Outfits to Rule the Boardroom

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So you have graduated from college and you are getting ready for your first job in the corporate world. Congratulations first off! But now you need to know what you should wear to make you look like the fierce businesswoman that you are set on being. What can you wear that still reflects your personality but is proper for a business board room? Take a look at these fashion tips that will not only make you look smart but give you the confidence to rule the boardroom or rock an interview. 

 

Boardroom Formal 

 

If you are just getting out of the world of college and stepping into the world of professionalism you are going to hear the words boardroom formal quite a bit. Be aware of the dress code especially if you are still going out on interviews. If they don’t mention it in the interview email don’t be afraid to ask what the attire is for the interview. Most professional offices the dress code is formal or business professional. Most times this means a blazer, dress slacks, or a dressier skirt, and a blouse is appropriate for this case. Make sure when you are going for an interview you look clean and polished to promote a professionalism vibe. Your outfit can convey a lot about you, and having that perfect matching pantsuit can often make the hiring professional view you as detail-oriented and organized. 

 

Dress for the job you want 

 

Dressing for the job you want is probably the most heard phrase when job hunting. If you are in a job where they let you have a bit of free-range with the fashion, it is ok to still have the mentality of, yeah I am in this job and I can wear what I want, but I am still going to put together a look that makes me look a little bit better than the person next to me. This may show those above you that you put effort into yourself and how you present yourself. When you dress well it shows that you want to make a positive impression on those that are around you. 

 

Say the CEO of your company comes into your office once a week, they see you in passing, maybe it’s in the elevator or potentially in the break room, but they see you and without knowing you they are able to gain an impression of you just by the way you dress. 

 

But my office allows us to wear jeans? 

 

If your office allows you to wear jeans you can still dress them up or give the jeans look an added flair. Try adding colored denim to your wardrobe, this will allow you to still be able to wear your jeans but have some added style to them. If colored jeans are not your forte try a more high waisted fit with a white button-down top slightly tucked into the front. This is a classic look that you can’t go wrong with but with the right accessories, you can easily dress this lookup and give it more appeal. 

 

If you are allowed to have fun with your outfits, if you have an office with a more lax dress code this can easily give you tons of room to play and experiment with your style. Try new things but remember to keep them in a professional range. While they may say they have a lax dress code there is still a dress code.

  

Business Tips For Female Entrepreneurs

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Women are still actually quite new to the world of business. We are not far from the time where it was accustom for the women to stay at home with the kids while the husband went off to work. We have now evolved into the breadwinners just like the men. But that does not mean we do not have our fair share of challenges when it comes to being apart of the business world. Women have to work twice as hard as the men do, we also have to put in the extra footwork when it comes to owning our own business. So what are some tips that will help us climb that uphill battle when in the world of business?

 

Get Social 

 

Social media has quickly climbed the ladder as one of the bused and most important strategies for business marketing. Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, even Pinterest are great ways to promote your business, generate sales leads, create third party endorsements, and even conduct sales. If you are unfamiliar with using social media for marketing there are tons of online courses that you can take to help you learn the best ways to use it. 

 

Networking

 

Networking is one of the most important tools when owning a business. Making sure that you have a reliable support system will help you to navigate through the tricky world that is business. Having a mentor who also understands what struggles you are dealing with is also important. When you join groups in your industry it allows you to create a reliable web of contacts who can help to support you and give you great advice about how to navigate possible problems that may come along down the road. If you don’t have a lot of time to do this in person there are lots of apps that can help you in this area. 

 

Home Life 

 

A lot of business professionals will tell you to not bring your home life into your work life, however, this can be a useful tool that you can use to your advantage. Many women have their own responsibilities at home to take care of, things like kids, and daycare can be stressful especially while you are in the beginning stages of trying to open a business. A lot of women use this to their advantage by taking a sense of inspiration to things that they deal with at home. Women are the CEO of the household. When you translate something that already comes naturally to a lot of women this allows you to create a seamless transition to balance everything all at once. 

 

Knowing Your Worth

While the world of business may for now be run by men, women business owners should know that they are worth it. Did you know that the approval rates for women to get a business loan approval are between 15 to 20% lower than it is for a man to get approval for a business loan? Most would think that would tear women business owners down, but for many this makes women strive harder to be successful.

The Amazing Women in Business

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For years the business industry has been solely male-dominated. Recently, women have started to take over the business industry, with women entrepreneurs making their names known and fighting back against the stereotypes, with an “anything you can do, I can do too.” attitude. With this, their mission does not seem to be slowing any time soon. Women around the world are becoming CEOs and setting Fortune 500 records; these are some of those women. 

Dr. Celeste Fralick – Data Perseverance

Dr. Fralick is both an author and the Senior Principal Engineer and Cheif Data Scientist for McAfee. She helps to create a technical, analytic strategy that is used to integrate into McAfee consumer and enterprise products along with internal Business Intelligence. With almost 40 years of experience, Dr. Fralick has developed things like Machine learning and Deep Learning for analytics for eight different market types. She also holds a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Arizona State University, with a concentration in predictive analytics and neuroscience she is currently working on authoring Springer’s text on “Intelligent Analytics.”

Marina Tognetti – Entrepreneur 

Marina Tognetti is both the founder and CEO of the website mYngle.com. While originally from Italy, Tognetti has managed to learn six languages and has lived in numerous countries. After spending almost 18 years working in a corporate career for Procter & Gamble, she decided to take the leap into becoming an entrepreneur and launched her website called mYngle in 2007. The site is a live language education system offering custom language learnings through video conferencing. With this program, you can learn 45 different languages from anywhere in the world. 

Mina Jeong – Business 

Mina Jeong helps to advise different companies who want to find the right customer audience, building a reputation, and getting them in the right markets. As a B2B/B2C Tech and Consumer PR specialist, she has over 20 years of experience under her belt. She is also the current president of the Kora Public Relations Consultancy Association (KPRCA). 

Radhika Jones – editor in chief of Vanity Fair Magazine

The successor after Gradon Carter, the first editor and chief of Vanity fair, Radhika Jones, has made the magazine hers by driving it towards articles that are a bit more relevant. More articles today are based on what’s currently going on in the world rather than who wore Dior last week. She has pushed for less stylized and glamorized style to promote the magazine towards more modern times and embracing the everyday. 

Ursula Burns – Chairman and Executive Officer of Xerox Corporation

Ursula Burns served as the CEO and chairman of the Xerox corporation from 2009 – 2016. She was the first African American woman to hold this position at the Fortune 500 company. She was the first woman to gain to the position of the CEO of such a company after the progression of another female. Raised in low-income housing in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Burns was one of three children raised by a single mother. Throughout her life, she excelled in math and earned a mechanical engineering degree from the Polytech Institute of New York University in Brooklyn. The same year Burns earned her degree, she went on to gain a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Columbia University and then joined Xerox that summer as a mechanical engineering intern. In 2007 she was named the CEO, and in 2010 she went on to become chairman of the board. 

 

With the world around us continually changing, more and more women are taking on prestigious positions. These inspiring women help the younger generation know that with hard work, they too can become successful and possibly be world leaders or the head of a significant fortune 500 company. 

 

Are Companies Really Incorporating Diversity?

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It’s become more and more common hearing the words cultural diversity being thrown around in the workplace. But why does it matter? The benefits can far outweigh any negative connotations that it might have. So let’s start by discussing what cultural diversity IS? It is when a population of differences is represented well within a company; this should include those of different races, ethnicities, ages, gender, ability, language, nationality, socioeconomic status. To be diverse, the group diversely represented by different groups. 

Why Does It Matter?

These diverse backgrounds can have various perspectives when it to the workplace, and their contribution allows situations to be viewed from more angles providing innovative results. For diversity to strengthen the company, it should be valued in the businesses philosophy and must integrate into every aspect of the companies practices. But for diversity to best work, all coworkers must be willing to be open-minded and non-judgmental. 

Commitment to Diversity

Without a firm commitment from all employees, this can cause a group to weaken and create poor communication between employees. When situations like this arise, it can result in hostile conditions where often, people can jump to conclusions and misinterpret others’ behaviors.

Economically Beneficial 

When everyone works together in a diverse company culture, this has also been found to increase financial gains and can even lead to more awareness for your company. Each year 50 companies are selected by DiversityInc that have the most diversity. Diversity helps to drive profitability by helping to drive marketing, operations, and innovation. It is said that being on a successful team drives team success. The critical foundation of managing diversity has teams that are all set on achieving a common goal, often seen more with growth-orientated companies. These companies understand that to thrive is to fully embrace diversity as a sort of “fuel” to help drive their companies forward. 

Legal Costs

Diversity helps to cut down on legal costs due to it being illegal for employers to discriminate on any cultural, racial, or gender differences due to the Equal Employment Opportunity, that handles all complaints about workplace discrimination. 

 

The Rise of Small Businesses Owned by Women

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Women are a growing force in the world of small business. They have become leaders in this industry as they carve out ways to tap into an industry that was once dominated by men. A large part of this has to do with the fact that women are tapping into so many different occupational fields.

 

The IT Crowd

A large number of women are gaining respect in the IT field with skills in programming, web designer, cybersecurity and system analyst jobs. This is a part of the small business world that women are embracing. There are also women that are opening small businesses that are training in things like software development and application usage for various programs. Women in IT are also working as headhunters for bigger companies.

 

Social Media

There are also women that are starting up their small businesses by promoting themselves through social media. Cosmetics have always been big business for women, but there is a greater level of control that women are taking in the business world now. They are posting videos about cosmetics, and they are giving makeup tutorials to build an audience. This ability to advertise this way has allows women to start small businesses from the comfort of home.

 

College Degrees

Women are also realizing their potential through education. They are going back to college as single mothers and learning more. They are moving away from roles as secretaries and administrative assistants inside of big corporations that are not paying them what they desire to make. These women are going back to school and getting degrees so that they can learn how to run their own businesses.

 

Food Trucks 

Higher education is a part of the growing number of women in the workforce that are getting into small businesses, but there are small businesses that thrive even when women do not have degrees. It doesn’t take a college degree to become a great cook. This is what a lot of women are discovering with the food truck business. Women love this because it doesn’t require as much money to invest in a food truck as it does to rent a commercial space for a restaurant and buy equipment. They have the freedom to be mobile and pay less in taxes. 

Understanding Risk Management

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Everything we do involves a degree of risk, but, without taking on those risks, we would never achieve anything. This is where risk management comes in. It’s a process of analyzing a situation to determine the risks of taking on a particular project. In some cases, those risks may be minimized, so the chances of success are made more likely. This process of managing risks helps us to move forward more efficiently, so we can evolve as a society.

A Deeper Look at Risk Management

The larger the project you’re undertaking, the more in-depth your risk analysis must be. For instance, a corporation taking on a new project will have to look into how the risks will affect the entire organization. A failure may affect every department within the organization, so it’s important to understand and prepare for these risks. ERM, or enterprise risk management, is a system that analyzes the risks for every department within the organization. This type of risk management process will even explore what risks the organization’s outlets will face.

In doing their jobs, risk management professionals must also determine ways for minimizing risks. This may involve recommending more insurance for the business, which will allow the business to continue operating. Risk managers may also have to consider how the health and safety of the business’ employees will be affected by the venture. Everything from ensuring the continued management of the company to addressing the possible financial fallout must be considered.

Businesses aren’t left to try to analyze these risks on their own. Today, there are many organizations that create and publish risk management standards. These companies will come out to audit your business or help you analyze how a proposed project will affect your company. These standards are often followed uniformly by many businesses within a given industry to ensure every company is following similar guidelines. This helps keep risks somewhat level among every business, which may make the playing field more even. Adhering to a set list of standards helps organizations better understand the risks of operating in a highly competitive environment.

While every endeavor includes some degree of risk, it’s important to separate good risk from unnecessary risk. This process of analysis can help you achieve success more often by limiting your exposure to bad risk. Regardless of what type of project you’re pursuing, thorough risk management can help you develop a more successful strategy.

Top Three Franchises for 2019

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When you think of a franchise, you think of food — Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds. Both of these companies have strong brands and bring in a great deal of money. We even see ads looking for people to become franchisees. What exactly is a franchise? And why do people buy into them? When you (the franchisee) buy a part of a business from the owner (franchisor), you are getting the rights to sell the company’s products and/or services as well as use its brand, processes, business model and equipment. Although you pay the franchisor an initial fee and royalties pertaining to the business, you do get support and use of the trademark. It’s important to note that the franchisor retains the license to the business whereas the franchisee can only use it. The franchisor grows his business through the franchises. It is not the same as growing a business by increasing its locations (e.g. Starbucks).

People are quick to buy a franchise because they are essentially cash cows. They also want to learn how to manage a business. That said, let’s take a look at some franchises that will be popular this year.

  1. McDonald’s — This will always be a popular franchise. The company started out as a small hamburger shop and became a multi-million dollar corporation. Brothers Maurice (Mac) and Richard McDonald opened their restaurant in 1948 in San Bernardino, California. Restaurant equipment salesman Ray Kroc saw how the brothers sold their food cheaply with a self-serve counter and came up with the idea of franchising the restaurant. The first franchise opened in 1954 in Des Plaines, Illinois. McDonalds continues to grow based on its brand, quality of food and reinvention (e.g. renovated restaurants).
  2. Dunkin Donuts — The fast food chain is now called Dunkin (or DD). The franchise decided last year to drop the “Donuts” and focus on beverages. Like McDonalds, the chain has grown due to its brand, products and convenience. It was started by William Rosenberg in 1948 and was originally called Open Kettle. The mission was to sell donuts and coffee quickly. However, after meeting with consultants, it was changed to “make and serve the freshest, most delicious coffee and donuts quickly and courteously in modern, well-merchandised stores.” The name was changed to Dunkin Donuts in 1950 and the first franchise opened in 1955. The mission holds true today with numerous franchises across the nation.
  3. The UPS Store — Originally called Mail Boxes Etc., this postal services company grew and embraced technology. It created the “business services category” with its digital capabilities for small businesses. In 2001, UPS acquired Mail Boxes Etc. and became the world’s “largest franchisor of retail shipping, postal, printing, and business services centers.” In 2003, the UPS Store Brand was introduced. In 2012, the Mail Boxes Etc. was absorbed into the UPS Store. Last year, the UPS Store was ranked #1 by Entrepreneur Magazine’s annual “Franchise 500.” There is no doubt this franchise will continue to be popular.