It was the end of August.

It had been announced that Shonali’s schedule was becoming too demanding to continue on as our Editor here at Women Grow Business, and no one knew who was taking over.

She was a bit under the weather, so I volunteered to help with the chat at the last minute, petrifying as the thought was.

We brainstormed over the phone to find a way to make the chat process work, such that she could be present, but not overloaded. (I was much more concerned about this than she was- she was more concerned about not letting the community down.)

At the last minute we came up with a brilliant idea. What if I interviewed her about being the Editor and Community Leader of Women Grow Business? It would be the perfect changing of the guard, more perfect than we could have ever planned, in retrospect.

The interview was quite successful – many people who rarely dropped by came to support Shonali and see her off, so to speak. And she did not disappoint. One thing she said that struck a cord with me was when asked what it was like to become the leader of this great community:

More Highlights from the Wisdom Shonali Shared

• How Women Grow Business impacted her approach to leadership
• Why she decided to accept the reins from our Founding Editor, Jill Foster.
• The extension of the community beyond the blog
• Her biggest challenges

You can download the transcript of that day’s chat here – [pdf 1.7 mb]. (The good stuff starts on the third page).

Luckily for us, this isn’t the last we’ll see of Shonali Burke. She’ll remain a part of our community, and has been an incredible resource in helping me find my way as her successor.

The October transcript will also be available shortly. In the meantime, mark your calendar for the next chat when our own Thursday Bram will be discussing freelancing from noon to 1pm on November 14th. More details will be released as the date gets closer, so be sure and sign up for the newsletter in the upper right corner of the page, to be reminded of our monthly community chat when it gets closer.

Twitter bird image courtesy of Six Revisions

More about Shonali

Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Ye faithful WGB readers, thank you for sticking with us the last couple of weeks! I know some of you have been scratching your heads, wondering where, oh where, did your content go?

We didn’t fall into a black hole, exactly, but as we were undergoing the editorial transition, we… ok, we fell into a black hole.

I’m sorry! We’ll try to do better the next time!

But we’re back now and I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to tell you that effective immediately, Tinu Abayomi-Paul is the new editor of Women Grow Business.

Tinu really needs no introduction. She’s been a stalwart of the WGB community from Day 1, not just with her terrific blog contributions, but has brought tremendous value to our community via last year’s Women Grow Business bootcamp, her regular participation in our monthly Twitter chats as well as other social properties, and, all in all, is just the bee’s knees.

(Do bees have knees? If they did, and assuming they were fantabulous, them’s Tinu for you.)

Here’s her official bio:

Tinu rescues web sites from obscurity and shows business people how to generate leads and traffic from the web. Founder of Free Traffic Tips and Ask Tinu, she is widely published online as an ever effective, end-to-end website promotion specialist — on Web Pro News, Search Engine Guide, and more. Ready to engage on Twitter as @tinu, she’s known to say: “You can’t knock my hustle.”

But really, Tinu is so much more than that, and I can’t wait to see the new heights she will take Women Grow Business to.

Please do join me in congratulating and welcoming your new editor – Tinu Abayomi-Paul!

Former Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, where she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. Adjunct faculty for Johns Hopkins’ MA/Communication program, she publishes Waxing UnLyrical under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Of note

Springboard Enterprises’ Equity Matters Seminar in Washington, D.C. is coming up on September 24.

The Equity Matters Seminar Series introduces women business owners and emerging/aspiring entrepreneurs to the sources and uses of capital to launch and grow their businesses.

This fall’s seminar draws on the expertise of successful entrepreneurs, lenders, and investors.

It will provide attendees with actionable information about

• the various sources of capital,
• what lenders and investors look for, and
• the resources available in the community to assist their businesses as they search for the most appropriate source of capital.

The agenda also includes a mini-workshop on financial projections, a special fast pitch panel session, which yields constructive criticism and ends with a networking luncheon.

When: Sept. 24, 8:30 am – 3 pm

Where: The George Washington University, Duques Hall, 2201 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20037

How much: $25 – $50, depending on whether you’re a student, affiliate or regular attendee (please pay attention to specific costs and registration policies on their website and contact them for clarification)

Register: on their website

Image: Nils Geylen via Flickr, Creative Commons

Based in the Washington, D.C. area, Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the IABC-accredited, award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, which specializes in “integrated communication to the nth degree.” In other words, she turns your communication conundrums into community cool. She blogs at Waxing UnLyrical

Yesterday we held our monthly #wgbiz Twitterchat where the special guest, as I mentioned last week, was YOU.

It was indubitably, positively, categorically, most excellent.

Did I get enough superlatives into that sentence?

Not that special guests aren’t great – they are, especially when they’re the likes of Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Kathy Korman Frey and Lori Saitz.

But it is equally refreshing to just chat among ourselves and share our collective learnings. Don’t you think?

Some of the gems from the chat included, on what they wish they’d known when starting their businesses:

Words of wisdom, if I ever heard them.

And I bet you’ve paid (or considered paying) several pesos or the equivalent to hear them from motivational speakers and business gurus.

And here, you get them for free!

You can view and download the entire transcript of #wgbiz Twitterchat – the YOU edition – if you’d like (we’d certainly recommend it).

And mark your calendars for our next chat – September 13, 12-1 pm ET.

It’s only a conversation if you join in!

Image: Mo, Creative Commons

Based in the Washington, D.C. area, Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the IABC-accredited, award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, which specializes in “integrated communication to the nth degree.” She blogs at Waxing UnLyrical, under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

A quick reminder that we hold our monthly #wgbiz Twitter chats the second Monday of each month, 12-1 pm ET.

We’ve had some great times since we kicked these off a few months ago: talking with Tinu Abayomi-Paul about inbound marketing, Lori Saitz about customer service, and Kathy Korman Frey aka Chief Hot Momma about what constitutes the new sisterhood of success.

This month, someone very special is going to be the guest.

YOU.

Image: Chris Owens, Creative Commons

That’s right. No special guests this month. We’re just going to let it all hang out and chat about whatever comes to mind as we discuss women entrepreneurs, the travails they face and who knows what else?

I do hope you’ll join. It’s easy: just log on to Twitter during that time and follow the #wgbiz hashtag to participate.

Have a great weekend!

Based in the Washington, D.C. area, Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the IABC-accredited, award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, which specializes in “integrated communication to the nth degree.” She blogs at Waxing UnLyrical, under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

Sister, Sister

If you’ve been following Women Grow Business or the #wgbiz hashtag, you’ll know that Kathy Korman Frey’s New Sisterhood of Success keynote at our first-ever WGB boot camp was a huge hit.

Image: (CC) Shashi Bellamkonda

So much so that we asked Kathy to be our guest on the monthly #wgbiz Twitterchat last week.

Again, Kathy didn’t disappoint. We had a terrific turnout, and the seeds of several mentoring relationships were sown, thanks to tweets such as these:

WTHashtag played nice, so we were able to download the transcript of the entire #wgbiz Twitterchat with Kathy; check it out.

#sisU… and YOU

Kathy recently announced the New Sisterhood of Success Boot Camp, a half-day event that will take place on October 9. Here’s the 4-1-1, as described on the event website:

Your Strategy: We all need a group of 5 supporters in our professional life if we are going to reach our potential. Period.

Your Mission: It is our obligation as women to pass on these lessons, and help other women and girls increase their self-confidence and opportunities.

1.  Understand the hard-hitting facts behind the value of women and girls in society, and the role we can play in bringing that value to the forefront.

2.  Learn how to build your group of “5″ (the magic number) professional supporters through a #sisU plan.

3.  Discover how to claim time in our daily lives for our #sisU plan (aka creating a little impenetrable oasis for ourselves).

4.  Pay it forward to others, creating a measurable and meaningful impact while helping women and girls.

5.  Learn about success factors for women and their careers, including research and solutions on balance, communication, prioritization, negotiation, and self-confidence, as taught in the award-winning Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership class at the George Washington University School of Business, Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence and featured in the Washington Post Magazine article ‘CEO of ME Inc.‘

Ready to rumble? I strongly suggest you do. Register for the New Sisterhood of Success Boot Camp (hashtag #sisU) here.

Based in the Washington, D.C. area, Women Grow Business editor Shonali Burke is the IABC-accredited, award-winning principal of Shonali Burke Consulting, which specializes in “integrated communication to the nth degree.” She blogs at Waxing UnLyrical, under the watchful eyes of Chuck, Suzy Q. and Lola, her three rescue dogs. Her long-suffering husband has accepted that Shonali can most often be found on Twitter.

With the first-ever Women Grow Business Boot Camp successfully behind us, I wanted to make sure you were able to access the resources even if you weren’t able to make it to the boot camp (there’s always the next time, right?).

So, here goes.

You can download several of the presentations from Network Solutions’ Slideshare account, and you’ll also find a complete contact list for speakers, sponsors and supporters (look under the “Documents” section).

Melanie Spring and Patricia Frame’s “Building Blocks” presentation is available here.

Kathy Korman Frey’s keynote presentation is available here. Kathy tells me it might look a little funky if you’re not viewing it in Internet Explorer because of a bug in Slideshare, so just a heads up on that.

Stacy Yamaoka of Yayastream did a great job with the live-stream; you can view her blog post and some of the archived recordings here.

And if you’re looking for a photographer, don’t forget to check out Aaron Thompson, who took terrific photos of the boot camp, including the one pictured above.

Here are some interesting posts we’ve seen following the event that opine on it, or reference it:

• Liz Scherer asks “Where’s your focus?“
• Mayra Ruiz shares what she learned at #wgbiz
• Marissa Levin discusses how to select the networking events that will meet your business objectives

We’d never have been able to pull this off had it not been for the sponsors – thank you, Network Solutions and Steptoe & Johnson – the speakers, contributors, volunteers… and everyone who supported the event, from tweeting about it, to showing up, to following the live-tweets (here’s the boot camp Twitter transcript).

You all rock.

Image: Aaron Thompson, used with permission

Shonali Burke is editor of Women Grow Business and one of the country’s leading business communicators, who was named to PRWeek’s inaugural top “40 Under 40″ list of US-based PR professionals. She specializes in creating and implementing integrated (online and off), results-based, measurable communication programs for clients both large and small at Shonali Burke Consulting. An accredited business communicator, she is also Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University’s M.A. in Communications program and active in the local communications community as President of IABC/DC Metro. Talk to her via her blog, Waxing UnLyrical or Twitter.

A great time was had last week on the Twitter chat with Beth Schillaci, one of the top 50 female bloggers and Founder and President of villageWorks Communications.

(That’s Beth getting ready for the chat, by the way; thanks to our own Shashi Bellamkonda for the great photo).

Beth shared her top tips to help business owners and entrepreneurs understand how blogging can help their business.  She also touched on what makes a blog post effective and how it can help tie your efforts on Facebook and Twitter together by being the “hub” of information about you and your company.  A recap of the chat can be found on Beth’s blog MarketingRoadHouse.com.

During the chat, it was announced that five Network Solutions blog hosting packages were being given away,  and we have winners!

Congratulations to: Shyam S. (@brandbull), Pam Bennett (@lotajune2), CB Whittemore (@CBWhittemore),  Jennifer Gerlock (@MommaMania) and Chris Keiff (@ckeiff)! You’ll be getting your coupons shortly!

We want to thank everyone who joined the conversation. And a special thanks to Beth and her “supervisor,” Little J, as well as a shout out to @newpr, @BenCookNS, @shashib for joining in the fun!

We’ll be giving you a “heads-up” on the next one coming in July, date TBD at this time.

More from:

• Me (!) on three questions to ask – and answer – when starting a Twitter chat
• How to get great SEO results with your small business blog from Grow Smart Business
• Deborah Ager tells you how to integrate your internet marketing tools for powerful results

Shonali Burke is editor of Women Grow Business and one of the country’s leading business communicators, who was named to PRWeek’s inaugural top “40 Under 40″ list of US-based PR professionals. She specializes in creating and implementing integrated (online and off), results-based, measurable communication programs for clients both large and small at Shonali Burke Consulting. An accredited business communicator, she is also Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University’s M.A. in Communications program and active in the local communications community as President of IABC/DC Metro. Talk to her via her blog, Waxing UnLyrical or Twitter.

Thinking of starting a blog? You don’t want to be “Lenny,” do you?

This will be a great resource for you; the upcoming Smallvolution Twitterchat on June 24 with Beth Schillaci, President and Founder of VillageWorks. Beth will share her learnings and expertise on how to blog effectively to market your small business.

Beth shares why she joined Network Solutions’ Smallvolution here:

Interested? Here’s what you need to do:

Log in to Twitter on June 24, from 1-2:30 pm ET, and simply follow/participate in the conversation using the #smallvolution hashtag. The easiest way is for you to participate via the dedicated chat room on Tweetchat.

Hope to see you there!

More:

• How College Admission Counselors is creating a Smallvolution (from Grow Smart Business, our brother blog)
• Deborah Ager on integrating your Internet marketing tools for powerful results

Image: HubSpot, Creative Commons

Shonali Burke is editor of Women Grow Business and one of the country’s leading business communicators, who was named to PRWeek’s inaugural top “40 Under 40″ list of US-based PR professionals. She specializes in creating and implementing integrated (online and off), results-based, measurable communication programs for clients both large and small at Shonali Burke Consulting. An accredited business communicator, she is also Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University’s M.A. in Communications program and active in the local communications community as President of IABC/DC Metro. Talk to her via her blog, Waxing UnLyrical or Twitter.

I’m still recovering

from the first-ever Women Grow Business Boot Camp, sponsored by Network Solutions and Steptoe & Johnson LLP, this past weekend. Though “recovering” is probably a poor choice of word; it was anything but draining. It was energizing, fun, empowering… I could go on and on.

Even for those of us who bond easily with other women, I don’t think we can quite imagine what it’s like to be in a roomful of women – around 100 or so on Saturday – all with a common goal: to be the best that they can be at their businesses and lives; and often the two overlap.

I started the day nervous but excited; even though we’d planned for pretty much every eventuality, you know Murphy’s Law has a way of insinuating itself just when you don’t need it to.

I ended the day exhausted, emotionally overloaded and literally tingling with the electricity generated by the women I had the great fortune to encounter during the entire experience of pulling the boot camp together.

Our terrific keynote speaker, Kathy Korman Frey, put it best, I think:

“I started the day excited, but unsure – as I am before every talk I give. I ended the day thinking, ‘These are women who could change the world, and probably will.’ Let this be a lesson to all women out there about how a couple of hours, and a room full of the right people, can change your day, your week, your year, and beyond.”

Image: (cc) Shashi Bellamkonda www.shashi.name | Social Media Swami | www.networksolutions.com

Much more to come in terms of information we want to share with all of you who weren’t there – after all, you are ALL our community – but for now, you can see the photos taken by our own Social Media Swami, Shashi Bellamkonda, here. Embedded below is the great keynote Kathy gave, and you can read her blog post here.

And if you’re serious about growing your business, you should sign up for the Sisterhood of Success webinar Kathy’s teaching this Wednesday.

You’ll come away feeling your eyes have just been opened. I guarantee it.

Shonali Burke is editor of Women Grow Business and one of the country’s leading business communicators, who was named to PRWeek’s inaugural top “40 Under 40″ list of US-based PR professionals. She specializes in creating and implementing integrated (online and off), results-based, measurable communication programs for clients both large and small at Shonali Burke Consulting. An accredited business communicator, she is also Adjunct Faculty at Johns Hopkins University’s M.A. in Communications program and active in the local communications community as President of IABC/DC Metro. Talk to her via her blog, Waxing UnLyrical or Twitter.