Meet 3 of Tech's Foremost Female Founders Women-owned businesses — 8.3 million of them, in total — are a crucial part of the U.S. economy. Growth by women-owned businesses is surging at a pace faster than that of any other group — over the past 15 years, 1.5 times greater than other groups. There's much to celebrate, and yet there's still work to be done and lessons to be learned. Over the past three weeks, we've shed light on women-owned businesses, spurred by American Express OPEN's recent report, The State of Women-Owned Businesses [PDF]. We've spoken with prominent female founders about their influences, their ambitions and challenges, in hopes of helping other aspiring female founders to embark on the journey, or to keep going. We've named 44 female founders who every entrepreneur should know, and it's sparked quite a conversation in the comments and on social media. On Tuesday, August 21 at 2p.m. Join us on Tuesday, August 21 at 2p.m. 44 Female Founders Every Entrepreneur Should Know
10 Things You Didn't Know About Women-Owned Businesses For the full State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, visit openforum.com/women. American Express OPEN salutes, celebrates and wants to help fuel the future of women business owners. For more information about BrandSpeak, click here. Stories inspire us to action, but behind many stories is data that provides a bigger and better picture of what is happening in the world around us. 1. "It's so essential for business owners to have a financial plan. 2. “I went out to SXSW knowing that all the investors I knew -– that they would all be there for the week and I could catch up with them all face to face. "Within 12 weeks I closed a round of nearly a quarter million. 3. “I’m pretty good at delegating and I would have persuaded myself sooner to delegate work that I love. "When you realize you’ve got the wrong people, you have to let them go because they are blocking the way for the right people coming in. SEE ALSO: The State of Women-Owned Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC] 4. 5. 6. 7. 9. 10.
How to Gamify Your Goals: A Step By Step Guide How to Gamify Those Pesky New Year’s Resolutions The Following is a Guest Post by Jon Guerrera When I started gamifying my goals last year, I didn’t think it would become something worth sharing. I simply wanted to create an effective system for tracking and achieving my goals – especially the ones that were in dire need of motivation. This article contains the nitty-gritty details on the process of gamifying goals, along with a set of techniques that will help you get the most out of the system you ultimately create for yourself. Before we get started, who is this not good for? Before we begin, a brief disclaimer is in order. So if you’re incredibly passionate about writing, and have a goal to write a book, I would recommend using another goal system – the last thing you need is less of that intrinsic drive and curiosity to write. So if you need to lose weight, but hate exercise with all of your being, this system is for you. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on. Congrats!