Being a home business entrepreneur is not always easy.  There are many sacrifices and compromises that go into starting a business and running it from your home.  Reading up on tips and advice from other home business entrepreneurs can make the difference between feeling like you’re drowning and feeling like you’re on top of the world.  An article published on Entrepreneur.com gives part-time business owners seven tips for running their business while working a full-time job.  There’s a lot of great advice on how to make the most of your time and energy.  By employing just one or two of these tips you’re sure to have a more focused idea of how to be successful in your business endeavors.

A recent Wall Street Journal article outlines several important tips on “How to Position Yourself as an Expert“. Why is this important? When you are a starting a business, it’s important to build a personal brand. It’s a way to enhance your business reputation and help grow your business. Becoming an expert in your field will help. The author of the article, Scott Gerber, is the founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, and he includes advice from fellow business experts, such as creating a catching a moniker for yourself and establishing a strong web presence. Read the column then take that first step. Just don’t forget to come back and share your expertise with us!

View the custom page for the book, How to Start your Business with $100.

You can win a custom Facebook page valued at $149, design by nextSTEPH to propel your business into 2011.

Click here to enter The Wild Women Entrepreneurs Custom Facebook Page Giveaway.

Equality among races, nationalities, and genders is something Wild WE strive for in the business world and their communities.  Even though we are closer than we have ever been at any point in civilization, there is still a long road ahead of us.

Ja-Nae Duane, the author of “How to Start Your Business with $100”, has an interesting blog up about 5 simple ways we can help women win as tech leaders.

The technology industry is one of the largest industries where women are severely underrepresented.  Blaming men is not the answer.  It is up to us women and entrepreneurs to take action and bring about change.

If you are a woman in the tech industry, you could become a mentor to other women or volunteer to speak at tech panels and conferences.  Inspiration is the key to encouraging other women to take on roles in male-dominated industries and promote real change towards equality.  Who are some women in the tech industry that you admire?

For women business owners, the need for excellent PowerPoint presentations while soliciting partners or customers is crucial to a successful small business. As a women entrepreneurs, we need to know our audiences before creating PowerPoints to address them. This is a crucial process for us all.

Given my artistic sensibilities, I enjoy designing PowerPoints for business presentations. However, sitting down to organize images, write text, insert graphics and add animation to a presentation is VERY time consuming. On top of that, the hard part about designing my own presentations isn’t just about the time. It’s recognizing the importance of professional – and catchy – presentations!

Well-executed presentations can offer potential clients and partners the absolute best first impression possible of you and your business. Presentations for current partners will ensure continued quality control within your small business. You could spend hours trying to design your own presentation, or you can hand the task off to someone who can get it done quickly and efficiently.

One organization that handles other businesses presentation design is www.123PPT.com. 123PPT offers creative and concept development, along with technical capabilities to develop state of the art presentations not only through PowerPoint, but also through Adobe FlashDesign, CD-ROM, DVD, video, and animation. 123PPT will give you esti­mates based on your exact needs.

A similar business presentation organization is ProPoint Graphics. ProPoint offers Flash and PowerPoint presentation design services. ProPoint serves large and small business alike, and similar to 123PPT, ProPoint will give you a quote on request.
Who designs your PowerPoints? How do you decide what content to include in your PowerPoints? How do you implement your brand in your PowerPoints? We would love to know, so shoot us a line.

Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs, listen up! I recently spent the majority of a couple of days helping a colleague restore her data after her computer was stolen.  Well, we restored as much as possible.  She was not good at making regular backups.  As a result she lost a significant amount of data that she will never see again.

I wanted to take this opportunity to provide a friendly reminder to make backup copies of data that you do not want to lose; and data you hold near and dear to your hearts!  I know many, and perhaps most, of you have your own businesses, so you could not only be sad from losing personal files, you could also devastate your business if you do not make regular backups.  I’d hate to hear if some of you lost time, money and customers as a result of not having backup copies.

Some important files to backup that are often overlooked include:

Email

Tax returns

Customer files, including order histories as applicable

Photos

MP3′s, including your music files (I’d cry if I lost my hundreds of iTunes songs)

Address files

Phone lists

Application files (e.g., Word, Excel, Viso, etc.)

Invoices

Stored cell phone numbers and messages

Etc…anything important to you

Be sure to create more than one backup.  For example, do not keep making your backups onto the same filename on an external hard drive, on the same USB drive, DVD, etc.  If your backup media is damaged, then your data on the backup may not be able to be retrieved.

Which brings me to the next point…store your important backups somewhere safe!  For your personal backups, a fireproof safe in your home *may* be okay, but preferably, store your backups off site in a secured location such as a bank deposit box.

And make your backups regularly… I recommend making it a weekly event.  It is amazing how many important files you can lose over just a week’s amount of time!  And if you have something extremely important, make a backup of it right away.

If you use online services to backup your data, let us know which services you love! Let’s promote what works!

Are you starting a business or a small business owner?  Wild Women Entrepreneur CEO, Ja-Nae Duane, offers tips from her upcoming book, “How to Start Your Business with $100.” Here is an easy marketing tip:

I make it a point to market my business in every possible situation, including the times when I’m browsing books at the local public library or bookstore.  While doing my own shopping, I’ll simply prop my business cards into relevant publications.  By utilizing similar methods, you too can land new clients while showing creativeness and ingenuity!

Even in the depths of the digital age, people continue to rely on hard-copy books as sources of information.  Imagine this scenario: A web/graphic designer – we’ll call her Susan – is seeking to expand her client list. She arms herself with a stack of business cards (a must for EVERY business, large or small) and heads down to her local library or bookstore.   Concentrating on the most appropriate library sections – such as “Technology,” “Art and Design,” or “Small Business” – she inserts several business cards into as many relevant publications as possible.

A few days later, a fellow entrepreneur in dire need of a website for her own business visits the same library in search of information on web design. She picks Web Design for Dummies from the stack. As she flips through the pages, growing more and more daunted by techie lingo, she finds your business card… and pauses.  It’s like a god-send!  Silently, she ponders: “Should I really suffer through the stress of purchasing design software, and spending countless frustrating hours trying to design a website? I could really use that time to focus on my own work.  Maybe I should give Susan a call and see what the rates are like.”

Just like that, Susan has landed a new client. This technique is simple, effective and most of all – FREE!

Let’s get going! Perform a web-based search of the most popular books in your industry (Amazon.com is a great place to start).  Take note of these books and locate them in your nearest library or bookstore.  Place your business cards into these books and other publications in the same area of the library.  It is helpful to place your cards into relevant sections of books as well. For example, the above-mentioned web designer might have placed her cards into the section of the book that describes costly design software. Such a maneuver is like an unspoken sales pitch!

Feel free to share your tips and your stories below. We would love to hear from you!

HI Everyone!

Wild WE is VERY excited to announce its first WINNER of the Wild WE Business Grant Contest! Tonight's LUCKY Winner is………………….

Mary Grillo!

When asked, this is what Mary said she would do with the money:

If I won the $100, I would hire a virtual assistant to do the tasks that I am used to doing, but hate doing.

We had such a GREAT response to this contest, that we are going to continue running it!

NEXT WEEK'S BUSINESS GRANT IS………

$50

NOTE: The more participants we have, the faster we can raise the grant amount!

Here's How you Enter:

1) Click the "Buy Now" Button Below and Register

2) Tell us either on the guest section of this blog or via email (members/at/TheWildWE.com) and tell us what you would do with your business grant.

3) From the eligible contestants, Wild WE will randomly select a winner on Friday Night at 8pm EDT.

See! Winning Has Never Been EASIER!

So, what are you waiting for? Click Below Now and Win!

If you are a parent of anyone under the age of 17, then I am sure you know Hannah Montana. I will also bet that you saw that ridiculous picture of 15 year old, Miley Cryus, and know how this will effect her relationship with Disney.

To read article: Click HERE

The moms and dads of Wild WE are furious because of what this picture represents. Many of them feel that now they can no longer have their children watch Hannah Montana or Disney for that matter.

My question is, WHY do parents push to expliot their children? For the quick buck? I mean, really! What a way to destroy a household brand. What a way to take a child’s career and life and completely manipulate it to serve your own needs.

I know that Buzz Machine agrees with me. To read the post, Click HERE

It is our responsibility not only to representing our own brands in a way that we deem appropriate, but to also establish relationships with brands that we can trust.

I have a feeling A LOT of people will be boycotting Vanity Fair for this incident. Don’t you agree?

Love,

Ja-Nae
Your Wildly Brand Sensitive Leader