Microsoft Office Live Small Business Community

As I stood there, she opened her sleepy eyes, smiled at me, rolled over in her crib, and went back to sleep. I guess she’ll just have to catch the webcast someday —and if you haven’t yet attended an event, so will you!  That way you can experience the excitement and intensity of Vision to Venture for yourself. You’ll see the faces of hundreds of women entrepreneurs literally light up during keynote presentations by Susan Wilson Solovic of SBTV, Rich Sloan of StartupNation, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, and myself, representing Microsoft Office Live Small Business.

Plus, you’ll get to hear some of the inspiring stories and been-there-done-that advice from our women business owners from Seattle.  

For example, here are the four incredible women business owners who participated in our Miami Vision to Venture panel:

• Wanda E. Gozdz, president and owner of W. Gozdz Enterprises, Inc. Wanda emphasized how important it is to delegate and place trust others in order to grow your business.
• Tamesha Keel, president of Jezreel Enterprises, Inc. Tamisha shared how she holds a flexible full-time job at a university in order to make time to start her dream business. She also expressed how easy it was to design and update her free Web site using Office Live Small Business.
• Marilyn Perlyn, president of Maridon Consulting Group.  Marilyn stressed how important creative image differentiation --- rather than price differentiation --- is when competing in today’s market.
• Camila Barsotti, owner of Fleur Details. Camila, who is running her business Web site on Office Live Small Business, described how she conducted her own market research by reaching out to actual and potential customers at their point-of-purchase.

In Austin, three other women business owners contributed valuable insights and engaged in conversations with a very active, attentive audience. We heard from:

• Teri Hill, president of THEnterprise. Teri gave the audience great advice on finding initial clients through your network of friends, family, and colleagues.
• Carli Kiene, owner of Inked Fingers Fotography. Carli has used the FREE Microsoft Office Live Small Business service to create a unique, attractive, and fully functional professional site. Carli also shared how her blog is one of her leading customer and referral generators.
• Amy Stevens, president of Launch Austin, and founding partner of Marketing Edge Ventures. Amy, also the newly chosen president of the Austin chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners, shared her “crystal ball versus rubber ball” philosophy on work/life balance. She suggests that some events in your life are “crystal balls” – one-of-a-kind events that don’t happen again, such as your son’s first football game or husband’s first promotion. You do everything to avoid missing those. Other events are “rubber balls.” These events are the ones you can make trade-offs on, if necessary, such as your son’s 15^th football game or husband’s third promotion.

From those few examples, I think you can see why I say the stories told and lessons learned from these panels are great practical advice for any women going into business.

Also, a very cool part of Vision to Venture is that our event sponsors, Toshiba and PixelFish, have been great about sharing their small-business products and services with the many guests attending. In Miami, the city of Miami sponsored the event and is participating in two initiatives to help Miami residents start their own businesses: Access Miami and Elevate Miami.

The last stop in our five-city tour is in Redmond May 9, but that event is sold out. However, as I mentioned earlier, you can still soak up all of this great information and insight via the FREE on-demand webcast to be made available in mid-May. Register for the webcast now, and we’ll notify you when it’s ready to view.

I know my daughter can hardly wait!

Karen Dayan