Starting outwards for the easiest... Environment

Look at your business idea, is the time right for it? is it a niche market, who are your competitors?

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What are the skills you have? What are the skills, resources and people that you need?   Paying a lot of money for training doesn't always bring results. You can often go ahead and learn on the hoof. You don't need letters after your name.

The archive this month represents 2 of our entrepreneurs - Martha Lane Fox, the Digital Tzar for the Government, and previous joint founder of LastMinute.com. Martha calls for mandatory boardroom quotas and said she totally rejects the "assumption that, with quotas comes substandard women". Describing the attitude as "patronizing and sexist". FMWF, Financial Mail Women's Forum.

Sonita Alleyne, interviewed when Obama won the last election, the woman responsible for the music at Mandela's party in Hyde Park for his 90th birthday. She believed in the "as if".."imposter moment." Act as though you are the person you want to be. It certainly came true for her and her media firm, Somethin' Else.

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Time for a look at beliefs: One of the starting points in coaching is to examine limiting beliefs, beliefs held over from your childhood, or from your parents, about what you are capable of and who you are.

The good news is that if you change them into liberating beliefs, then you can be whoever you want to be.

Previously we've looked at how you change your name through marriage, change your address through moving house, or country. You can change your age: see my article "REAL age" in Finally40. You can also change who you are; this is never more important than now, when the computer and the data banks would like to lock down individuals, tie them to their past, and not allow any choices. The danger of one size fits all and "smart" meters and registers. People often have pseudonyms; many women writers use a male moniker as it gives them better access to attention.

Best of all is a name which covers both, such as Sam or George or Hari; when measuring the numbers of male and female on boards this can confuse.

Women on boards is a hot topic right now, since Norway's success, aiming at 44% over 5 years.

Currently the EU women are coming out against quotas, despite all the evidence that more diverse firms are more successful. Some of our top firms have women resigning, after having turned the business around. Marjorie Scardino of Pearson, and Cynthia Carroll of Anglo-American Mining.

A comment from Professor Teresa Rees, consultant to the E.U. on Equality.

"Quotas, in effect, is what we currently have, an unofficial quota system for men. If brains, skills and competencies are evenly distributed then why are places on boards and top jobs disproportionately awarded to men?"

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So how do you see yourself? As a musician, mother, husband, banker. How many facets are there? and which is your drving force as an entrepreneurs.
 

In my seminars we've done 3 word hooks for your business, so that you are immediately memorable and often they're alliterative or front rhyming.

Here are two: "babel-fish for barrister" translator for lawyers, and "finish on a high note" musician who writes film scores.

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