Women-Owned Businesses

These statistics on women-owned businesses fascinated me. The information was reprinted from the January/February 2006 issue of Office Solutions magazine and was originally compiled by the Center for Women's Business Research.

• Rate at which employment at women-owned businesses is increasing: 24%
• Expansion rate of employment at all businesses: 12%
• Percentage faster revenues are growing in women-owned businesses than all businesses: 17%

With so many resume writing businesses being owned by women (the vast majority of them are sole proprietorships), resume writers should take heed of these figures!

QuickBooks Plug-in

Is your resume writing service one of 2.6 million small businesses using QuickBooks to maintain your financial records? I heard about a new product from my credit card merchant account provider that may interest you.

The SmartPayments™ products introduced by Hypercom intergrate electronic payments into QuickBooks Accounting software that may save you time and resources.

SmartPayments products are Microsoft Windows plug-in applications designed to capture transaction data from many popular Point-of-Sale (POS) applications. These products allow your business to process payment card transactions, automatically transmit the data to First National Merchant Solutions (my merchant account provider) and simultaneously update your QuickBooks Accounting software.

The integrated solutions support multiple users, include robust reporting features, and are set to auto-close your daily credit card transactions.

If you're interested in more information, call Hypercom at 888-679-0240. (It's possible the product works with your credit card merchant account provider too.)

I use Mac products exclusively, so I haven't tried this, but I thought it might be of interest to resume writers who process a large number of credit card transactions each day (for example, resume writers who subcontract their writing out to other resume writers.)

When Mother Nature Attacks...

Just yesterday, I talked with my insurance agent after receiving my business insurance renewal policy. I wanted to make sure that my coverage was still adequate, since it had been a couple of years since I'd looked at it.

Good thing. A huge, fast-moving storm moved through today, packing 80- to 100-mile-per hour winds. We lost two of our mature trees in our yard (see photos), although it could have been much worse. Neither tree hit the house -- although the way the wind was blowing in (straight from the west), the one in the back yard should have crashed into the house. Instead, it fell to the south, taking out the fence, but sparing the house.

Although we didn't have damage that would require filing an insurance claim, I'm glad that I have business insurance (in addition to our regular homeowner's insurance). If the tree had come into the house, we'd have business interruption coverage that would help replace the lost income from not being able to work while the home was being repaired.

As I told my husband MANY times today ... it could have been a lot worse.

Let our loss be your gain -- take the time to double-check your insurance coverage. Make sure your limits are adequate for your equipment, and consider business interruption coverage.

Ideas for "Prospering Despite a Downturn Market"

As I mentioned last week in my post on Free Continuing Education, Career Directors International offers free monthly "Best Practices" teleclasses to help resume writers and career coaches brainstorm best practices.

Yesterday, I cleared my schedule for an hour to listen to the most recent one, "Best Practices in Prospering Despite a Downturn Market." There were some great ideas. I was particularly interested in some of the strategies shared by career coach Laura Drew, of Carolina Career Coach, Inc.

One of Laura Drew's best practices is quite attention-getting. She ordered double-sided business cards from VistaPrint. On the back side is a list of teleclasses she offers. She also ordered a baseball cap that has "JOB HUNTING?" in all capital letters. On the business cards, she wrote the word "Hat" in the corner. When she wears her hat out in public (while she's running her errands, she notes), people ask her about the hat, and she gives them her "elevator pitch" and business card.

In one recent outing, she took 50 business cards with her; by the time she got home, she had distributed 47 of them. Those 47 cards turned into 13 paying clients.

That's just one of the ideas from the teleclass. There were more. Members of Career Directors International can access the MP3 audio files from all previous calls, including:

• Background Investigations Mega Trends
• Best Practices in Career Services Pricing
• Best Practices in Coaching Clients Using SWOT Analysis
• Best Practices in Creating Resume USPs
• Best Practices in Millennial Resume Writing
• Media Strategies Tips Seminar
• New Trends in Interviewing
• Paperless Resumes Mega Trends Report
• Resume Fraud Mega Trends Report
• Selling Career Research Services to Clients
• Social Networking Mega Trends Report
• Toast of the Resume Industry (TORI) Q&A
• 2008 CDI Conference (Seattle, WA) Q&A
• World's Best Resume Writer Competition Q&A
  

And here are the upcoming free teleclasses from Career Directors International:

• July 22: Best Practices in Advertising Your Career Service Business
• Aug. 12: Best Practices in While Life/Office Organization
• Aug. 20: International Resume and Career Services Q&A
  
• Sept. 16: Best Practices in Resume Data Mining (Client Information Gathering)
  

Laura DeCarlo is offering a special CDI membership offer for Resume Writers' Digest readers: Join CDI by July 31 and save $25 off the regular membership. Use this link: JOIN CDI and type in "Resume Writers Digest" in the comments box. The cart will show $150, but your credit card will only be charged $125 (you save $25).

Here's another quote from a CDI member who also listened to the best practices audio:

"I just finished listening to the recording of the 'Prospering Despite a Downturn Market' teleseminar. WOW!!! An hour of my time well spent. Thanks, Laura, for giving us such an extensive list of great, mostly free, ways to market and build business. I'm glad I was keyboarding everything you said, so I didn't miss much. You offered a number of specific things to do and places to go to get them done -- things I can get moving on right away. Some are things already on my to-do list, some are new ideas to me. A terrific push to be proactive and work thorugh slow times. I'm all fired up and anxious to get started."
-- Meg Guiseppi, Executive Resume Branding