The Women Entrepreneurs Blog @ Simon

Women Business Owners and Time Management

Women entrepreneurs rarely have time to think consciously about time management, but the truth is, without it they fail.

And women business owners (who are forced to manage their time more or less efficiently) sometimes forget how the rest of the world lives, until they accidently find themselves back in that space. Like driving somewhere at 10 AM. What is wrong with these people? Why are they driving so slowly? How about lunch with "the girls"?  Why do they sit there after the lunch hour has expired?

This must be the reason why women entrepreneurs seem to have an immediate link to each other. It's a sisterhood dedicated to time management. And that must be why so many women in business do a lot of their shopping online, which is good for me and my business!

A recent NY Times Blog Shifting Careers post, 5 Time-Mangement Tips, by Marci Alboher offers some great advice and links to more information expanding on these suggestions:

1. Tame the e-mail beast (including an InboxZero video presentation at Google)
2. Eliminate unnecessary meetings
3. Put up boundaries
4. Find your rhythm and schedule around it
5. Say no

Isn't that last one often the hardest for women?

My Favorite Book on Getting Started

I am the daughter and also the granddaughter of entrepreneurs. My brother is also an entrepreneur. It would seem that entrepreneurship runs in our family's blood. Or maybe, as my father says, none of us could work for anyone else so we had to start our own businesses!

Whatever ... I knew many years before I founded My Brands that I wanted to build my own business. Apparently this is common among entrepeneurs.

A dear friend of mine,William J. Stolze, who passed away a few years ago, wrote my favorite book on the topic of entrepreneurship: Start Up: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Launching and Managing a New Business (1999). Bill was one of the founders of RF Communications here in Rochester. In Bill's book he observes that many entrepreneurs know that they want to start a business, but they don't necessarily know exactly what business they want to be in. That was definately true with me!

I highly recommend this book. It is an easy read full of common sense and great advice. I followed Bill's advice that an entrepreneur should develop good business skills and keep their eyes and ears open to potential opportunites for new businesses. That is exactly the path that I took that led me to the idea for My Brands. I suggest that if you are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur this is the easiest first step that you can take.

You can view a couple of good excerpts from his book here.