Tips For Women Entrepreneurs

Among my favourite read of 2011 was the story of a single mom Trisha Waldron, who created million-dollar business that started from assembling jewellery at her kitchen table, late at night after putting to bed her two young daughters. 

It reminded me of J K Rawling, who had a somewhat similar start, then turned into self-made billionaire with the Harry Potters series.

Below are some of the pointers Trisha had shared for other women keen on becoming entrepreneurs, and for the full article, go to

http://shine.yahoo.com/event/poweryourfuture/welfare-mom-creates-million-dollar-biz-how-she-did-it-2573956/

• Your responsibility is to be clear about your vision. Then you can ask others to help.
• There is a lot of assistance out there for entrepreneurs if you look for it: I learned bookkeeping from a volunteer group of retired accountants.
• Surround yourself with people who support you. A lot of people said I was crazy to start my own business as a single mom. But I had a few people who believed in me.
• Be okay with the knowledge that you won’t know how to do everything right away and trust that you can learn.
• Create a “mastermind group” – 2 or 3 people who are willing to have you bounce ideas off them every few weeks. I kept my group going for 10 years.
• Realize it will be hard, and accept that.

SPEAKING of surrounding yourself with people who support you and/or creating a 'mastermind group' - Penang Affiliates of NAWEM is a good place to start doing so.

Below was another get-together we had last October, where member Kyree shared her expertise on 'Choosing A Good Time Piece."

 Everyone had a good time, a good laugh together - which is always healthy...

 We topped it all off with good food. The dinner was also to celebrate the successful "Opportunities for Women Entrepreneurs" seminar held earlier in October.

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Resolution: Not to get side-tracked...focus

Women are multi-tasker they say...and thus so easy to get side-tracked too if we are not diligent enough.

And that what has happened at this NAWEM-PAN blog since our last big event in Oct. 2011. I mean it is now 2012 (Happy New Year!). Let everyone be rest assured though that PAN has had stuff going on since then.

Anyhow there are always the numerous NAWEM activities in Kuala Lumpur, which all PAN members can join or get invited to. The most recent invitation is for our women entrepreneurs to participate in the Expo Kajang 2012 to be held on March 1 - 4.

Another invite is to a seminar happening this Sunday Jan 7, titled Emm-POWoman : SUCCESS INSIDE OUT - POWERING INTO 2012. The organiser is a sister organisation Peniagawati.

Back to the PAN back happenings since last October, there shall be short re-cap of them here, from time to time and mostly in photos. Just for the record.

Below is the PAN visit to SME Corp Penang office following our October seminar, where many questions were raised regarding funding and opportunities for women entrepreneurs from various sources. So some of us went on Oct 18 for some face-to-face consultation and to build network.

We must say that the director En Tajul Ariffin Jamaluddin was a gracious host.

Btw, PAN committee has decided that our anniversary later this year is to be celebrated in a major way and planning would start with the first monthly meeting end of this month.