I recently embarked on a project a bit different from Down-to-Earth Finance. While it shares the mission of empowering women through financial knowledge and success, the platform has changed. I applied for and was accepted to the Pipeline Fellowship.This group trains women to become angel investors through education, mentoring, and practice. Our goal is two-fold:

1. Invest in a woman-owned business

2. Pick a business that is socially conscious

What is Angel Investing? Only 12% of angel investors are women and only 5% are minorities. This means the number of women-owned companies that are getting funded are minute! I’m setting READ MORE »

** Guest post by Scott Gerber, founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council **

Our government is being strangled by partisan politics. Youth employment is at a 60-year low. Student loan debt just topped $1 trillion (and default rates are rising quickly).  

Yet young Americans are far more optimistic about our country’s future than the pundits would have you believe – and they are demonstrating that optimism through entrepreneurship. According to the 2011 Young Entrepreneur Council/Buzz Marketing Group annual youth entrepreneurship survey, 23 percent of young people started a business as a result of being unemployed. Fifteen READ MORE »

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Eleanor Roosevelt

March is Women’s History Month and we wanted to take a moment to highlight hair removal expert Shobha and its founder & CEO Shobha Tummala (and IGC friend!) for her thoughtful and creative way of celebrating the month!

Building on the success of her three Shobha salons in New York City, an online presence at myShobha.com and an extensive product line, Shobha has taken on partial ownership of an orphanage in Hyderabad, India. Shobha’s Home for Girls and Women mission is to READ MORE »

This Wednesday our favorite lingerie shop, Journelle, will be launching their 2012 Spring Cleaning Bra Drive, where they collect used bras to donate to charity and offer a 20% discount to anyone who brings in a bra. In addition, Journelle will also be donating $1 for each bra we receive and The Laundress will be giving customers a gift with purchase. For this year’s drive, Journelle is partnering with an organization called Free the Girls, which provides job opportunities to women rescued from sex trafficking in Mozambique. These girls and women are given READ MORE »

There is no denying that social media has certainly changed the nature of networking. However, regardless of how many Twitter followers you have, old-fashion face-to-face networking skills are still a critical component of business success.

Here are some terrific resources that will help even the most shy and apprehensive network with ease.

One of my favorite 30 Rock episodes is “Kidney Now.” It is a spoof of the “We are the World” video where the goal of the song’s fundraising efforts is to pay for a kidney transplant for Jack Donaghy’s (Alec Baldwin) father. It is brilliant, hilarious and includes Cyndi Lauper. Seriously, it does not get much better than that. Perhaps this is why I was drawn to the front page story “60 Lives, 30 kidneys, All Linked“ of this Sunday’s New York Times. The article describes an innovative approach to organ matching that READ MORE »

Once again,  In Good Company is thrilled to participate in City Harvest’s annual food drive. Now serving New York City for more than 25 years, City Harvest is the world’s first food rescue organization, dedicated to feeding the city’s hungry men, women, and children.This year, City Harvest will collect 28 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City using a fleet of trucks and bikes as well as volunteers on foot. Each week, City READ MORE »

The other week I stopped by my favorite coffee shop in Philly, Bodhi. They are known for not only serving Stumptown coffee but for their“pour over” or “hand-brewed” preparation method. In full disclosure I’m not a coffee or caffeine drinker but still I love this place. The decor is great, the vibe is warm, the staff is beyond friendly, and the sandwiches and treats are delicious. They obviously care a lot about their craft and their customers.

On this particular day I was browsing the cards and postcards on the counter while I waited for my eggel to toast. One card caught my eye…it was READ MORE »

I give the same answer to at least half of the business advice questions that I am asked.

“How should I get the word out about my new service?”

“What’s the best way to reach my target market?”

“What conferences are worth attending?”

“How much should I pay my staff?”

“How do I find a good manufacturer … sales rep … or cost-effective printer?”

“Ask your network,” I reply again and again and again. In my opinion it’s the easiest and fastest way to get the best answers to almost any question.

Veteran entrepreneurs usually nod in agreement, mentally scan their network, ask READ MORE »

Last week I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel called “How to Start Your Dream Business” at the 92|Tribeca with Bryan Janeczko, founder of Wicked Start. What a cool guy and what a cool company! Wicked Start is designed to help small business owners and early-stage entrepreneurs realize their dreams of starting a business through the creation of a FREE online suite of tools, resources, and community. Bryan’s previous entrepreneurial experience was creating a company called Nu-Kitchen, an online food retailer serving healthy and delicious meals which he sold to Nutrisystem.

On the panel, Bryan and I were like two peas in a READ MORE »

We’re big on peer relationships. We run a community that is built around in-person interaction and believe that a strong network of peers is every entrepreneur’s best tool. A robust network can give you all the answers, support, inspiration and troubleshooting you need to be successful. And luckily, entrepreneurs are notorious for being generous with their time, experience, and advice.

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, has been all over the pages of business publications this month as he promotes his new book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. I’ve read a lot of the pieces with great interest because the Starbucks story READ MORE »

Last night, we attended a panel discussion held as part of a lead-up to the forthcoming book by A&F co-founder, Amy Abrams, and her business partner Adelaide Lancaster at In Good Company, the Flatiron workspace they run for women business entrepreneurs. The panelists included business founders Lotta Anderson of design studio Lotta Jansdotter, The Hired Guns’ Allison Hemming, and Claudia Hanlin of The Wedding Library. There was a lot of great advice, reflection, sharing and nuggets of inspiration put forth by these 3 successful entrepreneurs whose businesses were born pre-Internet and have come of age in Web 2.0. One of READ MORE »

Before Adelaide and I started In Good Company, we spent 8 months fleshing out the concept and researching other business models that were similar. We reached out to a few companies who had similar business models to see if we could “pick their brains”.  One of the most helpful business relationships we established at the time was with the founders of Paragraph NY, Joy Parisi and Lila Cecil. Paragraph is a wonderful writer’s space in NYC. While they did not know us, they graciously READ MORE »

Originally I was going to write about deadlines today. The source of inspiration? The draft of our book is due this coming Monday! Coincidentally, something happened in the past 24 hours that illustrates a topic we discuss in our book (hey, consider this a sneak peak!) so I thought I would share this story instead. But briefly, on the subject of deadlines – we finished writing so they work!

One of the topics we talk about at IGC and in the book is the importance, as a business owner, to be connected to other business owners. That includes, believe it or not, your competition. READ MORE »

Recently, I have been giving a lot of thought about how and why people give advice. I am pretty sure this is in part due to certain shifts in my life, ones that were of the unexpected personal challenges variety. As a result, some of the people in my life, may have (mis)interpreted these as openings to give advice on how to best deal with the situation at hand.

Advice is a funny thing. When I was younger, I LOVED giving advice. I felt if I had an opinion on a situation, then I should share it. And often it took the form of “it is so obvious that you READ MORE »

One of the most exciting aspects of facilitating GrowIT is that it functions as a petri dish of ideas. Each group is teeming with challenges and solutions that entrepreneurs experience when running their own business. Here’s a sampling of the current group’s challenges: what to prioritize when you have competing priorities, how to communicate the founder’s unique value, how to communicate your offering in a compelling and concise manner, how to find more of the right kind of customer, how to create alternative revenue channels, how to become recognized as an expert in your field and then get paid appropriately for that expertise. Sound familiar?

While READ MORE »

In Good Company is thrilled to participate in City Harvest’s food drive. Now serving New York City for more than 25 years, City Harvest is the world’s first food rescue organization, dedicated to feeding the city’s hungry men, women, and children.This year, City Harvest will collect 28 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City using a fleet of trucks and bikes as well as volunteers on foot. Each week,  City Harvest helps over 300,000 hungry New Yorkers READ MORE »

This past weekend, I was invited to an incredible event produced by my father in law, Yossi Glimer, an art dealer and entrepreneur. This unique event was a performance piece utilizing art, mime and a collection of readings. Simultaneously, it was the synthesis and manifestation of a complex set of thoughts, attitudes and experiences that my father in law is experiencing. Call it a reinvention. At 65, my father in law is listening to an inner muse and courageously exploring a new direction of artistic expression. Yossi is now experiencing being in the role of an artist, a role that he has spent a career cultivating for others. Over READ MORE »

We were thrilled when Eden Abrahams of Clear Path Executive Coaching approached us nearly two years ago with the hope of using In Good Company as research site for her Masters’ Thesis. She was interested in looking at the process of “becoming an entrepreneur” for women.

We are so pleased that her results support the importance of peers, as this was obviously our entire premise and hope in starting In Good Company Workplaces back in 2007. Further, her study shows that safe space, collegial relationships, peer learning and truth speaking READ MORE »