Legal Eagles

Are you unsure about what business structure to choose for your company, or have doubts about a lease or contract you're about to sign? Maybe you've spent all your budget on marketing and have little left for consulting with a lawyer before making decisions such as these...

Well if you live in or around New York City, you're in luck. The Neighborhood Entrepreneur Law Project (NELP) was created exactly for this reason. They assist low to mid income business owners in Manhattan with legal issues - at no charge. Akira Arroyo is their program director and she graciously agreed to attend this week's meeting to talk to us about their services. They have partnered with volunteer attorneys that can advise you on whether your business should be a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, etc. They'll also review your lease or sales contract before you sign it, plus they'll give advice on protecting trademarks and copyrights, and on what licenses and registrations your company will need. They also offer seminars and legal clinics - like right now they have one on commercial leases. She can be reached at 212-382-6633. (That's her below)

Here's 2 other free legal services offered by the New York City Bar Association: the legal hotline (212-626-7383, Mon.-Fri. 9:00am-12:30pm, or www.lawhelp.org/ny) which is part of the City Bar Justice Center, the pro bono arm of NYCBA, and the Monday Night Law Project, a clinic held on the 1st Monday of every month where you get speak to an attorney who will help you assess your legal issues (you'll need to schedule an appointment in advance: call 212-626-7373). One caveat: both of these services only cover family law, landlord/housing, consumer fraud/credit issues. For small business issues your best bet is NELP.

After Akira's presentation we all had a chance to chat and catch up on things. Fellow Mogulette CarolynTownes shared that she now has 4 blogs that she's posting to! This fabulous fempreneur is a Spiritual Life and Leadership Coach who also runs a inspirational group entitled Becoming a Woman of Purpose. Her most recent post is about how to deal with gremlins. Yes, gremlins, those pesky killjoys that shoot down your ideas and rain on your parade.

Who's your action partner?

Fat, Broke and Lonely No More! That's the title of a new book by Victoria Moran, a woman I had the pleasure of meeting about a year ago and who has been an true inspiration to me. She did a book signing yesterday at Barnes & Noble which was delightful. Not only did she grace us with tidbits of her own brand of humorous wisdom from the book but she also had her friend sing a beautiful song that soothed our stressed out New York souls.

During the Q&A she spoke about how, when she's in writing mode, she usually works from Starbuck's because there's a lot of people around her but they want nothing from her (unlike at her home!). As a solopreneur I often feel isolated spending so many hours by myself in front of my computer. When my family stayed over for a visit recently I realized that even though they were a bit distracting, I still managed to get things done. As a matter of fact, I was even more productive. I get a lot of positive energy from people, and one way I can incorporate that into my routine is how Victoria does it: she has what she calls an action partner and they call each other every morning at 6:30am to share their actions for the day. Afterwards she has a good breakfast (one of the reasons she's so slim, she says), exercises and finds time to meditate, most days. That routine gets her ready for the work of the day.

The Mogulettes are my action partners, but I also have a wonderful list of supportive friends that I need to remember to call to keep me focused and on track on a daily basis. How do you stay connected and motivated? Please share your thoughts!

How to Research your Business Idea

If you've been putting off doing the market research portion of your business plan (like yours truly), I just came across a helpful article from Entrepreneur.com that spells out the hows and whys in a very straightforward manner. It also touches on related topics like not giving up if you find your idea has holes in it - you just might need to do some re-tooling - and making sure you're selling where your target market is likely to buy - in other words don't try selling oranges in a hardware store.

Women helping women...

Yesterday I discovered yet another great resource for 'fempreneurs' like us. I attended a seminar led by Elisa Balabram, editor of an online magazine called Womenandbiz.com. Unable to find any magazines that targeted women business owners, Elisa decided to start her own, and published the first issue in September 2003. Her site has tons of interviews with female entrepreneurs in various industries sharing how they got started, as well as tips from experts in personal coaching, management consulting, marketing...in short, a veritable smorgasbord of advice!

Free stuff for entrepreneurs

Last week was chock full of marketing, business finances and networking.

Here's the highlights:
Monday I visited the NYC Business Solutions office in downtown Manhattan. The center aids entrepreneurs by offering workshops and one-on-one counseling - for free! Its manager, Karen-Michelle Mirko, was super helpful with tips on branding and on increasing the traffic on my blog. She even came up with a contact for me to speak to about an idea I have for a reality TV show! So lots of resources there - I highly recommend checking them out. Karen-Michelle will be on maternity leave starting at the end of June but she introduced me to Elli Papadopoulos (212-618-8817), who will be taking over while she's gone, but there's also other female counselors available as well. It's great to have women helping women, which is the new tag line I came up with for the Mogulettes: women helping women achieve success - I'm still working on it but what do you think? Let me know!

On Tuesday at our weekly meeting we had Marina Aris, a financial consultant from Ameriprise Financial talk to us about business finances. We had a great turnout from the Mogulettes at the presentation and I was able to meet three new members. Afterwards we mingled and exchanged ideas. Someone suggested I bring a tax accountant to one of our meetings, so if any of you know of a good one, please let me know! Another suggestion I got was to do a teleconference, so that we can hold the meeting from the comfort of our homes. I'll keep you posted on that! One of the topics Marina covered was fixing your credit before asking for a loan. Here's two free upcoming seminars I found that deal specifically with that:

Credit Readiness

Sponsor: NYC Business Solutions, along with Greenpath Credit Counselors
Date: Wedn., June 6th
Time: 3:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: Lower Manhattan Business Solutions Center
79 John Street, b/t William & Gold Sts.
4th floor conference room
Cost: Free

RSVP: Call 311 and ask for small business seminars

************************************** ********
What Every Woman Needs to Know About Credit

Sponsor: ACCION New York
Date: 06/06/2007
Time: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Series Title: Save, Strengthen and Succeed! Financial Literacy Tips for Real Women
Location: Baruch College, Field Center for Entrepreneurship, 55 Lexington Ave./ Rm 2104
Cost: FREE
Description: Accion invites you to participate in this evening seminar and join ACCION's credit experts, local politicians, community leaders, and the Allstate Foundation in this kick-off workshop that will provide all the knowledge you need to read your credit report, build a healthy credit history, and more!
Registration Information: To register call (212) 387-0494.

If you can't make these they're offered periodically so check this calendar for future dates.

Does the idea of getting free money for your business appeal to you? It sure did to me, and that's why I made my way over to the Science, Industry and Business Library to attend a seminar by the same name, held by the Queens Economic Development Corp. It was all about grants for small businesses - where to find them, how to apply for them and what you need to qualify for them. They're free but you have to put together an application as well as a business plan to qualify for them. Here's a few places to find more info:

• www.grants.gov for federal government grants
• Idea Cafe's Biz Center for a list of private grants
• Avon Hello Tomorrow Fund to find grants for women
• The Foundation Center for links to grant maker websites
  

They also touched on business plan competitions, which are sometimes easier to obtain than grants. A quick google search for "business plan competition" + 2007 resulted in one for entrepreneurs 45 years old plus, one from Fortune Small Business for all ages, and one for women 35 years old or younger. There's also a lot of contests sponsored by universities for students but you can overcome these limitations by having someone on your team that fits their criteria.

Thursday and Friday I attended a conference on personal finance for Hispanic journalists sponsored by International Center for Journalists held at the McGraw-Hill headquarters, home of BusinessWeek and Standard & Poor's. One fellow writer I met there was Xavier Serbia, who has a website with lots of great articles on managing your money in Spanish and is very committed to getting the Latino community educated about their finances.

Pheww! It makes me tired just thinking about all the stuff I did last week. At our next meeting we'll be learning how to give our businesses a big push from two business coaches. How will they do that? Check back and find out!

What's in a name? That which we call a rose...

This week the Mogulettes and I attended a seminar on Trademarks and Copyrights sponsored by the Neighborhood Entrepreneur Law Project and the Field Center for Entrepreneurship at Baruch College. I was surprised to find out that you don't neccessarily have to register a trademark for the name of your company -simply by using it you own it - unless of course, someone else came up with the name before you did, in which case, they own it.

It's really important to do a thorough search to see if the name you want to give your business is already taken. It could end up costing you mucho dinero if you have to change your logo and reprint all your you marketing materials because someone else owns the name! A trendy Manhattan restaurant now called Serafina had to change it's name from Sophia at the height of its popularity for that same reason. They not only had to alter the logo on the outdoor signage, the menus, the business cards, etc. - then there was also the question of whether their clients would accept the new name and if they would recoginize the brand.

Here's a few places to check:

Register.com or GoDaddy.com for domain names

US Trademark Office database for business names

Your local County Clerk's office to see if there is already a business registered under your name

Here's a few good tips from "A Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business": check with a lawyer or accountant and have them run a city, state and national search to make sure that no one else has claimed it. Then once you know the name you want is available, run it by a professional or personal circle to get feedback. Make sure it's broad enough to encompass any future areas your company may expand into.

Check out this set of articles from Entrepreneur.com on domain names:
Find the Perfect Domain Name
Protecting Your Business Name Online
Keeping Your Domain Current

Postcards from the Edge

Hello everyone! Your chief Mogulette here reporting from the trenches. We're in the midst of marketing mania. Last week me and three other Mogulettes trekked over to Flatbush, Brooklyn for a seminar on cheap ways to market your business sponsored by CAMBA, a local agency that helps startups. It took us an hour and 20 minutes to get there but it was worth it. Jay Savulich, who led the workshop, had us in stitches most of the time. He's launched and run a number of restaurants in Manhattan like Tortilla Flats and Grange Hall, so he shared many funny and instructive stories on how to "win friends and influence people".

Brenda and Viv at the marketing seminar

One of our fellow Mogulettes, Brenda (above left), asked a question that brought up an interesting discussion. She is launching a dog care service and wanted to know if it was a good idea to put the name of your company on those little plastic bags used to scoop up your dog's poop. My initial thought was "Hell, no! That's gross!" But Jay pointed out that if you put your logo on the bags and give them away for free, it's a way to build customer loyalty and advertise your brand. Of course!!

This week we piggy-backed on the marketing theme and did a brainstorming session to figure out ways to promote ourselves. We had two ladies in the group providing pet care services so one suggestion we came up with was to print out postcards and use a similar strategy to Olimpia's (see her story here): strike up relationships with pet store owners where you send each other customers and leave a stack of cards at their store. Another one is give your existing clients a special gift (a discount or some other freebie) if they refer their friends to you.

As for my own business, I got a great idea from Ina, an incredibly creative make-up artist and stylist who's also part of our group. I was searching for a logo for the Mogulettes and this image in my head of a strong, invincible woman that does it all. There's a caricature in an E-surance commercial that comes close to what I had in mind - but Ina came up with an even better one: take the Charlie's Angels image of three women and instead of them holding weapons they hold a cellphone, a laptop and a briefcase! Love it! Soon to be at a Mogulette blog near you! Over and out...

Vision mapping

Melissa Zwanger spent years working for various Fortune 500 companies until a transformational trip to Hawaii made her realize her true calling. She now does counseling and coaching in the area of relationships and sexuality, and she incorporated her company, Transform Now, in 1994. We had the pleasure of listening to her tell her story at last week's meeting.
Melissa shares her vision with the Mogulettes

One interesting thing she revealed to us was how she came to an epiphany when preparing for her presentation to the Mogulettes. She found an old vision statement she had written over 10 years ago regarding her business, which she hadn't looked at in a very long time, and was shocked to see that almost everything she had wished for has come true, as if by divine intervention! She believes that our visions are the most important element in the business plan. Hers was one full, typed page, and it was written in the present tense.

Here's how she suggests you do it: first close your eyes and really imagine what it would be like to have the business you want to have - feel, hear, and see everything that is going on - and then write it down. List everything - from what products and services you offer to the types of clients you are attracting (not only demographics but also personality, age, culture, background, etc.) to the type of space you work in (how is it decorated? how large is it? where is it located?) - everything! This is a real fun exercise. It may feel like part fantasy, part wishful thinking but it's all about putting our intentions to the universe!!! Afterwards, share it with someone you trust (I'm planning on having a meeting just for sharing our visions!). And don't keep it hidden - carry it with you or tape it somewhere near your desk. That way you won't have to wait 10 years to see that miracles do happen...;)

Quote: "When you can picture the ending, the beginning is easy."

Marketing Allongé

One of the biggest hurdles I face in moving forward with my small enterprise is thinking that I'll be crushed by all the competition that's out there, and that my idea isn't original enough.

But here's the thing - Olimpia's idea for a dance school wasn't original - there's so many of them everywhere. She did, however, have a secret weapon: herself. Her 15 years plus of experience teaching and performing (see her bio here) gave her the know-how to offer a high level of course offerings and instruction, and that gave her an edge.

By bringing our unique background and abilities to our endeavors, we make them different from what others are offering. The key is to focus on our strengths. Like these female entrepreneurs that won the 2006 "Make Mine A Million" contest. We've seen most of these businesses before: dogwalker, jewelry maker, baker, vineyard operator, professional staffer. I'm pretty sure that they chose their particular field because they were passionate about it - that's what gives us the drive we need to execute our visions.

Getting the word out
But back to Luis and Olimpia. As the deadline for the first day of operations loomed, the two fledgling entrepreneurs racked their brains for ways to spread the word about their school. They had put together beautiful brochures and needed to come up with a creative way to get them in people's hands. They took a multi-pronged approach: first they figured that kids like to eat pizza so they found a local pizzeria and convinced them to include a brochure with every pizza delivery in exchange for an ad in the back of the brochure. Secondly they placed stacks of brochures in stores that catered to kids: clothing, shoes, pet stores, ice cream parlors. Olimpia also hit the pavement and visited all the private and public schools in the area handing out brochures herself, and finally on weekends she stood at a busy intersection near the school and attracted kids by giving away balloons - an brochures of course! They ran a promotion giving away the first two classes for free to whoever brought in a brochure. That's how they were able to measure what marketing method was working best. On the back of each brochure was a little mark indicating how it was marketed. In the end, they found that the ones that worked best were the handouts at the schools and on the street, so they stopped using the pizzeria. After the free classes a total of 3 girls had signed up - they were in business! Now it's one and a half years later and Allongé Dance Center has a total of 36 students...and growing!

Anatomy of a Startup: Allongé Dance Center

We recently had two full-fledged entrepreneurs (as opposed to aspiring, as most of us are still…) come visit our ever expanding Mogulettes meeting (we now have 36 members!) to share how they got started. Olimpia Hernández and Luis Blanco launched the Allongé Dance Center almost two years ago. Here are a few highlights of their story.

Trained as a dancer since she was a child, Olimpia had been dreaming of opening a dance studio for a long time. She had actually tried to do it on her own in the past but it hadn’t worked out. Then she met Luis, who has a background in finances, and decided to ask him to be her partner. From a business perspective, they complemented each other quite well. Luis could focus on doing the numbers-crunching and researching their target market, while Olimpia's expertise as a dancer and instructor would help them formulate the curriculum for the school, and give them a competitive advantage.

Luis and Olimpia share their startup secrets














Once Luis agreed to come on board, they decided to set a start date - that way they had a deadline to work towards. They gave themselves 9 months to prepare and immediately started looking at possible locations for the school. Their target market was parents with enough disposable income to pay for their children to attend dance classes, so they went into the census website and searched for neighborhoods with annual household incomes of $80,000. After that, they checked to see if there were any cultural or religious components to the area that might make a dance school unpopular with its residents. Competition was also a consideration, so they looked for places that didn’t have a lot of other studios operating there. Forest Hills, Queens, was their eventual choice. They even found a space that had just been vacated and had previously housed a dance studio.

With a little help from your friends
Luis quickly sat down and made some projections of how much they would need to "set up shop". He calculated it would cost $20,000 to renovate and rent the space for the first three months of operations. That was a huge chunk of change, especially since they didn't have it! They would also be losing money when the space wasn't being used, which would probably be most of the time at the beginning. But what else could they do?

Olimpia was able to find help in an unlikely place: she asked none other than her old boss for advice, who came up with a much cheaper alternative. He owned a dance school in Westchester where she had been teaching classes, and since she planned to open a studio in another county, she knew he wouldn't feel threatened. He suggested they do what he did when he started out: find a space they could rent by the hour, and only pay for the amount of time they needed it. Brilliant! (Another reason why we need mentors: to avoid costly mistakes!)

Howdy partner!
So they switched gears and looked into health clubs, karate schools and other options, until they found a yoga studio nearby that fit their requirements: a hardwood floor and a few open slots of time in the afternoons. However, when they got down to negotiating the rent, the owners wanted too much. So Olimpia and Luis came up with the idea of partnering up with the "yogis". They offered to give them a percentage of their profits in exchange for paying less rent, and the deal was sealed. Another hurdle overcome!

Coming up next: How Allongé found low cost ways to advertise