Behold the Power: One Blog Can Make a Statement
In 2004, I became an entrepreneur for the first time. Back then, I could count on one hand how many other female founders I knew. After a while, though, something cool happened: The number of women around us started to double, then triple, and then more than quadruple. It wasn’t just in our little group, but everywhere.
The same year (2007) that boasted a solid female presidential candidate (Hillary) and the first African American president (Barack) was also a booming one for women’s entrepreneurship. It’s not just a big shift for the times, but also for our gender.
Women were at the front desk in the 80s, the corner office in the 90s, and the CEO rank in the 2000s. Today, we create and own the whole operation.
It’s enormous. I had been researching the trend as part of a project when The New Power Girls series on my Huffington Post blog came to fruition. One of the reasons I became an entrepreneur was to use my work to inspire social change. A big element of this lately has been the hope to combat the negative image of women in the media, and even more so, show media business that it can make money doing it by creating projects around it. It was sparked in part by the conversations among hundreds of thousands of women online, and the fact that in 2007, we couldn’t find a single positive female role model to appear at an event for girls ages 8-12.
After a brainstorm session over dinner with a friend, The New Power Girls series on my Huffington Post blog was born as part of this effort.
In just a few short weeks, the subscriber list of women entrepreneurs has quadrupled - twice. My email in box is so full of interest in the series I haven’t been able to keep up with it.
That’s the power of this moment in time, for all of us. If you’ve ever wanted to be heard, share a message, inspire others or truly drive an initiative, the climate has never been greater. Participant Media is an excellent example of what can be done with this newfound access. That’s where the inspiration came in part for my efforts in media business.
The platform once owned by the media and big business alone is now wide open for anybody who wants it. The question is, what can social entrepreneurs do with it? For me, seeing the popularity of the series energized what I know can be possible: That you can expand people’s horizons and deliver a big message from just one blog.
Patricia Handschiegel is a serial entrepreneur who creates projects in media, entertainment and internet business with an eye on the greater goal of using business to inspire social change.
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