It’s that time of year again, when the trees bud, the air warms (at least if you’re not in Seattle) and we start to shed our winter cloaks in lieu of open-toed shoes and lighter fabrics. Freeing ourselves from the unwanted weight of heavy parkas and wool mittens feels pretty darn good.

And with that, we also crave shedding some of the crap in our lives with a healthy dose of spring cleaning.

Removing the clutter and streamlining our lives applies equally to our businesses and brands. When we’re lighter and unencumbered, we can better focus and stop clogging our time, brains and business with the things that don’t matter. So here’s a handy guide to how to perform such much needed spring cleaning on your business – but these can equally apply to your life:

Conduct an Audit

What really needs to stay or go? Has your menu of offerings turned into an endless buffet that only serves to confuse customers and distract your focus? Review your current business offerings and keep the ones making you money, while removing the deadwood of those that don’t. Why waste your time and your prospects’ attention on products or offerings that just take up space?

This audit can also apply to your brand. Which messages no longer serve your or your customer’s purpose? Does your website look stale and dated? Has your brand evolved beyond what your materials are currently saying about it? Set aside time and review everything your customers see with a keen eye, and get objective advice on how to clarify, update or tighten up your brand look, feel, message and differentiation.

Review your Partnerships

Sometimes we form business partnerships when it makes perfect sense but things change. Review your best referral sources, from where website traffic comes and perhaps even your affiliate partners. Run the numbers and the time spent and see if you’re getting the most out of these relationships. If there are relationships worth keeping, spend more attention making them really work for you. If they are not fruitful, release the deadwood and clear your mind, budget and schedule. You want to focus on fewer, more meaningful and higher quality partnerships that build you up, instead of sap your strength. PS: This exercise applies to networking groups and social media networks as well.

Clear the Clutter

Is your file system a disaster? Does your inbox overflow? Do you still have digital files from years ago that serve no purpose but to eat up storage space? Take a day to streamline and organize your systems to help make you more efficient in running your business. Consult with a personal organizer if you have trouble letting go. And speaking of systems, take a look at your business procedures and see where you can increase efficiency. Does billing clients take way too long? Do you spend too much time creating that monthly newsletter or managing your calendar? Document the tasks that are not a good use of your time and hire a virtual assistant or consult with an operations expert on how to manage your business better so you can spend more time being brilliant.

What “deadwood” is your business carrying around? What one thing will you do this spring to make your brand clearer, your load lighter and your business more efficient? Please share in the Comments.

The opening questions are pretty basic stuff – tell us about your company, how you got the idea, your biggest successes and failures. The panelists are then asked whether they’ve been able to balance work with home life and how they fit kids into their busy schedules. They pause over the question, not sure how to answer. It’s an odd question to ask a bunch of men. Balance isn’t something they think much about; it’s just something one does as a functioning adult. They work, they go home, they attend soccer games and feed their kids and talk to their partners about life. Next question: have you found it hard to balance your business savvy with your masculinity? Then the next one: how do you work around the challenge of being thought of as either a stud or a pervert in the workplace? Then they’re asked how long they stepped away from their companies – or if they quit them altogether – when their children were born. The conversation in the room turns entirely personal, focusing on their bodies, their hobbies, and their concerns about prostate exams.

Seems pretty ridiculous, I know. But the point is painfully clear: this would never happen to a panel of men. Because our society separates their gender from their business acumen. Because the idea of discussing vasectomies in a business discussion is completely inane. Because no one cares how or whether they balance their work and their life. So why do we continue to do this to women?

At some point in the past, these questions needed to be asked. We needed to have larger discussions about how women could climb past the gender issues to be taken seriously in business pursuits. But that time has passed. As long as we continue to ask and answer these questions and to accept them as a necessary part of being a businesswoman, we will continue to be viewed through the lens of our gender. We’ll continue to be called mompreneurs and we’ll continue to be expected to fry up that bacon after we bring it home.

So let’s all agree to move on to the next phase of business: gender-neutral business that takes every entrepreneurial pursuit seriously, no matter race, creed or sex. Either we all move forward together or we start getting more personal with men. Seems an easy choice to me.

Almost a year ago, we launched the Sharp Skirts Chicago chapter and we’ve since built an amazing local network representing a wide range of startups, women-owned businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs.  The unique tone and dedication to providing women the content and connections they need to build smart, successful companies has allowed Sharp Skirts, both online and in person, to be recognized as a valuable, dependable resource among Chicago entrepreneurs.

Just as many of you, I continuously strive to leverage my resources and experiences to personally encourage and empower others to challenge themselves and successfully reach their goals.  Whether it’s in my time spent with Sharp Skirts or volunteering with other organizations, I enjoy each chance I have to inspire others.

Last week, we had the exciting opportunity of bringing the wisdom and passion of the Chicago Sharp Skirts members together with a local group of adolescent mothers.  When launching the chapter last year, we were in search of an organization to donate our ticket proceeds to.  Brittany Martin Graunke, CEO & Founder of Zealous Good suggested and introduced me to New Moms Inc. Zealous Good is an organization that connects people with excess goods to local charities in need, making sure that your donations best benefit the community.  We happily donated the proceeds from our first event to this organization and couldn’t turn down the opportunity to work with them again.

New Moms, Inc. is a Chicago based non-profit organization that seeks to enable, empower and equip at-risk adolescent parents for the business world.  Founded in 1983, the organization has assisted over a thousand adolescent mothers and their children by providing housing, education support, career training and mentoring.

Leveraging the Sharp Skirts Chicago network of women, we organized a professional development day for the women of New Moms Inc.

“I wanted to thank you so much for hosting the “Professional Development Day” for the participants enrolled in the Academy of Professional Development here at New Moms. I can’t express to you how grateful I am that our participants had this opportunity to interact and attend the different workshops that your Sharp Skirts volunteers conducted. The workshops were extremely informative and covered valuable information that each of the participants will be able to utilize during this beginning stage of their careers.”

– Angela Forcucci, Career Advancement Coordinator at New Mom’s Inc.

We had amazing group of speakers discuss topics such as goal setting, resume writing, interview preparation and more.  It was an inspirational day for all and we appreciate the time and effort each of them put into making the event unforgettable:

Debi Lusk – Board Member & Committee Chair, SHRP

Suzanne Miller – CEO, Healthy Girl Cupcakes

Patrice Turner – Pastor & Life Coach

Maggie Landon – Recent Graduate & Amazing Volunteer

A big thank you also goes out to each of the following companies that generously provided food, supplies and motivation to our participants.  I encourage you to like, follow and support these companies to help demonstrate our appreciation.

Steve’s Deli

Healthy Girl Cupcakes

Fippex

Think Positive

Uber

Inspiration Wear

“A special thanks for all of the generous gifts and donations that Sharp Skirts and the other vendors provided to the participants.”

–      Angela Forcucci, Career Advancement Coordinator at New Moms Inc.

Feel free to check out the pictures on the Sharp Skirts Facebook page.  We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

Today’s question: When is social media so pervasive that it starts to impact our lives in a negative way?

I admit it. I was dragged kicking and screaming to the social media world. While I’ve been on Linked In since it launched in the early 2000’s and I have blogged for quite some time, I did not use Facebook and Twitter until a project in 2009 forced me to do so. And I’m not even touching Foursquare, which totally creeps me out.

Truly, I do love the connection, interactivity and dialogue. I really do. Please don’t judge me a Luddite. Once I learned to manage the time spent on social media, I found myself benefitting from the connection, community, content – and building my business presence successfully through it. And I love my Red Slice Nation peeps on Facebook and finding interesting articles via Twitter that I never would have found on my own.

And we can all agree that social media has changed the flow of global information, political reform and even disaster warnings.

But everyone needs to just settle down, y’all. I know there are people who are 24/7 on social media. Yes, I can access my accounts on my smartphone, especially when stuck in line for a latte or waiting for the drawbridge near my house to come down. But I am not one of those “always-on” people. I never want to be one of those people. I don’t even check my mobile phone before breakfast.

Some of my Facebook peeps chimed in and said their pet peeves are the pressure to respond to everything and the barrage of marketing messages that the floodgates have unleashed upon us.

This point was driven home recently when a class was cancelled and when I showed up, the instructor asked, “Didn’t you get the note?”

No, I did not. It’s Saturday freaking morning at 9 am and I didn’t check my Twitter account, Facebook page or phone between Friday night and this morning. I was LIVING MY LIFE! I was walking my dog, having breakfast with my husband, sipping coffee while reading the paper. So stop asking me “Didn’t you get the Tweet?” or “Did you get my invite on Facebook?” If I did, you’ll know. But if it’s something important or something you’re expecting me to attend, don’t just assume that I did if I didn’t respond.

Social media is great. But it has made us become extremely non-committal in making firm plans because we feel we can contact everyone instantly to change said plans. Which is good in some situations. But it’s not to be abused!

What are your biggest social media pet peeves that drive you mad? Please share in the Comments and get some Link Love back to your site!

© Copyright 2012, Red Slice LLC.  All other companies or works cited remain the copyright of their respective owners.

But it’s important for the members of this inspirational startup community to remember to support and give back to the greater Chicago community where we can.

The Sharp Skirts chapter is full of powerful leaders who have the experience and ability to encourage and motivate others to dream big. We’re excited to leverage this network of women for a day of sharing, teaching and inspiring with the women of New Moms, Inc.

New Moms, Inc. is a Chicago based non-profit organization that seeks to enable, empower and equip at-risk adolescent parents for the business world. Founded in 1983, the organization has assisted over a thousand adolescent mothers and their children by providing housing, education support, career training and mentoring.

Check out their website at http://www.newmomsinc.org/

On Friday, March 23rd, we’ll spend the day speaking to 50+ adolescent mothers about goal setting, interview techniques, resume tips and other professional development skills. We encourage you to get involved! This is a really big undertaking, so we’re looking for speakers, volunteers, child care, and anything else you want to share. See below for more details.

Speakers: Business Professionals and Inspirational Women
We’ll need volunteers to speak about the above mentioned topics and are open to other suggestions. Have an inspirational story you’d like to share with these moms? That would be appreciated as well.

Volunteers: Set-up, Registration & Child Care
We’ll also need volunteers to help organize, set up and to assist with babysitting during the event.

Reward the moms for attending
Not able to attend? We’ll gladly accept any donated items to be placed into goodie bags for each participating mother. Have extra pens? Notepads? Calendars? Have branded items your company is willing to donate? Let us know!

Shoot me an email at lisa@sharpskirts.com if you’d like to participate or have any questions.

Sharp Skirts’s own Ellie Scarborough (founder of Media Bombshell) directed and produced, while Mary Kang shot and edited. We’re proud to have such talented women as part of our organization – but obviously, not too proud to beg our favorite kick-ass woman to come to Austin! Check out the video, give it a thumbs-up, and pass it on!

Skirts at South By will be SxSW’s first day-long program targeted to entrepreneurial women. We’ll be located in the downtown Hilton as part of SxSW’s Startup Village and will have the kind of programming and networking you’d expect from Sharp Skirts. Hear usable advice on building your business. Connect with companies who are serious about hiring women. Get inspired to start your own business and learn from women who have already been through the process. No Botox booths, scented candles, or personal growth allowed – just tips for success from smart women.

We’ll share more specifics in the coming weeks but here’s the outline of the day: ‘reverse pitch’ session for women’s business organizations, networking, brown bag lunch with a kick-ass speaker, live-stream of the SxSWi keynote, startup pitch competition, and happy hour. We’ve got a couple of other fun items in the works as well, so stay tuned.

How can you get involved? First and foremost, plan to hang with us at the Hilton on March 10. We’re also looking for:

• *Sponsors interested in getting in front of this influential audience
• *Judges for our pitch competition
• *Women-owned startups to pitch (5-10 companies)
• *Volunteers to help make it fabulous!

If you’d like to get involved, hop on over to our signup page. And be sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest updates, as well as check back here on the blog.

We’re beyond excited to have a stage at SxSW to show how kick-ass a women’s conference can truly be. See you March 10!

Forbes published its ‘30 Under 30‘ list earlier this week and, not only were there a measly two women on the list, they shared their spots with men. It was stunning and exasperating. The original Sharp Skirt, Chris Shipley, first spotted it and emailed me. Let’s come up with our own list, she proposed. And it immediately felt right to me. Who needs an antiquated business mag to tell us who to emulate? We already know who these women are, so let’s give them the spotlight.

In late January, we’re going to unveil our list of 20 Kick Ass Women. Ideally, it’s the last separate-and-more-than-equal list we hope to publish. We’d much rather have an integrated list of 20 Kick Ass people, regardless of gender. But let’s focus on the present…

We have our own ideas about who should be on the list but we need to hear from you too.  Who are your Kick Ass Women? Women creating businesses and acting as role models for young entrepreneurs, women forging their own path, women you aspire to be. We’re looking for damn-the-torpedoes type of people that didn’t ask for a lot of permission to be doing what they’re doing. And they don’t have to be in the realm of tech either. Kick Ass Women run restaurants, funeral homes, construction companies and everything in between.

Send your submissions to us via email, with their name and company and a couple of sentences about why they’re Kick Ass Women. Some sort of link to their online presence is good too – Twitter, Facebook, or blog.

The 20 who make the cut will get some nice mentions online but we’re also working on getting them some special perks too. So send in your submissions today!

Bronwyn Saglimbeni

Many young women I know are questioning the role of feminism in today’s post-Oprah world. Personally, I know that feminism is barely in its awkward teenage phase, and that we’ve got more years in front of us than we do behind us. But I also know I have struggled to articulate what feminism will represent to the coming generations.

I had the great fortune to attend last week’s TEDxWomen event in Los Angeles;  with a lineup that included the likes of Gloria Steinem, I hoped I might hear something that would answer the question of where are going from here. And to those questioning whether feminism still has a place in modern society, might I point out that Verizon donated something to the goody bag for attendees (good!), but guess what it was? A MIRROR. FOR YOUR PURSE. We still have a long way to go. Verizon, bless you for supporting the event, but shame on you for sending something that symbolizes vanity, probably the biggest time- and talent-waster ever invented.

All that aside, I left TEDxWomen with 5 realizations about where feminism is headed.

5. “Women Can No Longer Be Half the Population AND a Special Interest Group.” – Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, journalist and author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

I have to admit something. Despite my outspokenness about women’s issues, there is still this tiny part of me that sees feminism as my “pet issue.” Unfortunately, this is how the world has seen feminism, but that is changing. Fast. Gayle Tzemach Lemmon showed us that equality, regardless of where we are on Maslow’s hierarchy of women’s needs, is the defining issue of our time because it affects HALF OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION. It made me wonder… if we had paid attention to the horrific stories of women’s oppression in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan back in 1994 when they surfaced, would 9/11 have happened?

4. We Aren’t Angry at Men Gone are the days of wanting to replace patriarchy with matriarchy. We’re not interested in sending the pendulum flying off into yet another state of imbalance. We are working side by side with men, and we value and welcome their time and talents. Evidence of this came from legendary New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who said during his conversation with Pat Mitchell that men in Afghanistan are becoming huge advocates for educating girls and women because where there is education for women, there is significantly less violence and crime in the community at large. Today, the feminist movement has fewer adversaries and far more allies, sometimes in the most unlikely of places.

3. We Celebrate a Different Kind of Celebrity. Jill Iscol, author and activist, told story after story of courage and resilience, showing us the faces of women overcoming unthinkable conditions. She said, “These women are MY celebrities.” While the feminist movement has always celebrated great women, never has that been more important than now. In this celebrity-obsessed culture, we need to celebrate a new kind of “star”. Every time we reach for an US Weekly, or spend our time gossiping about the latest Kardashian train wreck, we are modeling something profound about what we value in the world. We are celebrating precious lives wasted on all of the wrong things. As Mary Wilson, Founding President of the White House Project, said in the chilling documentary Miss Representation, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” Feminism means making sure that the women we are celebrating are doing something worth celebrating.

2. We Will Give Our Daughters More Than An Equal Paycheck. Despite how good they look on paper, outpacing boys in test scores, college completion, etc, our girls’ “psychological resumes are lagging behind,” according to Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. Simmons told the audience that we need to teach girls how to assert a minority opinion, how to raise a hand, even when we are unsure of the answer, and, just as importantly, how to spot a healthy friendship and nurture it. As Simmons said during her talk, “nothing brings a girl to her knees like a failed friendship.”

But by far, my favorite insight from Simmons’ talk was this: we need to embarrass our daughters. Rachel Simmons used to be mortified when her mother would send an order of fries back to the kitchen to be reheated. “GAWD, mom, why can’t you just eat the fries?!??!!” But as an adult, she is grateful for those moments of mortification, because now she has a script. She knows how to send her proverbial fries back — and as we grow up, those sent-back fries become low salaries. They become abusive relationships. They become the moments where we decide: I am worthy of something better than this. Feminism will look beyond the markers of title, position, and academic achievement to the more elemental, but less visible, signals of empowerment. Who knew a slice of potato could be so important?

1. A New Power is Rising. Around the world, old power structures are crumbling, and something new is emerging. Jill Iscol’s talk summed it up perfectly: the TEDxWomen heroes on stage that day, and around the world, “have one thing in common: respect and reverence for every human life on the planet.” This is real power. This is the power that is fueling a new brand of feminism, and it is the same power that will ultimately heal our relationships with our children, each other, our aging parents, and will heal divisions between nations, religions and ideologies. And the best part? It starts right here. In this moment, in this conversation.

Have you ever heard of anything so hopeful?

Bronwyn Saglimbeni

Presentation & Media Coaching

bronwyn@bronwyncommunications.com
Office: 408-414-7250

Stefani Zellmer

I’m Peggy.

Only without the panty hose and pointy bras.

That show resonates for people in advertising as much as it does with the general public because it gives a more accurate portrayal of our business than we’ve ever seen in fictional dramas. We don’t sketch ideas out with markers as much anymore. We don’t have three-Martini lunches. We don’t blow smoke rings in the office. But other than that, not much has changed in the way we come up with advertising ideas and how we sell those ideas to clients.

Unfortunately, there also hasn’t been much change in the numbers that skew toward male-domination in the ad biz. To this day, women represent only 3% of creative departments in this business. How sad is that?

On Mad Men, you’ll notice that Peggy is the only woman in the creative department. I’ll say it again. I’m Peggy. I have been Peggy several times over.

When I was hired at Crispin, Porter & Bogusky in 1997, I was told that I was the first female writer on their creative staff. The company was founded in 1965.

In 1999, when I moved back to Los Angeles and was hired by Ground Zero Advertising, I was also the first woman on the creative staff. They had been operating for five years.

Those statistics astounded me. But what astounded me more was that I was expected to be proud of this. It was told to me with enthusiasm. The first woman in the creative department! Whoo hoo!

Really?

I had a hard time being happy for me when I was so sad for my gender. Taking five years to hire a woman for your creative staff is just pathetic.

Those aren’t the only two times I’ve been hired because “we need more women on the account.” Or because the agency wants to go after a female-targeted business, which let’s face it, aren’t most businesses female-targeted businesses? And they can’t rightfully go into a new business meeting to talk intelligently about what makes a woman tick without a woman present.

So I represented. I built a career out of it, as well as some resentment. I bitched and moaned (isn’t that what women do?).

But then I did another thing that women do best. I embraced it.

It helped that in 2007 I fell prey to one of the biggest layoffs in GSD&M history. So what did I do? I started my own agency.

The truth is, by this point I had grown sick and tired of watching agencies waste precious client dollars trying to figure out how to speak to women, only to ignore the womanly advice the clients paid for and make decisions with their dicks. Because in every creative department that actually has female employees, there is rarely a woman in charge of that final decision.

And that has to change.

If you want to know how to speak to women through your advertising messages, you can’t just hire women. You have to put a woman at the helm.

Now I make my living helping other female-owned and -targeted businesses speak to women in a voice that doesn’t require any extra research dollars. We come by that knowledge naturally. So that knowledge is free.

And for me, it’s also freeing.

Stefani Zellmer was born, raised and educated in Texas, from which she promptly fled upon graduation. She’s written ads in Portland, Los Angeles, New York, Miami and Austin, for award-winning agencies such as Crispin, Porter & Bogusky, BBDO, Ogilvy & Mather and GSD&M, who finally lassoed her back to Texas where she belongs. In 2009, she co-founded The Swizzle Collective, where she created brand messaging for a roster of local clients such as Velocity Credit Union, Champions Westlake, Threadgill’s and Ballet Austin. In 2011, she started Zeehive, an advertising consultancy focused on creating a brand voice for female-targeted businesses. She lives in Austin, TX with her husband and two children, and you can find out more about her business online: