As many of you know, I am on vacation in Lucca, a small town in the Tuscany region of Italy. On our second night here we met a British couple who had sold their house in England and moved to Lucca after buying a Gelato shop here. Entrepreneurs are every where - I just can’t get away! And why would I want to? The common experiences led to a lengthy and enjoyable discussion. We talked for a long while about how hard owning a retail establishment was and how they feel like they are never able to get away. The way they look at it, they are able to take a couple of months off in the rainy Tuscan winter when the tourists decrease in numbers, so working long, hard hours the other times of the year seem worth it (a hard job that seems worth it…sound familiar to anyone else?)

A couple of days later I met a woman who, like me, has her first book coming out this summer. She is an American living in Lucca but is begrudgingly preparing to move back to the U.S. in October. After talking to her for a while, she shared with me that she and her husband owned several medical clinics and then sold out a couple of years ago. Since then they have been traveling while her husband tries his hand at first living the traveling-consultant life and now is making his first attempt at going back to work for someone else. I shared various cautionary tales I have heard about entrepreneurs cashing in their independence and working for someone else, but it seems they have found a company that values flexibility as much as they did. That would be the only way. After all, once you get used to not counting your vacation and sick days, it gets really hard to go back.

I guess what this whole experience confirms for me is that entrepreneurship is empowering but contains the same types of challenges no matter what continent you’re on. It is STILL, the hardest job you’ll ever love!

I received an e-mail from a young (20-something) woman, newly married and no kids (that she knows of). She had read an advanced copy of my book and got so much more out of it than she (or I) had expected! Without going into the details, she had been receiving pressure from her family about quitting her job when she became a mom. After reading my book, she says she “finally feels released of that pressure.” She went on to say that The ParentPreneur Edge was one of those “…rare ‘reads’ that moved (her) and allowed (her) to learn and grow in ways that (she) truly believes will have an amazingly positive impact on her future.” Wow. I literally cried when I read that. THAT is why I wrote the book - to have a positive impact on others, though admittedly I imagined parents getting the most out of the book. Who knew?! You don’t have to be a parent to get it. That is better than any good book review or media coverage. That is real!

I finally got a chance to see a copy of my book yesterday, the full finished product. It was delivered before noon but I promised my kids I would wait until they got home from school to open the boxes. I have been waiting so long already; it wasn’t hard to put it off for a few more hours. And when I saw the looks on their faces when they saw the boxes from the publisher, I knew I had made the right choice. They were so excited they couldn’t stand it. The looks of pride on their face as they saw their names in print on the dedication page made it all worth the wait. That’s when the tears began to pool in my eyes. Not because it had been such a long and tortuous process or because I had been up nights waiting for the book to be finished, but because like everything, the kids brought it all into perspective. Not that I didn’t relish in the monumental personal satisfaction this accomplishment provided, but experiencing the effect my achievement had on my daughters and the model it gave them for following their own dreams was, well, priceless.

The next milestone will be seeing the book on the shelves in our local Border’s and Barnes and Noble…only a couple more weeks for that one! It should be in all US bookstores by June 22nd. Shortly thereafter, on to Europe and the UK….

A recent study shows that female entrepreneurs are far less likely than their male counterparts to seek angel financing even though the percentage of women owned businesses actually getting funded is not significantly lower than businesses owned by men. In essence, women are not finding angels because they’re not seeking them. So what gives?

One of the authors of the study suggests that perhaps women don’t go to angels because there are so few women angels (a topic that deserves its own discussion!) and we prefer to work with like-minded people. In some ways, I can see his point. Through my past 2+ years of experience helping women to become entrepreneurs through ACTiVATE, I have seen that in general, women do prefer to work with people they are comfortable with. Getting to know a potential business partner on a personal level seems more important to women than to men.

I have other theories that I have developed over the years of working with (and being!) a women entrepreneur as to why women aren’t seeking outside capital to grow their businesses:

1. Women don’t like to ask for help or don’t know where to go for it. There are many of us who feel like we don’t need help…we’ll figure it out. We see asking for help as ‘weak.’ On the other side, so many people I talk to seem to struggle finding the right resources to help them build their concept into a viable business.

2. Many women start businesses for flexibility and control and resist outside assistance that might disrupt that. Taking money from someone to grow a business requires a willingness to give up some control, or at a minimum welcomes outside scrutiny of our efforts. What will an outside investor say if I decide not to go after a big contract because I want to control my growth for personal reasons?

3. They don’t think BIG enough. Prior to starting and growing my business, I just never thought I had the personal or financial resources to consider buying someone else’s business. Perhaps it was a confidence thing. Once I started to see what I could do I started to think “why can’t I?” I began to think bigger. When we were researching our second business, gluten-free snack foods, we even considered buying someone else’s manufacturing facility when we couldn’t find someone to co-manufacture our product and guarantee a wheat/dairy free facility. Five years earlier, that thought would not even have crossed my mind.

So what has stopped you for looking for outside funding? Don’t know how? And if you’re doing it, what do you see as barriers (if any!)? What’s missing?!