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The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on February 26, 2001. What's in vogue for women entrepreneurs?By DOROTHY P. MOORE Special to The Post and Courier Business Major Conversations with presenters and entrepreneurs during a mid-year speaking engagement at the National Association of Women Business Owners Conference and at a board meeting of the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship suggest some important trends. Practicing entrepreneurs are more and more focused on marketing. Have you thought of developing your brand name and image? You may be surprised at the new angles it provides for developing your personal and business career. Robin Fisher Roffer, owner of Big Fish Marketing, counts among her clients ABC, A&E, CNN, Comedy Central, TBS and Oxygen. In her new book, "Make a Name for Yourself-Eight Steps Every Woman Needs to Create a Personal Brand Strategy for Success," she identifies key steps to developing a successful marketing strategy to increase personal and company visibility. Robin recommends that you start by finding out who you are, defining your dreams, and making them a reality by going after a target audience. If your strategy doesn't appear to work, avoid a "crash and burn syndrome." Recruit "a squad of cheerleaders." Become comfortable with your skills and be willing to develop new ones. Then devise a new plan and benchmark it. Most important, says Robin, is to learn how others are branding you. The image they have may not match the one you hold of yourself. Where possible, take the upper hand and develop your own personal brand image first. The work doesn't stop here. It is necessary to reinforce your brand and practice brand consistency to lead to the kind of response you want from the publics you approach. Your end objective is to have your name lead others to make positive associations. Robin's idea of brand strategy allows you to step outside the neatly packaged box you ordinarily reside in and begin thinking about your personal career and your business in terms of marketing concepts. Another NAWBO keynote speaker, Bonnie St. John Deane, has been featured on NBC Nightly News as one of the five most inspiring women in America. She presented another view of career branding. A national spokesperson for Disabled Sports/USA, and highlighted in People, Ebony and Essence magazines, Bonnie will make you think twice about saying "I can't." With only one leg and very big dreams, she became an Olympic ski medallist, a Harvard honors graduate and a Rhodes Scholar. She held a host of executive spots in corporate America and in public service before taking off on her own business venture. The key to her success, she says, was the willingness to get up again and again after the spill. Her book, "Succeeding Sane, and Getting Ahead at Work Without Leaving Your Family Behind," offers a number of helpful hints for a fuller career. Measuring and benchmarking your career in terms of a brand strategy development is not just wrapped up in the spectacular events cited by these two entrepreneurs. It starts with increasing self-awareness and developing and honing skill sets. In my book, "Careerpreneurs-Lessons From Leading Women Entrepreneurs on Building a Career Without Boundaries," I define how women business owners use three strategies for building a successful career. They include the definitive styles of corporatepreneurs, entrepreneurs, and boundarypreneurs. In a questionnaire completed by a large group of women entrepreneurs at the NAWBO conference, the majority identified their strategy as that of a boundarypreneur. They saw their options as endless. They felt they could be a business owner today but if a better alternative came along tomorrow they would be ready to make that transition. Such flexibility is the in vogue wave of the future. Being capable and ready to move back and forth by using talents well honed from the private ownership environment to working for someone else under just the right set of conditions can measurably increase the opportunities for success. Colleen Lohnes, a partner with the Streamline Group, a business development company dedicated to helping small-business owners build world-class businesses, suggests that your business can be your golden parachute or your legacy if "you can transform it to work for you instead of because of you." In Careerpreneuring terms, this means that you are open and free to be in the driver's seat to determine your own best future options. There are other changes you can make to build brighter career options. One is to develop a global perspective. Leslie Grossman, president of Communications/Marketing Action, a New York-based publicrelations/marketing firm for high-growth companies, points out that 97 percent of all exporters are small businesses and two-thirds of them have fewer than 20 employees. Perhaps your new brand image may include a move into this market - one that you yet have not tapped. Another part of building that successful career is to take your team along with you. The place to start, according to Susan Solomon, president of Solomon Communications in Arizona, is to learn how to coach your employees to success. It begins by listening. It is healthy to check and see how well you are doing. A test question is to ask how much of the listening time you spend thinking about your response. Barbara Merkt, founder and president of Tampa, Fla.-based High-Tech Communications Consulting Inc., which serves clients in the $10 million to $100 million range, adds another perspective. She suggests outfitting your business for success by creating a "marketing boutique" atmosphere. By this she means combining high tech and marketing strategies to address the right target audience. The key to a successful image is to develop your label yourself rather than being labeled by someone else. For Questions/Comments about this site, contact dot.moore@comcast.net. Site designed by Jackye Cocoros. |