January 2012

Women-owned businesses start life with a third less capital than those owned by men. Some female entrepreneurs say it's partly the owners' fault.

As Liz Elting co-CEO of TransPerfect put it, “No one likes to be thought of as a ‘bitch.’ If you want everyone to like you, you will have a hard time doing what is necessary in hard times.”

Read all of Being Tough Isn’t the Same as Being a Bitch on Forbes.

Social entrepreneurs -- those using business skills to accomplish social good -- have many choices these days. New York and California recently joined five other states in allowing social good to be given as much weight as corporate profit by approving Benefit Corporations in which the well-being of all stakeholders (employees, community, clients, environment), not just shareholders, are legally taken into account when decisions are made.

Talking to Gen Xers and Gen Ys lately, I realize how dramatically e-commerce is changing retail business and customer service.

Opening up a store used to require renting space, furnishing the store, and working arduous hours. The last is still true but not the first two. Businesses are thriving without a physical location. In fact, many are able to exist because they skip the fixed costs and upfront investment of a brick-and-mortar store.

Women are 50% more likely to start businesses than the national average, yet are 70% less likely than men to own a business with revenue of $1 million-plus, according to The American Express OPEN State of Women-Owned Business Report.

Read all Want to Grow the Economy? Change Four Attitudes About Women Entrepreneurs on Forbes.

I try to practice what I preach so I keep an eye on my website metrics. And I’ve noticed some trends, the most notable being that people want easily accessed information about social media, aggregated in a useful collection. My most popular website pages were curated resources to help people learn about social media.