Introducing Fairy Godmother, Laura Posey
January 18, 2007
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Recently Fairy Godmother Holly Buchanan introduced me to her friend and our newest Fairy Godmother, Laura Posey and I’m so glad she did. Laura’s a “firecracker” in sales and we’re thrilled to have her share her magic with Start Up Princesses everywhere.
Laura brings much passion to her work as Vice President and Co-Founder of Dancing Elephants Achievement Group, a company focused on helping entrepreneurs build a sales and marketing machine that produces predictable income without their input. She likes to create and get things done. Over the years, she has received numerous awards and recognition for her sales and management contributions to different organizations. Laura’s extensive sales career has covered the gamut, from insurance to cars. She broke into sales in high school by selling cutlery door-to-door.
Laura is the co-author of Six Secrets of Sales Magnets. In this book, she discloses the differences between average, good and great salespeople and shows readers how to become part of the top 5% of salespeople in their field. Read more
Qualities of an Entrepreneur
January 18, 2007
The following is from the presentation by Fairy Godmother Rachael Herrscher
of Today’s Mama at The Start Up Princess conference, “Make A Wish, Make it Happen” held on Jan 13th . Thanks to Start Up Princess Elizabeth Scott (dream in development) for sharing her notes!
- Entrepreneur’s Perspective: The glass is MORE than full!
- All Big Dreams are done by people who are a little naive. If you knew what it really took, you might not even start.
- Risk Friendly
- Entrepreneurs are self-starters; they like to set their own hours, schedules, income, ambitious!
- They know that thoughts become Our Reality!
- They know that “it will eventually work out”
Great quotes: “The wiseman said, “it can’t be done” then the fool came in and did it.”
“One must have chaos in one’s sould to give birth to a dancing star.”-Nietzsche
Thanks Fairy Godmother, Rachael for the inspiration!
Prepare For Your Year-end Payroll
January 17, 2007
Fairy Godmother Gina Gwordz, CPA writes:
I am a strong advocate of having a professional handle your payroll as many small businesses end up paying unnecessary interest and penalties due to late or inaccurate payroll forms and tax payments.
Short of that, please use this as a general guide prior to performing your year-end payroll duties:
- Verify the accuracy of your employee’s address and social security number
- Verify the accuracy of your terminated employee’s address and social security number
- Verify the accuracy of your company contributions to employee provided retirement plans Read more
Must We Love All Aspects of Starting A Business?
January 17, 2007
No. How can we love all aspects? We all have different skill sets and talents and it’s ok.
I tend to want to do my favorites all the time:
- Networking with Entrepreneurs!
- Attending Conferences/Workshops (Start Up Princess ones, especially!)
- Writing blog posts, commenting on blogs, reading blogs
- Reading business books
- Marketing
- Product Development
- Brainstorming/Planning
- Writing emails
- Calling and meeting with my mentors/coach/Fairy Godmothers!
- Speaking/Teaching other entrepreneurs
- Buying merchandise
- Interacting with customers!
I certainly don’t love the following:
- Doing the finances/Quickbooks
- Paperwork!
- Inventory
- Late nights/early mornings
- Admitting that I have a lot to learn!
Todays’ Magic Wand: So, what do I do to make myself sit down and do my least favorites?? I reward myself! I just completed 1 1/2 hours of finance work, so I allowed myself to do a favorite: blog. Hence this little post. I feel better now that I’ve confronted my list of favorites and least favorites. I have been avoiding my finances for a few days…now I’m happy I finished that aspect. I know I will come to LOVE the finances someday when all the checks keep rolling in. 
What do you do to motivate yourself to do the “least favorites” of your start up business?Participate in a Blog Carnival to Boost Your Visibility
January 17, 2007
Today is Start Up Princess’s first experience participating in a blog carnival. Check it out here. I found the “entrepreneurship” blog carnival by visiting www.blogcarnival.com and then contacted the organizer. Basically all you do is submit a relevant post to the theme of your industry and if they like it, they include it. After you’re accepted, be sure to read the other posts and comment on others’ posts. The purpose is to network, connect, learn, and share…have fun.
Today’s Magic Wand: Find a blog carnival to participate in, check out www.blogcarnival.comEntrepreneur Blogs to Check Out
January 16, 2007
Today I met Ben of Startup Spark. He runs a great blog there (and other places as well, such as instigatorblog.com) and also hosts a weekly “blog carnival” (basically a collection of blog posts on a theme) for entrepreneurship posts. I will be participating in that soon… Ben is both friendly and helpful to fellow bloggers and offered me some excellent advice when we chatted about how Start Up Princess.com could grow and reach a broader audience. One answer was for me to visit lots of entrepreneurship blogs and comment on them. I thought I knew a few, but not until I saw Ben’s huge list. Check it out here.
Today’s Magic Wand: Visit one of the blogs on Ben’s list and then tell us what you think… I am trying to find the “best of the best” for our Blogroll here.What is your favorite Entrepreneurship blog? (besides Start Up Princess, of course!)
Fed-Ex Kinkos Saves Fairy Godmother!
January 15, 2007
Today’s Magic Wand: This one is from Fairy Godmother, Rachael Herrscher of Today’s Mama: My Magic Wand for ya’ll is Fed-Ex Kinkos! I know it’s simple — I know everyone knows them — BUT — do have you utilized their late night services? ;) In preparing for the Start Up Princess conference last weekend I realized the night before that I wanted to make a copy of a handout for everyone — the realization came at 10:45 p.m.
I hopped online at kinkos.com - uploaded my project and requested that I pick it up before midnight - they were done by 11:30 p.m. (and my husband picked the copies up for me). This is the second time I have used them last minute, late at night. Their service has been awesome and it’s great in a bind! So next time your only good ideas come late in the night before a big event - remember you can upload your projects and pick them up that same night or early in the a.m. at Fed-Ex Kinkos! Did that sound like they pay me or what?!?! (I wish they did)
Fear & Risk in Entrepreneurship
January 14, 2007
Here Fairy Godmother Janet Meiners shares some of her notes from the Start Up Princess Make a Wish, Make it Happen Conference:The theme of Fear and Risk:
Get used to fear and risk if you are an entrepreneur (or do anything great in life). I loved Rachael Herrscher’s story about her dad being an entrepreneur. They got to experience poverty and riches depending on how business went (in fifth grade she had to sell her baseball card collection to pay the family utility bill, yet recently her dad purchased an oil refinery) . He could always find a way to make a living and he knew it was up to him. They looked at poverty as an opportunity to create another way to make money (sold paintings in the living room one time). She said sometimes it’s like jumping out of the plane and wondering where your parachute is or if you even have one. You have to find your passion to be a successful entrepreneur. Rachael’s overall inspiration is a quote by Steve Jobs, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”Kristin Lamb talked about her home and told us where all the food was located, noting, if you starve it’s your own fault. So if we want to feast, we have to prepare the meal. We don’t need to do it alone though (as this community of women demonstrated as we helped, shared, and supported each other). She also told about how fear is believing the bad, wrong, or evil will happen. Faith is the other space which is believing the best, good, or right will prevail. You choose…
Make a Wish, Make it Happen Conference Highlights
January 13, 2007
It was an absolute joy to gather today with Start Up Princesses and Fairy Godmothers from around Utah! Today also marks our 6 month anniversary as a blog site for women entrepreneurs, so it was fun to celebrate with our first conference! We’ve come a long, long way…yet ironically when I wrote that first post on July 13th, 2006 I knew where we were heading and that it would soon become larger than I could handle on my own…it’s been a delight to see this dream evolve, thanks to the internet, good friends who have spread the word, and all who have believed in us. I feel so honored to be the founder of Start Up Princess because of all the amazing women who have become a part of our kingdom and all of the amazing women we will meet in 2007! (drop me an email if you would like to join our organization; Kelly <at> StartUpPrincess.com)
Thank you so much to all who attended and contributed to make our conference so wonderful. We look forward to sharing the details of the event over the next week and also will feature podcasts of the speakers in the near future once they are edited by our sponsor, Fairy Godmother Jennifer Napier-Pierce of Intellicast Communications.
The Highlights of the Event (for me):
- The vibe was friendly, fun, relaxed, girly, and inspiring! It was a treat to gather together in our host’s gorgeous home and celebrate entrepreneurship.
- We focused not only on “wishing”, but on the “action” of our Start Up Dreams…I hope everyone has a “take away” with the assignments we gave to turn their wishlists into action items…(this is an idea I shared from John Reese)
- I loved meeting everyone who came and seeing the faces behind the names on our registration list. It was said by many who attended that it felt so “familiar”, everyone seemed to really enjoy networking and making new friends. What an excellent, high caliber group! Start Up Princesses are classy and smart! Read more
Laughter is Better than Tears
January 12, 2007
Crazy disasters tonight:
- My baby threw up on my laptop (now I am typing on a keyboard plugged into my laptop because the keyboard is ruined)
- Someone left a crayon in their clothes and it melted all over the dryer and took an hour to clean out
- My son tripped over my 2 year old’s little potty (one of the rare times it was filled) and it all spilled on the bathroom floor
Today’s Magic Wand: Laugh at unpleasant situations (my kids teach me to do this), it’s the only way to get through it. We’d rather laugh than cry. I hope when your family has a messy day or when your start up has a messy day you can see the humor in it.
