Seed for Success | Empowering Women Entreprenuers

Our Seeds For Success finalists are now well into the contest, and each has launched their website and made great strides in growing these three businesses. Along the way they have received coaching and mentorship from Carolyn Kepcher’s team of business experts.Yet another thrilling milestone for them was their recent opportunity to speak with the legendary Bobbi Brown, who offered the following advice for Karla, Dana, and Abby:

Karla Duncan:

Karla has such a great idea. Having been a speech therapist, she has had first hand experience in the industry and knows there is a need for these products. Karla has a clear understanding of how and where to express her ideas (trade shows, etc.) and has great networking skills she can put to use in these venues. She also has incredible follow through which is essential in order to maintain and build on the success of her products after they launch.

When I spoke to Karla and gave her advice she was like a sponge, open to learning everything she could from me.  I talked to her about the importance of developing a press kit and press contacts. I told her that public relations is integral for the successful launch of a product.  In other words, don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth and buzz.  I advised her to create products that were different from the competition, and to call out these points of difference in all of her communications to the press and consumers.

Karla’s campaign is one that pulls on your heart strings and that’s something that’s going to strike a chord with consumers. I know she has sold me on her idea and I wish her the best of luck in her endeavor.

Dana Rubinstein:

I was impressed with Dana and how ahead of the game she is in her planning to start her company. She is now at the point where she has to determine who she wants to target and just go for it! Also, she has done her homework and has a very good grasp on the market for natural products for babies.  She recognizes the need for her products and I have no doubt that she’s going to be wildly successful. When I launched my line I introduced the concept of brown-based lipsticks, which was a novel concept at the time. I thought I was going to sell 100 lipsticks in a month and I ended up selling 100 in a day! One piece of advice I gave Dana was to minimize her expenses by hiring people in her family to help get her business off the ground. I had my sister in law handling my expenses when I first started out!

Abby has an advantage because she has previous corporate marketing experience. Because of this she is great at networking and understands the necessity of public relations to launch her business. Something that really impressed me about Abby was that she really knows where she wants her business to go and is extremely organized about getting there; she sees the whole picture which is really significant for long term success. I told her to make sure she stays on this path and always follows her gut. My advice for Abby, as she is well on her way to success, is to stay true to the essence of who she is and what she is trying to accomplish with every product she puts out on the market. Also, she should always be aware of her competition and focus on her point of difference.

This week we are pleased to welcome mentor Cathy Greenberg, PhD– executive coach, co-author of What Happy Companies Know ( with Dan Baker and Collins Hemingway), What Happy Women Know (with Dan Baker and Ina Yalof), Discover Your Inner Strength (due in early 2009!); and founder of h2c,LLC. Here is what Cathy had to say about our finalists progress….

Having spoken with Karla, Abby and Dana, it was clear that they were very capable women, each with a great business idea.  It was also clear they needed to know the difference between a Coach and a Mentor.  As a Coach, my role is help them learn enough about themselves to help them develop  “personal mastery”  and to transfer some basic skills so they could continue to grow into successful business people by also knowing themselves better and asking the right questions:
 

• How do they like to make decisions and why?
  

• What are their preferred styles of leadership?
  

• When do they need to listen to their inner voice and when do they need to seek advice?
  

• Who can they turn to when they need support?
  

• Why is their “personal mastery” a vital key to their individual success?

Being an Executive Coach as well as a successful business consultant in two of the world’s largest firms, CSC and Accenture, where I managed over 859 people on three continents, I learned that at the root of every business success was a leader who took the time to learn about themselves.  We call this discovering your inner strength.
 
Step 1
My first job as a Coach (not just a Mentor- or someone who tells you how they did it and how they were a success) was to provide each of the winners with a personal profile to help them understand themselves well enough to be able to ask the right questions and to increase their awareness about who they were as decision makers and leaders.
 
If you are interested in a personal profile you can certainly take mine by going to www.h2cleadership.com, but you may also go to the American Psychological Association Website and looking at all the profiling tools available.  Most companies who have your best interests at heart and want to help you bring the best of your skills to the workplace will have you take a personal profile assessment at some time in your career.  These are not used for hiring or firing but for helping “apply your strengths” on the job. Many of these tools are also available in management and leadership books you may have on your shelf. 
 
Here are some examples and places to get a personal profile or assessment tool:
 
www.authentichappiness.com offers a list of free tools to assess happiness as well as personal style which can also be found in their book: Authentic Happiness, by Martin E.P. Seligman, PhD.
www.truenorthleadership.com offers a host of tools and assessments on leadership style and emotional intelligence both on their site and in their book, The Leaders Playbook by R.Nadler, Ph.D.
 
Step 2
To learn more about coaching and personal style for business success you can go to the internet or your local library for these books on the subject of coaching and performance.
 
Personal and Executive Coaching: The Complete Guide for Mental Health Professionals by Jeffrey E. Auerbach, PhD.
Coaching for Performance: Growing People, Performance and Purpose by John Whitmore.
The Psychologists Book of Self Tests: 25 Love, Sex, Intelligence, Career and Personality Tests Developed to Reveal The Real You by Louisa Janda, Ph.D.
The Power of Self Coaching: The Five Essential Steps to Creating The Life You Want By Joseph J. Luciani, Ph.D.
What Happy Women Know: How Findings in Positive Psychology Can Change Women’s Lives for the Better, by D. Baker, PhD. and Cathy L. Greenberg, PhD.
 
All of these books are easy to read and are readily available at Amazon as well.
 
By tooling yourself with information about “you” and how your style impacts others through buidling your  “emotional intelligence” you can increase both your life satisfaction and your job effectiveness by more than 50% in just one session.
 
Step 3
Happiness is a critical factor and a key to success both personally and professionally.  When your talents and skills are matched to your role and your responsibility, your happiness and satisfaction on the job increases.  When you are delivering on your “talents” through the role you have in the job you are in your happiness increases by as much as 93%.  Research just released in 2008 shows that there is a .89% correlation between optimism and leadership success.  At h2c, LLC we believe that the bottom line on personal profiles and success is “Happiness=Profit”! 
 
When we combine Steps 1, 2 and 3 we can begin to see why self knowledge and having a personal executive coach can make all the difference in being a “happy leader” who is successful.  That’s my job and I love it!  So join in and take the challenge to learn about yourself on the journey to being a successful business owner,  business leader or entrepreneur….your success is tied to your ability to develop “personal mastery” where the new science of happiness can make a dramatic difference in your long term success.  Stay tuned.  As I help our Seeds For Success Winners develop their plans for personal success, I will continue to share insights with you as well. 
 

Oft-quoted workplace communications and leadership expert Peggy Klaus recently brought her whirlwind energy and brilliant advice to our Seeds For Success finalists…and they happily report that they will never present themselves or their businesses the same way again!

Finalists Karla, Abby, and Dapple partners Dana and Tamar graciously allowed me to push and prod them during our coaching time together. In each session, the focus was on how to effectively present yourself and your business, including learning how to brag (the right way, of course!) to the media, the investor community and to family and friends. While we’ve all been raised to think that brag is a four-letter word and that talking about our accomplishments is a big no-no, in today’s competitive business world self-promotion is a necessity, not a choice. And entrepreneurs especially need to be able to toot their own horn because no one is going to do it for them. So, knowing how to talk about yourself and your company in a conversational, story-like fashion– as if you were telling a good friend about an amazing trip you’ve just taken– has become a must-have skill. The following advice given to Karla, Abby, Dana, and Tamar will benefit any entrepreneur when it comes to presenting and self-promoting:

1. Complete the Take-12 Self-Evaluation Questionnaire at www.peggyklaus.com/brag/ questionnaire.htm

2. After the questionnaire, it’s time to create what I call a bragologue. Ranging from thirty-econds to three-minutes, bragologues grab the listener’s attention. You’ll want to have your bragologue equally ready for an elevator pitch at a moment’s notice or a carefully orchestrated meeting with an investor.

3. Spend time putting your bragologue together in different ways for different audiences. Continually update and hone them to keep them current and fresh. By doing this you will be armed and ready to promote yourself in any situation.

4. Whether talking to a reporter, a group of investors, colleagues at a networking event, or any audience that make us feel anxious or judged, most of us dial down our level of energy a few notches when we present. To prevent this, practice going OVER -THE -TOP by delivering your content in a highly exaggerated fashion. That way when it’s show time, your energy and enthusiasm will be at exactly the right performance level.

5. Using an upward inflection at the end of your sentences (i.e., turning a declarative statement into a question) confuses the audience and makes you appear unsure of yourself and lacking authority. Before speaking, prompt yourself with the words “Declare” and “Convince” to force a downward inflection and create an impression of confidence.

6. Be ready for the zingers—those unexpected questions that challenge you and bring up your weakest areas. Before each meeting, think about what the zingers might be. Write them out, answer them, and practice them aloud. Then you’ll really be ready to zap those zingers.

7. Watch yourself on video or listen to yourself on audiotape, then critique your performance for both content and style. Did you get in your core message? Were you interesting, concise, energetic? Warning:  Vocal speed does not need to equal your level of passion!

And remember, in the famous words of Dizzy Dean, or Satchel Paige, or Walt Whitman, and whomever else this quote has been attributed to:

It ain’t bragging if you done it!