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Archive for the 'Global trade' Category

Make Your Global Online Shoppers Feel at Home Wherever They Are

Registration is still open for our FREE November 7th, 2018 wegginar®, with presenter Cristina Bandal, Industry Segment Manager of Retail and Consumer Goods for UPS.

Cristina has an extensive career with UPS, working within the marketing functions. She has worked with merchants in the retail and high tech industries. Cristina makes customer experiences valuable, by improving the shopper’s experiences. Her most recent assignment helps enable merchants to sell outside the US through UPS technology.

If 95% of the worlds population lives outside the US, why are some merchants still only selling to the domestic market? Complex rules, costly risks and high transportation costs make it difficult for small businesses to merge into new markets. UPS i-parcel not only offers a solution to these merchants, but provides a frictionless experience to international consumers.

wegginar® participants can expect to learn how to…

Offer international consumers the same shopping experience on your website that you offer to shoppers in the US.
Avoid complicated and costly international shipping that will ultimately improve your conversion rate.
Enable new international markets with just a click and reach a world of consumers.
Make your online shoppers feel at home anywhere

wegg® aims to make resources for going global accessible to all women entrepreneurs, and our wegginars® are free thanks to our sponsors. To register for the event, visit this link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/8810009934736118275

Female Entrepreneurs Are the Engine of Global Growth

Published October 8, 2018 Economic growth , Education , Enlighten Me! , Equality , Gender challenges , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs Leave a Comment
Tags: be their own bosses, beyond borders, Exporting, female entrepreneurs, global growth, global women entrepreneurs, wegg®, women business owners, women entrepreneurs energize economies, women will conquer the world

Bonnie Chui, contributor for Forbes, writes a thoughtful piece about how female entrepreneurs are going global and that new policy attention may close the gap. At wegg®, we are closing that gap — whether there is new policy attention or not.

We not only serve women entrepreneurs by educating them on how to go global, we are women entrepreneurs, and through our educational efforts, we continue to energize economies worldwide.

Further, based on my experience running a successful global business and serving as a consultant to countless global women business owners, my observations indicate that women entrepreneurs must condition themselves to be risk oriented, innovative, and proactive (RIP) in order to achieve any reasonable level of success in the export marketplace.

Like everyone else, they must also achieve five things before venturing out beyond borders:

Becoming ready mentally, particularly emotionally
Being ready operationally
Having run a successful local business
Knowing how to use the latest technology
Having a business with export potential.

Also, in my view, a perceived lack of credibility is the number one barrier for women doing business globally. This perceived deficiency lack makes it difficult for women to access markets, market information, and establish relationships. If you don’t already have an influential person in your life who can tout your capabilities, find one and cultivate the relationship, or just reach out to wegg.

Most of the above referenced facts are covered in my Exporting: The Definitive Guide to Selling Abroad Profitably, Chapter 27, “Women Business Owners: Engine of Global Growth.”

Let’s face it, women launch businesses for the same reasons men do — to build wealth, to capitalize on their ideas and to be their own bosses.

Oftentimes you must learn about starting a business and taking it global the hard way — by doing it — and getting assistance from programs such as wegg’s helps enormously.

Female entrepreneurs are the engine of global growth and with appropriate support, will conquer the world. Just you watch.

wegg® keeps energizing women entrepreneurs the world over. We can help you build confidence, find great resources and show you the steps you can take to go global. Join us for our FREE wegginar® on 11/7 with Cristina Bandal. You can find all of the details, and register for the event, here.

President and CEO Julie Smolyansky on “Following Your Gut”

Published September 17, 2018 Business Development , Culture , Economic growth , Education , Enlighten Me! , Equality , Event , global branding , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Innovation , Inspiration , International business , Leadership , Sales & Distribution , wegg supporter , wegg workshop , wegginar , Working abroad , World entrepreneurship Leave a Comment
Tags: business mentoring, ceo, follow your gut, go global, lifeway, lifeway kefir, risk taking, WEGG, wegg workshop, wegginar, women business owners, women entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs grow global, women in business

This past Wednesday September 12th, President and CEO of Lifeway Kefir, Julie Smolyansky lead a wegg® workshop about the importance of following your gut on business and personal endeavors. Her inspiring talk covered the journey of Lifeway beginning in her parent’s basement, in the mid-eighties, when they began making Kefir, a food inspired by their home country, the former Soviet Union. It is now a $120 million publicly-traded company, thanks to Julie. She grew Lifeway to the size it is now, without a business degree, and became CEO at age 27, when her father suddenly passed away. Smolyansky shared the story of how one of her father’s friends reacted when he died and she was made CEO…

“[He said] ‘forget it, the company is done. Sell all of your stock tomorrow. There’s no way a 27 year old girl could run a company.’ This is done. Lifeway is over…I go into the office Monday morning…and everyone had sold their stock….It was devastating…[I] picked my head up and moved forward. Then, we had 70 people, today we have 320. We’ve grown our business from 12 million to 120 million…We continued to execute on the strategy we believed in, and continued to follow our gut, and worked really really hard….That man who said ‘she’s never gonna do it,’…I literally think about him every day. I say ‘thank you’, ‘thank you so much for underestimating me, for pissing me off, and making me angry…You gave me the fuel to move forward.”

Smolyansky went on to describe how being a young CEO became a strength for her. She followed her gut and made Lifeway one of the first businesses ever to have an active social media presence. She explained, “We were ahead of the game…Vogue called us ‘avant garde’ for being on social media.”

She also shared her beliefs on the importance of female entrepreneurship,

“If women were employed at the same rates as men, we know the global GDP would rise exponentially…That I think is really important. A rising tide raises all ships, and when women create jobs, an entire community is more safe and stable….Women are the key to saving the world…Entrepreneurship…can heal the world.”

Other inspiring takeaways from Smolyansky’s talk…

Keep moving ahead no matter what your challenges are in life.
Make a big impact: it only takes one person one step at a time to change the world.
Follow your gut (we should all listen to our intuition on important matters in life).

Thank you to Julie, and her team, Justine and Maria, for making our on-the-ground wegg® workshop a success. And thank you to Bank of America, Moji Eagan and Aneta Mazur, for hosting us.

If you were not able to make this wegg® workshop, we are having a wegginar® on Wednesday, October 3rd with Katie Kollhoff, CEO, NUMIX. She’ll present on “Small Startup, Big Impact.” Thanks to our sponsors, IBM, UPS, Bank of America and GlobalCare Clinical Trials, the program is no charge but you must register to attend, here.

Unlocking the Full Potential of Women- led SMEs in Indonesia

Published August 20, 2018 Business Development , Country specific , Culture , Education , Enlighten Me! , Equality , Finance , Gender challenges , Global news , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Innovation , Inspiration , International business , Leadership , Social Entrepreneurship , Sustainability practices , World entrepreneurship Leave a Comment
Tags: global small business, indonesia, small business ownership, SME Toolkit, SMEs, women around the world, women business owners, women entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurship, women in business, women's issues, women's rights, women-led SMEs, women-owned businesses, WSMEs

In a recent East Asia Forum article, “Unleashing the capabilities of women-led SMEs in Indonesia,” author Naimah Talib reports that 43 percent of the 26 million small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Indonesia are women led or women owned (WSMEs). Not only do these WSMEs make up for ten percent of the country’s GDP, they also lead to social development of the culture by empowering women economically. Besides these major benefits, support of WSMEs aids Indonesia in achieving the UN’s “Sustainable Development Goals”, specifically the tenets of ‘gender equality,’ ‘decent work and economic growth’, and ‘reduced inequality’.

The advantages of backing WSMEs are clear, but why are there limitations on the growth of these organizations? This is the question that Talib proposes. She illustrates just some of the difficulties women who head businesses face. Talib explains,

” …common difficulties for expansion [for WSMEs] include limited access to information about financial support, lack of business and entrepreneurial skills, lack of professional networks and limited government support and services at the local level. Financial support is available for WSMEs, but female entrepreneurs tend to lack information about these options. Female entrepreneurs find that information about government funding programs is often limited, difficult to access or unclear.”

One of Talib’s main arguments suggest that Indonesian policymakers fail to effectively provide WSMEs with the necessary resources to solve these issues. Talib writes of the necessary reform,

“Three areas require greater attention: increasing the accessibility of information, strengthening the institutional capacity of the Creative Economy Agency and improving government services at the local level.”

To read more about the specific solutions posed to the pressing issue of the neglect of Indonesian WSMEs, read the article here.

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JOIN us for our morning wegg™ workshop on September 12th and hosted by Bank of America (135 S. LaSalle Street, 44th Floor). Julie Smolyansky, President and CEO, Lifeway Foods, will present “Follow Your Gut,” covering:

How global factors influence company values and mission
Why we should empower women entrepreneurs around the world
How to channel inspiration from travel experiences into marketing initiatives

Tickets $40 ($20 for students); includes Continental Breakfast. To learn more and to register, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/weggtm-workshop-follow-your-gut-presented-by-julie-smolyansky-tickets-48655708534
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Women Entrepreneurs, the Global Market Needs You

Published July 23, 2018 Business Development , Economic growth , Education , emerging markets , Equality , Exporting , Gender challenges , global branding , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Importing , International business , Marketing , Research , Sales & Distribution , Strategy , World entrepreneurship Leave a Comment
Tags: Entrepreneur Magazine, gender equality worldwide, global economic growth, global growth, global impact, global marketplace, global reach, going global, Laurel J. Delaney, SMEs, WEGG, WEGG women, women business owners, women entrepreneurs

According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, In 2016, 97% of all exporters in the U.S. were small and medium-sized companies. The other statistic from this study that can’t be ignored is that only 12% of businesses that export are owned by women. Why are more women not accessing the vast world that is global business?

In Devishobha Chandramouli’s recent Entrepreneur article, “6 Global Trends Reveal How Women Are Redefining Entrepreneurship,” she reports the ways in which women entrepreneurs are critical to the global market. Within Chandramouli’s findings, WEGG founder, Laurel Delaney, reports on why women are often absent from business at a global level:

“Even in a developed economy, women business owners are less likely to explore and expand their products or services because they think they can’t do it, or that they don’t have access to the right training, education, advisory networks, mentorships and community programs. This perceived deficiency makes it difficult for women to access markets, conduct marketing and establish relationships.”

If women do not believe they are capable of global success, they will not achieve it. The secret is, that women are not only capable of global business, but are also exponentially beneficial to their communities when they have it. Chandramouli notes,

“As globalization is breaking down the barriers that limited businesses by cultures, gender and geography, many partnership and trade agreements have been developed in an attempt to encourage global economic activity among women. Women are known to give back about 90 percent of their earnings to the health and education of their communities and families, contributing to development directly, so it’s easy to see why it is critical.”

Women entrepreneurs, the global market needs you.

You can read Chandramouli’s article here, to learn more about how women have the ability to transform global business, for the better, from within.

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Why go global? How do you start? Where can you find customers? How do you get paid? Find out these answers and learn other best-kept secrets to expanding a business globally.

JOIN us for our first weggchat™ (#weggchat) Wednesday, August 8 from 11:00 a.m. — 12:00 p.m. (noon) Central time on “Take Your Business Global!“ and facilitated by Laurel Delaney, President of WEGG and founder of GlobeTrade.com. Laurel will field questions and add insights on how to take a business global. Small business owners can join the conversation by using the hashtag #weggchat to chime in with questions and answers.

Event is free of charge but you must use tchat.io or twubs.com to follow the conversation using the hashtag #weggchat. See you there!
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Everyone Can Compete on the New Global Playing Field

Published May 12, 2018 e-commerce , Global trade , Logistics/transportation , Supply Chain , Transportation Leave a Comment
Tags: big dogs, e-commerce, Jeremy Melis, new global playing field, size doesn't matter, UPS

Think your business is too small for globalization? If so, change your attitude because according to Jeremy Melis, Director of Small Business Marketing at UPS, size doesn’t matter.

“The world’s electronic commerce system has transformed retailers into e-tailers, attracting and retaining consumers around the corner and around the globe. So, brands of various sizes and scope can now compete on the new global playing field, valued at $2.3 trillion and projected to almost double by 2021,” says Jeremy.

So what’s a small business to do in order to compete?

Start small, take baby steps, and as Jeremy highlights, “Other advancements and technologies are also making it easier for small businesses to launch, manage and dominate in the world of e-commerce. The key is to understand the many options available to drive business to the next level.”

See what those resource options are by clicking here.

A quick thank you to UPS for their support to WEGG. We could not provide the incredible educational programming at WEGG without them.

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Note: Did you just bag a customer in Argentina, Ireland or Korea? How do you structure the deal? Don’t let lack of financing knowledge be the reason you lose the contract.

Join us for our next WEGGinar™ 6/6/18 on “Grow Globally By Offering Competitive Financing Solutions” and presented by Tamara Maxwell, Director, Minority and Women Owned Business & Multiplier Outreach Division, Office of Small Business, Export-Import Bank of the United States. She will guide you on how to get paid. Register here.

Event is free of charge but you must register in advance to attend.
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The Challenges and Rewards to Taking a Business Global

Published January 21, 2018 Barriers to trade , Global trade , International business Leave a Comment
Tags: challenges to taking a business global, do your homework, expand your business internationally, rewards to taking a business global

There are many things to think about before you sell and market your products or services overseas — from finding customers, to sealing a business deal, to getting paid. Yet, if you overcome the challenges to taking a business global, the rewards can be enormous.

What’s most important is to do your homework. That makes everything you face so much easier and it also provides a level of confidence on what you know you should do next.

Learn more about how to expand your business internationally and overcome the challenges that come with it.

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Note: Don’t miss our next WEGGinar™ 2/7/18 on “Dare to Be Bold! Here’s How” and presented by CamMI Pham, Partner, ThinkRenegade. Register here. Event is free of charge but you must register in advance to attend.
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Women Entrepreneurs Are Crushing It

Published October 28, 2017 Gender challenges , Global trade , global women entrepreneurs , Risks Leave a Comment
Tags: go global early, grow your business, National Association of Women Business Owners, taking a business global, women entrepreneurs are crushing it

According to the National Association of Women Business Owners, as of 2015, there are more than 9.4 million women-owned businesses in the United States, employing nearly 7.9 million people and contributing $1.4 trillion into the economy. When it comes to starting and growing a business, women entrepreneurs are crushing it.

If there’s anything that defines women entrepreneurs, it’s their ability to figure out everything from how to write a business plan to launching an app to — yes — taking a business global.

When you are ready to launch and grow your business, keep these six tips in your back pocket from women who’ve done it before.

Build a network early.
Hire help early.
Listen to advice, but make your own decisions.
Go global early [not in the article but Laurel Delaney’s advice :-)]
Go for it!
Be confident.

Learn what women entrepreneurs have done to crush it.

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Note: Don’t miss our next WEGGinar™ 11/1/17 on “UPS Takes the Guesswork out of Global Shipping” and presented by Andrea Cervini, UPS Illinois, Small Business Marketing Manager (https://global.ups.com/how-to-ship-internationally/). Register here:
https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/3272777010361474561.
Event is free of charge but you must register in advance to attend.
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Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global

Archive for the 'Global trade' Category

Female Entrepreneurs Are the Engine of Global Growth

President and CEO Julie Smolyansky on “Following Your Gut”

Women Entrepreneurs, the Global Market Needs You

Everyone Can Compete on the New Global Playing Field

The Challenges and Rewards to Taking a Business Global

Women Entrepreneurs Are Crushing It

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Donate Your Gift Card to WEGG!

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Connect

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Partners

Resources

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World

Recent Posts

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Ask a Question

Find an Opportunity

Honors & Awards

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