A Light Bulb Moment for Girls Guide

Last night I had a light bulb moment. You know what I'm talking about right? An answer to something you have been struggling with just appears? For months, years even we have been trying to figure out how we can help even more women with their career issues. I co-write books about women and careers (The Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business, The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss without Being a Bitch and the upcoming The Girl's Guide to Kicking Your Career into Gear), we speak to women all over the country about taking control of their careers, starting their own businesses and finding a better worklife balance.

But as we grow, I have noticed that we are missing that direct one-on-one contact with the women we are helping. We actually want to hear about the promotion that someone won. We want to help someone with their professional make-over. We want to see the brilliant small business idea get off the ground. We find ourselves giving career advice in line at the bank, to our hairdressers and to friends of friends so why not do it more of it?

So after much discussion and a very important light bulb moment we have decided to launch Girls Guide Career Coaching. This is early to even talk about it since we just made the decision last night, but we are so excited that we wanted to blog about it as soon as we got in. The entreprenurial part of us is buzzing with ideas this morning. How do we launch it? What is the best marketing tool? Will people be up for both in-person and phone coaching? How many women can we work with at a time? We want to help both women who work for themselves and other people so how best to reach out?

So if you have ANY ideas we want to hear from you! And a big THANK YOU in advance for any advice.

What Can You Really Control at Work?

What can you really control at work anyway? Turns out for us...not that much. We work hard for our clients but they are not always happy. We write books but unless we stand in the aisles of B&N and Borders pushing copies into the hands of the customers we can't actually sell them ourselves. We have a million ideas for articles but unless a magazine is interested they are not seeing the light of day. And often that depends on themes, and ad sales and a bunch of other things not in our control. The latest in the we-can't-control-everything front is our experience trying to get a dramedy off the ground in Hollywood. OK so we are working with kick-ass producers (MediaNation) who have come up with a really cool and fresh concept. As avid TV viewers we know what makes a good show, and this is a good show. We know this instinctively and by the responses to the treatment other people know this too. So what's the catch? Well, there was the upfronts, and then there was the summer, and then there were people excited about it that couldn't get other people excited about it. There was the 'yes, absolutely' meeting that turned into the 'just got signed on to an existing show and I need to pay my rent' call. There are people gagging for it if only we could tweak it a little so it was just like...a show already on television. After a rollercoaster of great calls followed by frustrating ones we have all taken the only approach you can in situations like this...a Zen one. We don't get too excited anymore (debatable) nor do we get too sad. We know this is a great show waiting to happen and we know we have zero control over the when and the how of it. So what can we control really? Turns out not that much. And that's OK.

Turns Out I Don't Know Everything

Caitlin Shares Her Humiliation:
So we had our very first focus group last night for these products we are working on and boy was it scary. I mean really scary. Imagine showing something you created to a group of strangers and having them say about one of the designs I HATE THAT ONE. That was a painful but productive comment because frankly we want to hear the truth before we sink in money. It got me thinking a little bit about how honest criticism and feedback is essential if you want to grow, get better and succeed at anything. It's tough in the moment but if you take your ego out of it (not always easy) you can learn something about yourself. Yesterday, the design I loved the best was the one everyone flatly despised. OK. So, maybe I don't know everything about marketing. I can live with that, might have stung a bit at the time but I'm over it. This morning we received a comment from a reader telling us that she objected to our using the word Girl in our materials. I wrote her back some thoughts because, while I didn't agree with her, she was invested enough in what we are trying to do and the community we are building to share her thoughts. And wow, that is amazing. I have learned at this point that it is actually a gift when people tell you the truth. You might not agree, or may have another point of view but sometimes they are absolutely 100% right. And when it comes down to it, when someone offers you feedback, good, bad and ugly at the very least it’s giving you another point of view to consider.

Welcome and Thank You!

First of all we just want to tell everyone how excited we are to be blogging here, on our very own Girls Guide website! Thanks so much for the support and feedback. We see this blog as the place to share our stories and hear yours. If you have read our books then you know that we learn from other women and include those pieces of wisdom at every opportunity. We thought for today's post we would talk about putting things off and start with http://www.girlsguidetobusiness.com/. It took years for us to finally pull the trigger on this site, we were just too anxious about it being perfect but had no vision for what that would look like. Finally, we accepted that we shouldn't strive for perfection but rather for a website that provided a place to talk about workplace issues and opportunities for women. Once we defined that goal we were on our way. Hopefully we are close with the elements highlighted on here and we will continue interviewing women, recommending products, sharing advice and tips and of course stories from women who are climbing the ladder and from those that jumped off.

Girls Guide To Business

The Learn chapter features interviews with women on all rungs of the ladder, tips for making your workday a little more fun, ideas for entrepreneurs, bosses to emulate and to definitely NOT emulate, things learned on the playground that apply to the boardroom, and by reader request…characters, movies or real women in the entertainment business that are worth watching.
At www.girlsguidetobusiness.com we share stories about women who work and who are working it. Our goal is to create a community of women who want to be happy and successful at work; women who want to create careers that fit their lives, and not lives to fit their careers. Whether they are working for a Fortune 100 company or for themselves, our girls want to be leaders with careers that build self confidence and offer both financial stability and a good time.
The Learn pages offers advice, tips and real-life stories from women around the country. We'll be updating these pages all the time, so join our community and jump into the conversation by sharing your experiences. Remember, your stories are important.