asked the question, where are the women? I ended my message with "please remember my name" for perhaps some day I might be a part of the list (gutsy, I know).
And for those who had the opportunity to attend this year's conference in Boston with Malcolm Gladwell, he's featured as No. 4 on the list.
The question becomes and the article points this out ... where are the women?
More, more, more on our fabulous Boston conference."Global integration is the new playing field ... and innovation is the way you win the game."
Speaker, blogger, author and entrepreneur-extraordinaire Marilynn Mobley, Senior Vice President, Strategic Counsel at Edelman, considered the absolute best public relations firm on the face of the earth, gave a knock'm dead presentation at our conference on how to generate great ideas that drive innovation.
Were it not for our WPO founder, Dr. Marsha Firestone (pictured), none of this would be made possible.
We have returned from an exhilarating conference and will continue to blog about it.
Yesterday was magnificent listening to Malcolm Gladwell's presentation on, "Learning From Picasso and Cezanne: Ways of Understanding Creativity," covering two great creative geniuses who may seem similar but are really quite different in terms of how long it took them (approach) to become great masters of work. 
Our conference is set to begin shortly with our founder, Dr. Marsha Firestone, giving opening remarks and keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell (pictured) is up first to address a crowd that is expected to be more than 600 members, sponsors, supporters and facilitators of the Women Presidents' Organization.
We are getting ready to head to Boston to take in all our WPO conference has to offer. If time permits, I will try to blog about what's happening. After all, with so many great keynote speakers -- from Malcolm Gladwell to Sung-Joo Kim to Marc Lautenbach -- there will be much to learn and talk about. We wish to share more information about our annual conference in Boston April 23-26. Visit here (Part II) and here (Part III).Our annual conference held in Boston this year is just around the corner: April 23-26. Have you signed up yet? If not, don't wait a second longer.
Our very own Ann Sachs (pictured), President & CEO, Sachs Morgan Studio, Theatre Design Specialists, earns the distinction of the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner. Each year, the Signature Awards (photos available for viewing here) recognizes women who best exemplify the commitment, determination and endurance that it takes to create a successful, long-term business.
This is a wonderfully inspiring entrepreneurial story by Jim McCann, founder of 1-800-Flowers.com, as told to Patricia R. Olsen, at The New York Times (3/16/08). There are many important lessons in it for all of us who run a business. Why just look at how observant (sensitive) Jim was when he remembered this about his grandmother:MY father was a painting contractor who ran the business out of my grandmother’s house. His father died when Dad was 19, and my grandmother had to continue the business. For a long time she made believe that my father was running it, but we all knew it was she, in the background.So many twists and turns his career took but as he says in the end:
If you look at highly successful people, they make the same number of mistakes as others, but they recover quickly. They don’t sit around moaning about what they’ve done wrong.Now isn't that the truth? Read the entire article here.
WPO Chicago downtown I chapter member Sandye Lerner, President of Comprehensive Therapeutics, is inducted into the Chicago Area Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame by the University of Illinois at Chicago Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies.
In 2007, the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO) celebrated ten years of helping women presidents of multimillion dollar companies achieve even greater success. Over the course of those ten years, President and founder Dr. Marsha Firestone learned a lot about fast-growth businesses and has had first-hand exposure to their leaders..jpeg)
To many, small is the new big (and beautiful!). Are you wooing top-notch corporate executives to work at your growing business? If not, you should be. With the U.S. economy faltering a bit, a growing number of seasoned workers are finding themselves moving from large companies toward smaller professional firms.
We felt privileged to attend the inspiring celebration for WPO Chicago downtown II chapter member Mary Bahr on her being honored by the Network of Women Entrepreneurs (NWE) at their 15th Annual Entrepreneurial Achievement Awards Breakfast February 22nd.... an intelligent, giving and hands-on leadership style.Congratulations Mary. We are very proud of you!
Facebook and MySpace have made social networking famous -- but do you need to be a social-networking company to make use of social networks? A growing number of companies don't think so, and are beginning to create their own. What's their appeal and how will it help grow your business? Find out here.
Enterprising Women Magazine has announced the 2008 Women of the Year award winners. Out of the 76 winners, 22 of them are members of the WPO -- and two are from Chicago. We are so proud!
There has been a tremendous amount of chatter about social media and social networking over the past couple of months. Both mediums bring content and information sharing from a passive to an active experience for everyone from a President (like you) to an individual who makes coffee at your local Starbucks. Think Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Kaneva.Josh Bernoff and I conducted an interesting experiment. I (Jeremiah) encouraged the twitter community (social media, marketing, advertising mavens) to join in on providing real-time ratings about ads during the superbowl.The experiment was a huge success. They had over 2000 responses from over 70 people over a 4 hour period.
Coincidently, today is Super Tuesday where many Americans will be voting, and I see that Google and Twitter are working together to create a map mashup (read what a mashup is here) to show real-time voices of which user is voting for who.We encourage you to use these platforms as a way to grow your business, build meaningful user-generated content, interaction and long-lasting value for your clients, vendors, constituents, partners, visitors and shareholders. And if you are already, please let us know what you are doing and how you are doing it. We'd welcome a chance to share your success stories with the world.
Expect this trend of real-time rating through social media to continue, and by this time next year, I hope to work with a sophisticated group who can take our little experiment to the next level.
Posts
All Comments
