Ashley Milne-Tyte

Entrepreneurship diaries 7: female entrepreneurs

June 28, 2012

I've spent quite a bit of time lately focusing on getting interviews for the fifth episode of The Broad Experience - this show will be on female entrepreneurship. I reported on this during the winter, but since then there has been a lot of talk about how female entrepreneurship is rising fast (your take on this depends on how you interpret the data) as well as a flurry of tweets and articles with a 'you go girl' flavor. Being a Brit and a journalist, I'm doubly uncomfortable with the gooey, encouraging tweets, even if they are well meant. But I am fascinated to talk to women who have gone out on their own, learn about their experiences and find out why they're choosing this route to success. The question is, how many of them will grow into multi-million-dollar companies? Should they have to? Most women-owned businesses stay small and are often termed 'lifestyle businesses', which somehow sounds demeaning, even though balancing work and the rest of life is exactly why these women opt out of traditional employment. My research led me to finding myself one of the guests of the Kauffman Foundation at an elegant dinner recently, where high-growth female entrepreneurship was the topic under discussion (Kauffman is trying to encourage more women business owners to focus on growth so they can hire more people and fuel the economy). I'm off to the the We Own It summit tomorrow - again, women business owners making a lot of money is its focus. Today I talked to Amanda Pouchot of The Levo League, the new job/social media site for ambitious Gen Y women. Really looking forward to blending her, Jackie Baptist of the film She Means Business, Lesa Mitchell of the Kauffman Foundation and journalist/media entrepreneur Manoush Zomorodi into the next show.

I'm also teacing at Columbia J-School on Sundays at the moment and researching a couple of radio stories. And sweating it out in the 90-degree NYC heat.

Entrepreneurship diaries 6: I am my own best friend

June 17, 2012

That line comes from a song in 'Chicago', one of the musicals I was brought up on. I can’t remember all the lyrics but I know they’re about being self-sufficient, although in Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart’s case the reasons had to do with double-crossing, back-stabbing guys and other vicissitudes of life in Prohibition-era Chicago.

My own journey is rather more pedestrian (at least so far), but lately I find I keep humming the tune to myself as I think about what I’m doing. It comes down to this: only I am going to make this happen. It all depends on how much effort I myself devote to this project and the extent to which I can happily carry on in the face of discouragement. I can’t take my foot off the gas just because I’m feeling a bit tired or fed up. When J Crowley - entrepreneur and brother of Dennis Crowley of Foursquare - came to talk to my entrepreneurial journalism class a couple of months ago, his parting words were, ‘Get used to being lonely.’ Despite my last entrepreneurship diaries post on pressing forward with my venture despite the odds, the reality has kicked in in the last couple of weeks. It can feel overwhelming to maintain the  juggling act of proceeding with my regular journalistic life on the one hand (pitching stories, working on them, preparing for a teaching gig) and working on what seem like the scores of things I should be doing every day to give The Broad Experience its best chance of growing an audience and gaining funding. Writers like Jonathan Yates, author of Freesourcing, and Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, talk about the difference between having an idea and actually turning it into reality. OK, done that. But then you have rev up your engines to approach organizations about distribution and sponsorship, to promote the show every way you can, and much else besides. These are among the many things I feel I should be doing to help The Broad Experience get its voice heard. And sometimes at the end of days when I haven’t done half what I say I will, I feel utterly defeated and frustrated with myself for not achieving more. But when you're a one-woman band and something crops up, you can easily be derailed for a few hours trying to sort it out (oh for an IT department!) All this is indeed a very solitary occupation, and can feel even more lonely when you live on your own, so I'm doing more networking than I ever have before. That's something I undervalued in my previous life, but which I'm now finding highly rewarding on various levels. I leave each event or meeting buzzing with ideas. Now all I need is enough time to implement them.

The Broad Experience, episode 4: getting ahead

June 10, 2012

In the latest episode of The Broad Experience, I talk to two successful women about what it takes to get ahead. The first, Heather McGregor, owns her own headhunting company in London, but more importantly (to this Financial Times reader, at least) she writes a weekly FT column under the pen name Mrs. Moneypenny. I've been reading it for years, and also recently finished her book 'Sharpen Your Heels: Mrs. Moneypenny's Career Advice for Women'. She and my second interviewee, Joanna Barsh of McKinsey, share some views on what women need to do to get to the top, but differ quite a bit when it comes to the topic of the glass ceiling. Joanna has been with McKinsey for 30 years and co-wrote the company's latest report on women and the workplace. Tune in for 12 minutes and let me know what you think. 

Portrait of an environmental champion

June 8, 2012

Read here. Appears on Catalysta.org.

I first met mechanical system engineer Henry Gifford several years ago when I was working on a story for Marketplace about why New York apartments are so overheated. Anyone who lives here knows that especially in older buildings you can grow tomatoes in your kitchen in January. It's really uncomfortable and a huge waste of energy as apartment dwellers throw their windows open to get the temperature down from the 80s. 

Back then Henry explained to me just how steam heat works, or doesn't work, and its part in the problem (sounds fascinating, I know, but these things matter when you're sweltering). I interviewed him again more recently, but this time the subject was him and how he'd come to be such a passionate campaigner for and creator of more energy efficient buildings. Who would have guessed that a love of biking fueled his interest in boilers?