Inspiring Female Entrepreneur - Karen Darby

I've just discovered this wonderful entrepreneur from the UK called, Karen Darby. Here's a woman says she felt she knew she wanted to run her own business from around the age of 8. She took on lots of jobs as a youngster, and lied about her age to get a job at a laundromat. She set up her own telemarketing company at the age of 22, and after 7 years had 200 employees and was making 4 million pounds. In the 90's she had two kids and started to work for herself again, training up customer call centers. In 2003 she set up a new business called, 'simplyswitch'. She was thoroughly passionate about the business as it was responsible for helping people get a good deal on switching between services (phone, energy, etc). She loved the business, and finally decided the time to sell the company in 2006 for 22 million pounds (approx $44M). Below is her list of top tips for success, and here's a link to a terrific interview with her - full of much sound advice and wonderful insight on the why behind her decisions.

Here's her tip list to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Do what you love
Create a white hot burning desire
Create leverage – commit to doing something with determination
Maintain a laser beam focus on your business idea
Use someone else’s money – seek funding opportunities
Be a rhino – learn how to handle rejection
Employ smart people + network like crazy – surround yourself with a strong team
Be enthusiastic
Live the brand – you are the best possible PR for your company
Give yourself a check up form the neck up on a regular basis
Hypnotize yourself – tell yourself you’re wonderful and your ideas are
wonderful
Know when not to listen – especially to negative comments
Double your failure rate
And remember most of all - timing is everything.

Most Powerful Women - Take a Break and Be Inspired

I am inspired by Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit. These are the top women in business. There was panel with lots of high flyers - Andrea Jung (CEO Avon), Anne Moore (CEO Time Inc), and Ursula Burns (President, Xerox). Here are links to three video clips from the conference.

Mentors to Most Powerful Women

Clips also on that page: Mentoring the next women CEOs (5 min) & Breaking the CEO Glass Ceiling (apologies - i wanted to link to these clips but was shortcut-hyperlinked challenged on the Fortune site).

The next summit is in October, however with a price tag of close to $4K dollars for 3 days, I'm doubtful many of us will attend, but staying tuned to hear the quality sound bytes will be worthwhile.

Now sometimes the tricky thing about keeping a blog, is that as you're about to publish a post you come across another slew of interesting information. Here's the best link I've found so far with links to video and content from previous 'Most Powerful Women' events. I haven't had a chance to check it out, but it certainly looks like empowering content. May be I shouldn't be going on vacation tomorrow, there's so much to do, and so many lessons to learn from these amazing women. But... sound body and mind is also a key foundational block for any future leader!

Repeating What Women Want - How is it Possible?

Here's a neat article on 'What Women Want' that documents the growth of the Lifetime Movie Network. This network launched in 1998. In 5 years it ended up with 4 million subscribers. It now boasts of 334K viewers in primetime network for 18+ women which is considered a prime segment. What I particularly like pulling from the article is this quote:

"Based on hundreds of focus groups and polls, Greco said, “Today’s woman, whether it’s real or perceived, feels like she’s really busy and has a fully loaded, hectic life.” Knowing that, LMN executives are attempting to portray and position the network as a TV destination that allows for a temporary escape. “It’s a place designed specifically for them, where they can take a break and escape, unwind, and have some personal time,” Greco said.

This again exactly maps to the philosophy of this blog - quick moments - that bring pleasure, and a break from everything else, where the experience is beautiful and the technology dissolves into the background. LMN has been experimenting with webisodes , they're getting into their strides with this. What other ways can we leverage technology to give us that momentary break and we can be immersed in the flow of the experience.

A Glut of Women in the News and Making News

Lots of things of interest here. First the website - Newsonwomen is a neat find - a website that is focused on Women in the News. There's nothing more empowering some days than to read about a slew of women who are succeeding, if in doubt about how to succeed take a look here and be inspired. The article that caught my attention is related to a kickoff event called, 'Women Making a Difference in Digital Media'.

While looking at the presenters at the event I found out about Natalie Del Conte and 'Loaded', Natali kicked off an online series around CES season earlier this year. I've just taken a glimpse at a couple of the daily episodes. Its fast, happy, and an E! type of presentation but of technology. Natali does a nice job of presenting the facts and also has quick insightful one liners about 'her' perspective on the technology, position, or whatever. Her philosophy is generally that there are a lot of technology shows about the 'specs' but not about the 'personal experience', she hesitates when saying that women are more attracted to the personal experience as she doesn't want to offend but honestly I think she's onto something. It has the lightweight appeal of glamour mag show, but actually is informative and just the sort of information you might need to have to drop in a technology conversation, or appear tech savvy - but the great part of it here is it is consumable by non-hard core geeks, and will help you stay up to date, with the added refreshment of a female commentary.

Worth taking this podcast to the gym (now if only I could findmy podcast player wire to connect to the PC, and figure out how to download the podcast, and remember to have it charged when at the gym.... any solution for that anyone???)

Carolyn Kepcher Finds What Matters

Another new site launching to support careers and aspirations of women can be found at http://findingwhatmatters.com/ . It's currently getting ready to launch. The celebrity behind the site is Carolyn Kepcher, who came to fame in the early series of The Apprentice, as Donald Trump's right-hand woman. Yes, I confess I was a fan of the early series when the problems and strategies were a novelty, and I believed there were some people with potential in the group rather than potential to make entertaining tv.

I always hoped there was substance behind Carolyn, and I've just listened to a webinar on Carve Your Own Road (a website for awakening and fostering the entrepreneurial spirit in everyone ) and after listening, I believe Carolyn is substantial. She talks like someone who figured out how to forge a successful career in the Trump organization, has good advice to questions asked, and is realistic. I will be checking in on FWM (finding what matters) to see where it heads.

A moment of inspiration to stay the course and work another day can come from anywhere. I have to say that while it wasn't exactly a quick moment at a 20 minutes webinar, it was most definitely a solid contributing moment to listen to a woman who has figured things out, made a few mistakes, and is trying to balance it all. Now if only my personal life allowed me these quick moments before 11:30pm, life would be be even better.

SheZoom! it's kinda YouTube for Women

A new beta site opened up this week called SheZoom! It's a managed , video site that is aiming at the female audience - it's goal is motivate women to better themselves and others. It is currently pre-populated with a lot of video content, with it's final goal to have both produced content and user content. There are sound bites of video street commentary - the video I saw on gadgets was a random set of people identifying their favorite gadget. 'What makes a woman sexy?' also was a random set of people from the streets providing short comment with their opinions - nothing outrageous, it was pretty tame stuff - mostly comments of the 'confidence', 'eyes', type.

I also saw an article on nutrition which was an expert asking questions and quizzing the viewer on what they knew about nutrition in food.

Now this site is still in it's beta phase and quality of content is going to be critical to the site. The question is whether women are going to step up to provide content to this female community. So far the research suggests women are more consumers of video content than creators of YouTube types of video, however may be there are some budding broadcasters out there who are looking for the right supportive venue to get started in saying something. It will be interesting to see if the site can gain critical mass of followers and content creators to be successful.

SheZoom's founder is Stacey Artandi. I will return to the site in a month to see how it's doing.

Your Phone Video Clips in Overheated Symphony

I love media projects like this that take aspects of real life from around the world and creatively assemble them for a larger audience enjoyment. There is a film festival about to start in England called Birds Eye View (March 6-19). One creative project they have running is to collect phone videos (40 second to 4 minutes) submitted by women to their site. On March 9th Sarah Turner (film editor) will edit the clips to produce a film called Overheated Symphony. The film will be shown at the festival and then posted on their site.

What a fascinating project to get insights from women around the world - so many voices to listen to. I can't wait to see what they come up with. Video is being used much more now not only in casual home postings, but also as a medium to post comment to blogs or video postings. I'm curious to see how well video takes off as a feedback mechanism for companies. In my work as a user researcher we have known for years that a power video clip of a user having difficulties can impact a team to respond more than heaps more research and numbers. How will the use of video feedback to companies empower, or not women to impact the products they want? What types of skills will companies need to understand free form video feedback? Given women are known to be better at interpreting non-verbal communication will they be better judges of content? There are some interesting times ahead in the use of video.

How to be the Perfect Boyfriend, and other Advice

Videojug is my new quick moment entertainment and yet informative website. It's a video site (obviously by it's name) but it's not a youtube free for all, this is a website that is trying to provide provide professional short videos to explain just about anything and everything, or as they put it Life Explained on Film, they allow user-submitted content but it's reviewed (I assume prior to posting) and they're soliciting ideas on what to make videos on next. I first discovered it when looking for an explanation of Web 2.0, and Wikipedia had a quote from Steven Fry on Web 2.0, which seemed an interesting person to quote given his a british writer/comedian/actor. He presented a short sensible explanation of Web 2.0. I poked around some more and found loads of topics, and put my vote in for a video on how to demonstrate folding fitted sheets (something that I've failed to master).

Today I was pointed to a fabulous clip that sincerely and humorously addresses 'How to be the perfect boyfriend' though I think it applies to all male partners, and 'How to be the perfect girlfriend' - gosh, it's pretty darned easy when you review the videos. Then in the short list of 'love story films' on the girlfriend page was also 'Four ways Office 2007 will make your life easier'

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It's truly wonderful stuff coming from the producers of Videojug. It's definitely a site that makes you try to think of stuff you've always wanted to know but never bothered finding out. Definitely worth a few quick moments indulging in random asks, and being given entertaining and quite often useful responses.

Knowing the Movies are Always There

So who hasn't heard of Netflixs? Netflixs became part of our lives in 1999 when we had our first child. We love to go to movies, we're talking at least two or three times a week back in 99. Once realizing our evenings out where a little less frequent (though we made the most of going to cry rooms which are small rooms in movie theaters where you can take babies and still see new movies) we bought a big screen tv which came with a trial Netflix subscription. We've been hooked ever since. What's not to like about selecting endless films of your choice to be sent to your home, watched at leisure, and no late fees.

My only minor complaint was I'm surprised they haven't done much to evolve queue management over the years. All I want is to be able to say, 2 movies from this queue (mainstream), 1 from this one (documentary/foreign), and 1 from this one (kids). But with a bit of manual management it works just fine.

But what I tried today was an amazing quick moment! I finally got around to trying their Browse Selection (online viewing). I'd tried it a while ago but it was flakey, but now it's pretty darn great - it was a click-click experience with no thinking to install whatever pieces for viewing, and then the show started to stream - great picture quality, sound, etc. I'm hooked, or to be honest I love the idea that viewing content is available to me at the click of a button. I don't know when I'll really find time to watch something completely on my computer but simply knowing it's there waiting for me provides a quick moment of happiness. I had heard it was pretty good but finding time to try it just doesn't happened until now, but now I'm mentally hooked.

Look Whose Watching, or Rather Creating!

An article was posted on Clickz today that shows the number of females watching Youtube videos online has risen (Pew Research).

• A 120% increase in women watching videos like Youtube videos online. 11% in 2007 from 6% in 2006.
• A 100% increase in women posting videos aged between 30 and 49 posting videos. 14% in 2007 from 7% in 2006.

Though I didn't answer the survey that number would include me. This holiday season I posted two short clips of my kids singing songs and wishing grandparents in England seasonal greetings - these are those good ideas you have, and can win excellent family credit points, if only they really are quick moments. Here are three quick insights from my experience:

1. Getting my kids to perform a 40 second holiday greeting for grandparents was tougher than I first thought, my initial clips I tried to post were too long. Trying to cut my daughter from singing all 6 verses from the school holiday song was an emotional experience. There must be ways of cutting video clips, but who has time to search during a quick moment? (if I figure it out I'll post)
2. My parents sending me email to ask that how to unblock the software on their computer or did he need to buy a new viewer as the message said he needed to install a new viewer, all this confusion because of an error message on the youtube site. Someone needs to figure out who the 30-49 year old women are posting videos for, and whether that audience will be able to easily view the videos.
3. A few days after posting receiving a message from Moldytoastervideo to ask for permission to subscribe to my video postings. Surely the mailer wasn't seriously interested in my terrible clips, but made realize that yep, I'm posting my clips out there for the world to see. Even now I'm surprised that the clip labeled 'gymnastics' has been accessed more than 200 times. I could have set permissions but that would have been more mail exchanges with my parents.

Its good to see Pew pick up on OUR generation as an up and coming audience for video clips. And I must say while posting my kid videos I also lost time in exploring youtube and finding other channels that I hadn't seen before. See, once we have a need to enter these spaces we can explore and generate click through in a different way from the Ygen. We just need a justified value proposition to enter but then once in, we can lose track of time - win for you services and implicit win for us too. (BRIT quick moment: For anyone wanting to see Michael Parkinson interview Beckham it's here).