Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

On Assignment with Boss Lady

The year was 1964. I was thirteen years old and riding solo on a Greyhound bus from Clearwater,Florida to Marion,Virginia. Somewhere in South Carolina a young woman sat next to me.

She was very excited. She had just gotten a full set of dentures. Our conversation made a lasting impression on me. Not because she got dentures --at the time I didn't think that was too weird--my grandparents had them. No, what I remember is that she called her boss the boss man.

I have no idea why that phrase cranked my motor but it still does. So when I recently saw that  Boss Lady had joined the Blogher Blog Roll I had an immediate urge to check them out.

As their tag line indicates, Boss Lady exists "because women run businesses." Although this blog is relatively young-- it is a reincarnation of sorts. Boss Lady's Bosses...Lauren Bacon and Emira Mears have been  producing Soapboxgirls, first as an ezine and then as a blog, since 2000.

While Soapboxgirls discussed a wide variety of issues of interest to women, Boss Lady is very targeted--focusing on the issues that are of interest and importance to women business owners. In addition to starting the blog, Bacon and Meirs are also co-authoring a book, called Boss Lady.

You might expect, as we did once, that the world would be full of books on this subject, because there are just so darned many women doing business with creativity, intelligence, and style… but the fact is, no one in the publishing world seems to have cottoned on to the fact that more and more women are heading out on their own to pursue their passions as entrepreneurs. At least, that's what we’re hoping. We’d love nothing more than to be the first to champion what we think is the most fun you can have while making a living. We started this website as a living guide to business, Boss Lady style. You can expect to find our thoughts and ruminations on business, updates on our book-writing and -publishing adventures, profiles of women-run businesses, resources for women entrepreneurs, and more than likely ideas on a few other assorted topics.

Just this week, Lauren Bacon and I had a chat about the blog, the challenges of getting a book published and why she thinks there are so very women business bloggers.

Fatique Management

When it comes to napping on the job, William and Camille Anthony have written the definitive book on the subject - The Art of Napping at Work.    Bill Anthony who runs a research lab at Boston University is a passionate napper. This is his second book on the subject -- the first was just a generic book on napping but the media seized on one paragraph in that book -- a paragraph about wife Camille's habit of using her bosses couch during lunch to take a snooze.  As Anthony explains in this podcast, it was when the Today show asked if they could tape Camille napping at work that they realized they had to write a follow-up book specifically targeted to the workplace.                                           

While Anthony says the concept of napping at work has yet to hit its tipping point, there are companies that are trying to provide napping services to the walking sleep deprived. To read more about napping in the work place, check out my post at Blogher.

Catching Up with the SPAM Queen

Four years ago Laura Betterly was in the business of producing commercial emails.
During an interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter she joked that she was the Spam Queen. The title stuck and for Laura it has been both a blessing and a curse.
While there were many who sent her hate mail, there were plenty of companies that sent her business. Today, a reformed commercial email producer, Betterly heads up In Touch media -- a marketing company focusing on search engine optimization, market research, blog, podcasting
The company recently launched SCOOOP.net that bills itself as a citizen journalism site. Laura talks about SCOOOP and what its like to be vilified in the media.

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Podcast #2 On Assignment with Dr. Linda Nelson

In 1980 Linda Nelson and some friends bought the formula for a detoxification product from a California- based naturopath. Today,at
age 64,Linda Nelson heads up a wellness empire headquartered in Salt
Lake City. Her products include skin care, nutritional supplements and wellness programs. Her products and programs can be found throughout the United States and in 17 countries worldwide.
Dr. Nelson says when she launched her company in the 1980s, Americans weren't interested in what she was selling.


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Podcast#1 _On Assignment_Joni Cole

Five years ago, Joni Cole was having a very bad day. She imagined her
friends were living "big lives"--that instead of sitting in a home
office and eating lunch out of a microwave box, they were "On
Assignment."

Joni turned that bad day into a great book idea. She invited women
from all over the country to share their day diaries.
This week--the first week of 2006--the second volume of This Day In
The Life is hitting the bookstores.
It is an addictive read and readers will walk away wishing they could"
go to lunch" with the women who share their feelings, thoughts,
passions and fears.
The book has earned a starred review from Publisher's Weekly.
This is my very first attempt at podcasting. Let's just say I have a
lot to learn.
First, I did the interview over Skype which I thought was very cool.
Only problem-- somehow I didn't have my computer settings to allow my
mic to record so while Joni's answers are loud and clear my questions
were lost.
Then I did some direct recording into Audacity and while they sounded
fine in playback, when I edit them in with Joni's soundbites, the
volume on my soundbites will make professional audio folks shake their
heads in disbelief.
And figuring out how to convert my WAV file to a MP3 that didn't sound
like a cat scratching a blackboard was an all day endeavor.
So yes, this is not the finest hour of podcasting history but it's my
first podcast.
Thanks for listening!


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