Career Women Coaching

Make Mine a Million $ Business (M3)

More than 8.3 million women-owned businesses from across the country will once  again have the opportunity to compete for the vital resources needed to grow into million dollar enterprises.

  The upcoming event is the latest evolution of the groundbreaking Make Mine a Million $ Business (M3) program and will act as a homecoming to past awardees who now own million-dollar companies.

Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence and American Express OPEN’s M3 1000 competition will take place July 31 at The Diana Center at Barnard College in New York City. Women entrepreneurs nationwide can apply to compete in this national program through the event date. To apply for the elevator pitch competition, please visit: http://www.makemineamillion.org/events. 

M3 1000 is designed to help women entrepreneurs strengthen their vision, build their strategy and take their businesses to a million dollars in revenue. Here’s how it works:

• Each participant will deliver a two-minute elevator pitch about their business, qualifications, and how they would benefit from the program
• All elevator pitches are given in front of a live audience and a panel of qualified judges
• Judges will select which of the participants will be named as pitch winners, who will receive prizes and then move on to the final round, to collect additional resources
• The pitch winners are required to submit full applications and company financial information for final consideration as M3 1000 awardees 

M3 1000 targets enterprises organized and conducting business in the United States with the following criteria:

• The business should be at least 50% owned by a woman who is a U.S. citizen or legal resident
• The company should be at least two years old and have annual revenues between $85,000 - $700,000
• The entrepreneur should be ready to grow her business to a million dollars within the next 18-24 months

Representatives from American Express OPEN and Count Me In are available to speak to how M3 1000 can help women entrepreneurs grow their businesses and add to the already existing 7.7 million Americans they employ and $1.3 trillion they contribute to the national economy. 

New self-coaching guide books for career women:

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

 John G. Agno: Women and Time

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

Society of Single Professionals

In the decade since Valerie Gibson published Cougar: A Guide for Older Women Dating Younger Men, the very notion of older women dating younger men has gained acceptance in popular culture, in part, due to the emergence of high-profile women—such as Demi Moore, Katie Couric, and the fictional character Samantha Jones on Sex and the City—who have no qualms about dating younger partners. "There is a new archetype that's emerging," says Amy Luna Manderino, the reigning Miss Cougar International. "There have always been free-thinking, vital women over the age of 40. The difference today is our numbers have reached a critical mass." Christine Lehtonen, a principal at Asterix Group, a marketing and advertising agency in San Francisco, says there are more women in the U.S. aged 51 than any other single age.

The ideal cougar—a Manolo Blahnik-wearing fortysomething with a fabulous Manhattan loft, fabulous friends, and a fabulous sexual appetite for younger men—is actually a media construction. Bridget Brennan, chief executive officer of the marketing firm Female Factor in Chicago, attests that "cougar" is simply the label society assigns financially independent divorcées. "Because I'm over 40, I have this special name," says Manderino. "We don't give men special names when they're over 40 and they date younger women."

The greater cougar industry has expanded into books (Dating a Cougar, Hot Cougar Sex, A Christian Cougar), television (real-life cougar Courtney Cox's Cougar Town and the reality-TV show The Cougar), and even the big screen. Four decades after Anne Bancroft introduced American viewing audiences to the phenomenon in The Graduate, the recently released Cougar Hunting follows a band of young men to Aspen on a quest for older women. Denise Richards, the former wife of Charlie Sheen, will try to resurrect her career as the star of Cougars, Inc., out this month.

Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek, May 16, 2011

Valerie Gibson: Cougar: A Guide For Older Women Dating Younger Men