guest blog post by Gina Blitstein

Women wear many hats - some we love and some we loathe, yet we wear them nonetheless. It seems every day requires more of us as we pursue the many roles we play, be it partner, mother, businesswoman, daughter, sister, friend, good citizen…the list goes on and on. It often feels like it requires superhuman effort, endurance and speed to fit all we want to do into a mere 24 hours.

How do our lives get so crazed? If we step back and take an introspective look, we’d see that a lot of it is of our own doing. We tend to take on too much, never admitting that we have limits or boundaries that even we ourselves need to respect. So why do we think that we need to be “Superwoman” - and for that matter - that any woman is or needs to be?

Kathy Caprino, psychotherapist, women’s work-life expert, career and life coach, speaker, and author of the new book Breakdown, Breakthrough: The Professional Woman’s Guide to Claiming a Life of Passion, Power and Purpose, describes the phenomenon she calls “overfunctioning” in women. Kathy defines overfunctioning as “doing more than is necessary, more than is appropriate, and more than is healthy.” Sound familiar? Kathy explains that “Women are addicted to overfunctioning out of fear of not being in control, or not living up to someone else’s standards, or being judged negatively by others.”
Read the rest of this entry

by guest blogger Maia Nolan

In a recent post at Brazen Careerist, writer Nisha Chittal opined that women aren’t as good at self-promotion as men are, for a variety of reasons. We asked Nisha to share some of her insight into why women have a harder time tooting their own horns — and, since self-promotion and entrepreneurship go hand-in-hand, how we can get over it.

So — what’s our problem? And why is it a problem?

In my experience, I have witnessed that women, much more so than men, are afraid to speak of their accomplishments and successes and goals. Men, I have often seen, are more aggressive in going after what they want, asking for help, talking up their accomplishments, and generally tooting their own horn. Women don’t want to seem as though they are bragging, or that they’re arrogant or self-absorbed. It’s a problem because in order to become successful today almost everyone needs to do a little self-promotion. And if women are feeling shy about talking up their achievements, then they’re holding themselves back from reaching their goals. There are fewer women executives, for instance. And one well-known Carnegie Mellon study also showed that women are far less likely to negotiate a higher salary than men — and thus, can cost themselves thousands of dollars in lost income over time.
Read the rest of this entry

Image via Wikipedia

I’m growing me a company. It is a bit of a seedling at the moment, but by golly, it will be an amazing tree or even forest before you know it.

The truth is, growing from a company of one to a virtual team of 9 has been exciting and painful at the same time. I brought on a business partner earlier this year, emphasis on business. She’s savvy, financially intelligent, ambitious, motivated, seasoned, all the ingredients of a great business partner. Plus, we really like and respect one another.

Why did I decide to grow from an easy peasy single employee consultancy to a fast-growing virtual team? Because I felt I was on to something. Last year, I approached my friend/now business partner with this revelation:

I feel right now the exact same way I did when I started Cybergrrl, Inc. back in 1995. There is something happening with social media that hasn’t been seen since the introduction of the Web, and I want to ride this wave the right way instead of making the same mistakes I made back in the 90s.

Read the rest of this entry