Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Girls [like me] Going Place

This column was originally published in the News & Record on October 4, 2006 - and no, I didn't pick the headline.

A recent invite to mentor the businesswomen of tomorrow strikes me as a little funny as I sit here in my frayed jeans and baseball tee, hair in pigtails and extra-long barbell jutting through an unusual spot in my ear. Unconventional though I may seem, I have been a business owner since October 2003 when I began my now-defunct personal chef service, Dining with Ease.

One of my advantages in life is a built-in delay in self-doubt: it often doesn’t occur to me that I may not be able to do something until I’m already knee-deep in whatever that something might be. Accordingly, I began my life as a businesswoman with the naïveté of not quite understanding the risks inherent in business; I knew I could cook and I knew I could learn about business, and that seemed like enough at the time.

Despite my lack of preparedness, I managed to fulfill the minimum requirements of business ownership by getting a Greensboro privilege license, forming my own LLC, and even signing on a few clients.

I would like to say that I then became wildly successful and eventually ended my business with a seven-figure sale of my client list.

But the truth is that after two years of slow but steady growth, I filed Articles of Dissolution when cooking became a chore and writing seemed more possible, regretting only the clients I was leaving to fend for their own meals.

Even the fact that I closed my business the way I opened it - in the red – doesn’t dampen the feeling that Dining with Ease was a success, if only by personal measures.

I learned a lot from my first trial-by-fire business venture: that putting on a convincing smile projects competence until true competence can be achieved, and later how to deliver a captivating 30-second ad, close a sale, manage my time and manage my books.

Most importantly, I learned the density of my own mettle, and I’ve been able to take that self-awareness into my current endeavors: this very column, and the business I co-own with my husband, Jones Computer and Networking, Inc.

While embarking on ventures for which we are not qualified is certainly a way to expedite learning, I and my comembers of the Winston Salem/Greensboro chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) hope that our guidance can help the next generation of businesswomen avoid our beginners’ mistakes.

On October 12, we’ll get our chance as NAWBO hosts high school girls from across the Triad in Guardian Life’s Girls Going Places (GGP) Entrepreneurship Program. Over the course of a school day, seasoned businesswomen will guide select girls through activities meant to teach them about innovation, business plans and financial acuity.

It is a program designed to bolster the future of women in business but with the understanding that what is good for the goose is good for the whole flock. After all, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research, there are nearly 10.4 million women-owned businesses employing more than 12.8 million people and generating $1.9 trillion in sales. Ultimately, we’re not talking businesswomen; we’re talking business leaders.

When I was invited to mentor at GGP, I worried that my individualistic looks and career path made my story irrelevant; I’ve come to hope that I can show these young women that not only can they achieve whatever they want, but that they can do it in their own way and by their own rules.

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