Women's Enterprise Centre Blog: Blog

Blogging Made Easy (but Effective)

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 04:26:00 PM

Along with the serious work we do, we still know how to have fun here at the Women’s Enterprise Centre. We surround ourselves with great folks who not only know how to educate entrepreneurs (and teach us a thing or two as well) but can also be highly entertaining. Last week we invited Liz Hover, local blog-guru, to spend part of an evening chatting with us about all things bloggish (and since part of the conversation was about her Shih Tzu Sadie’s blog, it was about things doggish too!). Liz takes a somewhat revolutionary perspective on business blogs and believes that the blog should be the hub around which your website revolves, acting as a channel to some of the information that you want to send to the world. She notes that one of the chief reasons to blog is that it gives you a chance to change your website frequently (thus incenting a greater degree of search-engine optimization (SEO) that gets more people to your site. Naturally, this is the desired outcome, particularly if your site is set up to optimally show off your product/service and if you have a way of easily converting views into sales. Liz asserts that a blog gives a company a human voice, as well as a chance to establish your expertise. It also allows you to build trusting relationships with your customers and promote some of your new products. Blogs are also attractive to other bloggers who may be looking for industry information or education about your offerings. That kind of blog networking can lead to collaboration and can give you a wider audience for your voice via other similar-thinking blog writers. On the ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’ side of things, while blogs are inexpensive to develop and post, they do require a high degree of commitment and consistency. It can take as long as a year’s solid application before you see any real results in your sales. The trick is to keep at it while you find your voice and build your community. Check out Liz Hover’s great resources at her informative website.

A Step Outside the Box

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:54:00 PM

I recently spoke at an entrepreneurship conference in Windsor, Ontario. The Canadian Council for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (CCSBE), built primarily on academic membership, is now encouraging attendance and input by non-academics, specifically business owners, policy makers, and practitioners who work to support entrepreneurs. The resulting mix at this year’s conference provided a rich offering of workshops and presentations that had some good application possibilities. As an entrepreneurship development organization, it’s clear what benefits this kind of gathering might have for the Women’s Enterprise Centre of Manitoba, but for our entrepreneurial clients, what’s the payback for attending something like the CCSBE event? When I had my own business, I would often pick up a copy of one of the North American academic journals that can be found in any business school library. Whether its area of concentration was on management, marketing, entrepreneurship or organizational behavior, I always found something of interest that sparked an idea that I could use in my own business development. Granted, some of this stuff is really abstract and statistical, but it’s ok to skip over the more esoteric methodologies to get to the conclusion, the meat of the study, to see what the findings tell you. Similarly, reading the abstracts of articles, just getting the gist of what the research has been about, can inspire a wealth of creative thinking. Some brilliant people have spent countless hours studying entrepreneurs and their behavior. Having that kind of aggregate information can’t help but serve the forward thinking entrepreneur in his/her imperatives to reach target markets, act strategically, utilize financial tools, measure activity against benchmarks, and get a good sense of what the rest of the enterprise world is doing to reach success. In similar fashion, attending a conference can benefit the entrepreneur in many ways. Listening, learning, informing and networking are all ways to refresh the brain and get a new handle on how things might be done better to enhance the bottom line. Meanwhile, check out International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal if this idea resonates with you.

You Need a Break Someday

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 12:00:00 AM

Leaving behind the wondrous smells of summer – barbecue, mown grass, suntan lotion – the sounds of kids splashing in water, the sight of clouds like giant sheep drifting across a slow summer sky, we emerge through the wormhole tunnel that is the Labour Day weekend into a different reality dimension. Here be dragons, timelines, schedules, obligations and the sure knowledge of winter to come. But we’re ready for all to that, refreshed and eager to return to the fray. Not all of us get to take summer holidays, however, and many do keep up their rushed schedules right through July and August. But even for the chronically overworked, summer is a bit of a respite if only because everyone else seems to be in vacation mode. Try to find the essential link to a contract negotiation, a business deal, a medical question, and you are put into ‘summer limbo’ simply because that link is out of touch, out of phone range, not able to connect to email or just plain not interacting with the workday world for whatever time is allotted them to rest and refresh. You, meanwhile, are hard at work, trying to darn whatever hole has been left in the fabric of your business dealings. Our salute to the summer leftovers, the skeleton staff, the stay-behind men and women who hold the world together whilst others gambol in the surf, loll on riverbanks and sip margaritas on cottage decks. You will be the ones laughing when you show off your glowing tans to your pasty-faced colleagues come January. And for those of you who seem never to be able to take a holiday, winter, spring, summer or fall, you business builders, earnest entrepreneurs, tireless negotiators, please heed my words. YOU NEED TO TAKE A BREAK. You will be better for it, have more energy, be more creative, have more patience. Taking time away gives you perspective on both threats and opportunities and a greater capacity to handle the uncertainties and ambiguities that characterize entrepreneurial activity. Even if all you can manage is a ‘stay-cation’, taking a break from the field of battle for a few restful days will do more for you, and for your business, than you can imagine. Sandra Altner

Clicking for Dollars

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:00:00 AM

A story that caught my eye on one of my preferred RSS feed sites, McKinsey Quarterly, tells of recently conducted research into how Internet search has benefitted the global economy. This seemed to me a bit like trying to quantify the effect of sunshine on marriage proposals. Measuring the Value of Search outlines the comprehensive computation of how billions of mouse clicks turn into economic value. But where do you even start to figure this out? McKinsey gave it the old college try and came up with some brilliant techniques to measure the immeasurable. First, they estimated the overall value of Internet in 2009 at $780 billion based on the assumption that each search was worth about 50 cents. They then figured that 69% ($540 billion) flowed directly to global GDP in the form of e-commerce and higher productivity. The remaining 31% is not captured in GDP numbers but is seen as benefits to people in the form of finding lower prices and the convenience of quick access to needed information. They estimated the value of these benefits to be about $20 per month for European and American consumers and up to $5 per month in countries with lower disposable incomes. The research determined that the value of searches in 2009 translated to 2% of retail revenues in developed nations, reflected either in direct sales or online marketing that actually resulted in getting people to the bricks and mortar store. Previous studies only measured the overall commercial value of Internet search. McKinsey points to the economic benefits of increased knowledge and informed decision making. Pretty amazing stuff, really. By the way, $780 billion is equivalent to the GDP of the Netherlands. And that was two years ago. Sandra Altner

Three Cheers for Students

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:47:00 AM

After years of wishing, we finally took the plunge and brought on board not one but two (and a half) summer students this year. By accessing two different student employment programs we were able to cover some of the costs of extra hands and brains needed to carry out our summer projects. One of our students, Jiajia Xu came to us from the Asper Cooperative Education Program. Jiajia is from China and her work was very challenging for someone whose first language is not English. We tasked her with a literature review that required her to identify and create abstracts for hundreds of articles pertinent to a program that is in the developmental stage. We are all extremely impressed with how Jiajia swung herself up the steep learning curve and provided us with high quality summations and a brilliant methodology for organizing the data she collected. Some support for Jiajia’s wages came to us through the Manitoba Career Focus Program. Gabrielle Morrill came to us a couple of years ago as a 16 year-old volunteer who was just looking for some workplace experience. With her parents’ permission, we put Gabby to work on an environmental scan which she tackled like a pro. The Canada Summer Jobs program allowed us to have Gabby back this summer on her break from the University of Guelph where she is a business student. She assiduously applied herself to updating our Women’s Business Directory, no mean task. Gabby sent hundreds of e-mails and made countless phone calls to women-owned businesses, asking, begging, cajoling and ultimately winning, correct and current information from our province’s women-owned enterprises. Gabby also delivered some top notch specialized research for a unique course offering that will be on our agenda this year. In early summer, we were approached by a former Board member who knew of a young woman majoring in economics and finance at the University of Western Ontario. She was looking for purely voluntary work experience that would keep her busy about 10 hours a week. This time, we were fortunate to meet Lauren Barker, a bright, organized, mature and very pleasant young woman who has been a great help to all of us as an extra pair of hands for some complex tasks. These smart, willing, and energetic young women completely belie the picture of our Manitoba teens as want-it-all-have-it-all princesses slouching indolently through their summer holidays. And just as they have learned lots from working with us about teamwork, workplace culture, appropriate business language, work organization and documentation, so have we learned from them about diverse perspectives. No word of a lie, I’m completely confident that we are in good hands with the next generation and can only hope that in years to come we will be as fortunate in our choices as we have been in the summer of 2011.

Business Buyer Beware – Part II

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:30:00 AM

After we posted the Business Buyer Beware blog earlier this week, Colleen, one of our business advisors who had just returned from holidays, brought to my attention a couple of other caveats she thought should be mentioned. My last blog caused a good bit of discussion around our staff meeting table with everyone contributing a sad story of lost savings, dishonest dealings or ‘finagled’ numbers. Our business advisors are very knowledgeable and capable professionals. One thing they can’t do is turn back the clock and prevent some questionable decisions that have caused such grief to somewhat naïve but well-intentioned business buyers. That is not to say that there aren’t good honest business people with the intention of selling stable enterprises with good earning potential. Just that it always pays to do the homework to ensure that’s who you are dealing with and that’s the outcome you will achieve. Some of Colleen’s suggestions: · If you are taking over a lease or taking on a new one in rental premises, it’s worth paying a lawyer to check over the agreement. Pay special attention to: who covers the cost of maintenance/replacement of electrical, plumbing and HVAC components? How old are these elements and when were they last replaced? What is the average lifespan of each component? · Verify that the numbers you are being shown are real. Ask to see a random sample of daily till tapes for various months so you can see how the totals were achieved. This will also assist you in confirming the incoming cash flow and business cycle which is useful in preparing financial projections. · Get a complete listing of all assets that you will be purchasing along with the estimated fair market value and the age of the assets. If you are dealing with specialized equipment, it’s worth getting a competent technician to check that everything is in good working order. · Will the current owner stay on for a period of training and introduction to existing clients? This can be a benefit where there are long-term owner/client relationships. · If you are purchasing inventory, the day before the sale of the business, do a physical count of all that you are purchasing. You should also develop an aging report to ascertain the potential for those items to be sold at full price or the requirement for discounted pricing. · Are there policies and procedures documented for all of the business systems, including human resources, technology, operations management, and customer relations management? · Spend some time observing the daily operations and traffic flow of the business. Take a random sample and do some extrapolation to justify the financial documentation you have received. · Take stock of how much time it will take you to get rolling if there are new systems to put in place, corporatel structures to develop, signing documentation, legal issues, new signage, new supplier relationships and credit applications. We could probably go on for days on this subject, but hopefully this will provide you with some food for thought when you are considering this major and all-important expenditure.

Business Buyer Beware

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:47:00 AM

Have you always wanted to be your own boss but are afraid of the risk of starting a new venture from scratch? Many people in that situation think that buying an existing business will mitigate the risk of a start up. Please believe us when we say that there are a great many risks and caveats to consider when purchasing a business. While it is not always so, we have had many people come through our doors who have made business purchase decisions without considering all of the important factors. The result is loss of hard-won savings, time, anguish and lost opportunity. The Canada/Manitoba Business Service Centre has some good information available on evaluating and purchasing a business. Based on some of the heartbreaking mistakes we’ve seen, here are additional thoughts you may want to consider and red flags to watch for if you are considering taking on an existing enterprise: · The current owner doesn’t want to share any of the financial data until you show that you are serious (i.e. put down a deposit); · The financial statements you received are internally generated (i.e. they are accounting program print outs rather than accountant-prepared statements); · The current owner only provided the current year’s statements without any history to show whether sales or profits have declined significantly; · The seller tells you that the business actually does much better than the statements show but ‘that is just for tax purposes’; · ‘Good Will’ is the largest asset on the balance sheet; · You haven’t researched whether there will be major construction, road closures, water-main repair, etc. in the vicinity of your proposed place of business; · You haven’t checked to see whether a major competitor is planning to open nearby; · You haven’t talked to existing customers to assess whether there will be a change in relationship once the current owner departs; · You haven’t checked to see if a near-by business with a strong draw is closing down, thereby affecting traffic to your establishment; · If the business is in rented premises, what is the relationship with the landlord? How easy will it be to renegotiate the lease? Is the building owner thinking of selling the building? Is he/she cooperative when it comes to repairs and replacement of major equipment? Believe it or not, we have heard stories about every single one of those points from clients who come to talk to us after they’ve made a major deposit or bought the business. We recommend that you always talk to a professional accountant and a lawyer before making such a major purchase decision. And by all means, if you are a woman or a 50% woman-owned partnership, come to see us at the Women’s Enterprise Centre. We’ve seen it all!

The Passing of Aqua Books

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 04:20:00 PM

We were devastated by Kelly Hughes announcement that he was closing Aqua Books/EAT! Bistro, one of our favourite restaurants and browsing spots. We had the Centre Holiday party there in December and it’s a regular place for lunch meetings and friend gab fests, always followed by a rewarding wander through the stacks of great used books at terrific prices. There are some good lessons to be learned from Kelly’s decision to close his enterprise. In today’s Free Press article about the downtown bookstore Kelly says, “People spend a lot of time now on their smartphones and accessing the Internet from anywhere in the world. That’s great, but it’s changed people’s habits and people don’t have the time like they used to to read.” Kelly’s noting the effect of the move to electronic books is indicative of the need to recognize industry and market trends that should shape business decision making, whether it’s to move, expand, diversify, grow or move on. In fact, Aqua Books has made some valiant efforts in diversification, having become known not only for the restaurant and bookstore, but also as a centre of cultural and literary arts residencies. Kenny Rogers had it right. You have to “know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em…” What’s true in poker, in this case, is true in business as well. A planned exit strategy, done with integrity and minimal harm to customers and clients, suppliers and staff, is always a class act that maintains a good reputation until the next time the entrepreneur has a good idea that fills a market need. We’ll miss you Kelly and Candace. Good luck and our best wishes.

Add Women and Mix

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:17:00 PM

A plethora of studies and attendant articles have recently created a stir around the mix of men and women in groups and the how the gender balance affects creativity, productivity and outcomes. Jessica Stillman’s blog on BNET cites a number of sources that subscribe to the idea that the more women in a group, the better the results. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review by researchers Anita Woolsey and Thomas Malone explains the results as not so much gender differences, but “differences in social sensitivity.” Since women score higher than men do on tests for social sensitivity, they are more likely to be better contributors to effective group dynamics. Granted, social sensitivity is not solely the purview of women, but it is less common in men for any number of reasons, among them basic socialization that accentuates competitiveness and dominance as manly traits. Think about it. Social sensitivity includes listening skills. There are linguistic and social studies that focus on gender differences that have indicated that men interrupt more than women. It could follow that a higher number of women in the group would mean fewer interruptions and would foster the kind of synergies that arise from the building of ideas on ideas rather than on one-ups-man-ship or competitive speaking. That isn’t to say that female-only or female-majority groups are more effective than their male counterparts. Only that gender diversity would appear to have a salubrious effect on group processes and outcomes. An entirely different outlook is proposed by Deborah Cameron in her very interesting book, The Myth of Mars and Venus (Oxford University Press) a portion of which is available on the UK Guardian site online. Cameron proposes that it is status, not gender, that dictates who dominates in a group situation and what form that dominance would take. As well, she suggests that the differences in communications styles cited by earlier studies are quite minimal. So what is it that supports, enhances, creates the higher outcome values in groups that contain women in greater proportion? Arguably, any aspect of diversity, whether it be based on gender or culture, would provide a wider continuum of perspective that could not but help to lead to better decision making, more cogent thinking, or a wider array of options. What do you think? As women business owners, does this issue have any bearing on creating success in your enterprise, better networking skills, better communications with your male or female clients/customers? I’d be very interested if you could add anything of value to the discussion. July 27, 2011 I just found delicious counter to all of this discussion regarding women’s influence on groups in Laurie Penny’s blog in the New Statesman. More grist for the mill.

Doodling is Good

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 04:24:00 PM

On a recent trip to Calgary for a Policy/Governance conference (I know, I lead such an exciting life!), I met an extraordinary woman. The conference organizers were working on the theme of “The Art and Craft of Good Governance” so they took a big risk and had an artist present the opening keynote. It wasn’t just any artist, but a brightly clad Dominican nun who is, among other things, a ‘styro-artist’ turning Styrofoam cups, plates and doggy-bag containers into a kind of intricate cloisonné-type structures. Sr. Joeann Daley’s purpose at the conference was to make a connection between the artist’s conceptual experience and the development of a balanced organizational experience based on the model of board governance known as Policy Governance developed by governance gurus, John and Miriam Carver. This was not an easy task, you might say. Many of the ‘left-brain’ folks in the audience would agree, having found the whole exercise questionable at best. On the other hand, a great many of us found interesting parallels in ‘Sister Joe’s’ presentation. There’s something about letting your mind make connections between what seem to be irreconcilably different concepts (apples and lamps for example) that is very liberating and leads to some really interesting synapse sparking. Some of the things I gleaned from that 90-minute keynote were: · Chaos is part of creativity – you have to learn to control your chaos. · ‘Orrore lacunae’, an ancient art form predicated on the fear of empty spaces, thus leading to intricate designs and embellishment is prevalent in business relationships. Sometimes less is more. Know how you relate to the empty spaces. · Take risks. You can always try again. Risks give hope, courage and inspire others to get involved. · Every mark you make in a drawing changes the relationships of the other marks along with the boundaries or edges. Don’t be afraid of the marks you are making. · Taking dreams into reality, the job of many organizations, is the same as the artistic process. · Don’t recycle, but upcycle – give something a new incarnation and function. · Doodling is good. It frees the mind to really listen at a higher level to what is being said. · Do the equivalent of what Sister Joe tells her art pupils; break your crayons into pieces. If you are only using the point, you don’t know your tool. During the three days of the conference, I asked 20 people how they felt about this unique approach to board development and organizational structure. The vast majority -- and we are talking here about chairs of boards, CEOs and governance consultants, not artists – found the experience enlightening and instructive. I may forget to use some of the workshop material I heard during that the conference, but I think that a good part of Sister Joe’s simple wisdom and vision will influence me, for a long time to come.

Saying Goodbye

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 04:12:00 PM

Have you had the experience of working with an employee who becomes valuable to your company, not only through their own sense of responsibility and work ethic, but also because of what you have taught them to do and challenged them to accomplish? When someone like that leaves a small business, it can seem like a dark day. These staff members create value in whatever work they do and multiply that value in accordance with the training or teaching you have provided. When they leave, it changes the interface with customers/clients, changes the dynamic of the workplace and creates a shift in all of the work relationships. While it can difficult for those who remain, this isn’t always a bad thing. An employee leaving because of a step up in a career or a great opportunity should go with your blessing and good wishes. Anything less than that would be small minded and would negate all of the good created in your previous working relationship. With the proper send off, that person becomes an ambassador for your business. He or she will likely continue to reflect the values and philosophy learned through working with you and will reflect the company culture you have created. People evolve, businesses evolve, things change. It’s part of the life cycle of a business and, like any relationship, letting go without regret or rancour brings the greatest benefit. And, hard to believe when you are experiencing it, often this is a change for the good. Someone new will be coming onboard and will bring new ideas and a fresh perspective that can be part of your own learning and development as a business owner.

Why Why Why....

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 09:33:00 AM

A very effective, but simple problem solving tool is the probing question: ‘why’? Called by various names in the consulting industry (The Five Whys, Cause and Effect, Dispersion Analysis), asking this question gets you to the center of the problem without getting bogged down in history and blame. Whether used by an individual facing an issue in her own business or a team trying to create a solution to a sticky organizational situation, asking ‘why’ to a series of questions often leads to a great revelation. The simple trick of the ‘why’ is that you get past symptoms to core problems and then dig a bit deeper to find what can sometimes be a universal cause to a number of problematic issues. It is important though, to be honest and accurate with the answers. Here’s an example: A business I worked with a number of years ago developed a new technology for skin care that was effective but labour intensive. They began recruiting and training young women in all the intricacies of the regime in order to provide the service to a slowly growing customer base. The company would train up to ten women at a time, over a period of two months. Very few (usually one or two) would complete the training. Those that did finish training usually left the program very soon after beginning delivery of the service. In a series of exit interviews, we started to delve into the real issues. Of all of the answers given for leaving, two recurred with some frequency: “It’s way too complicated.” and; “I can’t see a future doing this.” In working down the line with ‘whys’ in the first response, we recognized that there were problems with the recruitment side and the selection criteria for trainees had to reflect the need for some mechanical or technical competencies. When respondents were asked why they couldn’t see a future in it, the answers were varied: the company couldn’t provide enough hours; not enough customers to go around; technology too new and market not proven or ready. We ended with the realization that as the trainees became familiar with the technology, they recognized that it would be a long time, if ever, before the demand for the service made their training a sure source of income. The company was able to develop a core of competent and loyal service personnel through better recruitment criteria, base pay guarantees, and an incentive program that rewarded trainees for bringing in clients. In addition, a stepped up marketing program gave trainees faith that the company was putting resources into building up clientele. While that’s a very simplified explanation of the technique, it provides a starting point for you to try the five ‘whys’ with your business issues to see if you can identify the core problems and apply solutions that make a difference.

A Wrench in the Works

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 01:51:00 PM

I few years ago I served on the board of a non-profit organization with a fellow who believed that anything that worked well and smoothly should be shaken and stirred, just to keep things interesting. Naturally, this created a great deal of stress for the staff of the organization and no little worry for his fellow board members as well. Since that time, I’ve encountered several other people, on both sides of the board table, who believe similarly that when a healthy organization is sailing along, meeting its goals and delivering expected results, that is the time to “become the irritant that creates the pearl in the oyster”, as one woman put it. Recently, I came across an interesting article about ‘disruptive hypotheses’ that triggered all of the old feelings about the two year period I spent helping to put out fires that my board colleague had cheerfully and purposefully set. It also gave me a new perspective. The piece was in my favourite on-line publication, Co-Design and is a condensed version of the first chapter of Disrupt: Think the Unthinkable to Spark Transformation in Your Business by Luke Williams. Mr. Williams stipulates that the disruptive hypothesis is a very important mechanism for creating innovation. It helps to ask the ‘what if’ questions that lead to visionary thinking and creativity. However, I believe that since the disruptive hypothesis is an intentionally unreasonable statement that is meant to get your creative juices flowing, if used at the wrong time, in the wrong way it can be a serious hindrance to the ongoing healthy development of an organization. It can serve to undermine or cast serious doubt on successes achieved and on those people who might be making every effort to reach their goals or carry out their mandates; it can be asking the impossible from workers/managers/directors who are already giving their all. When is the optimal time to use the disruptive hypothesis? When there is a sticky problem to be solved that appears to be insoluble; when a business is mired in stasis and has no forward momentum; or when successful activities (or profits) are substantially below the potential that the business might have achieved. That’s when you really need to do some sideways thinking to get things moving in the right direction. So for all of you wrench throwers out there, you can be a force for good or evil, just choose your time and playing field with care.

Why It's ERP!

Tue, 10 May 2011 03:38:00 PM

Wikipedia defines enterprise resource planning (ERP) as “a system that integrates internal and external management information across an entire organization embracing finance/accounting, sales and service, customer relations management, manufacturing, sales and service, etc…”, it’s purpose is “to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside…the organization and to manage the connections to outside stakeholders” (from Hossein Bidgoli, The Internet Encyclopedia). Another term for ERP would be Business Management Solutions. Don’t think that the integration of all of your business functional areas – planning and scheduling, financial reporting, customer relationship management, inventory and supply chain management – is just for big business. The decreasing costs of technology have made these solutions available to everyone. These days, very affordable web-based options can reduce hardware investments and provide access to external team members, local or distant. The value for any business using ERP is that there is one entry point for all data, which is then shared across the organization. This facilitates, among other things, order entry, speedy payment collection, and reductions in staffing costs, growth costs and data entry errors. The reports that an ERP system can create, integrating all of the information in your organization, can lead to the development of management reports on which good strategic decisions are made. Which suppliers provide the best service, delivery and pricing? Which staff are the most productive and valuable to the business? What inventory lines cost the least in discounting? What effect do business cycles/seasons have on your bottom line? Which customers are the most profitable and which require the greatest time commitment, and are they the same ones? Good ERP systems can be tailored to your specific business situations and needs. The automation of processes and workflow can offer advantages for your organization in saving time, increasing productivity and enhancing internal communications. You might want to think about whether or not your business is ready for a version of ERP that takes into account your business imperatives. How much time are you wasting with redundant data inputs and ad hoc systems? What could you do with more planning/thinking time and good information outputs? It is certainly something to think about. Learn more about this at our Tech Tuesday lunch seminar on May 17.

A Fine Balance

Wed, 04 May 2011 04:39:00 PM

Last Wednesday, the Women’s Enterprise Centre and the Women Lawyers’ Forum of the Manitoba Bar Association presented a ‘speed mentoring’ event at the Reh-Fit Centre. More than 70 attendees were treated to a very entertaining and enlightening evening as they moved from table to table to listen to life-style experts in a kind of musical chairs manner – I know this because we were unintentionally one chair short and I found myself standing during the first exercise! The purpose of the evening was to recognize and address the fact that busy entrepreneurial and career women often neglect important aspects of their own health and wellness because their time, and their energies, can only be stretched so far. The format where important and relevant information was delivered in concentrated sound bytes, included a very short period of questions and answers at each table before the bell rang and we were obliged to move on. Eight tables were manned (or womanned!) by a host of experienced and articulate experts in a variety of fields. There were only six ten-minute snippets so participants had to choose their most-needed or most-desired topics from among the following: Financial Clarity – Dr. Moira Somers Office Organizing – Lorraine Mitchell Wellness – Averill Stephenson Healthy Eating - Dale Kornelson Time Management – Lisa Lewis Personal Training – Suzy Siemens Home Organizing – Roberta Willits Fitness – Shauna Watt It was a fun, informative, and delicious (thanks to Prairie Ink Cafe!) evening. The fact that so many of our friends and clients took advantage of the event to bring balance back into their lives was a great big bonus for us.

Finding the Creative Spark

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:00:00 AM

As managers and owners within our business organizations, we are always looking for ways to encourage and empower our employees to be creative both in problem solving and innovating products and services. A recent McKinsey Quarterly article speaks to the idea of sparking creativity in teams and how that can be accomplished. The authors of ‘Sparking Creativity in Teams: An Executive’s Guide’, direct attention to the necessity for people to be exposed to methods of breaking free of pre-existing views and established paradigms. One of the ways to accomplish this would be to move people out of the office, store or workplace to look at successful efforts made in other realms that might have some applicability at ‘home’. “These experiences were transformative for the employees, who watched, shopped, chatted with sales associates, took pictures and later shared observations with teammates in a more formal idea generation session. By visiting the other retailers and seeing firsthand how they operated, the retailer’s employees were able to relax their strongly held views about their own company’s operations…identify new retail concepts…and changing the design of stores…” These methods of sideways thinking can help to kick off an innovation effort by challenging orthodoxies and assumptions about one’s own business. One executive noted that often innovation was simply “putting lipstick on a pig,” just making something look new cosmetically without really paying attention to any of the foundational elements. Real creativity is sometimes about understanding and challenging core beliefs in order to see new opportunities. ‘Sparking Creativity in Teams’ cites a Harvard Business Review article which points to a number of techniques that can be used to get past deeply held opinions and ideas to discover innovation, particularly associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking. An exercise I used years ago when I was teaching a creative problem solving course was to have teams find a solution to their problem by randomly selecting a word in the dictionary. Trying to tie this random selection to the problem generated amazing connections and out-of-the-box thinking. Some of the solutions were quite brilliant and surprising. Another technique for creative thinking is to imagine artificial constraints (eg. What if you could only serve one consumer segment? What if the price of your product had to be cut in half?) to spur some adrenalized problem solving and idea creation. Whatever your methods, it pays to bring your employees together for some of these thought fests. It is deeply enjoyable and can generate buy in, engagement and very creative output. Sandra Altner

Beautiful Numbers

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 05:56:00 PM

We’ve been working with women entrepreneurs in Manitoba since our Centre was launched 16 years ago. We have learned how many small business owners look at the financial aspects of their enterprises. Too often they take the financial statements prepared by their accountants for tax purposes, send in the tax form, and file the whole shebang deep in a big gray metal drawer under the file name CRA 2010. Sadly, they don’t know that they are burying treasure in that file, never again to see the light of day (unless they are audited for some reason). So what’s in that big metal box that could turn into gold, if only it was discovered and mined? Numbers. Beautiful numbers. Numbers that tell the real story of how their businesses are doing; what’s being done right; where things are going wrong; which customers are buying what products at what time of year; how often the customers are buying; what percentage of which suppliers’ goods sell at full price and which are mostly discounted; which services bring in the greatest value in dollars, in repeat business, in word of mouth advertising. Numbers tell us about our inventory turns, our liquidity, our use of capital, our debt and leveraged dollars, our return on investment, and, ultimately, whether it’s all worthwhile. If you aren’t speaking with your accountant about these things, or don’t know how to get the answers on your own, you are missing out on some essential knowledge – knowledge that you will need to sustain and grow your business. Over the next few months, we will be doing research in the area of business acumen and financial literacy. We hope you will share your ideas and opinions on how you use your financial data. If you aren’t using it in a studied and thoughtful way, why? What are the barriers to your full understanding and use of your beautiful, golden numbers? Are they gathering dust in the back of your file cabinet or are they front and centre in your strategic planning?

Can Too Much Sitting Hurt My Health?

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 01:57:00 PM

Heather Stephens, WEC’s Loans Manager recently gave me a copy of The Globe and Mail article Can sitting too long really hurt my health? Heather and I are on the Centre’s Health and Wellness Committee and she thought it would provide some much-needed inspiration for the Manitoba Workplaces in Motion grant application I was working on. I was skeptical. I was sure that the article would end with a promo for a gimmicky product or give advice that is unlikely to be followed; you know the kind that suggests you should keep your garbage can on the other side of the office so you have to get up from your desk every time you have to throw something away. Not only is it a time-waster, it is the kind of practice that never sticks for very long. My attitude quickly changed. The article talked about recent studies that show that sitting for long periods carries health risks that can’t be erased even if you are exercising at other times of the day. It went on to say that even low intensity muscle contracting can mitigate those risks by increasing the levels of the enzyme lipoprotein lipase which is necessary to convert fat into fuel. Aside from regular walking and yoga, I spend many hours sitting at my desk. After reading the story, I was motivated to find ways to decrease the damage that results from the type of work I do. Office de-cluttering and plant care, tasks that I was once saw as interruptions, are now welcome health breaks. But what else can we do to get our muscles moving while at the office? Is the $30 foot-pedal that the author of the article recommends the way to go after all? What are you doing to keep moving? We would welcome your recommendations in the comment section of this blog.

It Was a Cold and Snowy Night...

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 03:14:00 PM

Last night at the Centre we were treated to some real-life stories about how women entrepreneurs from different backgrounds are working to make their businesses a success. Our panel consisted of Sara Hutniak from Sweatmarks, Nancy Vardalos Ginakes from Safe 2 Go Child Safety Harness and Pam Kirkpatrick of cake-ology fame. Each entrepreneur is at a different stage in her business, has a different view about her desired outcomes and has learned different lessons as she built and is building her enterprise. Some of the valuable ‘lessons learned’: It is important to have sufficient capital at start up to take you through the ups and downs of each business cycle. Put processes and systems in place in order to manage business flow as well as to keep you focused on your core areas of competency so that you are better able to develop revenue. Know what your ultimate goal is so that you can make better decisions about how to balance your business with your personal obligations. Build your brand through concentration on customer relationships not just on logos and marketing materials. Recognize the power of social marketing, but apply it consistently and in a way that is relevant to your target market. Plan, plan, plan before you spend your money or take off on the wrong foot. Sara provided the participants with a list of books that she has found to be valuable in the development of her business: The E-Myth by Michael Gerber Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert T. Kiyosaki Personality Plus by Florence Littauer The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz Many thanks to our panelists for taking the time to share their visions and their stories with us. And thanks to our appreciative audience who came out on a cold and snowy night to learn something that we hope will make a big positive difference in their own entrepreneurial stories.

Life/Work Partnerships

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 03:34:00 PM

Now that we have successfully navigated the shoals of another Valentine’s Day, and have not foundered on the rocks of elevated expectation nor sunk into the whirlpool of lassitude and avoidance, we might want to consider the special relationships that exist between couples who live and work together. A recent article in the Globe and Mail cites the pros and cons of the live/work relationship—and certainly both should be considered when the decision is made to start or purchase a business together. The balance between the advantages of having a life partner who is involved in the day-to-day running of a business (shared concerns, understanding, convenience), with some of the disadvantages that come from life being a 24-hour-a-day business meeting, is something that should be planned for and considered carefully. At the Women’s Enterprise Centre of Manitoba, we recommend that couples develop a partnership agreement in addition to any formal Shareholder’s Agreement required for a corporate structure. It should spell out the roles each person will play and the decision-making authority that is relevant to each role. Don’t assume that all decisions will be made in tandem. Each person has expertise which should be reflected in the agreement. Expectations and deliverables should be cited: for example, the books will be brought up to date at the end of the month; the marketing plan must be complete by March 1; the merchandising must be freshened every week; the bills will be paid as due; the cash flow will be projected for each quarter, etc. Some of the points we made in our August blog, Partnerships, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly are certainly pertinent to live/work partnerships as well. We recognize that this special kind of partnership can be a joy (building an enterprise together) or a terrible hardship (watching your relationship disintegrate as the demands of your business grow). The key is to think ahead, plan for all contingencies and, above all, know when to end the business meeting and just be a loving couple.