Block Off Your Morning and Plan How You Are Going to Handle Your Inevitable Cyberattack

Have you hired your first Chief Risk Officer (CRO)?  You might want to start considering.  This is the new robbery.  Here's a crash course on protecting your company from ransomware, deep fakes, and other cybersecurity threats.  It starts with addressing 4 critical questions that you need to answer.

Remap Fear Into Opportunity

Ali Kriegsman, co-founder of Bulletin online marketplace, chronicles her entrepreneurial journey – warts and all – in her debut book, “How to Build a Goddamn Empire,” which details her path from corporate employee to pivoting and scaling a major business. The book features stories and advice from 30 other female founders who built companies of various sizes and stages.

Learn more about how to push past fear and remap it into opportunity.

"I might be the first, but I’m not going to be the last," says President Terry Wheatley

This week marks a big moment for Vintage Wine Estates. Not only is the wine producer going public with a $690 million IPO, but the company’s president Terry Wheatley will also be making history as the first woman to take an American multi-hundred-million-dollar producer public.

 "I might be the first, but I’m not going to be the last," says Terry Wheatley, President, Vintage Wine Estates.

She goes on to say:

“I look at my career and the time spent to get where I’ve gotten, and I’m mentoring young women now. Their careers are accelerating so much faster. There aren’t the hurdles that I had coming through the industry and when I describe them to them, they’re, I don’t want to say surprised and shocked, but some of the wars that I’ve been through, they don’t have to fight those battles. We fought them for them, so now their careers are accelerating I think twice as fast or three times as fast as what mine did. So, I won’t be the last woman taking a company, a multimillion-dollar company public. There will be more after me and probably in a rapid pace because more and more women are rising to the C-suite level.”

Read the entire article here.

Breaking Gender Barriers and Building Thriving Businesses

A case study by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, examines what it takes to break gender barriers and build thriving businesses in an emerging startup hub.

About the case study and Professor Kanter

The challenges of creating an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem can be seen through the stories of four women—two of them Black, one Latinx, and one white—who launched new enterprises in Miami with an eye to diversifying tech jobs in the future. According to a recent case study by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, their experiences permit an inside look at pushing past barriers.

Read the entire article here.

How to Tell If You or Someone Else Will Make a Great Leader (Within 5 Minutes)?

Answering these 10 questions (honestly) with "often" or "almost always" would certainly indicate that you or someone else may be fit to lead at a high level.

Who Is the Minority Group of Business Owners in the USA?

Well what do you know.  White men are now the minority of business owners in the United States.  Read on to learn more.

How Mentorships and Peer Groups (Like WPO) Can Make a Difference

Women Presidents' Organization Los Angeles 1 Chapter member and CEO and President of Marketing Maven Lindsey Carnett (pictured) writes a wonderful article about the importance of mentors and peer groups for support and expertise to women business owners.

The big call to action from Lindsey?  "Remember – it is very rewarding as a mentor. And do not keep WPO to yourself. Spread the word to those qualified women who can be stronger with the support of fellow business owners through a proven peer group."

Read the entire article here.

How to Generate $1 Billion a Day in Revenue

©2019 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

Gosh I wonder what it would be like to generate $1 billion a day in revenue and what it would take to support it (e.g., people, products, processes and so forth).  Well, Apple can give you a glimpse of how it is done, what products are selling, and whether the momentum is sustainable.  Learn from the big guy.  Oh, here's a glimpse of what Apple CEO Tim Cook said:

Cook said on a conference call with analysts that all five of the best-selling smartphones in the U.S. during the quarter were iPhones. The top two sellers in China were iPhones. Four of the top six in Japan were iPhones. The top four in the U.K., iPhones. The top six in Australia, iPhones.

Another interesting detail.  They apparently are not experiencing any global supply chain issues.

What's your best-selling product or service offering?  Think you can take it to $1 billion a day in revenue?

Read on.

Women Business Owners Survive and Thrive During Global Pandemic

More than half of women business owners are the breadwinners in their families. 

Among women of color, it’s an even greater share — 65% — and these breadwinning entrepreneurs are being disproportionately affected by the pandemic, according to a report by small business platform Gusto and the National Association of Women Business Owners, which polled about 1,200 women business owners.

And here's the deal.  The hardships breadwinning women entrepreneurs have faced during the Covid-19 pandemic have led to a $1 billion drop in spending on children, a recent report estimates.

Learn more about what these women business owners have had to do to survive and thrive during the global pandemic.

Financial Freedom Is a State of Mind

According to Tony Robbins, financial freedom is not just about money.

“We all want to be truly free,” Robbins writes in The Path. “Free to do more of what we want, when we want, and to share it with those we love. Free to live with passion, with generosity, with gratitude and with peace of mind. This is financial freedom. It’s not an amount of money; it’s a state of mind.”

Check out his 8 steps to financial freedom.

Finding a Mentor or Experienced Adviser

Connecting and networking with experienced advisers can help your business grow.  To find a mentor, you need to open your eyes and ears.  Oftentimes, they can be right in front of you – even in your own WPO chapter.

While getting a mentor may seem like common sense, there's a gap between knowing a best practice and putting that knowledge to use. 

Forbes indicates that 76 percent of people think mentoring is important, but only 37 percent currently have a mentor. Having a mentor increases the chances of success and helps avoid the costly mistakes of entrepreneurship [and business ownership.]

Learn the common, costly mistakes a mentor can help your business avoid or mitigate, where to find mentors, how to be a good mentee, and where to turn for additional resources.

Bluedog Design #1 for Best Places to Work in 2021 by Crain's Chicago Business

Culture matters.  Just ask founder and CEO of Bluedog Design, Michelle Hayward (pictured), who just earned the #1 spot as the Best Places to Work in 2021 by Crain's Chicago Business.  We are busting our buttons with pride because Michelle is a force for good and also a WPO Platinum member.  We are thrilled for her and her team on earning this extraordinary achievement.

It takes creativity, hard work, tremendous effort and 'intent' to achieve this honor, especially during such a harrowing time in our lives.

Congrats to Michelle Hayward and her team.  Great leaders inspire others to become great, too.  Lead on! 

Learn more.

How to Push Forward When You Are Tired

What sustains your work, especially when you are tired?

Have a look at 4 women who talk straight on what keeps them moving forward – from making an impact, to remembering your why, to listening to music, to connecting with new people.

Read on.

Jump-Start Emotional Engagement Among Your Employees

Financial results are an outcome, not a root driver for employee performance. A growing body of evidence tells us that overemphasizing financial targets erodes morale and undermines long-term strategy. 

When a leader spends the majority of their airtime on a “make the numbers” narrative, it creates a transactional relationship with their employees, making them more likely to create transactional relationships with their teammates and customers.

Learn how you can jump-start emotional engagement among your employees, keep your focus on building belief in the larger purpose of the work.

12 Ways to Spark Motivation

At Sara Moniuszko's latest article for USA Today, she starts with, "Feeling unmotivated?  You're not alone!"

She goes on to say that with the one-year anniversary of pandemic lockdowns in the United States and no definitive end to the pandemic in sight, many are struggling now more than ever to spark and maintain motivation.

Sara rounded up 12 ways you can try to spark some motivation, whether for work or play.  Test if they work for you.

Let's Sharpen Our Business Leadership Skills Post COVID-19

Let's reexamine the way we lead our businesses and our people, and redefine strength itself. 

COVID-19 has ushered in a new template we should be following when recruiting our managers and team leaders. Those with highly developed “soft skills” will be the ones who take our organizations into the future.

Read on to learn what leadership looks like post COVID-19.  It requires real change.

How to Stand Out in Someone's Inbox

You may think storytelling would come in handy if you’re preparing for a presentation, but Lee Lazarus and Janine Kurnoff, founders of The Presentation Company and co-authors of the book Everyday Business Storytelling, say it can also help your email get answered.

The challenge with email is to cut through the noise and stand out in someone’s inbox.  Here's how to do it.

Are You Experiencing COVID-somnia?

With March being National Sleep Awareness Month, we thought it only fitting to talk about how sleep is so hard to come by, especially during a global pandemic. 

In fact, so many people have been having trouble catching zzz's that scientists and reporters have coined this widespread sleeplessness "COVID-somnia." And as we approach the one-year mark (or "coronavirsary") this month, stress and uncertainty might very well continue to wreak havoc on our shut-eye.

These three nonfiction sleep books might help you come up with some practicable and effective sleep solutions so you can better manage your business and your personal life.

Reach Your Greatest Potential By Strengthening Your Mental Muscle

Reaching your greatest potential doesn’t require you to work harder by adding desirable habits to your already busy life. Instead you can work smarter by eliminating the routines that erode effectiveness and siphon off mental strength. 

Here are the 13 things mentally strong people don’t do.

The Story of Presidents' Day

It all began in 1800.  Following the death of George Washington in 1799, his February 22 birthday became a perennial day of remembrance. 

While Washington’s birthday was an unofficial observance for most of the 1800s, it was not until the late 1870s that it became a federal holiday.  Senator Stephen Wallace Dorsey of Arkansas was the first to propose the measure, and in 1879 President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law – the first to celebrate the life of an individual American.   Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, signed into law in 1983, was the second.

Read on to find out the story of Presidents' Day and who championed to shift the celebration of several federal holidays from specific dates to a series of predetermined Mondays.