By Maria Valdez Haubrich

When I heard Jane Wurwand, founder and CEO of Dermologica, was going to be one of the panelists at the NAWBO-LA Speaker Series event featuring Women of Influence last week, I was surprised to learn there was a real entrepreneur behind the famous skin-care line and not a mega-corporation like L’ Oreal. And real she was. A warm, funny, smart and inspirational woman, Wurwand captivated the audience with her story of how she came to start and grow her business and also her insights about her style of leadership.

Wurwand has been in the beauty industry since age 13 when she was washing laundry in the back of a salon in England. When she turned the legal working age of 15, she got promoted to hair washer and that was it—she was hooked!

In the early 1980s she moved to the U.S. looking for her American dream, and slowly built her beauty business, hiring and encouraging women to share in her success by empowering them to go into the beauty business with her line of products. To date she has helped over 90,000 women go into business for themselves.

As a leader Wurwand urged the audience to be true to themselves. She believes it is a leader’s responsibility to help people not conform. “I want people to think, ‘What if’ and to instigate change,” she explained.

Entrepreneurs should be not only risk takers, but risk embracers, she said. She has 10 new ideas a minute and believes all processes can be improved. “That’s why I always say you need a good support team behind you. I need someone behind me mopping up the blood.”

Her risk-taking spirit extends to her views on the state of the economy. “I like the challenge of a tough economy. It makes people get creative and it weeds out the people who don’t know what they’re doing.” And although her business has expanded into 51 countries, she still seems accessible. In fact she said her leadership style mandates an open-door policy. She keeps in touch by e-mail and a company intranet, including a nine-minute podcast every week to all her employees worldwide.

One of her most amusing (and insightful) analogies compared leadership styles to military styles—the British Army versus the Israeli Army. “In the British Army the generals sit in the back of the battlefield, figure out the strategies and then dispatch people to do the work. This has worked well for them,” says Wurwand. “In the Israeli Army, the leaders are out in front. They are the first ones over the hill and say ‘follow me.’ That’s the style of leadership I like.” She says she would never ask anyone to do anything she hasn’t done or wouldn’t do. Hearing from this courageous and energetic entrepreneur made me feel like anything is possible.

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By Maria Anton

What part of the economy actually grew last year? According to Forrester Research Inc.’s State of Retailing Online 2009 report, online retail sales grew by 18 percent in 2008, Internet Retailer reports. Although growth slowed in 2009, retailers in the survey grew 11 percent year-over year in the first quarter of this year, and 12 percent in the second quarter.

Sucharita Mulpuru, principal analyst for retail e-business at Forrester and survey author, says successful online retailers are devoting the necessary IT resources to keep up with a changing business environment, tapping into online social networking communities, and recognizing the growth of mobile commerce.

“Most retailers affirm that the Web channel is better positioned to weather the economic storm than the offline channel, with many retailers seeing the downturn as an opportunity to capture market share from weakened competitors,” says the report. Paid search was the tactic most often used to get new customers. However, many retailers are also increasing their focus on customer retention, for which they mostly use e-mail.

According to Reineke Reitsma in the Forrester Blog, the study showed retailers experimenting with new ways to engage customers, such as with podcasts and comparison chart. But sometimes, the simplest tactics paid off the best. For instance, Reitsma notes, regrouping products into new sections of a site (such as “best-selling” lists or “Customer favorite” lists), creating sale and clearance pages, or highlighting fast-moving products are all very effective tactics for generating traffic and sales.

One tool online retailers should use more, says Mulpuru, is live chat—specifically, proactive chat, where a customer’s browsing on the site triggers a chat window to open up. Just 24 percent of retailers used proactive chat, the survey showed.

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By Karen Axelton

Going for government contracts can be hugely profitable—but it’s also really intimidating if you’ve never done it before. To help you get started, check out the SBA’s new online training course, “Recovery Act Opportunities: How to Win Federal Contracts.”

Designed to help small businesses access contracting opportunities, the free course is part of  a federal government-wide initiative, led by the SBA and the Department of Commerce, that President Obama announced last month.

The course provides information about the federal contracting marketplace, rules of federal contracts, where to find contracting opportunities (including those related to theh Recovery Act) and how to market to the government. Click here to access the course.

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By Rieva Lesonsky

The latest American Express OPEN® Small Business Monitor survey is out, and there’s lots of news. First, the good news:

More than half (55 percent) of entrepreneurs  have an optimistic outlook about their short-term business prospects, an increase from the 45 percent who were optimistic  in March 2009, when the last survey was done.

One-fourth (26 percent) of those surveyed said opportunities for their business are expanding, up from 15 percent a year ago.

But there’s also bad news:

Six in 10 (63 percent) say the worst of the recession is not over.

Nearly one in six (17 percent) are worried they will go out of business in the next six months.
Of the businesses who foresee growth opportunities, 44 percent say the opportunities are due to decreased competition; 13 percent say they are due to  the ability to renegotiate leases and supply contracts; and 12 percent say they are due to decreased real estate costs

While optimism is bouncing back from its all-time low one year ago, there are still plenty of clouds on the horizon. Thirty-two percent of those surveyed said they are using personal funds to handle cash-flow problems, a 9 percent increase from March. In addition, 27 percent have stopped paying themselves a salary and 17 percent have taken a second job.

The survey reveals small-business owners are in survival mode, rather than growth mode. Forty-one percent of those surveyed said their focus for the next six months will be maintaining current sources of income; just 26 percent are focused on growth—the lowest number in the history of the Monitor survey. In addition, 49 percent are unwilling to take on more financial risk to expand their businesses—a record high for the survey.

Plans to hire have decreased from March 2009, with just 23 percent of those surveyed planning to hire in the next six months. Instead, entrepreneurs are focusing on keeping their existing employees happy.

As they struggle to maintain their staffs, find sources of income and keep their heads above water, it’s no wonder that 68 percent of those surveyed report being “stressed out” by the economy; in fact, 31 percent say the recession has made them question their decision to become an entrepreneur.

How do these points of view agree with your own? You can read lots more from the Monitor here:

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By Maria Anton

One of my partners commented today that this is “the year of learning how to do everything.” Slightly more than one year into our startup, we’re still marveling every day at all the things we don’t know.

You know how it is. When you’re an employee, if your e-mail goes haywire, you call the IT guy to deal with it. Now, we’re our own IT guy—as well as our own cleaning person, secretary, mail room guy…you name it. It’s a rare day in the office when I’m not crawling under something, climbing over something or moving something.
My partners and I have been looking forward to the day when we can finally stop doing it all. But according to this article from CNNMoney.com, that day could be further away than we think. “As staffs shrink, business owners are taking on support duties they haven’t had to handle in years,” the article reports.
With an estimated 1.6 million layoffs from small companies this year, entrepreneurs are putting on hats they had long ago taken off. The article cites one business owner who, after cutting her staff from eight to five people, started shipping her own orders (and messing lots of them up).

Nicholas Aguilera, whose San Diego print shop has cut staff by half, is cross-training all his employees to handle each other’s jobs. He’s also doing things he hasn’t done in years, like ordering supplies.

Knowing how to do “a little bit of everything,” as Aguilera puts it, is probably a good idea in boom or bust times. If employees (and owners) are motivated to learn new things and share their skills, maybe that’s one silver lining of this recession.

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