Have you ever dreamed or even considered starting your own business? Do you know you want to be an entrepreneur but maybe haven’t found that killer idea or unique business proposition yet? If so, the ACTiVATE program may be for you and we are actively recruiting potential women entrepreneurs for the Class of 2008.

Don’t worry if you don’t have an idea for a business - that is part of what we help you with! We provide you with lists of technologies (patents and copyrights) from Maryland Universities and government labs which are available for licensing. Then, we take you through the licensing and commercialization process with the hopeful outcome that you will launch your own business at the end of the program (or before, as the case has been!).

I am going on my 4th year with the program and my 3rd as the Lead Instructor. I can honestly say I have never seen ANYTHING LIKE IT. First, it is taught and led by seasoned entrepreneurs who offer their practical experience with a no-holds-barred approach to sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. You get the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and build on our successes. Second, this is a HANDS ON program, where we measure success by your success in starting and building a viable, sustainable business. Third, the cadre of women who have gone through ACTiVATE, many of whom have started their own business as a result of the program, provides a support and networking group that is unparalleled in their experience, connections and desire to help each other succeed.

Additionally, the program is financially supported by TEDCO and receives assistance from a community of active volunteer advisors in all areas of business and entrepreneurship (including potential investors!) who all want to see you get your business off the ground. Never before has such an ensemble of guidance and support been assembled for the purpose of seeing you achieve your dreams! The testimonials from past participants says it all!

ABOUT ACTiVATE
ACTiVATE is a year-long program being offered for a 4th year at UMBC in Baltimore, Maryland. We are currently recruiting seasoned (i.e. not right out of school) women with either a technical (IT, bio tech, engineering) background or strong business experience to interview for possible acceptance into our next class which starts in February 2008.

If you are interested, attend one of our upcoming open houses to learn more about the program or go to our website and send in your application!

A couple of things I wanted to share tonight…

I found Family Matters Radio on the internet and after listening to a couple of interviews by Caroline and Jacquie, I just knew I wanted to talk with these dynamic women! We had a fun conversation - check out our radio interview (scroll down to the audio portion)…

I’ve also been participating in a lot of interviews lately which have recently landed on Nielsen’s Small Business Resource Center, Entrepreneur Magazine, and even my home-town Baltimore Sun! Check out Make Your Marketing Plan Matter along with all the other great small-business resources they have there as well as Small Businesses Can Make Performance Reviews Positive Experiences. I was able to get a book mention in Entrepreneur magazine story called The Brighter Side: Transforming a Negative Experience into a Positive Business Idea (sounds like me, doesn’t it!?), but I am looking forward to seeing the quote in print (it looks small on the internet!). As the list keeps growing, keep checking on my Press page to see what’s new.

There was a lot of good stuff that didn’t make it into the articles so I am guessing I am going to have to expand on these in the future…

Erin, whom I wrote about in an earlier post, has created a website asking for financial assistance this holiday season. She needs help in paying off her medical bills and providing a Christmas for her 3 sons. If you’re looking for a cause to give to, this one seems extremely worthy!

Ok, so most people don’t consider failing to be a joy. In fact, I know a lot of people who would rather not try something than risk failing. In my opinion, this is a depressing way to live, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, for a number of reasons:

• Some of the best lessons in business and life are learned through failure. As my father once told his high-school teacher, “I can not fail if I learn something from the experience.”
• If you’re not failing, you don’t know really what you can do. It isn’t until we push the limits into a new market or trying out a new service that we discover how much and how far we really can go.
• Just because we fail, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. The old story about Thomas Edison and the light bulb. In building over 1,700 models before he found one that worked, he said “I just found 1,700 ways not to make a light bulb.” Learn from it and try again, taking what you’ve learned with you.

I can’t even count the number of times I’ve failed, though I don’t really look at it like that. I prefer my dad’s view of ‘no such thing as failure.’ I actually celebrated the first rejection letter that I received from a publisher when I sent out proposals for The ParentPreneur Edge. I figured someone wasn’t going to want it, I might as well get the failure out of the way. Strange as it may sound, that rejection actually got a “WooHoo!” from me.

From a business perspective, most people don’t really make it BIG until their second or third business. So if you have an idea and it doesn’t work out, just look at it as one down, two to go!
I believe embracing the possibility (and the inevitability) of failing is liberating! Martha Beck has a great article on failure in O Magazine this month called The Woman Who Fell to Earth: To Fail is Divine that you should check out. She clearly agrees with this philosophy! Also check out Sara Reistad-Long’s arcticle in the same magazine that offers tips on how to Turn Your Regrets into a Life Booster. Refreshing!

So I am curious - how do you deal with what others might consider failure? What do you do to move on?

Yes…there is such thing as too much of a good thing, especially on Thanksgiving. Too much food. But it has been an incredible day. I got to play in the leaves with my kids and then come inside and make a home made apple pie with them. It was a small gathering, but it was nice. We were able to take our time, not worry about how messy the kitchen was or try to make everything happen at a certain time. Just perfect!

This week my friend, Wendy Piersall, posted a guest blog entry from me on her Enterpreneur.com blog called The Entrepreneurial Conundrum. Check it out and digg it if you find value in it!

For those of my friends in the United States, Thanksgiving provides a time for us to reflect on what we are thankful for. A recent e-mail from a woman in upstate New York really brought that home for me.

Erin contacted me earlier this week looking for help with her business idea. She has a vision of an organic plush toy line that will be eventually expanded to include bedding products. In talking about what is needed to get her business off the ground, she broke down and revealed to me that they were drowning in debt and couldn’t see how she could finance her start-up. Not an unusual story unfortunately. But it is a little different for her. Her 3-year-old son (the youngest one in the photo) was diagnosed with Leukemia a little less than a year ago. A couple months later, her 8-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Each of those are tough to handle alone, I can’t imagine dealing with both in succession.

She’s come to realize over the past year how precious the time with her three sons is. Erin’s goals for her business is to build something she and her kids can be proud of, but work that will also enable her to be more available for them. Starting a business to take control of your life…does that sound familiar to anyone else?

Those of you who know me, know what my first thought was – “how can I help?” Because I have been burned before – and hundreds of stories of scams float around on the internet – I knew I had to verify that this wasn’t one of them. I asked for copies of the medical bills and Erin quickly complied. She isn’t trying to scam anyone…she is just trying to get on with her life after a series of unfortunate events.

My immediate response to Erin’s story was one of thanks. I am thankful for all of the blessings I have received: I am healthy, my children are healthy and we have a nice home. Truly, we have everything we need. That thought alone compels me to give back in the spirit of thanks.

I am working with Erin to set up an account with a local church so that those of you who feel the need to help like I do have a way to donate to her cause. Please e-mail me if you’re interested in helping and I hope to post the information on how you can help soon!

I never wanted to be a cautionary tale, but here it is. I haven’t been blogging much in the past few weeks because I have been struggling with technology issues. Specifically, my laptop died. An entrepreneur’s nightmare.
Now just to vent a bit…this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. In truth, it is probably the 8th time this has occurred in the last 18 months, enough to make ANYONE nuts. My mother board went out, which means my display is a mess of mangled characters, not even close to resembling the most bizarre written languages. The cost to repair: $500. To understand why this is so unreasonable to me, you have to understand that this is the 4th mother board that has gone in this same computer in a little over a year. To make it worse, this was a machine that Toshiba sent me to replace the OTHER lemon I had, which required 4 new hard drives within a three month time frame.

Thankfully, I am a bit of a geek so I was able to get all of my data off making my decision to never use a Toshiba laptop again easier. However, the lesson for you, especially the not-so-geeky ones out there - when is the LAST TIME you backed up the data off your computer? Do you even know how to make a copy of your mail file so you don’t lose all your contacts with your recent e-mail? Although my husband SWEARS I emit some magnetic field that tends to fry electronic hardware, I believe the threat is not reserved for me. If you use technology extensively in your business like most entrepreneurs, you need to follow these guidelines for protecting yourself:

1. Create a backup of all critical files and when possible, keep a copy of them offsite. This can be in the form of a memory stick (they’re so inexpensive now!), a CD, or even another machine. Files should be backed up on a frequency that works with how often you update them. Weekly would be a minimum for average entrepreneurial activity.

2. Backup your e-mail. This is where the non-geeks may need some help. I use Outlook, which stores all my mail in a file with a PST extension. By default, however, the folder this is in stays hidden from you unless you change it. If you’re really need to do this, let me know and I’ll post detailed instructions. If you use something that is internet-based such as Yahoo or Hotmail, they should be taking care of the backups (you hope!).

3. Make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. Even if you never suffer a hardware failure (because you never bought a Toshiba ) the chances of your machine becoming infected with a virus are good unless you have protection and, here’s the kicker, keep it updated! Deviant minds are at work all over the world trying to bring you (yes, YOU!) down. The anti-virus folks are working equally hard to break their codes and eradicate their bugs. Choose the good side of this battle between good and evil. Pay to keep your anti-virus software updated.
I know the above sounds like a pain, but with technology as pervasive in our work and in our lives, you can NOT afford to spend hours recreating stuff you’ve already done. It is bad enough that I have had to reinstall software 6 times over the last 18 months…please don’t get caught with your guard down!