Category Archives: Financial

Wisdom From A Friend…Tell Me What You Need

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Some lessons are so simple, so obvious, yet so overlooked.  I learned one of those lessons from a friend of mine last week. 

We both volunteer with a program that educates women entrepreneurs in developing countries.  We love that work! 

As we talked about what we can do to provide really meaningful help, she said, “I’m glad that so many people are offering education and mentoring.  But sometimes they forget to ask the women they want to help, ‘What do you really need?  What would be most helpful to YOU?'”

Well then.  She’s right.  We’re smart.  We have lots of ideas.

We think we know what’s best for others. 

And we forget to ask what others really need.

So…because I offer online courses, training and keynotes for women entrepreneurs (and because I want to be as smart as my friend!), I’m asking YOU:

What do you really need?  What would be most helpful to you?

Think about the challenges you face as we come into the last half of 2013.  What could you learn that would be the most helpful for you?

Just scroll back up to the top and post a reply…I can’t wait to hear what you have to say!

Oh, and the more women you share this with, the more I will learn about what women need.  Thanks!

This Made Me Sad

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TearThis made me sad.

Yesterday I met with a woman who has owned a business for fifteen years. She’s really bright, knows her industry inside out, and provides great service.  She has an exceptional opportunity to grow because she’s put a fresh spin on an old concept.  I see lots of growth potential.

So why am I sad?

She’s broke.  In two weeks her rent and payroll are due and she won’t have the cash to make those payments.  In two weeks, it’s possible that fifteen years of work will go down the drain.  Worse, twelve employees will be out of a job.

How could this happen?

She doesn’t fully understand her financials and therefore doesn’t manage cash flow well.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s great with math.  She has stacks of Excel spreadsheets.  But because she’s never learned how to keep her books properly, the information is not well organized and not properly tracked.  Her personal finances are mixed in the business account—a big no no. So the data isn’t that useful.

She can’t really tell how – or even if – she’s making a profit. 

She doesn’t use any financial software.  She takes information off her bank statements and enters it into and Excel spreadsheet.  This is incredibly inefficient and eats up a lot of her time that would be better spent getting more customers.

I’m sad because she’s smart.  She just doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. 

When it comes to business, the first rule is…never, never, run out of cash.  There are plenty of other problems a business can recover from.  Running out of cash is fatal. 

If I could wave a magic wand, I’d make sure every woman who wanted to start a business would learn how to understand her numbers.   She’d learn how to track income and expenses in a way that will tell her which products or services are most profitable.

I’d make sure every women knew how to track all the right metrics and to have a clean set of books.

Every women would be able to answer this one question:  How does my company make a profit? 

If you don’t know the answer to that question, you can’t run your business successfully.

Not understanding your financials is one of the key factors in why women run smaller businesses than men.  For other factors, get my free report.)

Business don’t fail without clues.  Your numbers tell the story.  You can have all the passion, talent and innovative ideas in the world, but if you don’t know how to understand the relationship between what revenue comes in and what expenses go out, your business will not achieve full potential.

It’s women like the one I met yesterday that fuel my passion to teach female entrepreneurs.  With a little education, with a little help, she could be incredibly successful.

I just hope she can get through the next two weeks. 

You Were Born With Wings…

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The subject line of this short post is the beginning of a quote by the poet Rumi.  The full quote is:

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”

But just yesterday I asked a woman who owns her business what resources or education she would find most helpful to her as she thinks about growing her business.  She said, “I want to grow, I want to make more money, but I just can’t right now.  That would take time away from my son, and I just won’t do that.”

Her belief?  That it’s an either or choice.  That one comes at the expense of the other.

The combination of Rumi’s inspirational quote and my friend’s sad self-limiting belief reminded me of Sheryl Sandberg’s TED talk – it’s worth listening to, not just once but as many times as it takes to truly absorb the support and encouragement she offers.

Sandberg is talking about female executives – the messages they tell themselves, how they underestimate their own abilities, how they slide into self-doubt, and consequently lean back instead of leaning in.

I’ve seen the same behavior in female entrepreneurs.  Thinking small instead of thinking big.  Believing that growing your business equates to sacrificing your personal life.  Worrying that making our desires and expectations clear will make us less likeable.

These are just a few of the ways women pull back.  How we crawl through life instead of using our wings.

The facts tell us clearly that women run smaller businesses than men, and self-employed women earn only 55% of what self-employed men earn.  Ouch!

Read my report about Why Women Run Smaller Businesses Than Men. 

Then let me know what you think and how you experience your world of being a female business owner.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  

And remember, you were born with wings!

My Embarassing Near-Drowning Story

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It took near-drowning for me to learn tht working harder is a trap

by Darcie Harris

red flag.jpgLike most 17-year old girls growing up in southern California, I spent weekends at the beach. My girlfriends and I would pile into a car and head to 17th Street at Newport.

We slathered ourselves with a toxic combination of baby oil and iodine to acquire just the right color summer tan. (I’m dating myself, right?)

Of course the real purpose for our beach time was not tanning. We went there to meet boys.

I loved to swim, and in those days I was a good swimmer. But my girlfriends rarely went into the water. Why? Because you’d get your hair wet. Who wants to meet a boy when you have wet hair?

One day I did the very thing you are never supposed to do — I went into the water alone.

I swam out beyond the breakers, and cooled off. After a while, I noticed I couldn’t see my friends on the shore. I had ended up much farther out than I usually went.

I started to swim back in. But no matter how hard I swam, I couldn’t get any closer. I just kept swimming harder.

My arms burned. My legs burned. I was gasping for breath.

I paused to tread water, to catch my breath, and that’s when I saw the red warning flag at the lifeguard station.

It was a rip tide. A strong undercurrent was pulling me farther out and farther down the beach.

By this time I could barely breathe. I was exhausted but I started swimming again.

How dumb is this? I was about to drown but my 17-year old pride wouldn’t let me admit I was in trouble or, heaven forbid, look weak by yelling for help.

Thank God a lifeguard saw me bobbing around like a cork and dragged me in so that I could live to tell this humiliating tale.

It took nearly drowning for me to learn one thing.

Trying harder isn’t the answer.

I hope it doesn’t take near-drowning in work for you to learn that working harder isn’t the answer either.

Our business lives are increasingly demanding. The economy may be improving in some places, but it’s still a very competitive marketplace. Technology changes and improvements keep all of us scrambling to keep up. Social media has become a black hole we can fall into, emerging hours later with…what?

The myth is that if you work harder, you’ll finally get on top of things.

Let’s finally face the fact: if you are a female business owner or executive, there will always be more work than you can finish.

Instead of swimming harder, try these four things:

  1. Get very clear on your goals and what you want out of life. Make two lists: what are the five most important desires in your personal life and what are the five most important goals in your professional life. Then make sure that your professional goals will get you to your personal goals.
  2. Change your strategy — and perhaps even your business model — to make sure you reach those personal and professional goals. Think strategically about how you can work smarter and not harder. What can you delegate, outsource or stop altogether? Ruthlessly analyze what gets results and what doesn’t, so you know what to stop.
  3. Be ruthlessly diligent about prioritizing. Each week list out your Top Five Priorities and your Top One of Five. Use that as a guide to make good choices about what goes on your to-do list.
  4. Quit feeling guilty about saying “no” to things that don’t add joy or value. Make peace with knowing some things won’t get done. If it doesn’t move you toward your personal goals or your professional goals, this may not be the time or the season for it. No need to feel guilty about that!

I was reminded of this lesson that “Working Harder is a Trap” when I met a friend for a drink this week.

She told me that when she first started in her current business, she worked lots of extra hours — nights and weekends — thinking she’d “get ahead of the workload.” She was single and didn’t mind, so for two years she worked like a dog.

Then…she met a guy. Lo and behold, she’s found more to life than working! “It’s a trap,” she told me. “There’s no such thing as getting ahead of the workload. Looking back I can see now I had unrealistic expectations about what I could accomplish. Working harder just meant more work.”

Is a rip tide pulling you farther out to sea?

Falling in love was my friend’s “red flag” that working harder was not getting her what she wanted. What’s your “red flag” to indicate that you’re caught in a rip tide, and that swimming harder won’t help?

So, all you female entrepreneurs, if you’ve already figured out that working harder isn’t the answer, tell me what you do to help you make those tough choices about what to pursue and what to stop. I’d love to know! Leave me your comment below. Don’t forget to Get your free Webinar – “Working Harder is a Trap” and write your own job description!