It’s a Great Time to be a Female Entrepreneur!

BWC President Pamela Kan

As most of you know I am a second generation family member running Bishop-Wisecarver Corporation. My father, Bud Wisecarver, started the business decades ago. I began work here on April 1, 1991. That’s no joke — I thought it would be a temporary job but the business got into my blood and I stayed on. I became the president in May of 2000 and then I became the majority owner at the end of 2009.

Becoming a majority owner set me on my quest of becoming a WBENC certified woman owned business. This was more of an endeavor than I realized. Having more than 60 years of company history made the application process quite daunting. At times I was honestly pretty frustrated. But in the end, the process means you receive a certification that is vetted and respected.

Unfortunately I received certification just after the annual WBENC meeting last year. So I was very excited to be able to attend this year’s conference. It was held just a few weeks ago in Orlando, Florida. Anytime you put thousands of women in the same ballroom it is bound to be a good time — and it was!

Thank goodness for the first-timers orientation programs. I went to them all and I started to really see the potential and opportunities that certification provides. Selling into the supplier diversity channel is a whole other world — language, protocols and paperwork. But it is worth learning, because the opportunities to tap into the supply chain for these major corporations and government entities are extremely exciting.

The business fair was really a great experience. I got really good at pitching my company. My hat off to sales people. That is hard to do all day long! Working this channel as a manufacturer was really rewarding. There just are not a lot of us, and even fewer who are certified. I was very popular with the corporate partners in attendance. I strongly recommend that women in the manufacturing and technology sectors look at the benefits of becoming WBENC certified.

From my point of view, there is nothing but up-side potential just waiting to be tapped.

Go Out and Exercise ... Your Right to Vote

Today is the primary vote in the state of California. Since I have turned 18, no matter where I have lived, I have never missed a single vote. I am extremely passionate about people exercising their right to vote partly because of a trip to Europe I took with my mother in 1976.

Growing up, I was extremely lucky to have the experience of having students and young adults from around the world live with my family — Brazil, Italy, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Costa Rica and Iran. It was a great to hear how other people lived and thought about their countries and the USA.

In 1976, my mother and I did a tour of Europe and visited several of these visitors. In Germany we were taken to the border of East and West Germany. It was a profound and terrifying experience. 

Here is what I remember: I looked across a field that led into the forest. In the field I was told there were land mines. To my left and my right were guard towers. Each guard tower had two guards carrying rifles with scopes. Several times while standing on the West German side the guards would point their guns at us and watch us through their scopes. In front of me was a tall barbed wire fence, electrified, and every 25 to 30 feet along the top of that were motion sensitive guns. After that fence was the “free zone” of about 10 to 15 feet. Finally, closest to me, was a short chain link fence for the boarder of West Germany.

It was a life changing experience for me — to see a country literally fence its citizens in under force. I could not even image living under such conditions. I realized then that I lived in a very special country. I am not saying that the USA doesn’t make mistakes; it has and will continue to do so I am sure. But I still feel strongly that it is the greatest land of freedom and opportunity in the world.

Seeing that fence also makes me against the building of a wall/fence between the US and Mexico. Who's to say how that border gets used in the future? That is one risk I am not willing to take. There are so many other ways to deal with immigration besides building a physical barrier — but I digress.

The common excuse I hear is I don’t want to be an uninformed vote. I really don’t buy this as an excuse. There are so many resources to use now with the internet to get educated on both sides of an issue I just can’t buy that. Spend 20 minutes less on Facebook, YouTube or Pinterest and get the facts.

I am so disappointed in how few people vote in this country. A right that was so hard fought for by our founding fathers and many civil leaders in this country. A right that still today many people both male and especially female do not have in other places around the world. A right you can see people literally dying for on the evening news, yet most Americans can’t be bothered with taking a few minutes out of the lives once or twice a year to do. 

I think so much of this has to do with that fact that even though Forbes reports record holdings of passports by US citizens — now at one-third, which has doubled from 2000 — most US citizens have never really seen for themselves how much of the rest of the world lives. They do not really get what a good thing we have going here in American. They don’t understand how precious their right to vote really is in the scope of world dynamics.

As we get closer to our national elections there will be endless stories with poling numbers. I always have a hard time getting excited about anything the talking heads are predicting because how many of those people are actually going to vote? Even in the 2008 elections we only achieved a 63 percent voter rate, meaning that almost 40 percent of those who could vote did not. Shameful. 

I also hold to one rule, if you don’t vote you can’t complain around me. You have zero, zilch, zip no credibility in complaining if you did not even take the time to go and vote.

For those of you who are Californians, go vote today. If your primary is coming up, take the time to educate yourself and vote. Come November, it would be a wonderful thing for our country if we all cast our votes for those candidates and causes we believe will make our country an even better place to live.

Top 10 Reasons Why I Love Supporting FIRST

Here are my top reasons for supporting FIRST® — my company has been an official program sponsor since 2007, and I recently attended the 2012 championship in St. Louis, MO with part of the BWC team.

1. Kids learn how to work productively in groups
2. Creating a functional robot from a bunch of parts is pretty darn exciting
3. Kids learn why they want to stay in school
4. STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) matters
5. Girls get a chance to get actively involved in STEM
6. Yes, girls can grow up to own and run engineering/manufacturing companies
7. Raising money for something you believe in is a great skill
8. How you play the game can be as important as winning the game — gracious professionalism
9. Being smart, creative, nerdy or geeky is cool
10. Dean Kamen is my kind of rock star!

Psst — Get the infographic my creative team made about this year's program... we've got a PDF download on our website. Check is out and let me know what you think!

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We’re Fools For Being Number One

Just in time for April Fools, on April 1, the United States became the country with the highest corporate tax rate in the world. This was triggered by Japan reducing their rate. As cited by The Daily Caller, “Our top corporate tax rate has hovered at 35 percent for years. Meanwhile, other countries have gotten the message that lowering corporate taxes encourages growth. Canada has engaged in a series of cuts, ultimately reducing its corporate rate to 15 percent. Great Britain recently announced it will drop its corporate tax to 24 percent next month and then 22 percent by 2014.”

I know some of you are going to say, well what about all those big companies that pay no taxes? Well you are right. The effective tax rate for the large companies drops us to about sixth highest in the world, according to some economic pundits. The problem is that most companies are not operating like those big guys and it is the small and medium size businesses that are really the economic engine of our country. When you figure that most small business are filing as S corps, then I have heard that the effective tax rate could be as high as 50 percent.

In my state it is even worse since California is broke. There is no plan in sight to create any sort of economic development. Instead we pass the most stringent environmental laws IN THE WORLD that cost billions to California based businesses. Now we have two proposals to increase income taxes, once again, a direct hit to all those small businesses that file as S corps.

For those of you who complain about U.S. jobs moving off-shore, this tax burden is a huge part of that equation, along with the fact that US companies carry about a 20 percent regulatory cost burden above any other country in the world.

Personally, I would love to see the tax loop holes closed up and a movement toward a flatter tax rate. There is definitely a problem when I am in a meeting to discuss tax issues for small business and the two IRS representatives can’t even agree on what the tax law is or how it should be applied.

I know this is a hot topic right now, so share your creative ideas on how you would solve our country’s tax code problems and once again make us competitive with the rest of the world.

Someone help! Is there a machinist in the house?

I fly often, and often enough, that I have actually been on several flights where the call for a medical expert had been requested. The good news has always been that the call was answered in each of these instances.

As many of you know I get pretty passionate about the state of manufacturing in the United States, sided with a deep care for STEM education opportunities we are providing for our kids. The fact that as a nation we tend to no longer value skilled labor is a crime. It has severely affected our ability to remain the largest manufacturing economy in the world, but more disturbing, is that we have limited the opportunities for our children to exploit their talents and entrepreneurial spirit.

I was recently listening to some talking heads on television that said manufacturing was dead because we are now about the use of technology. What an ignorant statement! But unfortunately that is the belief still held by too many Americans. They still think of manufacturing like it existed in the days of Henry Ford — dirty, low wages, oppressive environments, relying on massive amounts of unskilled labor. We have come so far from that!

Almost every machine on my production and machining floor is run by a computer. Guess what, computers don't program themselves. Someone has to write the program that can create the final part needed, and if that’s for a multi spindle or axis machine, that starts to get fairly complicated.

Making chips fly and producing something out of raw materials is an art form as well as a technical skill and we are losing both at an alarming rate in this country.

The impact of this really hit home during my last quarterly sales meeting with my regional sales managers. As each one reported on their top priorities, they talked about the key issues with each customer and what was needed for the project to go to production. Over and over I heard them report that customers can't find the skilled labor they require to make their product. Granted, this is more than just machinists; their request for help includes needed support from mechanical engineers, CAD specialists, technical sales people, protection workers, programmers etc.

How sad that with the rate of unemployment we have in this country, we still don't have the skill sets we need to capitalize on the manufacturing opportunities we have available. How scary it is that when we call out for skilled and technical employees, the response is mostly silence.

Shame on us.

Have You Thanked Your Mentors Lately?

In the spirit of National Mentoring Month in January I spent time looking back, thinking about the people that helped shape me into who I am today. This is by no means a complete list but I found this exercise really interesting. It would be great if I could somehow thank all of these people for their help along the way.

Bud Wisecarver – My dad. He taught me several great lessons. First off – do what you love. If you really love what you are doing it isn’t really work. To this day my Dad, at 84, is still working four days a week. I saw firsthand the value of being a hard worker and being dedicated to your craft. He was always telling me, “A job worth doing is worth doing well.” He also told me all the time that, “The machine is only as good as the operator.” I could write a whole other blog on that one!

Mrs. Black – My kindergarten and fifth grade teacher. This woman just got me, and she understood how to support me but challenge me at the same time. I was so lucky to have such an amazing teacher twice. She made me feel normal and OK with who I was at the time. Not an easy task. She was really the first person to tell me it was OK for a girl to be smart and express her opinions. Boy, did she open the floodgates!

Mr. Costello – My high school teacher. He was known campus-wide as the toughest teacher the school had on staff (an ex-military guy with really strict rules of conduct in his classroom).  No one escaped their homework duties in his class. He taught me the value of doing your homework, being prepared, and that I did not always need to express that I know the answer. That was tough to learn and I think I still struggle with not always sharing the answer or expressing my opinions.  It was the start of learning how to read your audience and adjust your style.

Coco Chanel – Designer. Obviously I never met her, but Coco's story has always been one that I admired. She really did liberate women in so many ways and was comfortable in just being true to herself and her craft. I am thankful every day for her, and the fact that women wear knits and that's it's okay to be comfortable in your clothes. She was also a masterful marketer and her brand is just as strong now as when she was alive. Coco was the brand but she created a business that was able to live beyond her, just as strong and true to her original ideas. She was truly an early adopter of ideas and technology and she used that to her advantage.

Madame Curie – Scientist. Another person I never met but admire. When I learned about her, it changed how I thought about science. I fell in love with chemistry, and she made me feel okay that I loved my science classes. The realities of college level math took that career off the table for me but I still find the sciences fascinating.

Jane Goodall – Anthropologist. I haven't met her in person but have heard her speak many times, and after my dreams in chemistry died, I turned to anthropology. My focus was cultural and linguistic but I was inspired by all that Jane did with her work. Like my father, Jane really lives through her work, and her research was game changing for the science of anthropology.

In my time with Bishop-Wisecarver, I have been really blessed to have several fabulous mentors. I currently have an advisory board that helps to mentor me every quarter and challenge me to grow in ways that better refine my skills. We all have so many people in our lives, that when we take the time to look back, we realize who helped shape us and change the course of our lives for the better.

I feel lucky to now have the resources to help do that for the next generation through the company’s support of local science and tech fairs. I am proud of our on-going support of FIRST robotics and other STEM based programs.  If I can help keep one student engaged in school, I have served a purpose. If I have helped one student feel it is a true and valuable skill to be able to work with your hands and make things, I have served a purpose. I hope more people take the time to focus on the upcoming generations by passing on their skills and knowledge because it is the most important asset we all can share.

Is Your Baby Ugly?

I recently sat in on a session led by Tim Ash of Site Tuners, who opened up the session by stating, “The baby is ugly.” Well, that got everyone’s attention. Tim went on to say that so many of us are so emotionally tied to our websites that we can’t objectively admit when they aren't working anymore.

We had just launched an update to our own website, and as Tim went through his seven deadly sins I had to confess to myself that we violated several of his concepts.  I realized that he is right in so many cases about the real functionality of most sites. Too many sites are built by designers to look pretty, but are terrible when it comes to the usability of the customer. 

It made me wonder if many of the same truths apply to social media. You always hear that "content is king.” I agree that rich, relevant content is crucial, but as I scan my Tweetdeck channels I see so many that post things only relevant to them. Is that really what followers want to read over and over? I think not. I also struggle with how to post the right content for all the different types of followers I have on Twitter. I think, like with websites, that some people have to admit their 140 characters just look ugly — no call to action, bad or broken links, strange shortening and poor content.

So, for 2012 I am taking off my rose colored glasses and making an effort to really look at our online marketing from our customer’s point of view. I hope we can consistently birth beautiful babies!