Join a new community of women entrepreneurs

I (Simonne) am very excited about a trip to Guildford on Tuesday 19th November to speak at an event with the Hub Dot. It would be great if you could join us.

Connecting through Children
A coffee morning unlike anything you’ve seen before

Tuesday 19th November
9.30am PROMPT ‘til 11.30am
at Anthropologie,
149 High Street Guildford,GU1 3AD

Tickets are £10 and must be purchased in advance.

I connected with Simona Barbieri, the founder of The Hub Dot through a client of mine and felt an immediate resonance with her and the refreshing approach of her concept. We felt a synergy - both of us coming from, what she described as, a 'soulful business’ perspective.

Simona started the Hub Dot last year when she was looking for a new approach to networking where women could come together and support each other and, most importantly, meet for real, rather than in an online environment. So she sent out an email to friends, family and colleagues inviting them to her house for an informal coffee morning.
To help people engage with each other, she created the concept of wearing coloured dots, denoting not who you are but how you would like to engage. 
For example, a red dot means “I’m established – whether in business, career or motherhood – please feel free to ask more”; a yellow dot means “I have an idea, can anyone help”. By wearing any combination of five coloured dots, participants had an easy way in to conversations without anyone labeled or categorised.
The first event was a phenomenal success and since then Hub Dot has snowballed into an international community of inspiring businesswomen, with regular events in London and Naples and more planned for other major cities. 
Events are of very different shapes and sizes, but all use the same formula of the coloured dots and a range of speakers, who speak for just a few minutes – not selling their brand but sharing their stories with honesty and integrity and a great sense of fun.
I’m delighted to be able to be a part of it, and if you’re in the Guildford area next Tuesday please register to join us:
Tickets are £10 and must bepurchased in advance.
If you’re not, do check out the films on the Hub Dot website for a taste of these upbeat and uplifting occasions.
Thanks. Simonne Gnessen  Simonne@financial-coaching.co.uk

How banks discriminate against female customers

Just imagine.

You’ve got an exciting and bomb-proof proposal for a start-up and approach your bank for investment. Later you find out that you were:

-       asked more questions

-       offered less money

-       ask to provide higher collateral

than a male applicant approaching the same lender. Because you are female.

I'm pregnant, not brain-dead.

That’s just one of the findings in a new report published today by Noreena Hertz who is based at Duisenberg School of Finance, RSM, Erasmus University and University of Cambridge. She also reveals how women are refused mortgages, and their business acument is called into question, if they are pregnant.

Professor Hertz’s key findings include:

-        Evidence in the UK of banks discriminating against pregnant women and women on maternity leave seeking mortgages. This seems to be an ongoing industry-wide practice, with a number of leading UK high street banks named.

-        Evidence in Europe of banks discriminating against women entrepreneurs. Research suggests women are being asked for more collateral than men for loans, being charged higher interest rates and being refused loans more frequently than men.

-        Evidence of gender stereotyping by bank loan officers internationally. Examples of this include women entrepreneurs being questioned significantly more often than male applicants whether they have undertaken sufficient research into their business, and pregnant women being assumed by lending officers not to return to work after having a child.

The report asks banks to think carefully about whether their staff may be negatively stereotyping women, either consciously or unconsciously, and to take measures to address this. 

And it points out that the UK government has a responsibility to investigate this type of discrimination, which contravenes the United Nations Convention dictat on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Equality Act of 2010. 

In fact it states that the government is legally obliged to take action after the disclosure of such discrimination, and such action would mean prosecuting the banks found guilty of such practice and compensating those who have been discriminated against.

Recently David Cameron could be heard pontificating about entrpreneurship being the ‘only strategy’ by which the UK economy could achieve significant growth. 

He also highlighted the need for entrepreneurs to have access to credit from banks in order to thrive. 

I wonder if he was aware that such access would be strongly influenced by the applicant’s gender?

You can download Professor Hertz's full report here.

Where’s a safe haven for your money?

Simonne gives some wise advice about savings:

We all want to sleep soundly knowing our money's safe....

The world’s stock markets continue to take up too many column inches, and it’s difficult not to worry about how your investments will weather the financial storm. 

So where do you stash your cash when there’s such turmoil the world over?

Investing in stocks and shares still makes sense if you’re happy to put away your money for the long term – in financial speak, that means at least 5 years, preferably longer. One approach to reduce the risk is to drip your money in over a period of months, rather than investing a lump sum and hoping for the best. If you’re worried about the recent turmoil in stock markets, watch this episode of Meaningful Money, with Pete Matthews offering sound advice.

But what if you don’t want to tie up your money for that long? 

Or you’re looking for less risk? Savings accounts are one way to go, but with interest rates so low what other options are there? Here’s are some:

Fixed Interest Savings Accounts If you’re prepared to tie up your cash savings for a fixed term like three, four or five years, you’re likely to get better returns than from ordinary instant-access savings accounts. The Money Advice Service offers some guidelines about getting the most from your savings accounts.

Social Lending This is a peer-to-peer arrangement, so you’ll be lending to individuals rather than to conventional institutions such as banks. The aim is to get a better rate than you would with a bank, but with that comes extra risk. The companies that manage this type of lending are not currently regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and your capital isn’t protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, as it would be with an authorised firm. But there are methods used to control and minimise the risk to lenders. So you’ll need to weigh up the chance of a higher rate of interest with the increased risk and lower protection. Popular social lending sites include Zopa, RateSetter and Quakle. The Consumers Association, Which?, has a good review of some of the main social lending sites.

Inflation-proofed savings National Savings Certificates used to provide a guaranteed, tax-free interest above inflation and were in great demand, but sadly the door closed to new business early last month. Since then we’ve seen a few banks/building societies offering something similar, including the Post Office. But these accounts aren’t backed by the government and interest earned above inflation is taxable. However, if you hold no more than £85,000 in any one banking institution, your savings are protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. And they offer a fixed rate of interest above inflation. The accounts currently available tie up your money for a fixed term. A good review of the current selection of savings accounts linked to inflation can be found on SavvyWoman, Sarah Pennell’s, website.

Regular savings accounts If you can commit to save a fixed amount for a fixed term - usually 12 months - there are better rates around, as much as 8% a year, compared to say 3% in a high-interest account. Savings may be limited to £250 per month, though, and you might not be able to access to your money for the whole fixed term. Moneysupermarket is one of a number of comparison sites, which help you weigh up different regular savings accounts currently on the market.

If you’ve got a lump sum of cash to deposit, you could make use of a regular savings account. Run one alongside a high interest savings account, making a monthly transfer from the high interest account to regular savings account, which should increase your overall return.

Structured products have increased in popularity since the credit crunch. They’re usually promoted as a safe way of investing money where you benefit from the upside of the stock market without risking the downside. Typically, your money is tied up for five or six years. At maturity, you get a proportion of the stock market return over that term, and your money back if the stock market has fallen. But be careful, and take time to read the small print. The ‘capital guarantee’ (the getting your money back bit) usually applies only if the market hasn’t fallen below a certain level. This means that if markets fall dramatically, you could lose a big chunk of your original investment. The product may also be backed by different organisations and if the sponsor goes bust, you could lose all your money. Moneyweek’s video warns about their risks.

If you want more advice on savings and some financial coaching, see Simonne's website.

Male entrepreneurs using social networks as an extension of the boardroom

Should a woman behave more like a man to make it to the top?

How much are male and female traits visible through social networks such as Twitter?

Here are a couple of tweets, one from a male and one from a female entrepreneur. Can you tell which is which?

I feel very sorry for you on the score last night! Want a tissue?

Just heard a fab quote re the role of a parent “our job is to give children the courage to go out into the world & a home to come back to”

OK, so it was dead easy to spot. The first was from a man and the second from a woman. 

But is that generally true of male and female entrepreneur tweeters or do female entrepreneurs have to emulate male traits? 

My team at the University of Hertfordshire have been busy researching just that…..

We analysed nearly 5,000 tweets from twelve influential entrepreneurs over one-month. 

Our results showed that male entrepreneurs tend to use social networking sites to compete and dominate whilst women use them to build networks.

We also showed that men ‘tweet’ about business 46% more than women.

In fact even their more casual conversations involve business. So they really do have one-track minds. A business track.

And when it comes to blatant self-promotion, the males again come out as the top tweeters.

They do a lot more of blowing their own trumpets, sounding off 61% more self-promotional tweets than their female counterparts.

Female tweets are more supportive, friendly and more lifestyle-y.

In fact the female entrepreneurs put out more than twice as many tweets about their non-business life than men. 

These top women also tweeted 77% more supportive and conversational content than males. They were more likely to join in an on-line chat, respond to others with a friendly comment or messages of support.

It seems from these new findings that men are using social media as an extension of the board room or the sports field - where they typically like to lead the competition and dominate. 

Women seem to use social media far less aggressively, using it more socially to build contacts and network with people, as is often the case in the ‘real world’. Yet many are matching their male entrpreneurial counterparts when it comes to generating wealth.

The top 5 entrepreneurs by how much they tweeted in one month (Jan-Feb 2011) are below. They have an estimated combined wealth of £1.28billion*

1. 

             1. Michelle Mone 1,030 tweets
2.    Lord Sugar 965 tweets
3.    Duncan Bannatyne 660 tweets
4.    Theo Paphitis 505 tweets
5.    Martha Lane Fox 275 tweets

*  According to data from the Sunday Times Rich List 2010 excluding Michelle Mone worth estimated £50m from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/12/michelle-mone-lingerie-71-degrees-north Martha Lane Fox estimated £20m http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/net-multimillionaire-martha-lane-fox-seriously-injured-in-car-crash-in-morocco-562168.html

  

·       The University of Hertfordshire was awarded the Times Higher Education ‘Entrepreneurial University of the Year 2010’