Get Unstuck Program

Pursue what you are born for.

Our Get Unstuck program is off to a great start. The conference call on Friday, 8/28 at noon CDT was at maximum capacity so I tried my best to take a couple of you one-on-one to brainstorm about steps you might take to get you where you need to be with your life and your business.

For those who were on the call or a one-on-one with me, thank you for sharing. I truly enjoyed meeting you. I hope our connection was beneficial to you. I'll try to schedule a call like this once a month because I sense there is a real need amongst all our readers and, at the every least, it's a great way to realize that you are not alone with your ambitions.

Next call: September 28th at noon CDT. If you are interested in participating, email me early to ensure you make it in (ldelaney(at)laureldelaney.com). For now, happy Sunday.

Women Entrepreneurs Take The Lead

Here are some of the reasons why women entrepreneurs are taking the lead in our economy.

Get Unstuck

Stuck in a rut? Hate your boss? Hate your job? Hate your life? Every moment of being stuck is a lost opportunity.

Pursue what you are born for.

This blog serves as a resource to women who want to Escape From Corporate America and we always encourage you to move forward even when everything seems to be headed in reverse.

Need help? I am setting up a conference call for one-hour on Friday, August 28 at 12:00 p.m. (noon) CDT for the first 20 women who are interested in chatting about steps to take toward starting a business. We will discuss some of the challenges you face and how to overcome those obstacles in order to get unstuck.

If you are interested in participating (no cost to you other than the call), email me at ldelaney(at)laureldelaney.com and I will send you the call-in information. Look forward to hearing from you!

Explore Other Options: Start a Business

Whether you are based in the United States or the UK, why bother waiting it out on a promotion?

Study: Women overlooked in the UK for promotion in recession.

Don't let it happen to you. Explore other options. Get going. Start a business. Promote yourself.

Go After What You Want

Does It Take a Man to Add Star Power to Fox Business?

Would one of my female entrepreneurial readers please step up to the plate and contact Fox Business to offer your talent to increase their viewership?

Will it really take Don Imus (pictured) -- Mr. Lovable I am sure to so many women -- to lift up Fox's ratings? Oh puh-leeze.

For those unfamiliar, back story on Imus:

The talks with Mr. Imus would have been inconceivable little more than two years ago, when he was fired from CBS Radio after he was widely criticized for joking about the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos” on the air. MSNBC, which like CNBC is a unit of NBC Universal, also canceled its simulcast of the show, saying that Mr. Imus “went so far over the line that it was time.”

About six months later, he was hired by Citadel Broadcasting to resume his radio talk show.

How fast we forget and how desperate some can be. Read this to believe it.

In Pursuit of Happiness Minus Money

Keeping momentum when a business slows down is not easy, especially if cash flow starts to dwindle. Take Joanna D'Angelo, owner of Tea Together, she had this problem, but not because business was bad, rather, she merely needed a bridge loan until her next busy season.

While shopping for loans last month, Ms. D’Angelo walked into Chase, a preferred lender of loans backed by the federal Small Business Administration, and walked out a short time later — minus any money.

“We tried a few other banks, but they all had impossible conditions,” she said. “We did not qualify for an S.B.A. loan, something they were very adamant about.”

According to Ms. D’Angelo, Tea Together failed to qualify at Chase because the business was fewer than three years old, though she did not know if that was the Small Business Administration’s or Chase’s rule.

Ms. D’Angelo joins other owners of small local businesses who are finding credit hard to come by, even with the help of federal stimulus money directed to help.

Read more here.

Photo from Tea Together shop.

The Official Escape From Corporate America Makes Top 30 List

We are delighted to announce that our official Escape From Corporate America (www.escapefromCorporateAmerica.com) blog is proudly featured on:

She Takes On The World
Top 30 Business and Entrepreneurship
Blogs by Women

We are honored and humbled to be among so many gifted women entrepreneurial bloggers.

Thank you so much!

Open For Business Despite Awful Economy

What's it going to take to bring our economy back to full health? Hold up a mirror. Yes, it will be folks like us: entrepreneurs and small businesses. We are the lifeblood to innovation and getting things done.

But with the support of the Small Business Administration (SBA), things can only improve. Read more here.

Additional resources:

Women Entrepreneurs || SCORE

More inspiration here.

The Art of Bootstrapping

Sramana Mitra showcases a dozen entrepreneurs and the lessons they learned while bootstrapping their way to success in her latest book, "Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction."

Find out how bootstrapped entrepreneurship is truly the weapon of mass reconstruction and how the twelve profiled entrepreneurs did things on their own terms through lots of hard work.

In a world filled with fear and uncertainty, this is surely a book that brings hope to all who aspire to run a successful business. So buck the trend, back yourself (whatever venture it may be) and read this book.

Control Your Destiny

There's so much talk about work life balance choices and how it's nearly impossible for women to get ahead (break that glass ceiling) in Corporate America when they take time off to have a family.

I chose entrepreneurship because I wanted freedom, flexibility, a creative outlet without restrictions and total control over my destiny. Part of the control is to select the stress level I am willing to handle (if I must) and balance it with the positives in my life ... family, good health and a positive attitude.

Read what Jack Welch recently told the Society for Human Resource Management at its annual conference about why "There's no such thing as work-life balance." Why Jack is talking about this and not Suzy, I don't know.

Let's turn to you. Are you able to have work-life balance as an entrepreneur? Tell us about how you juggle running a business, managing a family and nurturing your happiness factor.