20th Annual WPO Chicago Summit: The Art of Balancing Style With Substance (9/14/23)

AI Is Changing the Workplace

Unlike many tech companies that are actively downsizing office space and waffling on RTO timing and policies, AI companies are seeing the need for physical office space to do their suddenly desirable work. 

Artificial intelligence could be the savior of the office building. 

The real estate services firm JLL estimates that by the end of 2023, AI companies will occupy 17.2 million square feet of office space across the country.  

Life Centricity: What It Is and How It Captures Growth Amid Uncertainty

According to Accenture, businesses today need to take a broader view that allows them to see customers in their full lives and adapt to their ever-changing needs and priorities. They call this life centricity.

A life-centric approach is built on understanding that people are multifaceted, and that they embrace their own complexity. It involves keeping a finger on the pulse of the external forces that impact modern life (whether economic, social, cultural or beyond) and finding ways to respond that create value for all. Companies with life-centric strategies are willing to make bold, creative changes to the heart of what they do, whether that means upending business models and internal operations or reimagining who their customers are.

Learn more about the 5 distinct and empirically-proven ways that companies on the path toward life centricity are capturing growth amid uncertainty.

Focus On Max of Two Growth Pillars At a Time

What separates the startups that succeed over those who fail? I am sure a lot of WPO members could tell you.

While the author of this article doesn't have a crystal ball to predict everyone’s futures, Martinez does have a wealth of stories and experience gained from his work scaling his company. 

He offers his top five growth lessons, with the aim to help you avoid making the same mistakes that he made early on while scaling a business from $0 to $1M ARR.

How Scaling Is the Missing Innovation Discipline

Companies make significant investments in developing and incubating new business initiatives, but too few follow a rigorous path to scaling their ventures.  Is that you?

Scaling is the missing innovation discipline. Indeed, when these authors assessed the innovation frameworks used by 15 large corporate incubation units, they found that only four mentioned scaling. 

Why is that?  Let's take a look.

The Road to the Top for Camille Burns, CEO, the Women Presidents Organization

WPO CEO Camille Burns (pictured above) spoke with SUCCESS about the road that led her to the top of the Women Presidents Organization and her hopes for the future of all women entrepreneurs.

Her answer to the last question:

With all the demands on a woman president’s time, something has to give. And when you join a group like WPO, you’re committed to showing up. That’s an opportunity for women to get out for a few hours and escape everyone needing them. It’s healthy to be around peers you can learn from. Other women will have workaround solutions for extremely busy lives, because women still have more of the burden outside the office and in their personal lives. Juggling all of that is challenging, but you still have to do things for you. 

Read the entire interview here.

Women Are In a Renaissance of Entrepreneurship

Seizing the opportunity is what successful entrepreneurs do best. But ingenuity for new company founders also plays into it.

Since the start of the pandemic, women, particularly women of color, have become the leading drivers of business creation in the U.S. In 2020 and 2021, women accounted for 49 percent of new business launches, according to a study by Gusto, a human resources software company, compared to 42 percent for men in 2021. 

Meanwhile, nearly half of female-led startups in 2020 were launched by women of color. In 2019, the share of new companies founded by women was just 28 percent. 

What's driving the surge?  Find out here.

Wildly Successful Businesses Run By Women

No longer are female business leaders an anomaly. Although there are still more male-owned businesses, women entrepreneurs are catching up, owning 42 percent of businesses in the United States, according to American Express. 

Get some inspiration by learning about the successful businesswomen who run Fortune 500 companies.  And for even more inspiration on wildly successful privately-owned businesses run by women, visit the Women Presidents Organization.

Prudential and Women Presidents Organization 6/28/23 Chicago Event a Super Success!

©2023 Laurel J. Delaney.  All rights reserved.

We blogged about the Prudential + Women Presidents Organization 6/28/23 Chicago event here, under the theme of "Transitions: Strategies For Business Owners."  It was a super success!  Huge turnout virtually and wonderful, engaging group in person.

WPO CEO Camille Burns (moderator and pictured above at left), AJ Goehle, CEO, Luci Creative (second from left) Margo Jacquot, PsyD, CSADC, BCETS, Chief Care Officer & Owner, The Juniper Center, and Karen Hoffman (far right), CLU®, ChFC®, CASL®, Vice President, Advanced Planning, Prudential Financial discussed concerns and strategies to help ensure that ownership of your business is transferred smoothly when the time comes.  They also addressed approaches for transferring wealth to people and organizations that you care about.

Thank you to all who made the program a success:  Emot Farley (Prudential), Megan McDonough (WPO), Judy Walk-Pearce (WPO, and Giana Dominguez (WPO).

And of course a big thank you to the panelists for their fun and informative discussion and to all the people who attended virtually and in person!

From Exit to ESOP

When contemplating selling her business, Michelle Hayward, founder of Bluedog, did some research. 

She had developed a highly capable leadership team. When she exited, she wanted them to benefit, too. For her, there was only one solution. An employee stock ownership program (ESOP) was the fastest path to exiting Bluedog and driving future value for her employees. Employee ownership takes the company's award-winning culture and the accountability for maintaining it to the next level. It rewards employees by making them owners. 

Read the entire article here.

Transitions: Strategies For Business Owners (Event 6/28/23)

Two WPO Chicago members, WPO CEO Camille Burns (moderator), and Prudential VP of Advanced Planning Karen Hoffman will discuss concerns and strategies to help ensure that ownership of your business is transferred smoothly when the time comes. 

Approaches for transferring wealth to people and organizations that you care about will also be discussed.

If you are a business owner, feel free to join us Wednesday, June 28, 2023 at 4:00 PM CT.

To learn more and to register (virtually or in person), visit: https://www.women-presidents.com/news-events/events-programs/Prudential-and-WPO-Discussion-Panel

10 Best Practices For Rewards and Recognition Programs For Employees

Simply put, employee recognition programs reward and acknowledge employees for their contributions and achievements. This can take many forms, from traditional bonuses and raises to non-monetary rewards like extra time off or public recognition. The key is tailoring the recognition to the individual and their accomplishments.

Here are 10 best practices for rewards and recognition programs for employees and some innovative strategies for employee recognition. 

The State of Girls and Women in STEM 2023

Created annually by National Girls Collaborative Project, this March 2023 resource presents a high-level summary of the most compelling statistics and research on the state of girls and women in STEM, focused on K-12 Education, Higher Education, and the STEM Workforce. 

At the Women Presidents Organization, we encourage more girls and women to enter into STEM.  It is crucial to understand that gender inequity in STEM is driven more by perception than by reality.

Download the document here.

The Best CEOs Continually Improve

"Success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure." – Andy Grove

How do CEOs (business owners) avoid complacency and sustain high performance through the middle years of the role? There is no magic formula, but from these authors research and experience in the field of CEO excellence, they are confident the odds are greatly increased by the following:

• Enhancing your learning agenda
• Taking an outsider’s perspective
• Collaboratively defining the next S-curve
• Future-proofing the organization

Read on to learn more about all of the above.

Minority Business Ownership Differs By Sector

As the U.S. population has become more diverse, ownership of U.S. businesses has changed.  There were more Hispanic-owned businesses overall and more minority-owned businesses in various sectors in 2020 than a decade earlier, according to the Census Bureau’s 2021 Annual Business Survey (ABS).

Approximately 20% or 1.2 million of these employer businesses were owned by minorities. They employed about 9.9 million employees and had annual payroll of $357.4 billion.

Learn more about who owns America's businesses and how minority business ownership differs by sector.

The Entrepreneurial Journey

JP Morgan | Chase asked business owners and leaders to share the strategies, priorities and principles they’ve embraced throughout their entrepreneurial journey.

Here's what they said.

Vegas Events: The 2023 WPO Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum

Come one, come all – it's finally here:  The 2023 WPO Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum May 10-12, 2023 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel Las Vegas.

Check it out here and learn from WPO members the answer to this key question:  Why did you join WPO and what have you gotten out of it?

See you in Vegas!

U.S. Women Entrepreneurs Are Fueling Business Growth

In the United States, many women are fueling this newfound growth in entrepreneurship, creating around half of all new businesses in 2022.

They are the future of work.  Learn why.

Join the Women Presidents Organization in Vegas for the Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum May 10-12, 2023

It's not too late!  JOIN me along with 750 other women business owners from around the world who will be arriving in Las Vegas for the annual Women Presidents Organization Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum. This is the most amazing program of the year for WPO.

Our WPO CEO Camille Burns sums it up nicely in this LinkedIn post.

To learn more and to register, visit here.  And be sure to stop in at the Pre-Forum Workshop I'll [Laurel Delaney] be moderating on Intentional Growth Beyond Borders (May 10th at 9:30 AM local time).

See you there!  

Helping Kids Launch Big Ideas of Their Own

Jess Ekstrom, Founder of Headbands of Hope and Mic Drop Workshop, launched a multi-million dollar company out of her dorm room in college.  

In this interview with Jessica Abo, she shares how it all started and her advice for kids and teens who want to launch their own big idea.