She Owns It

Celebrating, Connecting, and Supporting Women Entrepreneurs

3 Reasons You (Yes, YOU) Should Write a Book by @GirlFridayProd

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by Leslie “LAM” Miller | Featured Contributor  

You know the feeling you can get reading other women’s stories. That mm-hmm, uh-huh, Amen! when you discover another woman’s experience that mirrors your own. When she writes about the issue that men aren’t writing about, that maybe they don’t care about, or perhaps just don’t have to think about. That feeling you get when she validates you, teaches you, inspires you.

That’s one reason you’re reading this right now. Sites like sheownsit demonstrate how hungry we are for more women leaders’ voices on social, connecting and sharing their stories. And that extends to print media. Because, just as women are underrepresented in business leadership circles, there are too few of us on the bookshelves. The stats are clear: In business, men publish more, are reviewed more, their books receive more attention, and they’re more likely to land a book deal. All while women buy more books than men. Don’t let men dominate the business leadership space! Here’s why YOU should consider becoming an author.

1. Help other women entrepreneurs avoid some of the mistakes you made.

Don’t let the business quo fool you: the collaborative side of women business leaders and founders is a strength, not a weakness. The entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders-turned authors we work with at Girl Friday share our own values: they are more than willing to be vulnerable and share their mistakes. Women leaders are not about saving face; we’re about continuing to learn and grow and impart what we know to our peers and to a whole new generation of women entrepreneurs. Chronicling your journey as a leader, with all your missteps and triumphs, lifts all boats.

2. Enhance your brand with the most enduring form of media.

Books hold special gravitas in the thought-leadership world and add dimension to a robust digital media portfolio. Don’t underestimate the role of a book as a business card and as a legitimizer. Don’t constrain yourself to the one option of the standard business book, either. With the rise of self-publishing, you can control your message and your format. Create an inspirational book as a companion to your TED talk, design a workbook to use with clients, or publish a gorgeous visual book showcasing your Instagram-worthy pics.

3. Promote your thought leadership.

So long as we have one category of authors writing business books—namely, white men—we are limited in our ability to envision a new way forward for leadership and entrepreneurship. We all benefit from a greater diversity of voices talking about innovation and creativity, about how to reach new customer bases, about unconventional paths to success, about new ways to work and thrive as teams, and about those non-negotiables. We need more people like my former professor and associate dean, a brilliant woman who is currently writing a book about the role of empathy in driving business success. Or the founder of an innovative funding model relaying her lessons learned. Or the consultant turning her philosophies into a hands-on workbook. I know you have a story to share. What is it?

5 Steps Toward a Healthy Team Culture by @GirlFridayProd

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by Leslie “LAM” Miller | Featured Contributor  

Whether you own a business stocked with massive inventory or, like me, sell services rather than things, what we have in common is our most precious asset: our people. And many of us go the extra mile to keep our employees happy, for various reasons. For one, hiring is pricey—upwards of $250,000 to hire and train a high-level exec. Perhaps even more costly are the inevitable effects of a culture crisis: low morale, reduced productivity, a decrease in creativity and innovation, and teams who squabble rather than collaborate. So, how do you stave off crisis and create a culture that other businesses will covet? Here are a few ideas that have worked for us:

  1. Define and share your values

Before Girl Friday Productions hired a single employee, the partners worked with a fantastic consultant, Libby Wagner, to help us think through the big questions. No, I’m not referring to board structure or to investment strategies. I’m talking about values. Every member of our company understands and is expected to practice our four pillars of respect, genuineness, empathy, and specificity in our interactions with one another and with our clients. And this starts at the top. Model the behavior you want to see. Only by walking the walk and being explicit about the company’s values and expectations will you get the results you want and nurture a great company culture.

  1. Incentivize learning

It’s become buzzworthy to create a company that fails forward, but what does that really look like in practice? It means employees are not penalized for admitting to failures and mistakes but rather praised for analyzing their failures and then implementing strategic change. Ask yourself, does your performance management system or bonus structure reward learning, or increase the chances your team will try to hide their mistakes? And are you giving yourself the grace to learn from your mistakes as well?

  1. Take responsibility for failures and give credit for successes

When the company fails, look in the mirror; when the company succeeds, look out the window. It’s a popular leadership adage for a reason. Only insecure CEOs believe it signals weakness to take responsibility for missteps, misguided strategies, or quality issues rather than throwing their employees under the bus. Conversely, make sure you take time to celebrate your successes and give credit to your entire team, not just to the C-suite. We made it easier at our firm by dedicating an email alias to “myhero.” Anyone can write in when they feel thankful or inspired by a team member’s performance. We then share these tributes at monthly staff meetings.

  1. Be transparent

I think transparency is both more natural for female leaders and carries more risk. More natural because women are socialized to be self-deprecating and open about our faults (sometimes to a fault). Riskier because the bar is already set higher for women, making transparency around a tough earnings report or an HR crisis a tough call for female CEOs. Team members trust leaders who are honest with them, even when, perhaps especially when there is hard news to share. Culture is enhanced by truth, not by closed doors and whispered conversations.

  1. Consistently evaluate performance

We’ve all conducted an annual review where an employee’s coworkers finally let loose on the issue they’d been holding in all year. How did that go? Was the employee eager to accept the criticism and focused on change? Of course not. No one should be surprised by anything they hear in their annual review, because good managers and colleagues respectfully confront issues as they arise rather than springing them on employees months later. Not only is it unfair to the employee in question, but it’s a disservice to the rest of the team, who are forced to negotiate around the issue. Engage in continuous or frequent performance management and commit to “courageous” conversations. Your team will thank you for it.

5 Signs that It’s Time to Rebrand by @GirlFridayProd

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by Leslie “LAM” Miller | Featured Contributor  

Most small business entrepreneurs don’t have fully staffed marketing departments whose job it is to manage our brands, and when you’re enmeshed in the day-to-day operations, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. At my own company, after one major web update seven years in, it took five more years to realize we were beyond freshening the paint—it was time to remodel. One of the best moves we made was to get an outside perspective. Our consultant was invaluable in challenging us to really think through who we were and where we wanted to go. But it took a while before we recognized it was time to seek help.

How can you tell if it’s time to rebuild your brand? Here are five signs:

  1. The Competitive Landscape Has Changed

Evaluating your competition on a regular basis is key. For Girl Friday, when we started in 2006 we were one of the only book publishing services firms of our kind. In 2018, that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’re staying up on trends in your industry, you’ll get a sense about major shifts in the competitive landscape. Turning that feeling into data with a good old-fashioned SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis can reveal that your stake in the market is too crowded, and it’s time to shift focus.

  1. You’re Trying to Please Everybody

Regardless of industry, being a jack of all trades is a nearly impossible messaging proposition. This was a perennial struggle for our company, where we create very different kinds of books for very different client types. Our old website attempted to address everyone’s needs—and the result was confusing for visitors and ineffective at attracting the clients we really wanted. Don’t be afraid to put a stake in the ground about who you are for. Doing so doesn’t mean that you can’t have a variety of offerings and client types, but it does mean your brand messaging is focused only on attracting that target client. If you do a good job at owning the marketing in one category, the rest of the business will feel the halo effect of your brand’s growth.

  1. You’re Attracting the Wrong Clients

As your company matures your ideal client is bound to shift, and so too must your branding. What to us read as “accessible” and “quirky” five years ago was deemed “adolescent” by our recent consultant. Ouch, but he had a point. Our ideal client is serious about getting her ideas or story out in book form and is seeking expertise. She’s ready to make a big investment both in terms of time and money. We needed branding to attract her, not a hobbyist or someone on a shoestring budget who couldn’t afford our services. If you find yourself frustrated by the wrong clients coming through your pipeline, it’s worth stepping back and examining what you’re doing to attract them.

  1. You’re Not Leveraging Your Assets

We women tend to be a humble group—sometimes overly so. It may seem obvious to highlight what’s special about your company, but many of us are so busy trying to ape other people or models that we forget the power of being ourselves. For our firm, one of our major assets is an all-women leadership team. We also have a flexible work model because we were founded by moms with young babies. Internally, we all appreciated the company’s make-up and strengths, but we weren’t talking about it outside of our walls, let alone purposefully leveraging our uniqueness as part of our brand. What makes you unique? It’s time to put it out there!

  1. Your Branding Hasn’t Kept Up with Digital

As part of our rebrand, we updated our logo, in part to bring it more in line with our brand tone, but also because our old mark was too small and detailed to work well in social. Whereas we like to look at book designs on our large desktop monitors, we recognized that most people who find us online are browsing on their phones and optimized our website for mobile. If you’re not considering your client’s journey and building your branded assets with those considerations in mind, you’re missing a big opportunity.

  1. (Bonus!) Your Team Spirit Is Flagging

Sometimes, your company culture needs a reboot. Teams love to see themselves reflected in the company messaging. If your employees feel invested and clear on your business’s value proposition and see that reflected in your branding, odds are that they will make excellent ambassadors for the company and stay energized.