NAWBO-Columbus Member Blog

Today was spent at the Reagan International Trade Center.  A HUGE building here in DC.

Devora Zack, Networking for People who Hate Networking — great BINGO intro game for groups — very interactive.

Karen Mills, Administrator, US SBA spoke on the SBA’s initiatives to make money available for small businesses and especially women owned businesses — to help reinvigorate the economy.  Did you know that the SBA has online small business contracting course especially for women?  www.sba.gov — then look up small business classroom — and then find the class for women.  Proposed rule changes will enlarge the categories of procurement that have 5% women goals from 5 to 83.

Virginia Littlejohn honored with Legacy Award — a past  National President of NAWBO and early advocate for women in business in DC reminded us that it was 1986 when women businesses were beginning to be “recognized” as not just a hobby — and not until 1988 till women could get their own loan.

Dr. Terry Neese honored for her work with NAWBO in the early years and as founder of WIPP.

Claire Shipman (ABC news) and Katty Kay (BBC) coauthored Womenomics:  Write your own rules for success.  Book sounds great — has numbers and studies to show that:  1.  Boards that have at least 3 women on them — the companies outperform other companies without women on their boards 2. Changes in the workplace that allow for balance improve productivity by 40%  3.  Catalyst and Goldman Sachs and Guardian Life studies back up power of women in the workplace and women business owners.

Favorite quote(s) of the day:

1. If you run a business and you are not involved with politics — then politics will run your business
2. There is a special place in hell reserved for women who don’t help other women — Madeline Albright

50 Ways to keep your head above water when life keeps dragging you down.

This was the 2nd time I had the opportunity to hear Deborah Collins Stephens speak.  I really like her message — there is wonderful stuff to learn even in the midst of challenging business conditions – and life.

Ms. Stephens had an opportunity early on to read some of Maslow’s notes on business and success — and she has published a number of books from those studies and interviews with successful people.  Yesterday she focused on “Courageous Leadership.”  She shared a quote about how tough times were, how much was changing and so quickly…….and then she shared that it was a quote from a 1800’s Atlantic Journal article.  Every time has its challenges.

Per Ms. Stephens, when Maslow talked about Leadership he called it not a gift, or a talent, but rather a human endeavor and encouraged leaders to inspire not control.  Some of the stories shared were really great — a sampling here is all I can share today:

• Love or Fear – leadership out of love can cause amazing results – Jan Carlzon and SAS Airlines turnaround
• It matters HOW you play the game.
• Learning to Love the Weird (the new, where we are headed into unknown)
• Become a Blue Haired Lady — Great story about her Grandmother and her ability to create a success self-fulfilling prophesy for Deborah.
• Never a right way to do a wrong thing.
• Stand for something even if you stand alone.
• Who among you will change the world?  — Maslow

Jackie Speier — US Congresswoman — and supporting author on the book dropped in also.  She was a survivor of a horrible shooting when she was a journalist.  She said that with all the negativity about Washington DC and politicians — she wasn’t surprised that more good people didn’t want to run.  Yet she challenged that she has one of the greatest jobs — where she can make a difference every day.

As always, the Good to Great luncheon was a crowd favorite, and NAWBO-Columbus has received several compliments from participants and presenters alike.

To refresh, here were the table moderators and what the spoke of:

But despite the prescribed topics, there also was a lot of advice, support, and encouragement offered that we’d like to share with you here:

“An interesting conversation around — if you want to know your values — look at where you spend your money and time.”

“Karen [Hough] is amazing!  I know everyone got some good insight from: improving communication, facing change, elevator speech and much more.”

“TaKeysha was a wealth of information, and she genuinely seemed interested in all our businesses.  After providing us lots of information about boards of advisors, she then sought to learn from our businesses and how we could not only help each other, but how she could help us.”

Did you have a great experience at the Good to Great roundtables this year and what to put your two cents in?  Fill out the online meeting feedback form on the NAWBO-Columbus website, and your responses might be included in this blog post, too!

Thanks again to our table leaders, moderators, and all the great participants who once again made this event a success!

Would you like to see more pictures from the 2010 Good to Great Luncheon? View the slideshow!