Whether you are a parent or not, you have had to make choices between personal and professional. Read my guest blog over at my friend Ponn Sabra’s blog on how I make those choices. And while you’re there, take a look at the cool tools she has to offer entrepreneurs for marketing over the internet through her EmpowerWomenNow.com website. Her e-book on creating a search-engine optimized press release is chock-full of valuable insight!

As I was watching my favorite football team, the Cowboys (I am a native Dallasite, so I’m allowed to like them!), lose their first game of the season, it made me think about how a loss or a failure can actually be a good thing if we are willing to look at it as such.

First, once you stumble a bit, it just shows you’re human. Mistakes happen and the best thing we can do is learn from them. For the Cowboys, who’s game suffered from 12 penalties that cost them 100 yards, they are hopefully able to look back over the game and see things they could have done better or would do differently the next time.

In our business and in our life, we have to remember to play Monday Morning Quarterback not to feel remorse for mistakes, but to learn from them and simply do better the next time. When you win it feels good - a feeling you want to experience again. But you don’t necessarily grow or improve from that. Many times it takes failure as well as success to expand a business or to grow as a person. Embrace both and you’ll see what I mean!

As a child, I loved my music. Of course, that was back when we had to rely on the radio or our own album collection to hear our favorite songs. The result was that we either spent a lot of money on music or listened to the same songs over and over. I didn’t have much money, so I scanned the radio stations constantly. I found that just by hearing the right song, my mood could go from melancholy to pumped in 3:35.

For some reason, I forgot how much music can impact my thoughts, ideas, and mood until I got my iPod. It is one of those devices I resisted (I didn’t have TIME to mess with that!) and now I can’t live without. I’ve created play lists for inspiration, to lift my mood, and to make me cry (why do we women do that?). I bunched together songs for working out to and for making me feel EMPOWERED.

Sometimes it is the lyrics. I listen to Tubthumping by ChumbaWumba to remember that “I get knocked down but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down.” Life goes on.

Try and keep frowning while listening to Walkin’ on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves.

Other times, a song from my past brings back a specific feeling. Like Wild Wild West by Escape Club - it makes me feel EMPOWERED. Not because of the lyrics, though. It came out about the time I graduated from college and took a job 1500 miles away from home. My first assignment was 6 months in LA where I would be living on company expenses the entire time. WOOHOO! Livin’ in the wild, wild west!

My more-recent song of empowerment is Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfield. Check out the lyrics and let me know if they inspire YOU!

Do you use music to guide your mood? Maybe you use music to guide you into meditation, visualize your goals, or just have a good cry. Powerful stuff!

An article yesterday in the New York Times started a little debate around why such a small percentage of women (less than 3%) take their business over the $1M mark.

On one side of the coin, Nell Merlino of the Make Mine a $Million (M3) program believes that women get stuck at a certain point in their business and can’t move forward without help. On the flip side, Marsha Firestone of the Women President’s Organization (WPO) maintains that those women who are motivated will find a way.

OK – so I have connections on both sides. I am a mentor for the M3 program and a WPO alumna. These two women, though they may not share the same theories about what is happening, certainly share a passion for helping women to grow their businesses. I like that.

I think there are 3 main elements required to put your business in that top 3%:

1. Timing. There is some truth to the fact that you have to be in the right place at the right time. You have to have the right products, targeted to the right customers when they most need it or want it. Sounds easy but in truth, it is really, really hard.
2. Execution. Actually getting out there and doing it. And when you hit an obstacle, looking for the path through, which requires flexibility and vision. Oh, and you also have to be willing to hire help, as Nell suggested, and ask for other’s advice.
3. Don’t be afraid, as my friend Beth Cole always says, to THINK BIG! Some women entrepreneurs may hesitate to envision growth for their company (I did at first!) because it is scary to think about “losing control” of your business or your life. But in my experience, you CAN grow your company AND have a life. The control is just a little…uh…different than what you might expect.

So let’s hear what you think! Do we get stuck or do we just choose to grow at our own pace and explode the growth when we’re really ready?

An article today in the USA Today “Work or Stay at home: It’s Still Quandary For Moms” re-sparked the age-old mommy wars. Why does the press see it as only a two-sided choice? Let’s get the debate REALLY started!

First of all, a war requires two parties to disagree. I have a lot of friends who stay at home with their kids and I have a great respect for them. I don’t judge them because they made a different choice in life and they don’t judge me for working, at least as far as I know. If we would just quit worrying about what other people think, the other side would get tired and leave us alone. After all - no one likes to pick a fight where the other party isn’t fighting back, such as how Sabrina Parsons, CEO of Palo Alto Software, handled an insensitive remark from a colleague. It could have started a war. In response, she simply smiled, brushed it off, and focused on getting home to see her boys. I believe the reason she was able to do that so easily is that she is at peace with her own decision to continue not only working after having kids, but running a successful software company. If more women were at peace with their own decisions there would be no war.

Secondly, it consistently amazes me that most of these “Mommy War” reports leave out the option exercised by so many women to start their own business. Granted, not all moms are cut out to run a business but I maintain that there are a lot more women out there who haven’t realized they fit the bill as a “woman entrepreneur” yet. Do they see it as ‘unattainable?’ It is hard, to be sure, but if you find the right path it is SOOOOO worth it! And for those naysayers who say you can’t be a good mom and be serious about your business…tune ‘em out like Sabrina did!

I am sitting here watching one of my all-time favorite movies “A League of their Own.” In addition to being really funny, it has some great quotes to inspire entrepreneurs and other success-driven people.

• To achieve the incredible you have to attempt the impossible. Wow - SOOO true! How many times do we let the obstacles keep us from even starting something?
• There’s no crying in baseball. I love this one, too. It’s OK to have a pity party, but at times you need some tough love. My equivalent to some of the women entrepreneurs I work with is “put your big girl panties on and deal with it!” Same thing although coming from Tom Hanks it does sound a little better.
• It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, anyone could do it. It’s the hard that makes it great. Bingo. Building a business is hard. Achieving your dreams is hard. But that is what makes the accomplishment all the sweeter. Remember that next time you reach a gut-check or it gets too hard. How bad do you want it?

The added bonus of this movie for me is it was the last movie I watched with my dad a week before he died. The cancer had moved to his brain and he had trouble understanding subtle humor, but the outright funny scenes and one-liners in this movie made him laugh. To this day, it makes me laugh and cry - sometimes at the same time. What a great gift.