Happy 5th Birthday StartupPrincess.com! Celebrations & Reflections

(Fair warning, this is a very long post!) Wow. I can hardly believe it’s been 5 years since I wrote the very first post on StartupPrincess.com (then startupprincess.wordpress.com) it was a seriously boring template, but I was beyond grateful to enter the world of blogging for FREE (almost, had the little hosting bill and godaddy fee). WordPress is great! Where else can you set up shop and bootstrap your way from there? I didn’t even have our logo (that came 6 months later). Discovering how to launch a business/blog with little risk and low investment was a dream come true, especially considering that at the time I was pitching for $1M in funding for a retail concept and was hitting brick wall after brick wall. When I started this site I questioned, “How am I going to facilitate a networking organization/blog when I’m also trying to start another company and be the mother of a newborn and two other young children?” and the answer came, “One day at a time…” and that’s exactly what it has been. (As you might have guessed that retail business never fully launched… and thank goodness, this is the perfect place to be as a mom who chooses to be at home and create an income stream).

At the time I didn’t hardly know what a blog was, what the potential could be, and where I was headed. All I knew is that I felt beyond inspired to write, to share my own experiences as a Startup Princess by my own right and to reach out to mentors I admired and ask them to teach us what they had learned. Within seconds of deciding I’d dedicate this blog to women in startups the name came to me from  heaven and I knew there was a master plan to it all, I felt it from the top of my head to my toes. I purchased the domain name with tears streaming down my face and God showed me that in time women all over the world would be connected through this very site. I trusted and I put one foot in front of the other. I was naive but it was a perfect launch.

My core belief system about how businesses best succeed still remains the same as it was 5 years ago, “Ask and Ye Shall Receive”. Whenever I didn’t know what to do next I asked in prayer (and often brainstormed with fellow startups and mentors) and waited for a door to open — it always did. I envisioned retreats, conferences, generous sponsors, fancy speakers, teleseminars, and giving inspiring messages to women- all of which have happened, but I never envisioned in a million years that I would have the blessing and great fortune to make friends who would share their hearts, dreams, fears, and successes with me- this I treasure the very most. I also never considered that I would be requested as a keynote speaker, a cover girl, a TV guest, or magazine contributor which has all been humbling, exciting and stretching nor did I envision Twitter! (and oh how I love that our icon is on the homepage and recommended in the business category for new twitter users!)

Startup Princess initially was about my desire to give women entrepreneurs a chance to connect with each other and learn together and that wish has been granted over and over again. It is incredibly rewarding for me to hear of collaborations that evolved from women who met each other at a Startup Princess event or because women attended one of our events they were inspired to create their own or expand their business in some way. I love to share about Startup Princesses and what they are doing and how they are contributing.

When I started Startup Princess I was the voice, I wrote all of the posts, conducted the interviews, answered the emails and managed the events then in 2007 a call came from the Small Business Development Center in Orem where they offered an assistant at no cost to help me move things forward to help us organize events and conferences. We started our first Utah County chapter and it became such a powerful network and support for women. There was a real need then, there weren’t women networking events readily available, it felt great to provide that service. We eventually expanded to other chapters and at one time had 4 running by 2010. We quickly realized we weren’t really equipped to manage all of the chapters and make it profitable so we scaled back and decided retreats, smaller events, and our annual conference every September is where we want to focus. We are so grateful so many other online, local and national networks for women in business have popped up over the last few years and are providing excellent ways for women to connect. This week I read Derek Sivers book “Anything You Want” (launching soon on Amazon) where he says that he wouldn’t have continued with CD Baby if all Independent Musicians sold their own music on their own sites…he was there to serve them because there was a need and if the need ever ended so would he. That’s a little of how I feel about why we no longer have chapters for Startup Princess.

Our team over the years has evolved and changed too. At first it was just me and it was hard, so hard. Then Laurie joined me (from the Small Biz Dev Center grant) to help expand with events, a true miracle, the ultimate organizer! Then Leslie Smoot joined us, a woman gifted in business and continually offering excellent feedback and support, she contributed for 18 months and then left to launch her own cooking business- she maintains equity. When Leslie knew it was time for a change she told me a new partner was being prepared and oh how right she was! When she mentioned it I saw Michelle McCullough‘s face in my head and I offered her a position to support us with our 2nd Touchpoint in 2008 and she’s been heavily involved ever since in helping us to expand, launch different programs, run events, retreats, and above all helped me to stay sane, enjoy the journey of it all, and honors our partnership. Crystal Miller also deserves a big shoutout for being our site manager for more than a year and went above and beyond to make this site fresh and new. Sarah Ward was also remarkable as an event planner and supportive assistant. In 2010 Shannon Baker accepted a position to work with me closely for a month and offered tremendous insight. The talented and lovely Sarah Bray gets a huge thank you because when I wanted to expand in 2008 with a revamped site she believed in what we could become and sponsored our redesign which I fully acknowledge as being a major breakthrough for us plus becoming a kindred spirit in the process. Rebecca Servoss has been very involved in our website, graphic design, and branding efforts and feels like a part of our team even though she’s officially a freelancer for us because she cares so much and always turns out excellent work.

Our community has been essential to our success and has given us so much love over the years. Many many thanks to those who have attended and sponsored our events, read posts here, and never stopped believing in the good we were aiming to do- in no particular order… here’s several people I’d love to mention publicly:  Christopher Liechty and the Bank of American Fork marketing team for believing in us and our mission, Janet Thaeler (who on more than one occasion saved this site from crashing due to plugins and taught me many basic wordpress skills), Sarah Jane for being the one I love to brag about the most and for always sharing the good news, Quinn Curtis a true Startup Princess- continually wowing me with her entrepreneurial talent, ambition and sisterhood,  Jason Alba the first to ever call me “Startup Princess” and offer great insight, remains one of my favorite business wizards, Wendy Piersall who truly deserves to be called eMom forever- in the early days it was she who defined what a great blog post meant, how to do it with grace and get paid for it too, Danielle LaPorte for being both an honest mentor, contributor and friend since the beginning and for coming to SLC for Touchpoint last year, Heather Allard who has been a loyal contributor for years (can’t wait to meet in person!), Holly Buchanan, who was one of the first Fairy Godmothers and was there as a mentor and friend early on, Barbara Jones who took time to brainstorm over the years and has always been so generous, Nancy Cadjan who confirmed StartupPrincess was a winning business concept and helped me so much in the start, Jack Hadley for being so darn supportive of me and the entrepreneurial scene, Cary Snowden for doing the SunTweet event and sharing opportunities, Jeremy Hanks for giving me more than my fair share of free biz advice and being a huge advocate of our work, Jeanette Bennett for being the first magazine to do a feature on Startup Princess which launched a whole series of media opportunities, Brock Blake and Alex Lawrence for not laughing at me when I tell them I will be an Angel Investor, Seth Jenks who offered meaningful advice countless times and showed up to serve when I needed him, Nate Bagley who accepted a brief stint here as site manager and helped me to create more systems, Heather Madder who knows my heart, continually invites me to live fully engaged and embrace my mission, Tiffany Peterson who helped me to achieve my most rewarding financial breakthroughs this year, my best friend Deborah Gardner who always cheers me on and lovingly smacked me upside the head when I needed my priorities adjusted, Natalie Goddard who has shown me an enlightened way to give and receive, Pam Baumeister who granted wishes for me and so many more women as editor of Wasatch Woman and has remained a dear friend, Rachael Herrscher who told me when I started in business to “choose the path of least resistance” which echoed in my head for months until I chose StartupPrincess as ‘the business’, Jyl Pattee (along with Rachael) who continually push what I thought was possible in online media and events and has offered appreciated advice, Garret J White for showing mercy and coached me through failure privately so I could win publicly, Kim Flynn for offering excellent coaching and inviting me to play bigger than ever, Gabrielle Blair for saying yes to our retreat and making a huge difference for many influencers there- and inspiring me ever since, and to ALL of our Startup Princess Chapter Presidents and teams who believed, gave it a go and loved participating, and all of the Fairy Godmothers who ever shared a post, spoke at an event, and gave their best selves to help our community, my **family** for believing in what I create and give me the space to do it, Paul Allen for inviting me to share my story through a blog in the first place and Seth Godin who wrote a little post in 2006 and dramatically shifted my world, granted my wish to speak in SLC in 2010, overwhelms me by his generous heart, and continues to walk the talk.

What’s next for Startup Princess? Honestly my answer isn’t any more clear than it was 5 years ago, we’re still evolving! We know more now than we did- the blogosphere is evolving too, so is social media and business educational/networking events…so I will continue to show up to serve women entrepreneurs- challenging them to “Make a Wish, Make it Happen!“, Ask God for inspiration and put one foot in front of the other. I have plans in the next few years to offer grants, scholarships, mentor-based investments as an “Angel”. Exciting plans ahead!!

The biggest news that I’m going to announce is that today, 5 years after being a Startup Princess I’m graduating…and I’m going to fully embrace my role as a bonafide Fairy Godmother in Business, to completely OWN it. Previously I gathered the mentors/Fairy Godmothers and sat at their feet (and sometimes hiding behind their greatness), facilitated the events, spoke occasionally, wrote randomly, but never completely allowed myself the full opportunity to lead …now I am. No apologies. My confidence has grown tenfold in business this year. I know how to win, I know how to switch things up if they aren’t going well and I know how to make money, serious money which now opens doors for others. Business isn’t charity and a Startup Princess needs to know how to take care of herself financially, her family too if needed. I can now more confidently than ever coach women through that process with passion and I love it. I embrace the opportunity to serve in a new way, a bigger, bolder way than ever before because I am accepting who I am and who I am becoming.  To paraphrase Marianne Williamson, when we show up powerfully we allow others to do the same…let it begin!

Make a Wish, Make it Happen!

Kelly King Anderson, Fairy Godmother and Founder

StartupPrincess.com

 

Measuring PR: How to measure the effectiveness of media relations efforts

By Emily Haleck, Public Relations Manager, Bank of American Fork

Whether your company has one employee or one thousand, public relations can and should be an important part of your marketing plan. Public relations (PR) is your company’s effort to create and maintain a positive corporate image among the public.

One important component of PR is media relations. Getting your company covered by media—whether traditional media like newspapers, radio or TV, or “new” media like websites, blogs and social networking sites—can be an effective way to create credibility for your company since the messaging is coming from a third party instead of from you.

Once you have learned the basics of writing a press release, pitching a story idea and nurturing relationships with journalists, the media coverage will hopefully begin to flow. Now the question becomes, “What is this publicity worth?”

Here are a few ways you can measure media coverage to help you—and your board of directors—better understand the value of your PR efforts.

Circulation: The number of subscribers to a newspaper, magazine or newsletter. This is the minimum number of people that receive the publication. It does not include those that pick up the publication at a newsstand or read a second-hand copy at the dentist’s office (that number is a best guess known as readership). Online, the equivalent number might be the number of followers on a blog or Twitter, “like”-ers on Facebook or unique visitors for a website. For TV and radio reach, use viewers and listeners, respectively.

Impressions: Impressions are the number of times your coverage is viewed. The viewing may be done by a unique viewer or a repeat viewer. This number can be different from circulation due to multiple views by single persons or pass-along rates.

Publication size: How popular is the medium in which you receive coverage? If your company has mostly a local clientele, in-state newspapers and business magazines may be the jackpot. If your company is national or international in scope, a big publication is going to have a name like The New York Times, CNN or Vogue magazine. Determine what your reach should be and then create a scale to measure the prominence of the publication. One way to do this is to use 1 for low-, 2 for medium- and 3 for high-prominence publications. The bigger the number, the higher the reach.

Coverage placement and profile: Once you’ve determined how prominent the publication is, measure the value of the placement in the publication. A front-page feature story on your chief executive is more valuable than a one-liner event announcement buried on the back page. You can use the same low, medium and high rankings to measure how prominent your company’s coverage was within the publication and within the article. You’ll find that high placement in a local  newspaper can have a larger impact than low placement in a national one.

Tone: Of course, high scores for publication size and coverage profile are only good when the coverage is good. You should measure the tone of your media coverage to track whether your company’s image is getting a boost or a black eye. A good way to measure tone is to use +1 for pieces with a positive tone, 0 for neutral-toned pieces and -1 for negative tone. These metrics make it immediately clear whether your company’s media coverage was positive or negative, or somewhere in between.

Advertising equivalencies: Another way to measure the value of PR is by comparing it to how much it would have cost to pay for the same placement in a publication. This can be a bit tricky, as not all publications make available advertising information about how much they charge for a specific space. If you are able to find this information, it’s usually safe to at least double the advertising amount, as the value of the information coming from a neutral third party rather than a paid advertisement is seen as more credible.

All these numbers and definitions can be confusing at first, so provide a key on your PR reports that summarizes what each metric means. Over time, you and your team will understand how to interpret the data and how PR provides an unparalleled bang for the buck.

Emily Haleck is the public relations manager for Bank of American Fork, Utah’s largest community bank, where she is responsible for media relations, employee communications, copywriting and campaign measurement. Haleck received a bachelor’s degree in public relations from Brigham Young University and a master’s of business administration degree from the University of Utah. She is a member of the Public Relations Society of America.

Image Credits: AWIRTHLIN PR

Health is Wealth – My Top 10 Tips

It’s so true! “Health is Wealth”, you hear it and until you’re fading and broken you don’t consider the value of this statement. Today I’m thinking about it.

I can honestly say that I’ve been testing my health to the limits this Spring. I haven’t been eating as well as I know I should nor getting the amount of sleep that I know I need. After quite a bit of traveling and the stress of selling our home, my body is starting to shout at me and tell me to S-L-O-W down. It happens to the best of us, we go-go-go and then our body says, NO MORE!! So I’m obeying, I am saying no to invitations this week and going to be doing a lot more self care. That said, I generally have excellent health and I can’t think of a day I’ve spent in bed (besides food poisoning and pregnancy) in years.

Here’s a few tips that have helped me:

1. I believe in the power of pure, filtered water. 1/2 body weight in ounces a day.

2. I eat primarily a vegetarian type diet. I eat meat very sparingly, once a week. I make a lot of smoothies, especially green ones with spinach or collard leaves. I try to buy organic when possible.

3. I take supplements and love Omegas. I use doTERRA essential oils, in fact I’m a distributor of them and use them to completely replace my medicine cabinet. Feel free to ask me questions about them if you like. simpleabundance (at) gmail (dot) com is my email for that. I also have found it to be an amazing business, I’m making a generous full time salary with part-time effort.

4. I live near nature and spend a lot of time (when weather is good) going on walks and being outside

5. I take time for self-care. I get massages, go to the spa, get my hair done. I wear clothes that are in season, fashionable, and look good on my body type and coloring. I wear makeup. I adore jewelry.  When I feel good on the inside, I feel great on the outside but the opposite is also true, when you feel good on the outside it helps you feel good on the inside!

6. I am a huge believer in therapy. I believe that if we don’t take care of our pain and emotional challenges they will show up in our body and we will pay for it. I go to Deena Jordan for energy work. Deena does sessions over the phone and is very good at identifying the root of our suffering, asking the right questions to release and help the client let it go. I recommend at least 3 sessions to get started. I try to have 1 session a month. I also go to Karyn Grant, she is in Utah County and specializes in music, massage, and aromatherapy to heal the mind, body, and spirit. I’ve gone to Karyn for 8 years and she is excellent at what she does, her work is based in healing through Christ. I have coached with Heather Madder and highly recommend her audios, coaching, and healing work. She has a lot to offer in this area. All these women are very talented, intuitive, and I trust them 100%.

7. I believe in natural health care and recommend Laura Jacobs and team for bio scans at Herbs for Health in Pleasant Grove. With a scan they can identify what is going on in your body, mind, and spirit and see what supplements, dietary needs you may have, and other supportive methods will help you get to feeling better. I have been going every 6 months or so and bring my children as well. They use a variety of natural health products and I’ve had excellent results.

8. I try to SLEEP deeply and well. I take naps at least once a week and I am committed to getting better at this at night!

9. I have found exercise that resonates with me- running/walking in nature, yoga, biking, and horseback riding (although I rarely have the opportunity! i want to create more of this). I have had a personal trainer off/on and I love the results physically from toning up.

10. I am committed to my faith and I know there is power in health when you have a clear mission, identity, and choose to be an instrument for God to do His work. I know that when I pray sincerely, study scripture, attend church and temple regularly I am blessed to fulfill my work at home and beyond with more strength and passion.

It’s always good to review what works for us in regards to our health, what about you? I’d love to hear what has been helpful for you.

This post was written by Kelly King Anderson, Founder  of Startup Princess. Reach her here by leaving a comment or by messaging/following her on Twitter @startupprincess