Black Friday, Cyber Monday & Your PR and Marketing Campaign: Must Knows for Big Sales

It’s no secret that the retail world has been dealing with a lot these days.  Whether you’re a “big box” retailer or a small business, whether you're selling online or via a brick & mortar store, you’ve no doubt felt the blow of the depressed economy.  That said, despite economic woes, shoppers will be lining up virtually and braving the cold weather in “real life”  outside of stores to kick off the holiday shopping season during this month’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales . This means that if you are a small business that doesn’t have thousands (to millions) of dollars to spend on advertising these sales you’re going to be relying on things like do-it-yourself public relations & marketing, social media and perhaps your company’s newsletter to get the word out about your sale.

Before doing any more sales strategizing, be sure you review these tips in order to maximize yoru Black Friday and Cyber Monday buzz, and create some new and return customers in the process!

Prepare NOW:  If you don’t know what you’ll be discounting or selling via your Cyber Monday or Black Friday sales, prepare now.  This means getting the copy ready for your website, your newsletters and the press who may be asking about your deals; prepping and testing discount codes (you don’t want any mistakes costing you sales on the big day) and checking to be sure your inventory, packaging and all else is ready to go!

Double Discounts Opportunities for Future Sales:  Once a customer enters your virtual or brick & mortar store they’re already telling you they are excited enough about your product/store to check it out, and that’s when you hit ‘em with discount #1, the specific Cyber Monday or Black Friday discounts you want to share.  But don’t stop there!  Encourage future sales by creating a second discount code or gift certificate that shoppers will receive after their purchase.  This can be sent via email if you run an e-commerce site or via a physical voucher if you are in a brick & mortar store.  This is a great way to capitalize on all the web and foot traffic coming into your store, and to begin creating a long term relationship with future and current customers.

Make it a Triple (Sale), Tell a Friend:  Everyone loves telling their friends about the great deals they snagged or are planning on snagging during the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy.  Remind your customers to tell a friend about your upcoming sale or make it easy for them by allowing them to share the sale directly from your website or via a promo card they can pick up at your store and physically give to a friend.  Your newsletter (if you have one) should also have a place they can forward the message along to a friend.  It’s human nature to want to share great scoop or news, so make it easy to share news of your sale, and you could snag even more sales!

Flash Sales within a Sale:  Ready to really kick it up a notch?  With the help of social media and a few properly placed pitches, you can really rev up sales by running flash sales throughout the day on specific items that come and go, thus creating a sense or urgency to BUY NOW!  An example?  What if Tin Shingle member Object Mythology discounted all her cozy alpaca gloves throughout Cyber Monday but from 12-2 pm only she did an additional discount on her infinity scarves.  People who may have been on the fence would have extra incentive to buy, before the sale ended.  Perhaps propreneur Simply Sweet Arrangements is doing a day long free shipping sale from Black Friday through Cyber Monday, but on Monday from midnight to 12 noon she also did an additional 25% off all orders.  That’s extra incentive to buy!

Socialize your Sale:  Help your message go viral by buzzing about the sales you’re offering leading up to the big shopping days and then throughout the shopping weekend via your company’s Facebook & Twitter.  This will help news of your sale go viral even faster!  If you’re tweeting your sale, be sure you check out which hashtags are trending in regards to Black Friday & Cyber Monday, and include those hashtags on your tweets!  Want to up the ante even more?  Include a SPECIAL bonus (maybe a free shipping offer, early access to sales or an extra ten percent off) for your loyal social media followers!

Pitch, pitch pitch – to the Right People!  Keep in mind that the stories going up about Black Friday & Cyber Monday are short lead stories – this means they will be appearing on television, websites, blogs, and some newspapers.  This is not the time to be pitching long lead outlets (monthly magazines) because these editors are already planning spring issues.  Instead, reach out to the outlets (especially large blogs and websites) that match the niche of the product you’re selling whose readers or viewers would be interested in your product.  This is also a great time to send your sale information to experts and shopping gurus who regularly appear on television talking about these types of sales. 

Finally, look for opportunities to share your sale via pr lead generators such as HARO and the Tin Shingle PR Leads.  Members of Tin Shingle can also post their sales in our Events section, which we will “socialize” via our website, newsletter, Facebook & Twitter, and pass along to any media looking for Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales information!

Be Honest about your Fulfillment Schedule:  Several of your customers will be purchasing their holiday gifts via your sale.  If it will take you 2 weeks plus to fulfill their order, let them know prior to them purchasing your item.  There’s no sense in generating lots of sales if you’re also going to generate angry customer responses!  The best way is through a forewarning and honesty.  Speaking of order fulfillment, make sure you have an internal system in place, should you need extra hands on deck to man orders and shipments!

Despite the economy, the shopping "show" will go on, and you want to be sure customers looking for a great deal and a great gift find you, get to know you and continue to shop from you!  Follow our tips, plan ahead and use this Black Friday & Cyber Monday time to build retail relationships with customers for now and into the future!

Gwyneth's Goop 2.0: The Website Is Making a Comeback. Do You Want Your Business Featured in Goop/

Gwyneth Paltrow has been on the covers of a few magazines this summer, most notably Fast Company, which likes to put female celebrities on the cover who are running businesses. So is goop making a comeback? Is it a media darling to pay attention to for your own press, or even to sell your product on? Internet-wise, people love to smear Gwyneth in snarky comments. But do those opinions matter anymore, when goop has a track record of moving, as Gwyneth states, "hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of product, and millions of dollars of product for other brands"?

I am exploring this, and have found very telling clues that yes, goop is going to make a comeback, and that it should be on your radar and in your Media Tracking Sheet as a newsletter/website to be featured on. Here's the line from Gwyneth in the Fast Company article that convinced me: "I've made commitments to people, and I've taken their money. I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that the brand scales." Let's look at the history to see how this growth spurt is going to happen...

When Gwyneth Paltrow launched goop from her kitchen in 2008, her newsletter and online magazine that shows how to live an elevated lifestyle, Daily Candy was the must-have newsletter to be featured in as a business. goop was the must-have website design foundation that businesses in the fashion, beauty and lifestyle industries were clamoring to achieve and were ordering redesigns of their websites to look more like goop's. Clean, simple, beautiful. I know this because I had just hung my shingle as a website designer, and a website design that looked like goop was the #1 request I got. Followed by: "How do I get featured in Daily Candy?"

Goop featured very expensive products - $975 Bottega Veneta riding boots, a $4,700 juicer, a $2,000 safety pin earring (just one), and more luxury items. When Gwyneth and goop embraced a model to monetize the website, they pursued selling limited-edition products directly from the website, the first piece being a very plain white shirt, the price was $90. The Internet threw rotten tomatoes at the price, but it sold out. In 2012, goop brought in $1.5 million, though it was $40,000 shy from showing income. According to the Fast Company article, it had $1.2 million in debt on the books.

CLUE #1: Gwyneth likes limited-edition, high-quality, well-packaged, expensive items.

Here we are in 2015, and Gwyneth has been pretty busy raising children, making movies, writing cookbooks, opening high-end gyms and fitness empires, and consciously uncoupling from her spouse.

CLUE #2: She's recently hired the former CEO of Martha Stewart, Lisa Gersh, who pursued "contextual commerce" at Martha Stewart, with the vision that editorial could be blended with business, as people read about product and then bought it. This basic idea has been happening for years, albeit in different forms. A most obvious form would be affiliate advertising, where you click on a special link from within an article and the website owner gets a commission if you buy the product. Another form could be in branded content, where a media outlet is paid to write an article about a product. But Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia had followed a traditional media path, and had trouble blending with this belief. Says Gersh in a Fast Company article: "It's hard to change cultures."

Back to Gwyneth, and why goop has been off your radar for a few years. Gwyneth built goop slowly, and apparently, as she said to Anjali Mullany, the author of the Fast Company article, when referring to her early days of writing and sending the goop newsletter: "When I think back on it, I'm afraid to press SEND."

CLUE #3: Hold the phones, people. This means that Gwyneth herself was writing the newsletter and pressing send. What you received in your inbox was an email that Gwyneth herself had touched. Part of why goop grew so slowly was because Gwyneth wanted to personally sign off on each and every recommendation. There is no indication that she is looking to change that, since goop is so tied back to her philosophies, despite a staff of 25, and other writers being able to write travel and other recommendations.

GOOP'S AT-A-GLANCE
Goop is a website and newsletter that offers style, food, and wellness recommendations from Gwyneth Paltrow and her trusted circle of experts, spiritual thinkers, and alternative health professionals. It is a shoppable lifestyle brand that places all emphasis on trust between the team at goop and the readers.
1 million newsletter subscribers
3,75 million page views per month
Headquartered in LA (previously in the U.K.)
A staff of 25 people

DOES YOUR BUSINESS FIT IN AT GOOP?

Products featured at goop must:

• be beautiful
• be packaged beautifully
• elevate a person's life to extreme beauty or comfort
• not care about price point.

Goop does feature products in editorial, and they also pride themselves on working directly with designers called "Goop Product Collaborations", where they do receive a portion of sales for all items that are sold on goop. When you pitch goop, you will be pitching for a retail partnership, or an editorial feature opportunity. You should know which one before you pitch.

Goop is not bothered with gifts under $100. Most gift recommendations, for instance, are an easy $500, like this earring for $520 (yeah, just one earring). You may find something for $6, but it's a card. This is great news for high-end luxury designers who make limited-edition runs and struggle with traditional media outlets who insist on high-volume in order to satisfy the purchasing habits of their readers and viewers.

There is a void now for an extreme needle-moving Best Of The Best List. With Daily Candy gone, and Oprah's list in a different format, there are very few life-changing lists for businesses to covet. Of course there are lists at People Magazine and so forth, but there is currently a void in gamechangers that filmmakers study and make documentaries of, now that media is shifting and new crowns will sit on different heads. Goop is not there yet, but could be. Gwyneth, albeit subtle in her style, is ethereal in her recommendations, with her editorial team trained to find and showcase that refined style. This makes for a pretty good source of a recommendation, one that people hold as truth.

So yeah, you want this. Tin Shingle has updated its Media Contact Database with editorial contacts at goop for Premium Members of Tin Shingle should you want to pitch the outlet. Remember, there is a lot more than just getting a name. You've got to write the right pitch, come up with a subject line that reads like a page-turner, and present them with a very good reason of why their readers would love your product, tips or recommendations. Tin Shingle gives you a lot of these ideas in our webinar TuneUps that you can download at anytime.

Good luck! Tweet to us your thoughts @tinshingle!

What to Pitch in July: The Long (Lead) & The Short (Lead) Of It

I'm writing you this on the eve of a Fourth of July weekend that I'm determined will be filled with sun, swimming, relaxing, fireworks and delicious summer treats.  Which is why it feels funny that we're beginning this "What to Pitch the Press in July" monthly series with this warning: you need to begin thinking about your holiday PR outreach. Now. Yesterday. All month long!  Yes, that's right. Whether you're sharing products for holiday gift guides or want to land your tips in a holiday issue (big readership, folks) now is the time to begin strategizing and pitching the press.  Early birds always get worms and these big, juicy worms of opportunities are plucked quickly.  So that's your first what to pitch teaser.  It's also a big topic to cover so get your head start this way: Watch this #TuneUp webinar where we talk about it more in depth, and stay tuned to the Tin Shingle newsletter because this month we're doing a full and in-depth Holiday Pitching Training that you must attend!  Now onto a few more things you should be creating stories about this month...

A Little More Long Lead: Thanksgiving:

It's time to get grateful, well it is in the land of many a monthly magazine.  That means it's time to get your Thanksgiving-themed pitches out.  Whether you are a product or service doesn't matter, you just have to fit the season.  Here's where you're going to go with this (pick ideas that suit you): How to stay healthy during Thanksgiving, hostess gifts, the power of gratitude, entertaining tips and tricks, Turkey Day recipes, vacation safety, how to make the most of your in-laws, how to prepare your business for Black Friday or Small Biz Saturday (not do not share your actual sale ideas, more on that in this #TuneUp).  If you need some inspiration or ideas specific to certain outlets, just check past issues (online or at the library) to get a feel for the type of seasonal stories they do!

All Things Summer Continues:

Here's a brain dump for you, find some angles that you could spin your brand into: Summer parties, summer safety, bug bites and poison ivy, family reunions, road trips, festivals, parties, summer recipes, summer work out plans, how to stay safe in the heat, how to work out in the heat, how to keep you pets safe in the heat, how to save money on air conditioning in the heat...

Your goal here is to think of story ideas that add value to the readers or viewers who are getting it, and that fit into this peak summer season. 

Bring on the Celebrations & Observances:

July is packed with long lead and short lead observances you can be spinning stories around.  For instance:

1. Bastille Day (July 14) - All things French - get creative!
2. National Picnic Month
3. UV Safety Month
4. National Blueberry Month
5. International Day of Friendship (July 30)

Want access to what stories are hot for pitching or blog posts every month of the year? Download this customizable Blog Planning Calendar - we already did the research for you!

Quote: Start Where You Are, Use What You Have, Do What You Can

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can. - Arthur Ashe

Be Bold, Or Italic, Never Regular. A Perfect Quote

Inspired by an image in the stylist Lourdes Amador's Instagram feed in her article for Tin Shingle on her favorite one-stop-shop photo editing app, we put our own twist to this perfect quote:

be bold

or italic

never regular.

Well said. Whoever you are that first said it.

SmallBizSpotlightInterview: Meet Dentist Turned Pillow Dr. Dawn Jones

What leads a dentist to invent the "perfect pillow"?  Where do you even start on that quest as an entrepreneur?  And why is everyone going crazy about it?  Find out in this exclusive Small Biz Spotlight interview with Dr. Dawn Jones-Sylla...

By trade, you are a dentist and own your own practice, which means we have to ask, what led you to embark on a mission to create the “perfect pillow” (where both comfort and hairstyles are concerned)?

I had always struggled with preserving my own freshly done hairstyles.  I had even trained myself to sleep a certain way at night.  A few years ago, while watching the movie Memoirs of a Geisha, I envisioned the solution to this lifelong struggle.

Let’s go back to the start of your business:  how hard is the pillow industry to figure out and break into?  Where did you start the process?

The pillow industry has not been too difficult to navigate.  It was challenging sifting through all the information regarding state regulations for registration and sales tax, but we got through it.  It was also very challenging to connect with a manufacturer that was willing to fabricate a uniquely-shaped pillow. 

In your journey to produce the Hair Pillow, what were some of the tasks you could figure out and complete on your own, and what were some tasks you have to call on others for support in order to do them correctly?

My personality is such that I think that I can do anything.  For instance, I attempted to create my own pattern for the Hair Pillow and sew it (Note: I do not have any prior training in pattern making or sewing).  I soon came to the conclusion that, although I could probably do this, a trained professional could create the prototype quicker and better than I could.  The same held true for submitting my patent application.

Although I have hired a patent attorney to properly submit my patent application, I have been able to successfully submit my trademark applications.

What makes your Hair Pillow different than other pillows on the market?
 

The obvious:  It is uniquely shaped, comfortably supportive, and attractive.

The most important: It really works! (Beauty bloggers agree)

How do you balance both businesses – managing your practice in New York City with a growing product-based business?  Any tips for other “dual entrepreneurs” who may be reading this?

Balance you say?  Did I mention that I have a five-year-old? There have been times when I have had to sacrifice and put one business on

the back burner while I nurtured and grew the other business.  I have found that in order to maintain a certain degree of balance, four things hold true:

1. You must make it clear to yourself what you want to happen, or rather, clearly define your goals.
2. You can’t do it by yourself: You must hire good workers to fill positions and actively delegate.
3. You must put yourself on a schedule and stick to it.
4. You must decide to believe that what you want to happen will happen. 

I have found that simply making a decision can cause doors to open, sometimes immediately.

What – if any – have you found is different in terms of running a service business (your dental practice) as opposed to a product-based business (the hair pillow)?

There is definitely less overhead associated with my product based business.  Marketing efforts for both businesses are completely different.  There are patient referral services established that

dentists can sign on with and patients will come.  Marketing the Hair Pillow requires me to be more creative and consistent.  Marketing the Hair Pillow and completing the administrative work for my dental office is where balance sometimes gets thrown off.

What are some of your entrepreneurial dreams for the Hair Pillow – and in general?

My entrepreneurial dreams for the Hair Pillow are:

• To truly improve the quality of life for all those in pursuit of maintaining good hair and/or attaining a good night’s rest.  
• To have the Hair Pillow featured as one of Oprah’s Favorite Things and in other major media.
• To have the Hair Pillow endorsed somehow by a major influencer.
• To have strong online sales every month and a strong presence in major and minor retail stores.

My entrepreneurial dream overall is to grow Lifestyle Pillows by developing and bringing to the market other concepts created to help one live a better quality of life.

Quote: How to Have a Simple Life

We love this great infographic about how to have a simple life as an entrepreneur from Anna Vital, Startup Evangelist at Funders and Founders.

• Let go of the past
• Consume less
• Say no, when you mean it
• Let go of perfectionism
• Turn off the phone
• Sever unhealthy relationships
• Have an alter-ego (to deal with complicated things)
• Purge your belongings
• Wear minimalist clothes
• Move closer to where you want to be
• Walk more
• Run slowly, and you will get there faster

Instagram Cheat Sheet Now Available to Tin Shingle Members

If a photo is posted to Instagram without a hashtag, does it make a sound? Barely. And not even your own followers may see it, thanks to Instagram changing their algorithm to not show you pictures chronologically anymore. It mingles with other photos when you include a hashtag into your photo caption. Like #yummy or #nomnomnom for really good food, or #bighairdontcare for a big hairstyle.

People navigate Instagram by clicking on hashtags of things they are interested in. People make up unique hashtags all the time, and sometimes those hashtags take off.

The digital team at Tin Shingle collects these hashtags and adds them to Tin Shingle's Exclusive Instagram Hashtag Cheat Sheet. Each hashtag is checked to make sure it contains a collection of good photos and then is added to the list as a recommended hashtag to use. The Instagram Hashtag Cheat Sheet is available to Tin Shingle members only, and are grouped by industry. It's a living guide, so we add to it on an ongoing basis. It's one of many buzz-building tools that come with membership, so check out what you've been missing if you're not a member yet.

If you want to contribute to this Instagram Hashtag Cheat Sheet Guide, you can email your suggestion to member@tinshingle.com. This is good for people who:

• Are having great luck and getting big reach from certain hashtags.
• Are trying to create a movement with a hashtag they made up and want to connect with others on it.

To help you get the most out of Instagram right now, listen to this TuneUp with the Senior Social Media Manager of Marvel, Adri Cowan, who also helps select clients in her social media agency, Rogue Social.

Unauthorized Use of Getty or and Image... "But I Didn't Do It!"

Coming clean in this blog post because our confession is the only way we know how to feel better after making such an avoidable mistake. And we don't want you making the same mistake, because just one wrongly published photo could be costly.

This week, we were served with a packet of paper from the Legal Department of Getty Images, stating that we'd wrongly used an image, the rights of which are managed by Getty Images. Because we'd not paid for the rights to use this image, our usage of it on this website constituted as stealing. This letter is otherwise known as the Getty Images Unauthorized Use Notification letter, and plenty of people have gotten one. It's also known as a cease-and-desist letter.

SEE ALSO: Copyright and Website Image Selection

Getty had taken a screenshot of the photo in question that was used on this blog. It was true. We had used the image. But the image we found had no watermark. It came up in a Google Images Search. We'd never touched Getty's website while searching for it. Sure, it was a great photo, staged well, perfect lighting, but....yeah, there it was in Google Images, so we could use it, right? No one would notice, right?

Wrong. And honestly, we knew this. Long ago I'd pinned the article on Photo Copyright Tips for Bloggers from IFB. I've purchased the rights to use photos in designated spots for clients. But somehow, I'd turned a blind eye for our own blog [hand slap!!!]. If you are getting sloppy with how you collect images from the web to post to your website or Facebook business page, just stop and read this article.

SEE ALSO: someecards.com are Favorites for eCards, But Permission Denied for Publishing on Websites

If you've posted images that you are not 100% about their origin, or if you didn't contact the owner to ask permission, then delete them right now from your website, Facebook business page, Twitter, and wherever else you've posted them. And for the very paranoid, remove your website from Archive.org as well, that can visually list pages from months or years ago.

HERE'S THE DEAL:

Getty Images, Corbis, and any big photo rights management company has software that can dig deep into websites all over the Internet, including Facebook pages, and find images that are posted without proper payment. Photo rights management companies represent artists like this guy who make a living making the photos, illustrations or other forms of graphic art. They need to be compensated for the art, and a big company like Getty will make sure they get it. And Getty makes sure that Getty gets its own share too.

So it's quite lucrative to go out and identify a photo being used on another website, send the company a letter with the proof of the unauthorized use, and demand payment. Even if you didn't mean to use a rights protected image. Should you wish to contest their financial demand, you'd need a lawyer, and the lawyer would probably cost more than the settlement you will probably need to pay anyway.

We did email our lawyer to make sure this wasn't a hoax, and that he thought it a good idea that we pay the settlement fee, which was basically a fee to use the image on a type of page in our website. It wasn't the home page and it didn't have very prominent placement, all of which is taken into account when negotiating rights to place an image. We paid the fee.

"BUT THE PHOTO DIDN'T HAVE A WATERMARK!"

Know this: you should not do image searches in Google and pull an image, even if there is no watermark on it. If someone bought the rights to use an image on their website, then they have a legitimate copy of the photo with no watermark on it. However, Google Images currently is able to pull that image and display it in a collection of image results to show you. If you suck down that image, or take a screenshot of it, you're using a photo that you didn't pay for.

There could be entire websites that post stolen images without watermarks that exist simply to attract you to search images on them. Such a website owner may have put Google Ads onto the site, and is making a pretty penny off of people like you clicking around on ads for a sunset image, finding it on their website, thinking it's safe, clicking on more Google Ads on their site, and it goes on and on.

Note: It's not Google making a killing on that type of website (well...indirectly they are), it's a scam artist who built a website with stolen images on it, attracting folks looking for pretty pictures to put on their website.

NO-NO TO POSTING PROTECTED IMAGES ON FACEBOOK OR TWITTER

Read the License Agreement over at Getty Images. See how far reaching their protection is over the art they represent. See the clause on Facebook and other third-party social sharing sites:

"2.11 Unless otherwise specified in the Rights and Restrictions, Licensee may not, directly or indirectly, Reproduce the Licensee Work in any secondary Reproductions, such as compilations, screenshots, in-context promotions or on file-sharing or social networking websites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc."

CREATE YOUR OWN ARTWORK

You don't want to get mixed up in this. If you don't have a photo budget to buy stock photography at Getty or Corbis, then you are much better off taking your own photos and creating your own artwork in many of the free photo editing software out there, like PicMonkey, Hipstamatic, Hipstogram, and even your iPhone or Android has filters to make pictures stand out and look cool.

See this photo below? It's part of our new mission to build our own stock photography collection. This green ornament is one that hangs on my front porch. Then Jackie did some PicMonkey magic to it to make it more framed!

Photo credit on the camera above, which we applied the red art to: "Font Awesome by Dave Gandy - http://fontawesome.io".

Hudson Valley Magazine Speaks with Katie Hellmuth Martin, Co-founder Tin Shingle

Days after attending the 3rd Annual Women in Business lunch hosted by Westchester's business magazine, 914Inc., I picked up a copy of the Hudson Valley Magazine from my local drugstore here in Beacon, NY (yes, we still have a local drugstore that isn't Rite Aid!), to read the December issue of our regional magazine. This month covers how female entrepreneurs, CEOs and small business owners are taking care of business. I was honored to be included in the editor's letter that kicked off the issue.

Olivia Abel, editor in chief, interviewed me for my take on what special challenges women entrepreneurs face these days. The challenges that women entrepreneurs face are quite different for each circumstance and usually relate heavily to family and time. She included a few of my thoughts in her editor's note, which I'll share here with you as well:

Perfection. Women are natural organizers and can multi-task very well. These are ingredients to a recipe for success. However, women who can quickly foresee the success of a business venture can be easily let down or disappointed in themselves if things aren't going exactly as planned. It's important for women to forgive themselves when they are working their hardest and sacrificing personal time for the pursuit of their business. (Alli Webb, founder of Drybar, also feels this way, as we learned in our business success secrets interview with her.)

Guilt. Women are consumed by guilt, and it's a really hard habit to break. There is no room for guilt in business relationships. Guilt about having a negative conversation with someone when a situation needs improvement can often lead to no conversation at all, and thus no improvement in a situation.

Family. Women are nurturers, and in business this can work very well as they listen to the needs of their businesses and shift accordingly. But the pull of family responsibilities is strong, and women often are taking care of household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and directly caring for the children. This is quite time consuming, thus leading to time away from growing their business. On the upside, however, unplugging in this digital day in age has become increasingly difficult, so a forced unplugging when spending time on family or household can lead to a recharged brain and fresh ideas.

Networking. It can be difficult to find a networking group that gets to the core of your business needs. But once you fine one, you'll realize that women are great at sharing and like to help each other.

Being "Worth It". Entrepreneurial women have created something from scratch. There is no boss telling them to stay after 5pm, or working on a family vacation. Entrepreneurs decide to work these extra hours, not take personal calls during the day, and sometimes say no to personal invitations when really, she needs to be working on her business. Women sacrifice for others, but rarely for themselves. And as a business owner, a woman must think that she and her business are "worth it" in order to do what needs to be done.