Eat, Pray, Love: the Formula for Women-Owned Business Success

On March 31, 2011, GABA Women in Business held another event with the topic “Eat, Pray, Love: the Formula for Women-Owned Business Success” at the headquarters of MindJet Corp. in San Francisco.

Featuring stories from entrepreneurial backgrounds, Britt Huber (HR consultant, Global Human Resources) lead an inspiring panel discussion together with Esther Nio (Founder of Esther’s German Bakery), Taryn Voget (CEO & Co-Founder of the Everyday Genius Institute), Marita Roebkes (Social Media Manager and Co-Founder of Xeesm Corp) and Toby  Beth Freedman (President of Synapsis Search), who each shared their experiences, tips and insights on how to run a successful business. The participants presented examples from their personal and professional lives, illustrating the specific challenges women deal with in running a business, and how to achieve a successful outcome.   

 Some of the key highlights:

·         Be passionate about your product or service: You should do what you love!

·         Do your homework: Running a successful business includes a detailed business plan, research your competitors, customers and how to make money.

·         Prioritize your work and be intensively focused

·         Build your own professional network: Being successful is not just about working hard, but about building a strong community that helps grow your business and connect with potential partners or vendors.

·         Ask for advise: Setting up Master-Mind groups and joining personal development workshops and women-in-business organizations serve as a source of information, networking and advice on issues related to your business. Available resources include Astra Women’s Business Alliance, ASTIA, Hatch Network, Biztech and SCORE.

The Vision of 100% Renewable Energy (2)

This is the 2^nd blog following up on Gaba’s event "The Vision of 100% Renewable Energy - commemorating Hermann Scheer" summarizing thoughts from Hermann’s last book. And, with Fukushima as a catalyst for the transformation of Germany’s energy system, his thoughts have gained even more actuality.

The big 4 German utilities are on defense, but will keep their general strategy: slowing down change forever. Together with their political supporters they will advocate gigantic projects like big offshore windparks in the Baltic Sea and huge transmission lines to southern Germany.

If they are successful, they will keep the central energy generation model and maintain control over energy generation and distribution. They also will be in charge of running those projects and make sure that they will be delayed. And, not a single kWh of renewable power will come from those projects until they are 100% completed.

But, we do not need those projects. Lifting the ban on wind energy in southern Germany and repowering old turbines alone would lead to 50% of all electricity in Germany coming from decentral wind alone (for calculation, see Scheer’s book).

PV, biomass and small hydro can supply another 10%, and 10% can be saved by increased efficiencies. 70% renewable until 2020.

Will the revolution happen at that pace? The policy decisions of the coming weeks are likely to have a huge impact. We can evaluate them by the number of players that they enable:

• The big 4 only, in offshore parks and transmission lines, which will not happen in this decade?
• Hundreds of small wind power developers, in areas opened up in southern Germany that so far blocked wind?

As Hermann Scheer pointed out: There is no win-win in moving to Renewable Energy. It can only be achieved if we face the conflict. Now is the time.

Fukushima - take action!

The concern about Japan's nuclear disaster seems much larger among Germany's public, press and politicians than in the US. And it also seems to be much more geared towards learning and action.

That is even true for Greenpeace. Their German website gives a couple a concrete suggestions of how everybody can contribute to ban nuclear energy - once and for all:

Make your protest visible: nuclear energy, no thanks!

- Add a "nuclear power - no thanks" sticker on your facebook picture.

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=127528613970751

- Get tshirts, stickers, posters, flags with similar slogans. I did not find a US site yet, and so had to design my own tshirt.

Talk to your politicians!

- Write emails to your politicians

- Sign petitions like https://secure3.convio.net/gpeace/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=801&s_src=sidenav

- Sign up at www.votesolar.org

Make your own solar energy!

- In some areas, like Mill Valley, you can actually buy green electricity from you utility

- Get your own solar system on the roof or have companies like http://www.sunrunhome.com build and own them

Take action in your community!

Join demonstrations - more than 110.000 people went on the streets all over Germany just at the beginning of this week. Where are events happening close to where you live in the US?

I invite everybody to add links, events and organizations!

The Vision of 100% Renewable Energy (1)

This short series of blogs will be interesting to all participants of Gaba's event "The Vision of 100% Renewable Energy - commemorating Hermann Scheer" - and to those who are sad to have missed it.

I just finished reading Hermann's last book, "Der Energethische Imparativ". It is a fabulous analysis of how to transform the energy system - not in scientific theory, but in political practice. In the following blogs I will give a short summary of his ideas along with a changing focus on different chapters and a few own thoughts - as an appetizer for the book, not as replacement.

His main theses are:

1. Switching to Renewable Energy is as unavoidable as natural law

2. "Old Energy" changed strategy: from impeding to slowing down, from confrontation to becoming meek and mild.

3. One way of trying to slow change down forever are gigantic projects - good for PR, never going to happen, putting old energy back into the driver seat.

4. There is no win-win in moving to Renewable Energy. It can only be achieved if we face the conflict.

5. Accelerating the change to Renewable Energy requires a good understanding of the underlying system. The best measures increase the number of players and address a multitude of motives instead of just one. All other measures distract us and should not be pursued.

6. Germany can get 70% Renewable electricity until 2020, 100% until 2030. The measures are all known and proven. But the government is owned by big old energy.

7. And, those measures will be applicable in other countries to a large degree.

In the following blocks I will go into further detail for all of those theses - and share Hermann's sharp analysis and some astonishing facts.

How to build your Network in CA

I arrived in California in September 2008. In other words, when the plane touched down, Lehman Brothers came down. Welcome to America and “The Financial Crisis”. Coming from South Africa, we were seeking ‘the American dream’, but landed with a bump and things got off to a rough start for us.

My husband started his post doc at Stanford and I chased my own dreams. I quickly realised that in times of shortage and undersupply people rely even more heavily on their networks. Having just arrived in a new country, my networks were not in existence. Rather than focusing on finding a job, which were so hard to come by, I focused on meeting people. This can potentially be quite a challenge and quite overwhelming, but here are a few selected tips.

Firstly, start at a place close to you and that would probably be your spouse’s workplace. Ask people there for advice and listen carefully. That is how I found the Bechtel International Center at Stanford, a fabulous place, which offers advice, activities and programmes for spouses. I met wonderful people there and also had my first volunteer job.

Secondly, join clubs such as sport clubs or other clubs of your interest. I joined an aerobics class at Stanford and Toastmasters club in Palo Alto. The sporty activity provides you with energy and the Toastmasters club provides you with a platform to meet people and articulate your wishes and thoughts. For readers who don’t know the concept of Toastmasters, it is a club which provides you with the tools to improve your public speaking and leadership skills. These are useful tools to have when you live in a very outspoken well-articulated society.

Thirdly, you can join a language class and start to learn a new language. I considerably improved my Spanish while chasing around. Palo Alto Adult School offers great inexpensive courses. Through Craigslist you can always find a tandem – trading one language with another. Also look at the Stanford Continuing Education Programme.

Fourthly, find like-minded people and associations. I was so very lucky to find GABA, where I was able to meet lots of people and attend networking events. The other European organisations are also interesting and they organise numerous events. San Francisco has the Swissnex Organisation, the French American Chamber of Commerce, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and many more. Check them out and join them. Another great organisation to join is the World Affairs Council in San Francisco, which offers great networking opportunities. You can also become a volunteer and help out at the events.

Find new hobbies and join discussion groups. The website www.meetup.com is very developed in the Bay Area. You can find hiking groups, cooking groups, discussion groups and so much more. I joined a meditation group in Palo Alto and thoroughly enjoy the experience.

Lastly, I decided to start a blog. I realised that there is a lot of information out there when you working, but not enough when you are a spouse trying to build your life. The blog is called www.stanfordwives.com and addresses people who accompany their spouses to California, whether it is to work or study. The blog gives tips and tricks for spouses living in the Bay Area. Personalised experiences give information, which cannot be found on official websites. Through the blog I have met many people, even before they arrive in the Bay Area. Twitter and Facebook are also great tools.

I subsequently found a job and many friends along the way. My ‘near nightmare’ turned into a dream.

Please tell us how you created your network in California. Feel free to add on.

Women in Business: Make Mentoring Work for You

Juliane Nandra, Nicole Kidd, Linda Cleary, Caroline Raynaud

SAP Labs warmly hosted its first GABA Women in Business event on how mentoring helps a woman’s career on November 9^th, 2010, together with SAP’s Business Women’s Network and sponsored by Cisco.

Featuring stories from both corporate and entrepreneurial backgrounds, Karen Colligan (Principal, PeopleThink) lead an inspiring discussion together with Rosie Cofre (Inclusion and Diversity Manager, Cisco), Katharina Rock (SVP Strategic Projects, SAP), Kim Wise (President, Mentor Resources) and Lesley Young (VP North American Sales, Huddle), who each shared their experiences from the perspective of both a mentor, and as a mentee. 

Participants discussed the differences between coaching and mentoring, how to find a mentor, and how to be a mentor.

Key points included: 

• When looking for a mentor in your work environment, determine first what your expectations are. For example, are you looking for direction in something that a particular person is good at?  Or is there a timeline within which you would like to have a mentor help you acquire certain skills or insight?

•       Try to avoid “the M-word” (mentoring): build your inquiry around what you’re trying to achieve, rather than ask a person if they would be willing to mentor you. Mentoring could refer to expectations to acquire certain skills or involved a time commitment that can scare people away.    

•       Although the focus of mentoring is often to strengthen your weaknesses, be sure to also keep your strengths in mind, and that your mentor could advise you on how to leverage those in your career. 

•         It’s okay to realize that a mentoring relationship is limited in time; one mentor cannot fulfill all the needs of the mentee, and it’s time to move on to a different mentor when you know that the current mentor-mentee relationship has fulfilled its purpose.

• ·       Mentors should ask many questions before making any assumptions about a challenging situation that the mentee might inquire about, as there are many unknowns and subjective descriptions when it’s first presented.

•       Chemistry plays a role: the best mentoring relationships occur when the mentor and mentee have good chemistry together.      

•         Importance of roles: two levels up between job-grades is the highest one should go for a mentoring relationship. It’s also recommended to find someone who is outside of your immediate work-circle, in order to get a different perspective and also to avoid potential jealousy or perception of threat.

If you are a woman in business, what’s YOUR story about mentoring?  Continue the conversation on our Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/GABAWIB or in our email discussion group http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/GABA_WIB/ .Be sure to also check out the photo gallery.

GABA Women in Business is a community of international, business-minded women in the Bay Area. Our goal is to provide a forum for women where we can build long-lasting relationships, get inspired and share our experiences.

For more information on GABA Women in Business, visit www.gaba-network.org/womeninbusiness.

By Linda K. Cleary, Chair, GABA Women in Business

A Personal Story

I want to share briefly my story about moving to the U.S. and how GABA has helped me to make a good start in the SF Bay Area. It shows that GABA is truly a great networking platform providing opportunities for its members (and non-members). 

In 2009, I won a Green Card in the U.S. Visa Diversity Lottery and had the opportunity to immigrate to the U.S.. It’s a once in a lifetime chance and I couldn’t pass it up. At this time, I didn’t really have an idea what it would be like living in the U.S.. My previous trips to the U.S. were just short vacations, a semester abroad at San Diego State and an internship, but now I had the opportunity to go to the U.S. long term and build something from scratch.  In essence, live the American dream.

So in April 2010 I left Germany and I moved to the Bay Area by myself.  I didn’t have a job nor did I know anyone in the Bay Area.  But while researching the Bay Area I came across the GABA and was impressed by its members, events and sponsors. I thought this organization would be a great opportunity for me to get in touch with Bay Area professionals, particularly in the IT industry in which I have an affinity for and have always been interested in the latest technologies.  So I decided to join the GABA and became a member.

I remember the first GABA event vividly as it was just one day after I arrived. Though I was jet-lagged and tired, I am glad that I made it to Phone Wars 2. It was an interesting topic about the smart-phone market and I managed to meet kind people such as Mandy Herrmann from GABA. With the good impression of the first event, I started to attend GABA events regularly to chat with people and learn more about interesting subjects such as Cloud Computing, Social Networks or Innovation Models at Google.

Some people call it serendipity, but I think it was my regular attendance at the GABA events that lead me to meeting Dirk Lueth. He’s also German and moved with his family to the Silicon Valley in 2009 to start a new venture: ENTARENA. This software startup company operates in the Enterprise 2.0 space. It develops enterprise software to improve the performance of an organization through enhanced real-time communication capabilities. Dirk and I met each other at the Social Media for Business event and, as always, exchanged business cards. Afterwards, I sent him a follow up email and we met for coffee in Palo Alto to talk a little bit more about ENTARENA and ourselves.

To cut a long story short, Dirk offered me an opportunity to work for this promising startup company and I thank GABA for providing the environment to meet him!

Do you also have an encouraging GABA story? Write a comment.

See you at one of the upcoming events!
Jan Belke

http://www.linkedin.com/in/janbelke