Janet Switzer is unique among business experts as the woman who has created and executed highly successful day-today income-generation strategies for many of the world’s top celebrity entrepreneurs. She’s a number-one bestselling author (Instant Income: Strategies That Bring in the Cash for Small Businesses, Innovative Employees and Occasional Entrepreneurs), as well as the coauthor of The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, a New York Times and USA Today bestseller that has been published in twenty-seven languages.
Her popular column featuring topics of interest to small-business owners is syndicated to more than 220 media outlets worldwide. She has also counseled thousands of companies and entrepreneurs in the areas of generating immediate revenue and securing long-term success.
Not that long ago, when it came to pursuing their careers, women were forced into an “either/or” situation. In order to be successful in her career, the perception was that a woman had to either put everything into her job or be faced with choosing personal goals (such as raising a family or caring for elderly parents) to the forfeiture of career opportunities she deserved.
Fortunately, technology has leveled the playing field for women today, who can now make tangible contributions to any and all fields—but most importantly in the area of entrepreneurship. Today, women start businesses at a rate of two-to-one over men; more than two-thirds of all new businesses worldwide are started by women. Women-owned businesses are also uniquely recognized by the US government, which offers a variety of incentives to encourage entrepreneurship. Not to be left out, corporations now encourage women’s entrepreneurship through monetary support of special initiatives.
Perhaps most important, however, is that it’s no longer a tough choice between raising a family and owning a business. Internet-based businesses, virtual offices, flextime employment, and job sharing are but a few ways in which women have taken back control over their professional and personal lives.
Many women have also emerged as experts in the small-business category. For decades, we saw our male counterparts reign as the top-selling business authors, most popular business speakers, and most talked-about business advisors. This is ironic since women are more likely to pursue continuing education to ensure they are well versed in innovations that can improve efficiency and ROI; they purchase some 85 percent of business-related books and a significant percentage of other learning tools.
As a woman business author, I’m often asked how I conduct business differently than my male colleagues. While I generally don’t speak in generalities, I will in this instance. Women are inherently more detail oriented (I certainly fall into this category), while men, at least in the small-business category, more often take the role of big-picture thinkers or visionaries.
When it comes to teaching a marketing strategy or revenuegeneration system or making a sale, I’m constantly attentive to ensuring that entrepreneurs understand every step of the process or have every bit of information they need to make a buying decision. When I teach entrepreneurs, I’m focused not just on the what-to-do, but on the step-by-step “how-to-do.” I like to overdeliver by providing lots of detail. I believe this eye for detail—a trait commonly attributed to women—has contributed significantly to my success. Very little at my company is left to chance—which is quite deliberate, and which has served me well during my career.
Today, my reputation has been built on the care I take in explaining the process in the books I write, and in my speeches, newsletters, and home-study courses.
Behind this ability to “explain in detail” is two decades of work—not as a visionary, but as the day-to-day income-generation strategist for a wide variety of small companies.
For the first twenty years of my career, I was the woman in the background behind many of the world’s top celebrity entrepreneurs, authors, and speakers, as well as countless brick-and-mortar businesses. During that time, I had the opportunity to hone my capabilities in developing revenue streams for small businesses. In some cases, I didn’t get paid unless I brought in the cash, so as you can imagine, I got really good at refining strategies that delivered reliable cash flow. When I wrote my book, Instant Income, I compiled those strategies that are quick to execute and that bring in the cash quickly—strategies that I had honed and refined over nearly twenty years.
As a woman entrepreneur who works often with other women entrepreneurs, I’ve seen some unique qualities that help women excel in their field.
Women tend to be great communicators and even better relationship builders. This really becomes valuable in small business when creating strategic alliances, introducing people to your big vision, and nurturing relationships that will pay off over time. It’s exceptionally helpful to have a relationship-building attitude when it comes to customers. For example, my company focuses on delivering useful and well-thought-out products to our many long-time readers and subscribers. And though I may not be the one creating the biggest stir at a multispeaker event or the one attracting hundreds of thousands of opt-ins from a single e-mail, my readers are established business owners and loyal followers who convert really well into buyers of our products and services. As an author, I know I would rather have 100,000 loyal readers who respond to virtually any offer I broadcast than a million Web site visitors who don’t buy because I’m focused on numbers instead of relationships.
Women are good at taking a big project, breaking it down into parts, and seeing well in advance what’s needed to complete it successfully. Smart businesswomen tend to be planners. While they can visualize the big goals they want, they also have the ability to see the necessary steps required to bring those goals to fruition. In my book with Jack Canfield, The Success Principles, we wrote a chapter called “Chunk It Down”—the idea that any big goal can be achieved (and seem less daunting) by breaking it down into manageable tasks. Women are good at doing that. Not only does this skill keep you focused on the end game, but it keeps you from spending time and energy on tasks that don’t matter to the ultimate outcome. I think women sometimes have a sense that they need to work harder than men to be successful as business owners. This isn’t true, of course, but the perception is still there. Chunking it down is a strategy that will keep women working smarter, not harder—and help them be exponentially more successful as a result.
Women in business naturally tend to “pay it forward” to other women just starting out. I am always happy to see women’s entrepreneurial networks in action—where more established women business owners advise, mentor, and act as a sounding board for younger women or women just beginning their careers. In fact, it’s a perfect example of a well-known success principle at work: “Success leaves clues.” For anything that you want to accomplish, there’s likely someone else who has already achieved that goal—especially in the field of entrepreneurship. Seeking out these established experts, asking questions, and acting on their advice is often the key to achieving goals faster. Not only are women natural seekers of information, but they’re also good recipients of advice and energetic followers and implementers of any strategies that are given to them.