Before launching Work It, Mom! I spent my entire career working mostly with men. This was especially during the last five years that I spent in venture capital, an industry that by the latest count had less than 10% of women in decision-making positions. At the firm where I worked I was the only woman who was not an administrative assistant, most of my networking lunches and events were with men, and most companies I invested in were led by men. All of this led to the sad reality of my not having many women in my professional network.

And all of this changed when I became an entrepreneur and started a company focused on women. Read the rest of this entry »

A while back I wrote a post, right here on this blog, about the unfortunate way that confident women are often perceived in the workplace. As I’ve witnessed in my own career and as too many studies have suggested, they are viewed as aggressive, overbearing, and bitchy.

But recently I’ve come in contact with too many women who actually are bitchy to other women they work with. As I was dealing with one of them I started to wonder if there was something I was doing to cause her rudeness and bitchiness in communicating with me. I began to load my emails with all sorts of niceties and infused my phone conversations with her with an extra dose of politeness; her behavior didn’t change one bit. Then I met two other women who have dealt with her in the past and was relieved — how sad is that? — to learn that it was nothing personal towards me.

This certainly isn’t the first time this has happened. Read the rest of this entry »

I know, it’s a very long title, but it’s the best I can do after 2 days of networking, 2 days of walking around NYC, and all of this while consuming inordinate quantities of Tylenol/Emergen-C/funky Chinese herbs the guy at Whole Foods promised would cure all my ills.

I spent Thursday and Friday at the Blogher Business Conference. I am glad I went — although it was a big investment of both time and money for a small (but mighty!) company like Work It, Mom!. The best thing about business conferences is the opportunity to meet new people and connect in person with people I know only virtually. I think email and phone can go a long way to create great working relationships, but there’s nothing like being able to talk face-to-face and conferences offer a way to do a bunch of these mini-meetings at once.

I must say one of the highlights was meeting our awesome Mir in person, after working with her for almost a year. Read the rest of this entry »

I know, you’re thinking “OK, Nataly, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about networking?”

But in all seriousness, I feel that networking is a task that we — and yes, by this huge generalization, I mean we = women — overlook most often and don’t do enough of in our careers, businesses, and life in general. I know this from my personal experiences and from those of my female colleagues and friends. I am sure there are plenty of reasons for it, but this post isn’t about that. It is about what I’ve learned about networking and my desire to encourage you to make it a regular part of our routine, whatever your career or business might be. Believe me when I say it’s really good for you.

My 5 golden rules of networking:

Rule #1: If you want to succeed in your business, your career, or your life, you MUST network.

My first job out of college was for a huge consulting firm famous for the way it invested in training its business analysts. They put us through tons of training — financial analysis, client management, presentation skills, and much more — but we were never taught about networking. My next job was in strategy for a small company, where I had a great boss who taught me about business, running companies, and sales and marketing — but I don’t remember him saying anything about networking. When I took a job in venture capital my boss told me that to find new deals I had to network, but that was it. In my 10+ year career, no-one ever taught me about networking but I so much wish someone had.

I learned the importance of networking only when I decided to start my own company (Work It, Mom!, of course). My partner, Victoria, and I were introduced by someone I worked with and after a year of business lunches we decided to start a company together. When it came time to find our great team of bloggers, I started reaching out to several whose personal blogs I liked and always asked if there were others they’d recommend. I have a great group of extremely sharp and experienced people to whom I go for advice about growing my own company and I’ve met them all through networking. Networking means connecting with people, creating relationships, and expanding the circle of people to whom you can go for advice, support, career direction, job leads, and answers to specific questions. I don’t know a single person successful person who doesn’t make networking part of their daily life.

Rule #2: The best time to network is when you don’t need anything. Read the rest of this entry »