Be Intentional About Your Public Speaking Goals

How do you go from having zero skill to mastering your craft? It’s not just about putting in the hours. It’s about the right kind of practice and monitoring your progress along the way. It turns out any skill can be gained quickly through what I call progressive mastery.

Here are the 10 steps to progressive mastery Brendon Burchar followed to learn public speaking.

RIP: Theresa D'Angelo, Founder of Three Businesses

Theresa D’Angelo received a patent in 2015 for a device inspired by the cover for a swimming pool. Her daughter, Madelaine, described it as “a people catcher.”  She died March 10, 2018 in her Grand Island home after seven-year battle with metastatic breast cancer. She was 59.

“She loved to work and loved being an entrepreneur,” her daughter said.

D'Angelo was the founder of three businesses:  Rail Services, Complete Auto Network and Complete Personnel Solutions.

She [Theresa] was a board member of the New York Staffing Association and a member of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council and the Women’s Presidents Organization. An advocate for inclusion and diversity, she encouraged young women in their careers.

Learn more about gifted entrepreneur and problem-solver Theresa D'Angelo here.  May she rest in peace (RIP).

Essential Characteristics of Successful Businesswomen

How do you succeed in business?  There are many essential characteristics that successful women business owners carry. Here's a look at a few.

5 Things Tory Burch Wants You to Know About Business Ownership

Through her work, designer Tory Burch has met hundreds of small-business owners from New York to Shanghai.  Below, she shares the advice that has helped her over the last 14 years.

1. Believe in yourself.
2. Buckle up and know that it’s going to be a tremendous amount of work.
3. Be open to new ideas.
4. Seek out opportunities.
5. Think bigger.

Full article here on what Tory wants you to know.

Criticism, When Delivered Thoughtfully, Helps Teams Perform Better

In "How to Use Criticism to Your Advantage," the author talks about how criticism hurts for a reason but it doesn't mean it can be avoided.

Criticism, when delivered thoughtfully, helps teams perform better and helps people improve their behavior. It also wakes people up and makes them realize they can’t be complacent. If people on your team are doing a terrible job, they deserve to know so they can improve their work. And if your partner is acting in a way that upsets you, he or she should know why.

Put some thought into your next criticism.  And remember, never attack the person; instead criticize the action.

Believe in Entrepreneurship

Starting a business requires hard work, perseverance and smarts to bring it beyond the million dollar level.

There’s no easy path, no get-rich-quick scheme that will make your business thrive other than you.

What do you need to have in order to start a thriving business?

1. A responsible fear.
2. Realistic expectations.
3. Short and long-terms goals.

Read more here.

WEGGinar™: Creating a Workplace that Works:

Joselyn DiPetta, Google and Managing Partner, Present Possibility is passionate about empowering teams and individuals to expand their view of what’s possible. Her focus on women’s leadership, diversity and inclusion, and leadership alignment is a platform for the creation of holistic solutions that transform people and cultures in service of achieving exceptional results.

In this WEGGinar™, Joselyn covers how to:

• Develop a deeper understanding of diversity and inclusion
• Understand why diversity and inclusion are critical to successful and sustainable business outcomes
• Learn about the importance of fostering an environment where everyone can fully contribute
• Learn about unconscious bias and the importance of addressing it

View the WEGGinar™ by visiting: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/1837790091765976835.  It's complimentary thanks to companies who support WEGG: IBM, UPS and Bank of America.

What Women Entrepreneurs Can Do to be More Successful

Kerry Hannon, contributor for Forbes, interviews Carla Harris (pictured), chair of the National Women’s Business Council (NWBC), a 30-year-old, nonpartisan federal group that serves as an independent source of advice and counsel to the President, Congress and the U.S. Small Business Administration on economic issues of importance to women business owners.

One key question:  What can women entrepreneurs do to be more successful?  Harris says:

Women entrepreneurs should leverage the resources already in place, as there are a plethora of supports across the country specific to women business owners. In a thriving ecosystem, there are in-person and virtual incubators and accelerators, SBA resource partners such as SCORE, Women Business Centers and Small Business Development Centers, as well as online educational resources that provide powerful knowledge throughout the business lifecycle.

And of course the Women Presidents' Organization powers prosperity for women business owners too.

Read the entire interview here.

5 Soft Leadership Skills That Affect the Bottom Line and Create Hard Results

Managing the personal portion of leadership while still achieving goals and hitting deadlines requires the art of leadership, as opposed to the science. As the leader, you’re managing for results and outcomes. But results don’t come without relationships, connections and personal investment.

If you’re not getting the results you want, it may be the soft stuff that you’re lacking.

Here are the five soft leadership skills that affect the bottom line the most directly, and how leaders can develop them.

Read more:  5 Soft Leadership Skills That Affect the Bottom Line

In the Digital Economy, Speed Matters

According to an MIT Sloan Management Review article, Jeanne Ross says, "To keep pace with customer demands and competitor moves, companies must be able to quickly experiment with a potential offering and, depending on customer response, continuously enrich and scale that offering, or discard it and move on to the next experiment."

Ms. Ross claims that innovating at speed means utilizing empowered teams that are aligned to achieve company-wide objectives.

Read more about how to empower your teams and architect your company for agility.

Find Finance. Find Mentors. Find Balance.

Women entrepreneurs face many challenges when they start companies.  That said, to make it easier on women, all companies should be supporting the move towards more diverse perspectives and inclusive attitudes at every level of the business world.

As the article below, states, "understanding and quantifying the challenges faced when starting a woman-centric business may help to break down the systematic prejudices and level the playing field for women in the entrepreneurial sector."

Read more about finding finance, finding mentors and finding balance as you build a business.  And of course joining WPO can help you overcome all of these challenges.

A Few Good Winning Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs

Who isn't always looking for a good winning strategy that brings success to a business that much faster?

Here are eight (8) winning strategies from a book, Think Bigger, that will help you enlarge your thought processes on what it takes to run a successful business.

Read:  Winning Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs

Be Unique and Intelligently Greedy When Others are Fearful in 2018

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

As Tony Robbins said to entrepreneur and author Tim Ferriss, “Winter is coming.” Everything is cyclical, so make sure you’re prepared to be intelligently greedy when others are fearful. When people are myopically fixated on problems, they often leave opportunities in plain sight.

Read more on what will make your business a success in 2018.

Happy New Year!

Season's Greetings and Best Wishes for a Prosperous New Year

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

Make Your Team Thrive in 2018

Yes, it's doable:  you can start a business and have a baby at the same time.

When Caitlin Zaino, Founder of Porter & Sail, a hospitality company, was expecting her first child, she was desperate find an example of another female founder who’d juggled childbirth and running a startup.  She found the role model she was looking for in Birchbox co-founder Katia Beauchamp, who shared this advice.

“Everyone wants to think that they are the most important person in an organization but the team still thrives, if you’ve done your job well, all should move forward.”

So when the time came, Caitlin took time off, wanting to show that it was more than OK for anyone — even the founder — to take time away for a new baby.

Read more about how you can strike out on your own, start a new company, grow the economy, and have a baby.

WEGG Enables Global Growth for Women Business Owners

Laurel Delaney writes for the WPO blog:

Women-owned firms that export,” reports the White House Council on Women and Girls, “not only earn more but employ more people and are, on average, more productive than women-owned firms that do not.”  But estimates show that only 12 percent of women-owned SMEs in the U.S. export.  Either women do not think they have what it takes to export or they lack the appropriate support, such as training, education, and advisory networks.

Solutions are available.  Visit Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global

WEGG is a proud partner to the Women Presidents' Organization

Fire Clients Who Hold You Back

I am a big fan of Marshall Goldsmith and this article is one of my favorites because it rings true on so many levels for me.  The biggest nugget in the article below is how toxic relationships -- whether a client, customer, employee, boss or group -- can hold you back.

Which relationships should you continue to develop, and which should you gently let go? In business, Goldsmith recommends that customers be referred elsewhere (fired) when they do these six different things.

The bottom line is that it isn't terribly hard to cut ties with people or groups who bring you down.  And when you do, you lead a more stress-free and healthy life.  And that can only be a good outcome.

When It Comes to Women Business Owners and Babies, VCs Ignore Them

The struggles of a breast-pump startup underscore venture capitalists blind spot when it comes to women and babies.

Venture capitalists, however, do not appear to share my [author at The New Yorker magazine] enthusiasm for breast-pump #disruption, perhaps because the industry is ninety-three per cent male. 

Read more about why mothers who are business owners don't seem to be worth anything to venture capitalists.

Screenshot: Medela

Stand Like a Rock

©2017 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." -- Thomas Jefferson

Inspiring Quotes from Women Business Owners and Leaders

As Sara Blakely (pictured), founder of Spanx says, "Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else."

Discover other inspiring quotes from women business owners and leaders.