Tag: women entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs: Say “No” to Silos!

Laura Gallagher, the founder & CEO of The Creative Company, talks with The Savvy Entrepreneur about some of the many challenges women entrepreneurs face.

Laura started The Creative Company, a full-service marketing firm, during her senior year in college. That was in 1989, the year after Wisconsin finally allowed women business owners to sign for a business loan in their own name.

Laura says there were so much she had to learn the hard way. But she realized just how much she still didn’t know, after attending Goldman Sachs-sponosored programs at Colombia University and Babson College. She saw the huge gap between what was readily available to women business owners and what they needed to know.

That led her to sponsor and organize the first two Wisconsin Women’s Entrepreneurship Day. Although well-attended and well-received, she took away some painful learnings from these events as well.

In the end, I sensed that Laura doesn’t feel these big 1-day splashy conferences are really the solution. She offers a number of thoughtful suggestions — listen in as she shares the learnings from her journey, and her thoughts on how women entrepreneurs can truly support each other (Hint: break down barriers and just say “No” to silos!)

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Blythe-Martin Productions: How to Be a Successful Enterpreneur

Ever dreamed of making a living by singing, acting, or dancing? If so, this is an interview you need to listen to!

Jamie Blythe Martin is a self-professed “Enterpreneur” — a successful entrepreneur in the entertainment world. She found success on the stage as early as middle school, and was buoyed by lots of support from her parents.

As a musician and performer myself, I know how easy it is to fall in love with music and performing. The key, of course, is figuring out how to make a decent living doing that.

Jamie has pivoted a number of times in her life, but for several years now has successfully built a stable business around lucrative voice over work and doing farm-themed musical performances to entertain young kids as “Miss Jamie.”

Jamie shares some major nuggets of advice for anyone thinking of becoming an enterpreneur. Most of us think that we don’t do it because we might not be talented enough. Miss Jamie says that’s “hogwash!” Jamie believes that there are actually many successful enterpreneurs who don’t really have that much talent.

She says two things separate successful enterpreneurs: (1) they face their fears and move forward, believing in themselves and (2) they are very disciplined about treating their talent & gigs as a business.

Click on the arrow to listen to The Savvy Entrepreneur’s interview of “Miss Jamie” Blythe-Martin, as she shares how she & her husband worked through several personal challenges in building Blythe Martin Productions. And for those of you aspiring enterpreneurs, she shares plenty of candid tips to help you build your business.

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Matriarchy: Coaching Feminist Businesses

Allison Staiger’s company, The Matriarchy, is a great example of a company building a business around a very specific niche.

The Matriarchy coaches feminist women, helping them build caregiving businesses.

The Matriarchy is Allison’s second business venture. Her first, Highwire Therapy, is a counseling practice focused on perinatal mental health.

Allison joins The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show to chat about how she’s rebuilt her business after moving from Louisiana to Illinois, and has gone about finding new clients.

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Memoir For Me: Custom Memory Books

Nora Kerr’s company Memoir For Me began when her father was dying of prostate cancer and was told he only had 6-8 months to live. Nora took that opportunity to sit down with him over the course of several months. She asked him many of the questions she’d always had about him and his life, and worked to sort through and learn the stories behind the many photographs.

She found she truly loved doing this. She started volunteering her time to do it for friends and other family members, as well as members of her community that were nominated by neighbors.

Along the way, Nora realized that not only could she make money doing this, but that it was a perfect way to blend her writing and photography skills with her IT background. Thus, Memoir For Me, a custom life-story memory book company, was founded.

The biggest challenge, she’s found, is convincing people that their ordinary, everyday stories are worth capturing. That everyday people lead remarkable lives in the small things they do, and that these deserve to be captured. But customers are increasingly finding her, and Memoir For Me is growing steadily.

Memoir For Me has been self-funded so far, but is just starting to look for funding, as Nora is realizing the company can’t continue to grow without investments in personnel and systems. It’s a great story — in fact, The Savvy Entrepreneur hopes Nora takes time to document her very own everyday, remarkable story of how her company got started and has grown!

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Lavender Eucalyptus: Helping NonProfits Be More Strategic

Trina Ntmere and her company, Lavender Eucalyptus LLC, are passionate about helping nonprofits become more strategic.

By helping them do that, they raise more money, provide more valuable services, and make better use of scarce staff resources. She shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur some of the ways she and Lavender Eucalyptus do that.

Non-profits struggle just like for-profit companies with too much to do and too few resources, says Trina. And this problem is magnified when long-term strategy is murky, changing, or non-existent.

She knows not every non-profit is a good fit for Lavender Eucalyptus, and she has become creative along the way in helping her clients find funding for initiatives they work on with her.

Trina shares some great insights into non-profits, where entrepreneurial skills are needed just as much as in for-profit companies. She also is living proof that there are opportunities for entrepreneurs in working with non-profits.

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