There was a intriguing article (free registration required) in the Washington Post today about a Northern Virginia entrepreneurial company, Dyscern, which was started as a home-based business by a mom wanting more flexibility and is now expected to post revenues of $12M this year. As the business has grown, CEO Jennifer Canty moved it out of her basement and teamed with her husband Bill Frischling to build their small business. What struck me the most from this article other than the scary parallels between their journey and my own, is the challenges they are seeing are fairly normal for a growing entrepreneurial company. Their experience provides lessons we can all learn from.

1. Communication is key. Even if the top two executives at the firm weren’t married, communication between team members is crucial in a growing company. Dyscern describes their style as “honest without being diplomatic.” The ability to express contrary views honestly stems from a mutual respect and trust among members of the close-knit team.
2. Encourage referrals from employees when hiring. When someone has been working for you, they know the culture and what is required of new employees. What better position from which to recommend future employees? The risk you run is that you get too many ‘like minded’ people on board, but making sure new folks are consistent with your corporate culture is critical, especially when you’re small and growing. In fact, I learned the hard way that cultural fit is as important as skills (if not more so!) when adding to a growing team.
3. Integrating work and life can work, but it doesn’t have to be for everyone. While the owners choose to integrate their work and life, it isn’t forced on the rest of the company. Dyscern often hosts family-oriented events but those who choose to keep work and family separate are able to. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach to work-life balance.

The biggest hurdle coming up for this e-Bay success story will most likely be branching outside of the friends and family network to bring in next-phase experience to continue their growth. After all, not all founding entrepreneurs can or even want to manage that upward trajectory.

My bank, Mercantile Potomac, was recently purchased by PNC bank and switched over this past weekend. Prior to the change, PNC did a great job of providing information about their programs, terms, and services, which I read thoroughly. And thank goodness I did. There were some details in there that can bite any small business owner.

My previous business account had a fairly fast turnaround on deposits. We had been a long-time client, so even large deposits over $50,000 were generally not held and were available in our account immediately. In reading the terms of my new account, I discovered that all out-of-state deposits over $50,000 will be held for 4 days. 4 DAYS. When you’re churning cash pretty fast and working to make payroll as clients push out how long it takes them to pay their bills, 4 days is a long time! That small detail alone could result in heavy overdraft charges. If you’re smart, you at least have a line of credit available to cover you, but having to draw on that unexpectedly is never good.

The bottom line is to make sure if you’re not watching the details, someone in your company is and making the appropriate plans for dealing with them.

A study released this month by the SBA is called “Are Male and Female Entrepreneurs Really That Different?” and poses some very interesting points.

According to the study, gender does not affect new venture performance. That’s refreshing to hear and about what I would have expected. What caught me off guard is that it appears the differences in women entrepreneurs’ preferences, motivation, and expectations accounted for the discrepancy in what they deemed business success. The good news is if a woman decides she wants to start and grow her business and is willing to do what it takes to get there, there is no reason she can’t. The bad news is (and I am not sure that this is necessarily bad) women don’t seem to go into business with high expectations.

One of the other interesting factors brought out in the report is the different reasons men and women start businesses. The study found that men are more likely to list making money as one of their top reasons for starting a business while flexibility was among tops for women. From what I have seen, that does not mean that women are not interested in making money. Rather, we see our business as perhaps more holistic than just a financial opportunity. In many cases, I have observed that many women are also lacking the confidence or the tools they need to build a business, which is what drove my targeting The ParentPreneur Edge at women entrepreneurs.

I find it interesting, too, that the SBA survey seemed to focus on venture size among other things as an indicator of success. I have issue with that – is high growth and more zeroes the only measure of accomplishment? It isn’t all about size. Most women business owners I work with view their businesses much broader than that. For them, it is about building something bigger than them as well as providing a positive impact on customers, employees, and the community. Making a decent living is certainly in there as well, but it isn’t usually ego-driven big for big’s sake. Perhaps it is time to broaden our perspective and look at a more universal definition of business success.

Ultimately what I took away from this report is that women can do it if they so choose. We can go out there and build high-growth businesses, get funded, and reach what others might deem success. But is that what we want to do? If so, then according to this study women have the same chances to be successful as men, though I suspect some women would argue that they still see barriers. According to the research, however, success by traditional and strictly financial definitions may not be what all women want.

Take a look at the full report and let me know what you think!

Here are a couple of interviews that have been posted online that I wanted to share with everyone:

Growing your Business, interview with Fred and Lyna. Since neither Fred nor Lyna are parents, this is an interesting discussion about being an entrepreneur and how non-parents can relate.

B-Net: Useful Commute: Parenting Skills Can Help Your Business, interview with Carmine Gallo of Gallo Communications. At just under 8 minutes, this one is a short but sweet look at applying parenting skills to your business, whether it is your own or you work for someone else. Please listen to it and if you like it, recommend it to others!

ADDENDUM on 9/10: This one from Work at Home Moms Talk Radio just posted today. And thanks to Kelly McCausey for her fun interview and book give away!

I was recently honored to speak with a group of women entrepreneurs who were visiting the United States with the International Visitor Leadership Program. This particular group was from the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). Of the 12 women, about half spoke English and the rest had the benefit of an Arabic translator.

In the short 90 minutes I was with them, it was amazing the connections we were able to make. From cultures that are light-years away from each other, we found common ground in growing our businesses and, for many of them, trying to raise a family at the same time.

An interesting business question came up that I thought was worth sharing: what should you do when you’re working your way into a business that has been in your family for years? I believe the advice we discussed is applicable to anyone stepping in to take over any business, whether a family business or not:

1. Watch and listen. Before you go in and make any sweeping changes, take a couple months to really learn about what is going on in the business. Attend meetings and say nothing. Walk the halls and listen to the conversations that are going on around you. Tune your antenna in to anything and everything that is going on in the company and take special note of talk around the water cooler.
2. Make a list of what is working. From your observations, determine what is good about the company. Even if the company is in trouble, there is generally some good in there. Rarely would a company still be in business if there wasn’t some reason they were still bringing in money and servicing customers. Be careful not to throw the good out with the bad.
3. Change what isn’t working. Some people subscribe to the idea that making fast, swooping changes takes advantage of the shock affect and is better in the long run. From what I have seen, unless you’re bringing in all new people, this approach can have a negative effect on morale and, as a result, the company. Unless there are problems that are draining the company of cash or customers, it is better to take a gradual approach and work to get the buy-in of existing staff members.

As Jan B. King described when I interviewed her about her experiences taking over Merritt Publishing for The ParentPreneur Edge, taking over someone else’s business is like adopting an older child. There are some habits and attitudes that may be hard to extract, but by taking a gradual and thoughtful approach to it, successful change can be obtained over time.

Great Labor Day reading: Fortune Magazine reported that the UN published a survey that found only 18% of American’s are clocking in over 48 hours per week. This suggests to me a couple of things:

• Being productive and getting more done in less time was not counted nor is valued
• No one surveyed entrepreneurs or small business owners
• Someone thinks running a family is a leisure activity

In addition to waving caution because we don’t appear to be working enough, the article also pointed out that we have, on average, 117 hours of ‘leisure’ time per week. Note that that includes sleep (because sleep is optional?). So if we take out the weekend (assuming we actually don’t work over the weekend), we’re left with 13.8 hours a day for sleep and non-work activities. Assuming you’re lucky enough to get the recommended 8 hours of sleep per night, you have 5.8 hours per day when you’re not working or not sleeping. I have to assume that running kids to soccer practice, preparing dinner, or commuting to work is also included in that paltry 5.8 hours. When did those tasks become leisurely? Any women entrepreneurs want to weigh in on that?

I believe the bottom line points to Americans taking a more integrated approach to work and life. We value productivity and believe we can be valuable at work and have a life (some call this work/life balance, though I before to see it as creating a sustainable life). We may not be punching the time clock as often as other countries, but it would also be interested to look at what type of work those other countries such as Peru and South Korea are doing.

ADDENDUM: From the same report, a different take on it. The Buffalo News reports the findings from the UN report as “Americans are more productive than any other country.” Unfortunately I can not locate the report on the web (nor did either article link to it!) so I can not draw my own conclusions, but such is the challenge with the press…it is all in the spin!