The Boss of You

Charity Village, which bills itself as “Canada’s supersite for the nonprofit sector” (and it really is — our friends & colleagues in the nonprofit world visit it on a daily basis), has posted a very kind review of The Boss of You. You may wonder why nonprofit types would be interested in a business book, but in fact many of the same principles apply to running a not-for-profit venture as a for-profit one; the only difference is that in a nonprofit, the profits are funnelled back into providing more services. (Well, there are legal and governance differences, too — but there are still budgets to be balanced, audience needs to be met, and outreach to be done.)

It’s no secret that women make up the majority of people working in the nonprofit sector. And with more and more organizations turning to social enterprise and other related business ventures to generate some of their revenue, it means there are a lot of women out there looking for sound business advice. Enter Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears. Although their new book, The Boss of You, isn’t directed specifically at nonprofits, it is chock-full of smart insight on how to get a fledging enterprise off the ground.

Thanks, Charity Village!

We’re incredibly excited to be appearing at one of our favourite bookstores, Seattle’s fabulous Elliott Bay Books (map), this coming Saturday, May 17th @ 4:30 pm. (Note the early start time — we’ll have you done in time for dinner and you’ll have the whole night free for less business-y endeavours!) We’ll be introducing our book and reading a couple of short passages, then following up with a Q&A. At our last event, the Q&A was spirited and fun, with plenty of great hands-on discussion and advice, so we’re hoping all our Seattle readers (assuming we have Seattle readers…) will stop by and bring lots of questions.

There will even be door prizes for a couple of lucky people, donated by fabulous, Seattle-based women-owned businesses. (We love to promote local small businesses…) And if I’m not mistaken, Elliott Bay serves incredibly tasty vegan pastries in the cafe next to the event room, so you can treat yourself to a delicious dessert while you’re there.

From Seattle, we fly to New York, and from there to Washington DC. We haven’t been able to set up a formal book event in NYC, but we’ll be there for a few days — so if anyone’s interested in a coffee shop meetup, let us know (leave a comment or drop us an email) and we’ll try and get one organized. Location suggestions are also welcome!

There’s nothing like talking about insurance on a Monday morning to start the week off with a bang. A few weeks ago now, Michelle Goodman asked us some questions about liability insurance and we chimed in with our two cents. She’s posted our thoughts over at her blog, so if liability insurance is in your future (or if you’re just wondering what the heck it is and why you should care) check it out.

Our last stop on our blog book tour is over at Alex Beauchamp’s fabulous site Another Girl at Play as the May Newsletter issue. It’s wonderful to be posting over at Alex’s site as she is not only a dear friend, but she has served as an inspiration throughout the process of conceiving of our book/writing it and finally getting it out into the world. Being interviewed for her site oh so many years ago, put us in the company of many awesome smart, creative women who were turning their passions into a career and it was women like that, that helped inspire us to write The Boss of  You.

As we wrap up our mini series on hiring employees, I’ve covered off making sure your employees are going to help you bring in money so that you can in fact afford to keep them around. It may seem like a bit of an obvious consideration, but when you’re taking the leap to being responsible for someone else’s paycheque, it’s nothing to be taken too lightly.

Heard this story on the radio this morning and thought it was an interesting lesson for employers (and managers, for that matter):

Workers Who Feel Trusted Will Boost Sales and Provide Better Customer Service: Study
Companies that communicate their trust to employees will see superior sales and customer service performance, says a psychology researcher from Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.
[…]

Of course, this is another one of those studies that isn’t exactly rocket science. If your boss communicates mistrust towards you, of course you’re not going to perform well. However, I suppose there are likely some nimrods in the world who need to be told there’s a profit margin involved before they decide to treat people decently.

My interest in this story came from my experiences as someone who finds it difficult to delegate. I need constant reminders that I’m helping everyone in the office when I spread the work around — my employees get a chance to broaden their skill sets and take on more responsibility, and I get my nose off the grindstone long enough to look around and see how everyone is doing. So for those of you who have difficulty asking for help (even when help is available), perhaps this study will provide food for thought.

Our third book tour stop takes us to one of our favourite e-zines: All Things Girl. Their blog is a regular haunt for me, and we’re delighted to be guest-bloggers for a day.

Today’s post is all about overcoming any apprehensions you may have about becoming an employer, and staying true to yourself as you step into the “boss of them” role. It’s called “Embracing your inner Good Boss: Becoming an employer without losing your nerve. (And if you leave a comment on the ATG post, you’ll be entered to win a free copy of The Boss of You.)

If you missed the first two installments of our “How to Hire” blog book tour, you can find them here and here.

We’re having a big day over here: A television interview this morning, our event at Sophia Books tonight, and in between we got news that The Vancouver Courier has published a lovely article about us. I think they (or rather, the fabulous author Cheryl Rossi) captured our philosophy very nicely — that your business doesn’t have to rake in millions to qualify as successful, and that women can do business their own way and achieve their dreams.

The accompanying photo co-stars the beautiful spiral staircase in our office building, which also appears in our jacket photo.

OK, that’s more than enough blog posts for one day. More tomorrow…

(Photo: Dan Toulgoet)

We’ve got post number 2 in our world wide blog book tour up at Felicia’s site this morning. Today’s topic is figuring out who to hire, once you’ve decided you need some help.

It’s going up a little bit late as we spent the morning sitting in a green room with the very charming Kurt Browning (pretty awesome if you’re a Canadian or a hardcore figure skating fan), as we waited for our moment in the spotlight on Breakfast TV. It’s going to be a big day (and a long one frankly) for the book around these parts. We’re also doing a reading at Sophia Books (450 West Hastings, Vancouver) this evening at 7pm. If you’re in town here we’d love to see you so do stop by and say hello!

And one more thing: If you don’t have one yet (or you’re dying for a second copy) you can enter to win a copy of The Boss of You from our lovely friends over at Lunapads, check it out.

Our blog book tour begins! Today we kick off the “hiring help” series with a post on The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: “How do I know when it’s time to hire some outside help?” We tell the sad-but-true tale of two women (us) who didn’t recognize the signs that it was time to bring in some support, and struggled too long to try and maintain the status quo. As a bonus, we slip in a gratuitous Joss Whedon reference, ‘cause hey, if I can find a way to quote Joss, I will.

Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for The Boss of You in the Vancouver area:

• We’ll be making an appearance on Breakfast Television. We’re told we’ll be on sometime between 8:30 and 9:30 AM, for about five minutes. (That’s on Channel 13 for those of you on Shaw cable.)
• I believe there will also be an article in The Vancouver Courier
• And of course we’ll be at Sophia Books tonight (whoops, I’m getting ahead of myself!) tomorrow night at 7:00 PM, talking about the book and doing a Q&A — and we’d love to meet you, so please stop by and say hello!

If you’re outside Vancouver, keep an eye our Events page to see if we’re coming to a bookstore near you.