Posted by Kate Stence on Mon, Apr 26, 2010
Overcoming Your Fears: The Entrepreneur's Journey
So you want to be an entrepreneur, right? That was my life dream. It was my solution for "having it all": a successful professional, personal and family life. These were my motivations. What are yours?
Like many entrepreneurs, I had major fears before taking the plunge. Having the entrepreneur’s dream, and making it a reality are two different beasts. There are many mental roadblocks that can inhibit you from taking the plunge:
I’m not sure about my idea. What if I fail?
Failure is what happens when you stop trying. No idea is perfect. Ideas evolve much like people. They grow, change, and need to be nurtured to blossom. Too many people think the idea is the key to entrepreneurial success. In reality, the idea is just the starting point. The challenges come with the journey that follows.
When I started Marry Me Live, I was a true idea romantic. I quickly realized that business success could not rely on the idea alone. Execution and evolution is the key to business prosperity. Although we are still true to the original mission (enabling everyone to attend the wedding regardless of geography), everything else about the business has evolved and changed in one way or another.
It is such a big risk. Is it worth giving up job security?
We all say we want to be an entrepreneur when times are bad. The question you need to ask yourself is “Would I still be willing to give up my job when times are good?”
Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. There is risk. There are ups and downs. It takes a certain mindset to stay positive when things look bleak. If the entrepreneurial drive is stronger than the benefits you receive at the best of times, it is time to re-evaluate your situation.
Look yourself in the mirror and determine if your current position is getting you closer to your entrepreneurial dream. If the answer is “no”, staying in your current situation is the “bigger” risk.
I'm scared. How do I get over my fear of “taking the leap”?
You are likely reading this article because you want to take the leap. You are halfway there. You’ve done your research. If you have not done your research, start by talking to entrepreneurs. You will realize that they are not super humans, but everyday people like you and me. Those individuals took the leap because their passion for their business overtook their fear of failure.
Still not convinced? Do something that scares you just a little bit everyday. Talk to that handsome stranger in the elevator, go skydiving, sing karaoke in a very crowded bar, whatever it is that gets you out of your comfort zone.
When you realize you are still alive and breathing, you may be closer to taking that leap after all.
I cannot afford to be an entrepreneur! How will I finance the business?
If you are passionate about being an entrepreneur, you will find creative ways to make it work. It could be a part-time job, friends and family investment, small business loan, or being a full-time employee/nights and weekend entrepreneur.
Keep in mind that you may not be able to afford your current lifestyle. Being an entrepreneur takes sacrifice. But, when you have the vision, the sacrifice is worth it.
These are a just a few of the many thoughts that I’m sure are swirling around in your head. After reading this, if you still think you want to be an entrepreneur, the best advice I can give you is to not over-think the process!
The biggest hurdle of all is keeping your fear of the unknown in check. The entrepreneur’s journey is risky, but it is that same risk that can make your dream a reality. You will never feel completely prepared, but that is what makes the journey so thrilling. Once you realize this, taking the plunge is much easier than you think. So step back, relax and jump!
About the Author:
Stacy Yamaoka is the co-founder of Marry Me Live, a live wedding streaming and wedding webcasting service enabling wedding couples to share their wedding LIVE with family and friends around the world. Stacy Yamaoka is also the Director of College Mentorship for Future Women Leaders.
Posted by Kate Stence on Mon, Oct 19, 2009
Mentors Wanted for Stanford Women in Business Club
Your insight and guidance could be invaluable and shape the life of a Stanford student. Along with FWL, Stanford Women in Business (SWIB) is looking for professionals (male and female) to become mentors for undergraduate students. We welcome any prior experience in consulting, finance, marketing, communications, nonprofit, venture capital, entrepreneurship, management or other creative business-related experience. Mentors and mentees are carefully paired, and venues and suggestions are provided to encourage communication. Program participants are also welcome to come to SWIB and FWL events during the year. Kindly find sign-ups online at Stanford here, on FWL's College Mentorship page, or directly reply to collegementorship@futurewomenleaders.net for more information.
Posted by Shradha Balakrishnan on Tue, Aug 25, 2009
A guest post by Vera Devera
For attendees of FWL's recent signature event, the question "How many degrees of separation are you from Kevin Bacon" can now be "How many degrees of separation are you from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg?
The "how many degrees" question was popularized in the late 1990s when a character on the TV show Mad About You posited the question. However, it's been around since 1929 when a Hungarian writer, Frigyes Karinthy described the phenomenon in a short story called "Chains." The term "six degrees" came much later in 1967 when sociologist, Stanley Milgram, decided to test this theory in an experiment called "The Small-World Problem." Milgram discovered that the average "length" of the path to any one person is five.
As you probably have come to realize, making connections and building relationships is one of the keys to success in your professional life.
On Tuesday, August 11, Future Women Leaders presented its annual signature event, "Transitioning Careers & Industries" at Varnish Fine Art Gallery in San Francisco. The event featured a unique silent auction where time with professional coaches and women business leaders were bid on, ultimately raising nearly $800 for Future Women Leaders programming and scholarships. After an hour of networking over cocktails and gourmet Vietnamese hors d'oeuvres prepared by Le's Catering Kitchen, over 80 women and men gathered to hear keynote speaker, Lori Goler, Director of Human Resources at Facebook, now the fourth largest site in the world.
Goler immediately set expectations, admitting that if one were to look at her bio, they would not see a functional resume - she had not become Director of HR at Facebook by the traditional route of increasing responsibility in the same functional area. After earning a bachelor's degree from Yale University, Lori entered Kennedy School of Government to study public policy. Over the summer, she interned for Walt Disney Company. Lori then switched tracks to earn a Master's of Business Administration in addition to her master's in public policy, from Harvard Business School. Her previous summer internship helped her get her foot in the door for a real job at Disney, where she spent two years conducting strategy and business planning for the consumer products businesses. Intuition told Lori that she must re-evaluate her career path.
Lori continued to share with us how she leveraged her personal relationships with former business school classmates, not particularly to get a job at their companies, but to gather information on the business climate and landscape. Each call she made turned into an opportunity. For example, when she left Disney, shortly thereafter, a friend from grad school was pregnant and frustrated how there weren't any cute clothes for expecting mothers. Initially an idea born in a living room, Lori - with her background in strategic planning at Disney - was there from the ground up to help transform her friend's spark into babystyle.com, a thriving online retail business with 200 employees. {Read more about Lori's background including 5 years at eBay by clicking here.}
Goler admitted that she doesn't participate in formal networking, such as attending events for specific groups, and that the opportunities that have come her way were because she leveraged her personal social network. In fact, she had gotten in touch with Facebook's COO, Sheryl Sandberg, through a friend at a party. She also told us that she initially didn't want the human resources job, trying to rationalize her lack of any formal experience in recruiting. However, she couldn't deny she did have experience in hiring more than 300 people over her career.
Ironically, while Lori isn't a serial networker, her team of recruiters at Facebook frequent LinkedIn and friends-of-friends of current employees -- how's that for making 6 degrees of separation work? For now, she's happy to be on the ground, building a young company with amazingly talented people. This week already, Facebook has reportedly grown twice as fast as fellow social media site, Twitter.
Being a Future Women Leader member for the last couple years and a grad of FWL's Leadership Development Program (LDP), Lori's story of "transitioning industries and careers" definitely resonated with me. Through LDP, I had a better understanding of my Myers-Briggs personality in personal and work settings and also learned ways to practice leadership in different situations. I went on to find a career path that was more aligned with the personal values I had identified in LDP and my personality style (I'm an ENFJ). Like Lori, I'm a builder and enjoy being part of something in the beginning where passion over years of experience really counts. Finally, I credit my own social network for helping me to find my current job. When I started at my new company, I learned that the person leaving the position I was filling was going to succeed my previous role at a company I had left in 2007! The world is definitely small. Thanks, Stanley Milgram for 6 degrees of separation...and thank you, Lori, for showing us that an un-functional career path and building lasting relationships can result in something truly extraordinary!
P.S. I, and the other 80 FWL signature event attendees, can say we are now 5 degrees from Mark Zuckerberg!
About Vera Devera:
Vera Devera is a do-gooder by day (Account Executive at Donordigital, an online fundraising and advocacy nonprofit consultancy) and also moonlights as a special event planner (Va de Vie Events). She is currently a featured Weddzilla.com blogger and also blogs about her $10,000 wedding.
Posted by Megan Bergtholdt on Wed, Jun 24, 2009
FWL has the privelege of having Lori Goler, director of HR at Facebook, speak on the topic of transitioning careers and industries. Lori speaks from experience, having started her career at Walt Disney Company focusing on strategy and business planning for their consumer products businesses.
In the spirit of encouraging mentoring among women, we'll also be featuring a silent auction where you'll be able to bid on time with a prominent local business woman. Hope to see you there!
RSVP HERE!
RSVP HERE!
About Lori Goler, Keynote Speaker
Lori Goler is the Director of Human Resources and is responsible for all aspects of Facebook's people strategy including growing, developing and retaining the Facebook team. Lori joined Facebook following five years at eBay, where she led consumer marketing with responsibility for marketing strategy, brand management, advertising, and consumer promotions. While there, she also served as General Manager of the eBay Stores business. Lori was a founding member of the executive team at babystyle.com where she led operations and merchandising. In that role, she led the roll-out of babystyle.com which became a leading online retailer in the category. Lori started her career at The Walt Disney Company focused on strategy and business planning for the consumer products businesses. Lori holds a bachelor's degree from Yale University, a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School and a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government.
Posted by Dyna Lopez on Wed, Apr 29, 2009
I attended HubSpot's San Francisco Meet Up at Julian's at Metreon on Monday. HubSpot is the ultimate internet marketing machine powering up small to medium sized online businesses and organizations such as Future Women Leader's (FWL) site. The Cambridge based software company is in town for the two day Inbound Marketing Summit, its co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah are guest speakers.
I say machine in a figurative sense to describe their extensive services such as marketing analytics and lead tracking...and...just for kicks, since it's such an archaic term that represented the 1ate 18th and early 19th century when great discoveries and inventions, such as coal and electricity, transformed society and was only made possible by an entrepreneurial and capitalistic spirit. Fast forward 180 years...
That same spirit was buzzing all night at the mixer as I weaved my way through a reserved corner section of the bar. Approximately 60 or so of the mostly 25-35 year old looking crowd of multimedia entrepreneurs and startup founders were a friendly bunch. I arrived about half an hour into the event as people were engaged in lively conversations while noshing on hearty appetizers and drinks - free!
I spotted the only familiar face in the room, FWL Leader and HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Expert, Erin Colbert who invited me to the mixer. We chatted for a bit before she was whisked away into the thick of the mingling crowd - a hostess' got to do what a hostess' got to do - keep the party moving and guests happy.
I met some interesting folks such as Get Talked About's co-founders, Andy Angelos and Marty Hitzeman, a month old Chicago based startup and Castro Valley's Crashproof Solutions, one of ten startups that CEO Leonid Knyshov is hatching. I met a young woman; I apologize for not having her information, from a London based public relations firm that has a San Francisco satellite office. Impressed by her ambition, I told her about FWL, its workshops, special events and blog and she seemed intrigued. It helped that I told her "I'm sharing this information with you because I see you as a Future Woman Leader!" in my poor Ed McMann (You've won XX million dollars!) impersonation.
This was HubSpot's first open to all social mixer and it looked like it was a success. I left a little more than hour upon arriving and about one third of the crowd was still engaged in each other's ideas, plans and aspirations.
I asked my roundtable of fellow diners (Get Talked About and the PR woman) if the recession is affecting their business and their city. Unaffected, they shrugged the over used word off, saying they're not worried, that their business is not being negatively affected by it. Actually the PR woman said her firm is doing very well. That's the no fear spirit that consumers and businesses need to hear. That same talent and ambition that fueled the industrial revolution will only help steer this 21st century year old country upward.