Birthing the Elephant: The Woman's Go-For-It! Guide to Overcoming the Big Challenges of Launching a Business - Softcover

Abarbanel, Karin; Freeman, Bruce

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580088872 ISBN 13: 9781580088879

Verlag: Ten Speed Press, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

"This positive and practical guide for the first-time entrepreneur details the life cycle of a small-business launch with real-life stories and a slew of helpful hints and strategies."
-Publishers Weekly PW and AARP's Roundup of Spring Books for Baby Boomers, 4/15/08

Customized for the female entrepreneur's unique psychological experience of launching a business, Birthing the Elephant goes beyond logistics to prepare women for the emotional challenges they will face, with expert advice on reshaping one's business identity, giving up the paycheck mentality, anticipating problems, and avoiding costly mistakes. This supportive handbook gives the small-business owner the staying power to survive and succeed in the business of her dreams.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

BRUCE FREEMAN, nationally known as the Small Business Professor, is a syndicated columnist for The Tribune News Service. He is the president of ProLine Communications and serves as an adjunct professor of marketing at Seton Hall University. Bruce lives with his wife and two daughters in Livingston, New Jersey.

KARIN ABARBANEL runs a marketing communications firm and served as Avon Corporation's spokesperson for its "Corporation to Cottage" initiative. She is the author of How to Succeed on Your Own and coauthor of The Art of Winning Foundation Grants. Karin lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

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BIRTHING the ELEPHANT

The woman's go-for-it! guide to overcoming the big challenges of launching a businessBy KARIN ABARBANEL BRUCE FREEMAN

Ten Speed Press

Copyright © 2008 Karin Abarbanel and Bruce Freeman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-58008-887-9

Contents

Acknowledgments............................................................viiiEntrepreneurs and Experts..................................................ixForeword...................................................................xiIntroduction...............................................................1Chapter 1 Design Your Destiny.............................................5Chapter 2 Real Stories behind Real Start-ups..............................19Chapter 3 Substitute Brains for Bucks.....................................38Chapter 4 Take the Leap...................................................62Chapter 5 Stage 1: Start Your Start-up....................................82Chapter 6 Stage 2: run Your Own Show......................................108Chapter 7 Stage 3: turn Breakdowns into Breakthroughs.....................133Chapter 8 Stage 4: Find Your Business Rhythm..............................157Chapter 9 Avoid the Ten Biggest Pitfalls..................................178Chapter 10 Welcome to Your new life!.......................................194Resources..................................................................198Notes......................................................................203Index......................................................................205About the Authors..........................................................210

Chapter One

Design Your Destiny

Having a business isn't really about control, but I get to design my own destiny. -SUZANNE LYONS

You're ready to strike out on your own. Finally, you're going to do work that you love-work that reflects your personality and passions and is in harmony with your family's needs-and, oh yes, you're going to make lots of money while you're at it! It's time to run your own show. You've paid your dues. You've earned this chance, haven't you?

Come down from that castle in the air for just a minute! It's true that being your own boss offers many potential rewards. But it will also make some startling new demands on you: the need to do more with less, assume unfamiliar risks, wear many hats, and, at least for a while, give up the trappings of success. Still want in? Of course! We all do.

In making this decision, you've set an ambitious but totally achievable goal. All around you, women are reinventing themselves as entrepreneurs and transforming their personal visions into fulfilling work. Every sixty seconds, five women launch new ventures somewhere in the united States. That adds up to more than seven thousand start-ups per day-and more than 2.5 million a year. Astounding, isn't it?

What's fueling this surge in women-owned start-ups? First and foremost, there's the turbocharged internet, which has boosted small-business owners' power and reach in amazing ways. In just a few short years, the Web has triggered a small-business explosion by creating dynamic new sales and marketing channels-and providing niche sellers with easy access to millions of niche buyers. It's also leveled the playing field by enabling small businesses to compete for profits and court customers on a 24/7 basis. One entrepreneur described the awesome experience of standing in an internet cafe in Hong Kong, watching her website pop up-and realizing that at that very moment she could order her product halfway around the world from her home-business base in Orlando!

The internet is also a vast ocean of information, with many an island of advice created especially for entrepreneurial women. Online "e-zines," networking groups, funding sources, training tools, and market data are all just a quick click away. These resources offer not just valuable facts and figures but also a sense of community: today, women-owned businesses are building support systems that are both vibrant and enormously diverse.

Stage-of-life shifts are also stoking the entrepreneurial engine. If fifty is the new forty, then there are vast numbers of women who have years of productive, high-speed living ahead of them. As they ponder fresh ideas about how to spend that time, many baby boomers who've made their mark in corporate jobs are exploring new work options more attuned to their changing self-images and aspirations. You may be one of them yourself!

All this growth creates enormous clout: today, as never before, women are attracting attention and resources from major companies who want their goodwill and, more important, their business. To woo women entrepreneurs, these companies are offering seed funding, running conferences, and showcasing the success stories of women business owners. This intense corporate interest is great news for you. all in all, there's never been a better time to launch your start-up.

Winning the Small-Business Mind Game

Despite the promising climate for entrepreneurs, the realities of small-business ownership remain as daunting as ever. According to the U.S. Small Business administration, one-third of all new ventures won't survive their first two years and more than one-half won't survive through year four. What separates those who make it from those who don't? You might think it's money. Most people do. While that's a big factor, it's not the biggest one. We've spoken to top entrepreneurs and small-business experts all across the country, and most people in the trenches agree that the real key to success is winning the small-business mind game.

Succeeding takes more than courage and business savvy. It also takes a whole new mind-set. To survive a start-up, you need to learn how to think and act like an entrepreneur.

In making this move, you're not just changing your job, or changing your lifestyle, or changing careers. You are changing your identity. At a stroke, your office, your title, a regular paycheck, the rhythm of your workday, the deadlines, the business lunches, the built-in support system-are gone. Suddenly, you're on your own: everything begins and ends with you.

Unless you can cultivate an entrepreneurial approach, even the strongest business plan and rock-solid expertise won't be enough to ensure that your enterprise survives and thrives. And unless you can find the inner strength to rebound from the setbacks you'll meet, you'll find yourself down for the count no matter how promising your new venture is. Moments of doubt can be triggered by the loss of a client, a product disaster, or the incredible shrinking bank balance that plagues most start-ups.

How you respond to challenges like these makes all the difference to your success or failure. You can either collapse in a heap or find the staying power to land on your feet. This is the most demanding aspect of making a small business work-pushing past those times when you feel overwhelmed and everything seems to be falling apart.

Different Paths, Shared Goals

The gifted women you'll come to know in these pages all have different backgrounds and have traveled different roads in building their businesses. Yet we found four themes running through their stories:

1. Seizing the moment: Almost all the women we spoke with experienced a sense of urgency once they committed to launching. When...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Ten Speed Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1580088872
• ISBN 13: 9781580088879
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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