Dear Womenandbiz.com Reader, For this issue we are discussing family business and home-based businesses. When I was taking an entrepreneurship class at Baruch College, we had a guest speaker who spoke about family business. She mentioned that many times even self-employed individuals actually run a family business, as they need their family support in order [...]

Outside of close day-to-day interactions with family members, one of the top challenges that family-run businesses face is succession planning. It usually goes something like this: Paul Parent has spent decades growing his hardware store the old-fashioned way – elbow grease, keeping a watchful eye on the bottom-line and service with a smile. He’s no [...]

What do Amazon.com, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Pepperidge Farm, Lillian Vernon, and Playboy all have in common? They were all started as home-based businesses. In fact, of the approximately 10 million businesses in the U.S. about half are home-based¹. Some will grow beyond the home while others will happily remain home-based. All home-based businesses require a significant [...]

Family businesses are the most prevalent business form in the United States. Family businesses run the gamut from providing daycare for a few children at home to corporate giants such as the Ford Motor Company and Johnson & Johnson. The 1997 National Family Business Study surveyed households throughout the United States and found that one [...]

Self-Preservation in a Toxic Work Environment Hi Jill, I’m self-employed and recently accepted a long-term contract position as part of an onsite product development team. The project is very interesting, and it’s a great opportunity to earn some steady income. The problem is the people. Several of my teammates are very negative, and I’m surrounded [...]

I recently lost not only my staunchest supporter, but also a dynamic business mentor and style icon that greatly influenced my career path from the very beginning. My Mother had the rare gift of making people feel very special and cared for while achieving much success in her work. This quality, along with her courage, [...]

Annemarie Segaric – Background * Please tell us about your education and professional experience, before starting your career as a life coach. I studied Operations Research & Industrial Engineering at Cornell University. From college I went on to have about 6 jobs in 7 years! All of these were doing one form or another of [...]

I first met Andrea Nierenberg in 2003, at an Employee ROI breakfast event where she gave a presentation on networking strategies. We kept in touch, and she has been one of womenandbiz.com’s contributors since the beginning. I still remember and practice a few things she talked about at that event, such as: * When you [...]

I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs – first my father had a construction company and my mother was working with him. When it wasn’t doing so well, my mother, an excellent cook, learned how to make candies and truffles and started selling it out of our living room, and my father soon closed [...]