Ladies Who Launch

Startup Tips From Alison Covarrubias

To Office or Not To Office...

As a start up business owner, it is tempting to rush out and start looking for office space. After all, to be successful you must project an image of success, right? And what is more impressive than a corner office with a view? I'm here to tell you that is not necessarily true and the urger to rent is one that could potentially tank you and your bottom line.

Especially during your first year of business, it's more important to use the resources you have available that are free to considerable cheap before you start measuring square footage and pricing out new furniture. No one will find it odd that you don't have an office with a view of downtown or that you have dogs barking in the background, especially when you are first starting out. Here are some great alternatives to an office lease:

1. Free Internet Cafe's - This is the number one option for home-bound entrepreneurs who need to meet with clients or who simply need to get out of the house. For a few dollars, you have a clean space, access to all the coffee/tea/water you need, a restroom,, internet for free (or less than $10/day), and actual human contact so that you don't feel isolated. One suggestion, tip your barrista! After all, you're camping out in their space and they will be far more attentive and helpful if you throw a little bone their way. Don't empty your wallet as that will defeat the whole "cheap' part of this arrangement, but a couple of dollars depending on how long you stay is sufficient.
2. Library - It's quiet, you have ALL the resources in the world at your fingertips, you can people watch and once again - decent restrooms.
3. Book Store - This option is not so quiet which is nice if you are a talker and like to chit-chat with other book aficionados. Larger book stores often have cafe's and internet access. They want you there so go ahead and hang out.
4. Your Car - Not a great place for typing but if you have a voice recorder or just need some time to think then grab your keys, your driver's license, your hands-free headset and hit the open road! You can get fresh air, see the scenery and talk to yourself or someone on the other end of the phone. Remember that safety is first and if you're not a multi-tasker, leave the phone and recorder on the seat next to you and simply drive to clear your thoughts. It's a cathartic process that often stimulates creativity.
5. Restaurants - Not unlike coffee shops, restaurants are great for nourishment and meetings. Generally the servers aren't as excited to see you set up your portable office in their section so limit your restaurant meetings to those where you are eating a meal and discussing business. Tip, It's always acceptable to offer to go dutch but the person who suggested you meet for a meal instead of a "regular" meeting generally pays.
6. Friend's homes or offices - Setting up "office hours" with a friend or colleague at their place is a fantastic way to have office-like interaction with someone who also the entrepreneurial spirit. My friends and I have gotten so much accomplished simply by sitting next to each other and bouncing ideas off one another. It's also great when you have to make difficult sales calls to have a friend nearby to help cheer you on and to offer feedback on how you are handling the call. As always, don't do office hours with negative people who will make you feel bad about your calls or projects.
7. Outdoors - Grab your notebook and pen and go outside. It's so much more fun to have a meeting in a park or by the water than a stuffy old conference room. You have escaped corporate America, stop thinking that professionalism equals confinement. Fresh air, sunshine and a nice breeze say more about a successful business than a cramped space with fluorescent lighting.
8. Spas and Golf Clubs - Now this is where it's good to model our Corporate America counterparts. Where do they go to meet their important clients? Spas, resorts and golf clubs. You can do the sale! It's more expensive than the free internet cafe, but a heck of a lt cheaper than a 5-year lease. Plus it's more fun to get in 18 holes or a nice hot rock massage than to deal with wiring your office for the internet.
9. Home Office - Your home office can take many forms and some of them will be more than acceptable for client visits. Your kitchen table, a separate desk, a whole room dedicated to you for the day or at least part of it all make great home offices. It's a temporary situation so don't go sinking all of your start up dollars in fancy equipment, but do invest in making it a happy, comfortable working space where you can find your important files, get work done and have some separation of home and office. As long as there is an extra chair and water, your client will be just fine meeting you there. No chair? Have them sit on your couch - just take an extra moment to clean off the pet hair or baby goo before they sit down.

Alison (Allie) Covarrubias graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a BA in Speech Communication. Her first big career break came in 2000 when she started working at SalesForce. After experiencing the business from the eyes of executives as the assistant to the CEO she jumped at the chance to explore more career development opportunities that came her way. During her 5 years at salesforce.com Alison worked as a Sales Recruiter, HR Coordinator and Sales Representative. After an exciting adventure to Thailand in 2005, Alison discovered that the corporate life was not her calling and made the decision to embark on her entrepreneurial career. Alison launched herself and her business when she joined Ladies Who Launch as the SF chapter leader and is now the Bay Area Director. Ladies Who Launch is a national organization of women who embrace creativity and entrepreneurism as a lifestyle and support each other both on-line and in-person. Her own business, Business Legs offers start up consulting services with an emphasis on marketing strategy for women entrepreneurs creating "lifestyle" businesses. Alison is a born “team player” and when not acting as a part of her client’s business teams, she is active in her fitness group, cycling, traveling as much as possible and living a happy and holistic lifestyle.

Design/Tech Stuff :: Mysteries of Meta and Title Tags Revealed

by Fashionmista aka That IT Girl and Katie James (what a mouthfull)

Hi again. Today's lesson is in Meta Description and Title Tags, with pictures!  I get asked variations of questions about these tags as eager website owners try to figure out what to do with them to answer SEO needs, like: "Fill in your meta tags!" or "We'll give you Meta Tags for $$". But you want to know what the heck they are before you go and get some, or pay someone to get you some.

Title and Meta Description and Keyword Tags Overview

First of all, your keywords for the specific page go into these tags. These tags are specific to each page in your website, and are not used to generally describe what is on your whole site. They are located under the hood in your HTML code. Depending on how you update your website (straight HTML pages that you upload or through a content manager where you press Save or Publish), you will have different ways of accessing and customizing these. At their most basic level, they tell the search engine what the page is called, and what the search engine might find there.

We'll get to the pictures in a minute, but the most heavily weighted by the search engines is the Title Tag. The Meta Description Tag is less weighted, but very important for different reasons - actual people could read it in the search results and gauge if they want to click on your page or not. And how do they click on your page from the search results? By clicking on the Title Tag. The Meta Keyword Tag is not so important, but is a place where you can put a string of keywords that appear on the specific page.

Tag Definitions:
Title Tag: Shows up in your browser window and in search results (see both pictures). Search engines place good deal of weight on what you plug into here. Keywords should go at the front, as users scan the search results page and have their specific keyword that they just searched for on the brain.

The blue underlined text is the title tag that people click on to get to your page. Not just to your whole website, but to a specific page. The black text, in this case, is the meta description tag. The black text can also be viewable copy pulled from your actual page depending on the better keyword match. The green text is the URL, which is the direct way to get to that page on your website. 

Meta Description Tag: It can show up in the search results when you run a search on a search engine like Google. It will only show up if there is a good keyword match between what is in meta description tag and what the user typed into the search box. Otherwise, it is another indicator to the search engine about what is on the page. The main reason you want it filled in is to show the user a sentence about what the page is about. It's more of a marketing-type sentence and should be different than the content on your actual page. Different, as in, not identical.

The screen shot picture above shows how the meta description tag is displaying in the search results for the query: "jewelry bag travel". The below screen shot shows the first line of text on my jewelry bag page that this search result is pointing to. Usually, for a page with not a lot of content, and if there is no meta description tag, or if the copy in the tag is not a great match, the search engine will display snippets from the first few lines of actual copy from the page, and may include copy from your text based menus, etc.



This is the top of a browser window. The very tippy top has text in it. That's the title tag. See how it can show up everywhere? So you want to choose it carefully. Mine could be better, but this is what we've got for now.  :)  The white area is the Address Bar. It shows your URL, which was that green text from the search engine result in the picture above.

Meta Keyword Tag: This is just a long list of keywords found on the specific page like: "jewelry bag bags pouch pouches travel traveling jewlry silk pink brown drawstring pull snaps snap pocket pockets elastic" It doesn't have that much weight in the search engines, but it doesn't hurt to fill it in. And what do you fill it in with? Words that appear on the page and misspellings of those words. The meta keyword tag will not display anywhere and is only for the search engines to read.

Text on the Actual Page

See how the regular copy on this page is not the meta description tag we saw in the search results above. The title tag is in view in the top of the browser window (in picture above, not this one below). But note how the keyword that I'm targeting, "jewelry bag" is in some hot spots on the page. It is in linked copy below each image, and they all link to the specific color of jewelry bag. The text under these jewelry bag pictures is not an image. It is actual text, which is readable by search engines, which is what you want. If it's an image, the search engines can't read it. These tag images I have posted here are just images, and totally unreadable by search engines. But I have placed my desired target keywrods in other places of this post, so I can take the loss of actual text in this case.

Title and Meta Tag SumUp

Title tags are very important. The are read by users and search engines, and may be pulled by other websites who link to you, like the social networking sites like StumbleUpon. If someone uses a special website like StumbleUpon or ThisNext to vote for your page as a good page, that website will automatically pull your title tag and show it on their website. You may have Title and Meta tags filled in with keywords, but there are plenty of other places you need to put keywords, like in the body copy, alt tags, image file names (that's my theory anyway), headers and sub heads, menu copy, in text links pointing to your pages, etc etc. Now that you know this, the tricky and fun part is getting creative with how you place your keywords (that you have researched, of course). Hire out or think of creative ways yourself, but either way, be aware of it.

Good luck!

The Spacialist's Crash Course in Kicking Kitchen Chaos

Ladies Who Launcher Erica Ecker of  The Spacialist, offers  tips on organizing everything in your life. Sign up for The Spacialist’s weekly tips, "Space Treats", delivered fresh every Friday morning into your e-mail box.

Crash course in kicking kitchen chaos.

Strap on your apron and grab your water bottle – we’re going to whip your kitchen into shape!
This organizing adventure has 5 different components:
• Food
• Cooking
• Serving
• Storing Food
• Clean Up

Let’s get started with your food.  It lives in the fridge, freezer, and the pantry. The first step is to remove, compost and recycle any expired foods.  This chart published by the government and this chart about pantry foods will help you determine your food’s edibility.

Fridge Food:
• Dilemma:  You don’t have adequate storage on the door for condiments.
• Remedy:  Use a low rectangular bin to unify jams and jellies.  Use another one to unify mustards, relishes, ketchups and chutneys.  Of course slap a label on to identify the categories.

• Dilemma:  You never know where to look for the yogurt, tofu, cottage cheese or cooked carrots. 
• Remedy:  Use each fridge shelf for a different category of food.   For example, use the top shelf for all leftovers.  Use the middle shelf for all bread and dairy products. Use the bottom shelf for all meat, poultry and fish products. Label accordingly so you never have to hear you spouse say, “Honey, where’s the butter?”

Rocket Launchers: Ladies Who Launch In the News

Fashion designer Kathlin Argiro was on The Today Show.

Laurel Denise's beautiful jewelry was chosen by Eva Longoria herself as the gift she’s giving to her bridesmaids in her upcoming wedding to Tony Parker. You can see all of my jewelry at her site, Laurel Denise. Here is the specific necklace that she and stylist Robert Verdi chose: http://www.laureldenise.com/shop/simplystated/wish.html.

Holli Ehrlich, co-founder Wedding Podcast Network  was recently a guest on Karen Salmansohn's Be Happy, Dammit! radio show heard on SIRIUS satellite radio.  Wedding Podcast Network was featured on WNBC-TV.  Sree Sreenivasan, the tech reporter, cited Wedding Podcast Network as one of the best wedding websites.

You can read Tali Gillette's numerous press mentions in the press section of her jewelry website, Tali Gilette.

Amy Holbrook's  AMH Design needlepoint kits was featured in the Hamptons Magazine.

Author Karen Salmansohn is featured in an article in the New York Post.

Danielle Scherman of Soiree Events was featured in Hamptons Magazine for her summer events at The Hamptons.

Entrepreneur Magazine's Woman Of The Year Contest

From Nichelle Stephens, Blog Editor:

Submit you and your business for the 4th annual Entrepreneur Magazine Woman of The Year award.

Entrepreneur magazine will honor one outstanding woman entrepreneur as Woman of the Year.

If you are the woman business owner who best exemplifies the qualities needed to be truly successful in business today--competitiveness, compassion and clarity of vision--you could be our winner.

To qualify, a woman business owner must

• be a founder of the business
• own at least 51% of her business
• be actively involved in day-to-day operations
• have been in business for at least one full year
• have 2006 sales of at least $1 million, and
• have less than 100 employees.

The deadline for entry is September 15, 2007

iLive, iLove, iWork, iPodcast

iLove Quote:  "There are many wonderful things that will not be done if you do not do them."  Honorable Charles D. Gill

All this "i" talk started with the wildly popular iPod and it's the ultimate reason I started our company Wedding Podcast Network with the man iLove, love, love.  Working with my husband Robert Allen, everyday is challenging and rewarding.  Our commitment to working hard on an innovative startup company plus our extensive knowledge of weddings along with the almighty iPod we are truly enjoying the world of podcasting.

Why podcast?  It's a reliable way to create, connect, share and communicate.  Podcasting is easy, cost effective and is revolutionizing the way we do business.  In a world where multi-tasking has become the norm, it is important to be able to get information wherever and whenever.  It's ideal for our very on-demand and mobile culture.  In the same way that the DVD recorder and TiVo has revolutionized the way we handle the time shifted world of television, podcasting is doing the same for audio.  Listening is by invitation only, from your lips to their ears.  It's a warm, educational & intriguing conversation between two friends.

Podcasts go wherever you can take an mp3 player which makes it a much more intimate medium.  Engaged and motivated listeners are more likely to spend when they hear something that relates to their interests and passions.  So many businesses are adopting podcasting for different types of communications because it's an extremely adaptable format.  You don't even need an iPod to listen to podcast.  Click here to find out more about podcasting.

Podcasting, especially, "niche" podcasting, is clearly the wave of the future.  There are podcasts for people interested in business, child care, cooking, crafts, dating & relationships, fitness, social commentary, sports and my personal favorite - weddings.  I invite you to listen and subscribe to my podcast so you can automatically download the programs you want.  Explore iTunes to discover your preferences.  Close your eyes while commuting to work, treating yourself to a mani & pedi or make the half hour at the gym on the treadmill really fly while listening to a podcast!

Podcasting can bridge technology and marketing needs for forward thinking companies.  WPN offers such services and I'd be delighted to help you reach your target audience with informative and entertaining content.  Podcasting after all is the fastest growing technology since email.

iLove LWL and the LWL women who embrace creativity and exciting, new promotional & marketing ideas.  It's time to incorporate this new audio technology to make a difference in your market.

Holli Ehrlich
Co-Founder, Director of Marketing
Wedding Podcast Network

Tech/Design Stuff :: Tips on How to Avoid Tripping Spam Filters as an eNewsletter

By FashionMista, aka That IT Girl

Hi All,
This is the first of my Thursday Tech/Design Stuff post for the Ladies Who Launch blog (that's my unofficial name for it as of now). I was whirring with ideas of what to write about, and then the clock chimed 6pm! Which meant I needed to be on a train to CT, which puts us two hours before midnight and I'm sliding into the deadline with a short but valuable post on what to with the eNewsletter you want to create or grow.

eNewsletters are getting more and more popular, which mean that more and more of them are coming to our inboxes, which  puts more and more pressure on two things: spam filters to protect us and eNewsletter based companies to provide not-to-be-missed content in a good clean technical way. Spam filters protect us, but they also keep out well-meaning eNewsletters who trip them with red flags that signal spam. Inspired by a little reading at MailChimp's blog, here are a few design and marketing tips of how to avoid getting caught in a spam filter, with a couple of marketing ideas thrown in:

• Don't add your address book to an email campaign for your business without asking everyone in it if they'd like to receive your eNewsletter. If someone didn't sign up for it, and if you didn't ask them before you added them yourself, don't assume that they want it. In fact, they might not connect the dots (aka know that the email campaign is from you) and flag you as spam. In gmail at least, "Report Spam" is as easy to hit as "Reply."
• Do tell people about your newsletter, and follow up with a personalized email to them asking if they'd like to sign up for your eNewsletter. Then provide with a lickidy split way of signing up.
• Do use a double-opt-in. This means that the user fills in your sign up box, clicks submit, then gets an email to their address box asking to make double sure that they want it,  then they click the URL provided, and finally get to your Thank You! page with a link back into your website. This helps ensure that you are getting very interested people who are less likely to flag you as spam or maybe unsubscribe.
• Do put an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email campaigns. And make sure it's readable. And unsubscribe the people within 10 days. It's the law as part of the CAN-SPAM Act.
• Ask for birthdays and send a discount coupon to those June Babies, or whatever month. You could send a snailmail birthday card as well as an email with a coupon code. I just got one in the snailmail for a boutique in Cleveland, and I will be there for a wedding to use my special 20% off!
• Include a Send to a Friend link. Although they can just as easily press Forward, you might as well give them a call to action.
• Pay attention to your subject lines. Get the juicy keywords at the beginning. DON'T put the word "free" in there. It's a red flag. And don't mislead. It's also the law.
• Don't use light colored fonts that match the background of your email. That's looked down upon by search engines (and they may penalize you for it in their rankings) as well as spam filters. They ask themselves: "What is this gal trying to hide? Why include text but make it almost impossible to notice or read?" Treat spam filters and search engines like they are people, and they will treat you just as nicely. Do one to others...well, you know the drill.

More to come on eNewsletters and other tech/design stuff!

Beth and Victoria On The Today Show

Here's a link to Beth and Victoria's appearance on the Today Show.  It was excellent!

From Holli Ehrlich of The Wedding Podcast Network.
            How fabulous!  Just watched you both on Today show and loved the segment.
Great for LWL and women and business. You are two very special women that really share.  I admire the business you have created.  So many women will benefit personally and professionally. It was very exciting to see you on television and get this deserved press. Have a great day and enjoy the moment!

Ladies On Launch On Facebook

Facebook is not for college kids anymore. I myself was skeptical but recently many professionals have created groups on Facebook to connect online. Facebook has applications that integrate with social networking applications such as Twitter (IM/text messaging) and Del.icio.us (social bookmarking).

I started a Ladies Who Launch Facebook Group. Join us!