Five Ways Working Mothers Can Carve Out Some 'Me-Time'

Contrary to what this article purports, I believe all women, whether employed at BIG companies or running their own show (business), should create a:

"to stop" list!

Now go carve out time to carve your pumpkin. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Giving Notice

Giving Notice: Why the Best and Brightest are Leaving the workplace and How You Can Help Them Stay by Freada Kapor Klein appears to be an eye-opening book (haven't read it yet) filled with tell-it-like-it-is approaches for solving the current imbalance and challenges us to change our hidden biases in the workplace.

It should be required reading for all corporate folks in top executive positions and especially for those who head up HR or diversity responsibilities! After all, we want to understand why more and more people are escaping corporate America for entrepreneurship.

Freada Kapor Klein (San Francisco, CA) is an internationally noted consultant and diversity expert. She has been quoted in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and on the Today show, Nightline, and NBC Nightly News.

Does Birth Order Matter On Becoming An Entrepreneur?

Do you think it matters whether you are first-born or last (the baby of the brood) when it comes to becoming an entrepreneur?

According to Jeffrey Kluger in a Time magazine article, he thinks it does. It's murky but the conclusion is such that birth order affects fundamental personality traits and we all know that certain characteristics such as the ability to sell something and to take on well-thought-out risks are vital to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Of all the things that shape who we are, few seem more arbitrary than the sequence in which we and our siblings pop out of the womb. Maybe it's your genes that make you a gifted athlete, your training that makes you an accomplished actress, an accident of brain chemistry that makes you a drunk instead of a President. But in family after family, case study after case study, the simple roll of the birth-date dice has an odd and arbitrary power all its own.

I am the youngest of four children and definitely fit the bill on what Kluger says on later-borns also are more willing to take on risk (I am the only entrepreneur within the family). For instance, research by Ben Dattner, a professor at New York University, shows that firstborn chief executives prefer to make incremental improvements, while later-born CEOs are more likely to make transformational changes.

Read more here and feel free to weigh in with your thoughts. Curious to know whether you agree or disagree based on your birth order or that of others who you track.

No Room for Entrepreneurs

I saved this clip, "No Room Room for Entrepreneurs" by Mary Anastasia O'Grady published in the Wall Street Journal October 8th (available only to subscribers but I just found a reprint of it online at the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research) because I have always been a fan of the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950). He was one of the most brilliant minds who ever lived, and had an electrifying personality to go along with it. Without his knowledge, we would never have understood the concept of what it means to be an entrepreneur.

Schumpeter felt entrepreneurs are not moved by a wish to grow rich but rather the desire and will to conquer, to prove oneself superior to others and to succeed by utilizing one's energy and ingenuity to make something progressive happen -- not for the sake of success alone. I really believe in that theory.

But back to O'Grady's fine opinion piece.

In a speech last year to European finance ministers in Vienna, Mr. Schramm explained Schumpeter's fears: He "worried that entrepreneurial capitalism would not flourish because the bureaucracies of modern government and big corporations would dampen innovation -- the process of 'creative destruction' would be too ungovernable for a modern, Keynesian-regulated economy to tolerate." As a result, Mr. Schramm said, Schumpeter thought that "the importance of entrepreneurs would fade over time as capitalism sought predictability from governments who would plan economic activity as well as order social benefits."

Schramm is president of the Kauffman Foundation of Entrepreneurship.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

How To Get A Better Handle On Your Customer Base?

If you're a BIG company, put more women on your board! Why? Because your company will perform better. Read more here.

Let the Grant Process Begin

The Small Business Administration plans to approve grants for older Women's Business Centers by mid-January, finally implementing a program signed into law four months ago.

In all, there are 98 Women's Business Centers across the country. Last year they provided training and counseling to nearly 130,000 small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.

A worthy cause that should never be an issue or in question.

More here.