To foster more collaboration and to use more of the available tools, we’ve moved the entire A Successful Woman blog over to WordPress.com.

Please make a note of the change in your bookmarks:

http://asuccessfulwoman.com.wordpress.com

 
What does it mean to be successful?
On our Facebook group I’ve been challenging you to consider your own definition of success, post it somewhere public, and strive to check in on a regular basis. I’ve been sending out quarterly reminders to the group (join the Facebook group) and the latest message that I’ve been musing on is that:

Each of us is on a shared path, a journey together where we have an opportunity to support each other, learn about each other, and work together.

There is no “end”. We continue to strive for success and to complete each task before us with grace and equanimity.

Every day that we are alive is another opportunity to do our work, the work we are born to do.

Let’s live each day with compassion, understanding, and integrity. Let’s live each day with gratefulness and courage.
Let’s share the best that we have to offer. Let’s be the best that we can be.

Let’s connect with one another.

Today through my Twitter stream I saw a video posted by @lovepeaceunity called Abraham on Money – Change your Story.

I wanted to take a moment to connect with you about this.

I, too, have had my share of feeling “poor” and feeling unloved and unsupported. It’s such a tough call because so often, these feelings come from the part of you that is down on yourself and basically wants to wallow in self-pity. I called this aspect of my personality “Crabby Ragamuffin” and my image is of the waifish, skinny girl in Les Miserables.

The point is to accept that part of you, let her know that you’re concerned about her and you care for her and love her, and then move on.

The video does a repetitive section so you can understand how the “self-talk” affects your external vibrational energy. It also shows you, towards the end, how you must change your story: change your motto, change your theme. Mix it up and make it different from what you’ve been telling yourself up until this point.

Part of cultivating a success orientation is allowing yourself the ability to find out all the many, various, and gloriously vibrant ways you can participate in our shared experience of life. There are so many opportunities, abundant and overflowing. Part of “tapping in” and flowing is identifying what you particularly are good at — and what you offer.

Try it: Here is an “old script” that says:

I don’t have enough money.
I don’t have enough money.
I don’t have enough money.

(Don’t you see how awful this makes you feel and how you start to think only about those words?)

Here is a “new script” that says:

There’s plenty of money
the resources are here
the circumstances have been arranged
the money is here
the money is here
look over here
everything I want is lined up here
all you need to do is relax
whenever you’re ready
you’ve done all the work
allow whatever you want to fall into your experience
Source is calling you in your direction

Feel the difference? I sense a way of opening up and allowing values, belief, potential, skills, and abilities to come surging in.

What are you good at? What can you offer? What are your unique skills, what only you through the grace of being alive can give? Now’s the time to start sharing those skills.

There are many articles on this website to help you: do a search on success thinking. And believe me when I tell you that all your circumstances may be changed. It is possible by changing your mindset and changing your frame of reference.

A guest post by Cindy Chang, proprietor of The Green Bubble Shop. Cindy offers amazing hand-crafted, organic, healing products as well as supplies for the handcrafter.

Take a look at her website to see such gems as the bulk 100% recycled bags, as well as her tinctures in scents such as Eucalyptus, French Lavender, Chamomile Sage, and Tea Tree.

1) Tell us a little bit about your business, product, or service. What sets you apart or makes your business unique?

I design a hand-made line of all natural, plant-based, non-toxic & organic body care line. I carefully select my ingredients, looking for such qualities as therapeutic and homeopathic value, coming from the USA, organically grown, sustainable, Fair Trade or ethically harvested and recyclability of packaging. Not all these factors are captured 100% of the time when making my products but these are the factors that are considered 100% of the time.
I also distribute a collection of eco-friendly packaging options and supplies for handcrafters and indie businesses.

2) What motivates you in your work?

I am driven by the desire to accomplish success that I can own and that I can be proud of. I’ve always had a strong sensitivity to living in balance with Nature and I feel through my work I can contribute to the cause. I’m also motivated by my desire to provide eco-friendly options and alternatives to the community at large.

3) Could you describe one of your biggest challenges, and how you overcame it.

Small business start-up is definitely my largest challenge and I’m still working to fight the challenges of a start-up. Part of the plan is not to give up as everyday can be daunting and you just have to keep plugging at it and come up with new ways to expose your business more.

I get a very positive response to my products and the more customers I expose myself to the more fans I get so I have to keep working at putting myself out there and showing the community what I offer.

4) Tell us what makes you green?

I am very focused on sustainability. Especially from the ingredients and packaging point of view sustainability is key. My ingredients are scrutinized for their impact to the environment, from qualities and issues such as: organically farmed, locally farmed, genetically modified, mono-crops, endangered species, ethically harvested, etc. In the packaging I look for qualities like recyclability, recycled content, renewable resources, biodegradability, etc.

5) Many companies and businesses are going green today. What is your prediction for the green market next year?

Green has been growing strong for the past few years and I see it continuing with strength and growing still over the next year.

http://www.greenBubble.etsy.com
http://twitter.com/thegreenbubble

The following is a guest post from my cousin, Reg Silva, who recently quit a profitable job to pursue her dream. I know many of you have this in mind but here are the specific steps she took. Notice her advice that “I just knew if you do something you love, everything else follows.”

Don’t believe in this? I encourage you to see my list of how other people’s dreams come true.

How I Quit My Job to Follow My Dream, by Reg Silva

I started my first job before I graduated from college. I had just finished my last day of classes and was all set to embrace contributing to statistics for the unemployed when I suddenly found myself in training for a motion graphics artist position at the biggest broadcasting network here in Manila, Philippines. A classmate had recommended me for the position and I started working at the TV network’s News and Current Affairs department in January 2005, a month before I received my college diploma.

From a college classroom, I was transported into the rush and frenzy of a fast-paced news environment.

I worked as a motion graphics artist for the longest running news program in the country. I, along with a team of other artists, was responsible for the graphics one typically would see on television in a news program—crime statistics, over-the-phone interviews, show openers/intros. It was an exciting time for me.

Not only was I was working in a good and reputable company, my starting salary was more than twice what a fresh graduate would usually get. I got to work behind the scenes of a TV show I had grown up watching as a kid. I met the most prestigious and respected broadcast journalists in the country. I learned a lot and learned to work fast under time pressure.

Through the news department’s partnerships with outside advertisers, I worked on some big-name accounts like McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson, Globe Telecom, and other well-known brands in the Philippines. After a year with the network, I was able to move into and furnish my own 1-bedroom condo unit a stone’s throw away from the office. I bought myself a laptop, one I had only dreamt about for years. I designed graphics for multiple TV programs within the department and my work was aired not only nationwide but reached Australia, the US, Europe, and the Middle East via the network’s cable channels across the globe. My salary, at this time, had more than tripled. I was making more than I could spend. I had a job other people would only dream of having.

Then I resigned.

I wasn’t happy. All that came at a price. I spent as much as 18 hours working on most days, and for a time I even had to work Sundays. The little time I had to myself was spent catching up on sleep. Since I worked in news, we didn’t get holidays off, so Christmas and New Year was spent working in the newsroom. I was always missing from family gatherings and I started getting sick every so often. There were even times I wanted to get sick so that I would at least get to rest.

The worst part was I didn’t even enjoy what I was doing. Making graphics for the daily news started to feel like routine and didn’t pose much of a challenge to me. Making graphical representations of how much gas prices have gone up and typing text onto premade graphics templates didn’t sit well with me as an artist, especially since I basically just did the same things over and over again.

There were more creative assignments I looked forward to sinking my teeth into but they came far and few in between. I felt like I was wasting my time and talent doing mundane design work. Designing, for me, used to be fun. Now it just meant bleary eyes and an aching back while hunched in front of the computer from 2 pm to 6 am the next day.

I had been thinking about resigning from the job as early as a year after I started working but it took me so long to actually go and do it because I knew how stable and financially-rewarding the job was. I held endless debates with myself and kept pushing back my self-imposed resignation deadlines because I was too busy entertaining fear and uncertainty over what could happen without this job. Then one day I realized overanalyzing the situation only kept me there longer. The first step to resigning was to actually resign!

I took a month-long leave of absence in January 2008, three years after I started working at the network. I told my supervisor I wasn’t sure I’d be coming back to work after my leave but deep down I already knew that I wasn’t.

And I didn’t. I filed my official resignation three months later.

I resigned without having another job to fall back on. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go back to a fulltime job ever again. Despite that, resigning felt like a breath of fresh air. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. Friends and family noticed I looked better and healthier. I was happier, too.

I spent the rest of 2008 rekindling my love for design and illustration, things I previously did not have time to explore in a leisurely manner. I drew and designed for myself, not for a client-imposed deadline.

I participated in Illustration Friday’s weekly drawing challenges (http://illustrationfriday.com) and uploaded my drawings online where people can see them. I added new work to my long-dead website/online portfolio (http://www.wedgienet.net). I lived off the money I had saved from my job and just as funds were getting low, I started getting freelance design and illustration projects from halfway around the world.

I was essentially getting paid to have fun and the best part was I was relaxed and getting a full eight (sometimes ten) hours of sleep every night.

I also stumbled across Etsy.com that year, a place for selling handmade goods. I experimented with it a bit before I opened a new shop (http://NotebooksEtc.etsy.com) earlier this year. I sell handmade paper goods with my designs and illustrations on them. I just started but it has been a rewarding experience so far— people are paying me not for design services rendered for them, but for art I made for myself!

That truly boggles my mind sometimes, coupled with the fact that my products have been to places I’ve never been to before: Canada, France, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Lebanon, USA, and Italy, just to name a few. I have started selling my products in local bazaars as well and I’m making plans to invest in a few machines to speed up production of my notebooks. People take the time to e-mail me and tell me how much they love my stuff and that makes me feel I really did make the right decision to leave my dead-end job.

I wouldn’t have had the chance to do this if I had stayed at the network. I took a leap of faith. I just knew if you do something you love, everything else follows. I resigned to pursue something I believed I can do and it is with hard work, preseverance, and faith in my ability that I was able to turn my passion into a small business venture.

I’m not earning as much as what I used to (yet!) but that doesn’t matter. Happiness, for me, does not mean more money than you can spend, having friends in high places, glamour, or fame and recognition. To me it means being surrounded by friends, family, and loved ones; living your dream, and simply being happy doing what you’re doing.

For those looking to resign from their jobs despite the economy, make sure it is to pursue something you are passionate about. You cannot just sit around waiting for opportunity to come knocking on your door– sometimes you have to be the one to pull it in. Do it while you’re young and have no obligations yet like a family to support or children to send off to school. Do it before you regret staying at a toxic job for far too long that you start boxing yourself in and limiting what you can do.

But the most important thing is to work hard and believe in yourself.

It’s a cliché but it works. Results don’t happen overnight but they will in the long run as long as you persevere. Happiness is your choice. You have to be the one to make it happen.

To learn more about Regina, visit her portfolio website: http://www.wedgienet.net
Or see her products in her store: http://NotebooksEtc.etsy.com
Free Downloads from her illustration site: http://www.wedgienet.net/downloads/

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wedgienet
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/wedgienet

We’ll be running periodic highlights of woman-owned and women-friendly green businesses in this space on Friday mornings. Please bookmark http://www.asuccessfulwoman.com.

If your business is:
women-owned
women-focused
progressive
green
environmentally-friendly
sustainable companies
and/or targeted to help women

Please submit your business using our form:

http://www.asuccessfulwoman.com/greenbizguestpost.php

We especially want to share your story if you’re an African-American, Latina, Asian-American or Native American woman in business.

Thank you!

If you are lucky, one day you too will receive a questionnaire in your in-box asking about your company prefaced with the very flattering “one of my group projects is to interview a successful entrepreneur so that we can do a presentation for the class…. I have searched you up on the web and found that you are a very successful entrepreneur.”

In the meantime, prepare your responses in advance! Here’s my very brief responses:

1) In just a few sentences, could you describe your business (Name – brief description – product/service/customer)?

10K Webdesign designs and develop websites for progressive organizations, green businesses, and minority women in business.

2) What have been some of the major challenges you have faced in starting and running your business?

Cash flow, finding customers, developing a system and product, hiring the right people.

3) What ignited the spark in you to start a new business venture or to make significant changes in an existing business? How did the idea for your business come about?

Wanted greater control over my own destiny.

4) What have been some of the greatest rewards from your business?

Financial, ability to direct my own time, and opportunity to grow along with our customers.

5) How did you decide on the location for your business?

Web-based, so we work for clients throughout the United States.

6) What opportunities do you see for your business in the future?

Offering more template-based website development, growing our public and government project support, and supporting more green, gardening, sustainable, and woman-focused companies.

7) Where did your organization’s funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it? How did you obtain investors for your venture?

Personal credit cards and family loans.

How do you find people to bring into your organization that truly care about the organization the way you do?

Networking.

9) What type of investors financed your company initially (friends, family, angel investors, venture capitalists)?

Family and our own boostrapping.

10) Did you have a business plan prepared when you started your business?

Yes, just a 1-2 pager.

11) If so, what did your business plan address (i.e. market size and growth, start-up costs, financial projections, exit strategy)?

Overall values, goals, and initial direction for the company.

12) Have you referred to your business plan once you began your firm? If so, how has it helped?

No.

13) Do you update your business plan currently or use it to guide your business growth?

No.

14) What part of your business plan or business functions do you find most valuable (strategic planning, marketing planning, sales forecasting, financial forecasting)?

Strategic planning in terms of how we want to grow the business, and internal research to understand what parts of the process require which types of skills.

15) When was your business started?

September 2004, incorporated in December 2004

16) Does everyone in the business have a specific role? Are the roles and responsibilities for every person in the business clearly defined?

Everyone has a specific role, roles and responsibilities are still being defined.

17) How many employees does your company have?

Eight.

18) How do you and your people spend your time? Which activities are leading to profits and which to expenses?

30% on new business acquisition

10% on research and development

50% on implementing products for customers

10% on technical support from prior customers

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19) What do you feel is the major difference between entrepreneurs and those who work for someone else?

Ability to ask for support, ability to delegate, ability to think forward, forecast, and set goals, ability to harness ideas to create products and services.

20) How do you balance work with relaxation?

I take late afternoons off to be with my family.

21) Do you really enjoy the business you are in?

I LOVE my business.

22) Are you undergoing any self-improvement education to improve your skills and expertise? Have you done any before?

Yes, I am working with a professional coach to identify my own strengths and weaknesses.

23) Is your company primarily family owned?

If yes, how much control does the family exert over day-to-day operations?

Yes, currently two partners control the entire decision-making process.

24) What kind of culture exists in your organization? How did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

We focus on independence, access to information, and green thinking and action.

We believe that many of our customers benefit from having access to their website content and we encourage training, documentation, and support so that they may use their sites to make more sales, reach more people, and build their community of clients.

25) What three pieces of advice would you give to college students who want to become entrepreneurs?

1) Do what you love and the money will follow.

2) Hire people smarter than you.

3) If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

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26) What is your title?

Principal

27) How long have you been with the company?

5 years.

The Business Needs and Haves list is run by the incredible iThinkWorks team out of Tampa, and is called Business Helping Business: “Businesses helping one another to survive and succeed by making needs known and favors available. An entirely grassroots movement intended to bring together large and small, global and local, and product and service businesses alike in cooperation rather than competition.”

The link is: www.businesshelpingbusiness.com

In the spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and sharing, this list shares “needs” and “haves” from all industries. For example, do you NEED something? A contact, a mentor, a service, a product? Find people who can help you. Do you HAVE something? A book, a download, a free widget, a game, a goodie bag item? Offer your “HAVE” on the list.

Sample needs: http://www.businesshelpingbusiness.com/sample-needs
Sample haves: http://www.businesshelpingbusiness.com/sample-haves

Thanks to all who are downloading the e-book “Fifty-one Ways to Build Your Community of Clients Online”, my 240 page e-book packed with tips and tools on how to update your website.

There are less than 1000 downloads available for free here, for a limited time only:
https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?c=cart&i=ASW_eBOOK1:Fifty_one_Ways&cl=25145&ejc=2
use discount code: 10KWeb

If you’ve downloaded and you’re a woman in business, consider sharing your success story with us by guest posting: http://www.asuccessfulwoman.com/guestpost.php

Share your expertise, your skills, and your knowledge with the rest of the A Successful Woman community.

I used to wonder if I would ever be that good at anything. It seemed like anything I tried – be it biking, skiing, or swing dancing – I would get good enough to enjoy it, and maybe be competitive, but never any better than that. My improvement seemed to plateau. I would see my friends getting better and better at what they did, and envy their unyielding devotion.

I also saw something similar in allegiance with objects. In elementary school I had friends who were crazy about New Kids on the Block or the LA Lakers, and I have an aunt who owns everything Mickey Mouse. That kind of devotion to one specific thing always felt arbitrary to me – I never desired to tie my identity to something external.

It took me until college to realize that I just didn’t have the attention span that was required to become an expert. Even though I am naturally better at some things than others, and maybe could be an expert at, say, knitting, I just don’t care about any one thing in particular enough to devote my full self to it. Spending all my time doing one thing means that I would miss out on the wealth of other things the world has to offer.

I am not meant to be an expert at anything. I am meant to be a jack-of-all-trades, and I aspire to know a little bit about a lot of things by the time I’m an old woman. I am a generalist.

If you’re a specialist, you may be wondering right now what my problem is! Specialists are focused, like narrow and complicated subject matter and have no problem fully devoting themselves to two or three things.

One of my best friends in college spent all of his time on his bike (I never saw him walking). He would do wheelies, ride down stairs and drop off cliffs. Then he moved to California. He was introduced to surfing, surfed every day before work and all day on the weekends, and now hangs with the best surfers in the area. Needless to say, when surfing started, his biking got moved to the back burner.

Another friend was an amazing saxophone player. He was also a physics genius. Then he learned to swing dance, and that took a spot near the other two things he was top-notch at. From what I hear, he now travels the country to meet and dance with other swing dancers. Doesn’t surprise me.

Meet the specialists. They find something they like and are good at, and become one of the best at it. They will excel in their fields, and when they find a job they like will be more likely to stick with it and excel.

To summarize:

· Specialists want to dig deeper and deeper into a subject. Generalists want to satiate their curiosity and move on.

· A generalist has a wide variety of knowledge. A specialist has deep knowledge in a small number of fields.

· Specialists are more likely to earn a PhD, while a generalist might get an MBA.

· A specialist would be the expert of one sector of a company, while a generalist might be the CEO, overseeing all operations of the company.

· Generalists are afraid that focusing on one thing is limiting or stifling. Specialists are masters of focus, and see it as a way to achievement and power.

· Generalists are masters of integration. They want to see the bigger picture and to understand how the pieces fit together. Specialists like to bury themselves in one piece of the puzzle.

“A generalist species is able to thrive in a wide variety of environmental conditions and, if a heterotroph, has a varied diet. Specialist species can only thrive in a narrow range of environmental conditions and/or have a limited diet.” [Wikipedia] Although this is referring to species categorization, it works for personalities and environments, where ‘diet’ might mean activity or sensory input (i.e., entertainment). When it says that specialists “can only thrive”, I interpret it to mean “thrive better” when referring to humans.

Maybe at this point you’re beginning to categorize yourself as either a specialist or a generalist. Neither is better than the other – the world needs both types of people. What is important is to recognize which you are and check that your goals are in alignment with your natural inclinations. Figuring this out can be advantageous when designing your career track. If you’re feeling pressure to dig deeper in your current field and have a natural resistance to doing so, you may be a generalist. If you’re in a management or overseer position and you feel that you lack content or focus, you may be a specialist. My advice is to follow your natural tendency whether it’s to dig deep and focus or to float on top of multiple activities.

As an engineer with a Masters degree, most of the people in my situation are digging deeper into their engineering careers as specialists. Knowing I am a generalist, it is more fitting for me to leverage my engineering training in a consulting or coaching position focused on helping engineers.

Recognize your tendency to specialize or generalize and consider that when designing your life’s direction.

A specialist friend of mine scoffed at the generalists, summarizing us as “jack of all trades, master of none.”

To which I responded:

“Jack of all trades, master of none, though ofttimes better than master of one.”

To each his own.

________________________________________________________

Liz is a personal development specialist who works with technical professionals and small businesses to develop successful leaders. Personal foundation, life vision, relationships, and behavior patterns are explored to leverage strengths and create new effective ways of being as a leader. She offers complimentary coaching consultations – call or email today to schedule yours. www.vgacoaching.com

Barbara Weaver Smith and I contribute articles at Women On Business, and I’m thrilled to have her guest post here at A Successful Woman. This is her final post on developing a success orientation and mindset.

Yesterday I wrote about overcoming fear of scarcity by learning to live in a culture of abundance. When times are flush, that isn’t so hard. But the economy is weak right now, and many people are fearful. And if you or someone else in your household has lost a job, or taken a pay cut, or found yourself upside-down on your home mortgage, or lost a chunk of value in your IRA, you are most likely fearful about how you are going to manage.

But historically, when the traditional institutions fail us, entrepreneurship flourishes. Everywhere around us, people are starting new companies and launching new ventures, turning adversity into opportunity. Right now it’s easier to listen to the market because it is not as crowded. There are new, unmet needs. For example, people have a need to find the good news which seems hidden in the fog of journalistic gloom. We have a need for inexpensive pleasures, vacations closer to home, do-it-yourself projects, lessons in gardening or canning or cooking on a budget. We have an enormous need for suppliers we can trust—bankers, manufacturers, financial advisors, investment brokers, service providers. Unmet needs translate into opportunity for the woman who lives in the culture of abundance. If you are not the owner but rather an inventor or operations specialist or sales guru, now is time to align with an innovative team.

For small business owners, now is a time to increase market share. Your larger competitors are hunkered down, restricting their spending, cutting their workforce, and managing through across-the-board cuts in personnel and financial resources that are short-term survival tactics, not long-term strategic decisions. Now is a time when strategic business development will lead you to opportunities in a market that is less cluttered than it was a year ago.

If you do business for your kids’ school, or for your favorite charity, if you do volunteer work and community service, you can help others adopt a mindset of abundance, which will liberate their creativity.

So, how do you overcome a sluggish economy? First, look around. Really look. What do people want and need right now that they’re not getting? How could you help them? Second, enlist some thinking partners. Don’t be alone. Third, think it through, make a plan for what to do next. And fourth—do it!

Thanks to Monica for inviting me to share her blog. I look forward to your comments; let’s have some dialog!

To learn about Whale Hunting Women & to order your copy today, visit http://cli.gs/WHWEbook
Thank you for visiting this post about Barbara Weaver Smith and Whale Hunting Women.

Two people who comment during the tour will be entered a giveaway – post a comment on any post about the tour and you will be entered. The winners will win a three-volume audio set of Whale Hunters Wisdom. Volumes include I: Mind of a Hunter, II: The Hunt, and III: The Whale Hunting Culture ($90 value).

Barbara Weaver Smith’s website – http://www.thewhalehunters.com
Barbara Weaver Smith’s blog – http://blog.thewhalehunters.com
Order your copy of Whale Hunting Women – http://cli.gs/WHWEbook
To see the tour schedule visit http://virtualblogtour.blogspot.com/2009/04/whale-hunting-with-barbara-weaver-smith.html

One thing that has always irked me is the perception that a woman-owned, minority-owned, or disabled-veteran-owned company is only focused on the 1% or 2% setaside, or the subcontractor role for a potential project. I’d like us to all start thinking bigger, Whale Hunting style. It’s like what Barbara Weaver Smith says: when we think about how to work together, we land bigger and better contracts — the ones that are larger than our usual business dealings, by a factor of 10.

A great field for this is in the current trend towards “green” thinking and business practices. For example, today, if you’re in Southern California, I invite you to go today to “Advancing Diversity in the New Green Energy Economy www.cudcsummit.com, sponsored by the California Utilities Diversity Council.

“Our primary goal is to broaden and sharpen understanding of how the transition to a clean energy economy can bring green investment and opportunity to entrepreneurial women, minority, service-disabled, and veteran business owners, as well as benefit underserved and underrepresented communities through green workforce education and job creation,” says Jose Perez, chairman of the CUDC. Perez and other sponsors, including Southern California Edison, Sempra Energy utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Gas Company, Pacific Gas & Electric Company, AT&T and the California Water Association, are holding this one-day conference Friday, May 29, in Long Beach, California — open to business owners, educators and all other professionals interested in learning from public and private sector experts.

The subtitle of the conference is “How to take advantage of the green gold rush in California” and for many of us, this will be the next wave of business to incorporate into our practices. How do we reconfigure our companies to be lean, green, and mean? My company was the fourth web design company in Oakland to receive Green Business certification through Alameda County, in September 2006, and we completely believe that going through this process has helped us understand the process of being green while helping us become more efficient and more earth-friendly.

The field of “green” business development is changing rapidly. I’m a part of the 47,000-member Green Group on LinkedIn, which will send you a daily e-mail of discussions posted: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=67451&trk=anet_ug_grppro.

If you’re not able to attend this green energy conference but you’re still interested, find resources directly with your local city and state government who deal with issues of diversity and inclusion in the clean energy industry.

Or, do a search term on any of the following: green business, sustainable energy solutions, sustainable technologies in California, green jobs, businesses going green, diversity in the new green economy, developing, cultivating and training a green pipeline, and green branding.