Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

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Six Tips To Help You When You Are a Panelist

Recently, I was invited to be part of a panel on women and entrepreneurship at an entrepreneurship expo at the Ontario Science Centre. I was part of a panel that included a moderator and two other panelists. The moderator was Katherine Roos, Executive Director – Imagination Catalyst at OCAD University. The two panelists were: Dr. Diana Kraskouskaya, CEO of Dalriada Therapeutics and Chakameh Shafii, CEO and Co-Founder of TranQool. It was a wonderful experience. The moderator asked questions to the panelists for about 40 minutes. Afterwards, there was a question and answer period with audience members.

If you have the opportunity to participate as part of a panel, I highly recommend it. Here are six tips that can help you navigate the opportunity when you are invited to be a panelist. They are:

1. Panel Fit. Before you accept the invitation to be part of a panel, determine if it’s a good fit for you. There are a variety of reasons why you could be asked to be on a panel. You could be invited based on: your expertise, your professional experience, your education, your network, or your profile and platform. Before you accept the invitation, decide if being a panelist is a good fit for you. Take into consideration your professional experience and the value that you would add to the panel. When I accepted the invitation to participate, I decided that it was a good fit. The other two panelists were CEOs and based on my experience as a “solopreneur” in the coaching and consulting areas, I could give a unique perspective. Being on the panel was also in alignment with my commitment to women’s issues, including economic empowerment.

2. Conduct Your Research. In order to prepare properly, conduct research into the following: the organization hosting the panel, the topic under consideration, the moderator and the other panelists. Doing your research in advance will help you to speak credibly to the topic that will be discussed. I conducted research into all the above and it served me well on the panel.

3. Questions from the Moderator. If possible try to obtain some examples of the questions that the moderator might ask in advance of the panel and prepare accordingly. If you are unable to obtain some of the questions in advance, prepare a few sample questions and practice with them. I anticipated what some of the questions might be and some of those questions were asked.

4. Share Personal Stories. You were asked to be part of a panel because of your expertise and professional background. The audience members want to learn about your journey. Be prepared to share relevant, personal stories that highlight your area of expertise. One area where I got personal was when the moderator asked me who my mentor was. I mentioned my mother who taught me the tenacity, courage, perseverance, empathy and compassion that I need to succeed in business and in life.

5. Questions from the Audience. Similar to preparing for the moderator’s questions, anticipate some questions that might come from the audience. When the questions are asked, answer to the best of your ability. I brainstormed a few potential questions in advance and some of them were asked by audience members.

6. Connect with Your Host. Before the date of the panel, ensure that you have communicated with your host well in advance. Have at least one phone call with your host in addition to email communication to determine the event expectations and the venue location/time. If he or she doesn’t do so automatically, ask to be connected with the panel moderator to touch base. On the date of the event, arrive early, connect with the host and make sure that you know where the panel meeting room location is. After the event, thank the host for the wonderful opportunity.

While you may not have participated on a panel (yet), these tips will help you navigate that opportunity smoothly. When opportunity knocks, preparation will enable you to open the door with full confidence!

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Overcome the Fear of Speaking

Guest Post By the Queen of Sales Conversion
Lisa Sasevich

Jerry Seinfeld has a joke about the fear of public speaking that goes like this: “I saw a study that said speaking in front of a crowd is the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. This means to the average person, if you have to go to a funeral, you would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.”

If this sentiment applies to you, don’t worry. I have worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and I can tell you with absolute certainty, you already have everything you need to overcome your fear of public speaking.

The first thing I want you to know about public speaking is that it is not a unique talent. It is a skill that you can learn, and master with practice. Think of the best speaker you’ve ever seen. They were not always that good. They struggled, they learned, they honed their craft. They become a great speaker. They weren’t born that way. In fact, when they were born, I can assure you they couldn’t speak at all.

If you truly want to overcome your fear of speaking, you can. And these tips will help you do it.

Build Confidence By Controlling Your Environment
You don’t have to give your first speech as the commencement address at your Alma Mater or as the keynote speaker at a large conference. When you are talking about your business or your passion to a group that wants to hear what you have to say, you are SPEAKING.

This speaking can take place in your living room with five people, on a conference call, as part of a group meeting, or online through a webinar. Starting in one of these environments, whichever one makes you feel the most at ease, is a great first step to overcoming your fear.

Imagination NOT required
Overcoming your fear of public speaking is not about convincing yourself of an alternate reality. You don’t need to picture the audience in their underwear or visualize yourself on stage as the confident speaker you one day will be.

Becoming a confident speaker is all about your message, and your message is already in you. It is your truth. But you convey so much more than your words when you are speaking. Your body language is key.

By learning and using body language that projects comfort and confidence to your audience, you can start to feel that confidence grow in you. Your confidence can come, at least in part, from the outside in.

Prepare, prepare, prepare
I’m usually not one to use a sports analogy, but my marketing director told me that basketball coach Bob Knight once said, “The key is not the will to win. Everybody has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that’s important.” And that seemed kind of perfect to me.

You see, the same is true of public speaking. Wanting to be a great public speaker isn’t enough. It’s really all about the preparation. But how do you prepare?

First, know your audience and craft your message to them. Speak in a way that is comfortable and natural for you, but in a language they can understand, and make sure you are addressing their needs and not just your own. If your message is clear and it resonates with them, you will feel that as you speak and it will make you more confident and comfortable.

Second, anticipate resistance and prepare to meet it. Find the most likely objections to your message and know how you are going to answer those objections.

Meeting obstacles you didn’t expect is nerve-wracking, but if you’ve anticipated the obstacle, encountering it can be comforting and reinforces your total mastery of what you are presenting.

Third, focus on how great your talk is, not how long your talk is. Everyone in your audience would prefer an excellent 45-minutes to a mediocre 90-minutes. They would also prefer an excellent 90-minutes to a mediocre 45-minutes. It’s not about the length, it’s about the quality. Every time.

In addition – and I can’t emphasize this enough – practice. Practice in front of a mirror, or on video, or with a colleague who can give you feedback. This can be really helpful in identifying all the ways you are communicating when you speak; your tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, hand gestures, ums, uhs, crutch words, or jargon.

All of these are more easily identified and improved upon with an outside point of view.

And finally, know your space. By arriving early and getting comfortable in the room you remove an unknown, which will make you feel much more at ease. Take some time in the room before the crowd arrives to just be in the space, to breathe in the space. This will help to prepare your body and mind since you’ve already prepared your presentation.

Practice Self-Care
Taking the time to take care of yourself is crucial to both the health of your business and to your quality of life but it’s especially important for overcoming your fear of public speaking.

It’s very hard to master something new when you are feeling tired, irritable, stressed, or forgetful. You’ve done the work of preparing your presentation. You are the expert in the room and are the only one who can deliver your message. Now take some time to relax and feel refreshed so you can do your best.

You’ve taken care of the work, now take care of you.

And after it’s done, take some time to reflect. Muscles are built in the rest time after the workout. The same is true for learning from what you’ve done. In quiet reflection after a presentation is when you learn the lessons of that experience.

Be Yourself!
Remember that what you are offering when you speak is yourself. You are giving your audience the gift of your experience and perspective. They want the real you!

Which is great, since there’s no one else you’re more prepared to be. You’ve been you for a long time!

Bring your authentic self and let your personality shine through.

There are two ways that speakers tend to short-circuit their own authenticity.

First, by trying to wing it. Gaining speaking confidence is all about being prepared and the more prepared you are to deliver the content of your speech, the more your true personality can shine through.

Second, by over-scripting what you’re going to say. The pendulum swings both ways – creating rigidity and over-scripting makes it easier to get thrown off if someone asks a question you were going to talk about later, or you understand that the room isn’t responding to something, or if the projector breaks or the mic goes out. Know your content and be comfortable with your delivery, but avoid getting locked into reading off a prepared script.

Prepare For Things To Go Wrong
Breathe.

Breathe again.

There. Good. If you speak long enough something will go wrong. It’s ok. It happens to all of us.

Take some time in your preparation to think through how you’ll respond if something doesn’t go as planned. If you’ve thought about it already it will be less of a surprise if it happens.

The important part isn’t that something went wrong, the important part is how you respond. Here are a few things you can do to master your response.

Don’t take it personally. The laptop going out isn’t the will of the universe directed at your presentation. Keep cool. Breathe. You know what you’re going say and you know it’s worth hearing. This won’t derail you. You’ve got this!

Find the humor in the situation. Your audience is going to feel bad for you when something goes wrong. They’ll tense up on your behalf. If you can relax into it, find the humor and keep it light, they will feed off your positive energy and you’ll all ride the storm out.

Stick to your plan. You’ve prepared for this presentation. You know your stuff. You know it will work the way you’ve planned it. Do what you had already planned to do and you’ll be just fine.

If you enjoyed this content, Lisa Sasevich is releasing a complimentary online training series chocked full of resources like this designed to support you on your business building journey. Check it out here.

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Insights from Visionary Leader Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Mohammad Yunus

Here is a flashback to one of my most popular posts.

The world needs visionary leaders more than ever. One visionary leader who has changed the world through microfinance is Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Dr. Yunus from Bangladesh is a banker, economist, social entrepreneur and the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winner. He is the author of several books including, Banker to the Poor.

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Yunus speak as part of a panel at a microfinance and microcredit summit. Dr. Yunus founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh in the 1980s. Grameen means village bank. Since that time the Grameen Bank has loaned out over 1.5 billion (USD) in microloans mainly to women who are 97 percent of the loan recipients.

In Bangladesh, these microloans are often between $30.00 (USD) to $35.00 (USD) and have helped women start microenterprises. These loans enable women in Bangladesh to change their entire life’s trajectory. When they start businesses, the women who are loan recipients are able to pay for their children’s education and give back to their local community. Entire villages are improved because of these microloans. The loans also have a high repayment rate of 97 percent.

Since the Grameen Bank started in Bangladesh more than 9 million women have received microloans. These loans have in turn impacted between 40 – 45 million people which includes the women’s families and local communities which is remarkable. The Grameen Bank model is now operating outside of Bangladesh in several cities, including New York City. In the various locations, the model is similar in providing microloans to the poor and people who traditionally would not be able to qualify for a loan to start a business.

There were several major takeaways from the summit. Dr. Yunus spoke about the “three zeros,” which are the targets that the world should be aiming for in order to improve the quality of life for everyone. They include: zero poverty, zero unemployment and zero net carbon emissions. Now these targets may seem like an impossible dream. If we work together as a global community on initiatives to improve the quality of life for every human on the planet who is to say that one day these targets might come true. That is what true visionaries do. They envision possibility for a better world despite what currently exists. Visionaries also take action to make their visions a reality. For the zero poverty target, we all know that there are more than enough resources to go around world wide for everyone. According to Dr. Yunus, people don’t choose to be poor. It is the prevailing economic systems that keep people in poverty even when they are willing, have the skills and want to work. That is why entrepreneurship is so powerful. Starting a business can help lift people out of poverty through their own ingenuity, skills and talents.

One of the major takeaways from the summit was that entrepreneurship is not the purview or the domain of a select few. Another target the world should be aiming for is zero unemployment. Again this is linked back to entrepreneurship. According to Dr. Yunus, “human beings by birth are entrepreneurs.” There is a prevailing myth that only certain people can be entrepreneurs. Dr. Yunus believes that each one of us has the capacity to use our skills and talents to create a business.

In other words, we were not designed for drudgery in a job or career that we don’t love or are not passionate about where we can’t make a difference. In Bangladesh, when women were advanced loans they were able to start businesses with no or minimal business training. They used their creativity, ingenuity, skills and leveraged their village network in order to create profitable microbusinesses. In addition to zero poverty and zero unemployment, zero carbon emissions was also a target discussed in order to make our planet a healthier place to live.

The panel was excellent and included leaders from the Aboriginal Community who reinforced the fact that there are so many talented and skilled Aboriginal people, especially youth who are doing amazing things in the community. Microcredit will continue to help revolutionize the developing world and help marginalized people in the developed world. By providing access to smaller amounts of capital, the poor and marginalized communities can start businesses to elevate their circumstances. It was an excellent summit and a true honour to listen to Dr. Yunus and other visionary leaders who are helping to change the world.

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Lessons Learned from Sandra Yancey eWomen Network CEO & Founder

An amazing time was had by members and guests at the eWomen Network Success Summit on Thursday, May 26, 2016. Many new connections were made and attendees had the opportunity to learn from Sandra Yancey, the Founder and CEO of the eWomen Network. It was an honour to meet and learn from her. Through the eWomen Network she has created an empowering environment where women entrepreneurs and professionals can grow their businesses, learn valuable information and make new connections. ‪There were many brilliant takeaways from Sandra Yancey’s talk and here are some of the highlights. They are:

– Nothing happens to me, it happens for me.
– When you are doubting yourself, remember that “every master was once a disaster.”
– It’s not working out because you are aiming too low.
– You were born a winner.
– Success is hard, so is being broke.
– Really evaluate the people you have around you to ensure they are committed to your success because, “Not everyone is designed to travel to your future.”
– Stop spending time with people who misunderstand you.
– You can’t build a million dollar dream with a minimum wage mindset.
– Have your point of differentiation and own it.
– The answer is always no if you don’t ask.
– Give yourself permission to succeed!
– Success is giving yourself goosebumps!

It was amazing to be a part of the leadership team as an eWomen Network Ambassador. Congratulations to the leadership team for organizing a wonderful event. The other members of the team are: Managing Director, Daniela Spirlac, Patti Pokorchak, Duygu Nangir, Kathy Barthel, Nicky Yiannakis, Heather Chernofsky, Debra Wilson and Beatrice Ten-Thye. Bravo!

It was my first eWomen Network Success ‪Summit‬ and I’m counting down for 2017! If you would like information about the eWomen Network, please contact me at deb@deborahangelaustin.com.

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Are You Ready to Pay the Price for High Level Results?

When it comes to achieving success, do you truly believe that successful people are just lucky, rich, had the right breaks, are attractive, or have a great network to leverage? All of which may or may not be true. There may be a percentage of people who have achieved success the so called easy way (what way that is, I don’t know).

The reality is that the majority of successful people have worked hard to attain success.  And yes, they may have leveraged their personal and professional connections, their education, financial resources and “lucky breaks” (also known as opportunities) that came along to achieve their success.  They also would have worked hard, set goals, overcome obstacles and pursued their goals with  tenacity.

Think about yourself for a moment and the skills that you’ve developed throughout your life.  Whether it was for a new venture,  learning a new language or instrument, or learning how to parent, wasn’t there hard work involved to be successful in that specific area. There was a major commitment of time, energy and money to study, train  and gain the required experience and skills necessary to be successful. You may have “failed” or have been unsuccessful several times before mastering the skill you needed to learn. If learning the skill or achieving the goal was important enough to you, I bet you did the required work to learn the skill or achieve the goal. In other words you “paid the price.”

The truth is some people just aren’t willing to do the hard work required to achieve high level results. For example, if you want to have a bikini ready body, that would mean that you would have to workout consistently (at least one hour per day, maybe more),  eat a healthy diet on a regular basis and forgo many high calorie treats. Some people are just not willing to do that type of work to obtain that type of body. Which is perfectly fine. What about being an entrepreneur?

Being an entrepreneur involves long work hours, reduced family time, and unpredictable income with no guarantee of success. All of which are totally reasonable in the entrepreneur’s mind (at least in the short term) because having a successful business will eventually lead to (in the future) more financial freedom, more family time and possibly living a location independent lifestyle. With up to 80 percent of small businesses failing within 18 months (according to Bloomberg), the majority of people aren’t willing to do the hard work required to become a successful entrepreneur. They don’t want to gamble with their time, family or financial resources, which is perfectly understandable. The rewards though for the successful entrepreneur can be substantial so the work involved to achieve that success is more than justified.

The next time you encounter successful people who you believe have obtained success (or a specific result that you want) the so called easy way or “overnight,” reflect and think about what really went into building that success. The answers you come up with will be very illuminating. As an exercise, creatively reverse engineer how the successful person achieved that high level result by working backwards. For example, if an actor you like won an Academy Award and you have acting aspirations, what are the steps that would have led him or her to that stage? If someone you know just launched a tech start-up, what are the steps required to launch a tech business? If you know someone who is an outstanding parent who has raised children who are now wonderful adults, what are some parenting strategies you could adopt that can help you with your young children.  When you do an exercise like this you soon realize that behind any successful person there are many factors that contribute to their success. It was rarely “easy.”

Success is not achieved in a vacuum. There are many factors that contribute to being successful in life. Many successful people had to study, train, gain experience and fail many times before achieving their definition of success. In fact, failing numerous times is a common trait among successful people. The difference is successful people do not allow their failures to define them or allow failures to distract them from achieving their ultimate goals and dreams. People who are successful and achieve high level results think and act differently when it comes to commitment, discipline, focus, surmounting obstacles and pursuing their goals with determination. The so called, “Overnight Success” rarely is and has worked for years (often decades) setting the foundation for the success that they end up bringing to fruition.

In a future post, I look forward  to examining  the mindset of  successful people and high achievers. I look forward to sharing tips with you on how you can learn to develop that mindset.

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