I love hearing about other people’s plans. Thank you for sharing! I’ve been busy working on my strategic plan for 2010 and some of my goals are to improve She Takes on the World and expand the site with more content and feature posts by successful women. I will also be launching The Women’s Business Academy to help women launch successful businesses. I’m super-pumped for the year ahead!

The winner of the free copy of New Year, New You is Alex Gorbokon. Best wishes for 2010! Let me know if there’s anything I can do to be part of your success.
[rq=1822634,0,blog][/rq]Female Athletes Taking on the World

Having left the inertia behind (by leaving my job) I plan to use 2010 to discover a new direction. This includes making new contacts through friends, informational interviews, networking events, etc. Also I plan to work with a career coach to discuss what some good options might be.Overall, my plan is simply to be open to and available for new opportunities.

Thanks for another great post, Natalie. I agree with Alexandra that the worst enemy in discovering meaningful work is inertia. I got “stuck” a few years ago in an industry that wasn’t taking me anywhere professionally. Just got too comfortable and stayed too long. Through a series of (seemingly) fateful events and a lot of calculated risk-taking and a healthy dose of stubborn determination, I am now doing work (design and marketing communications) that I love. It took a lot to get here, but it was so worth it. It’s completely changed my career (and my life) and has opened up a path that I wasn’t able to see before.

In 2010, I plan to push even further into my new career, learning everything I can, finding challenges, learning from my mistakes, and becoming great at what I do.

I really enjoy your blog, Natalie — keep up the good work!

Thank you, Natalie, for an insightful interview with Alexandra… and Alexandra, congratulations on yet another wonderful book that no doubt will help many, many people in 2010 and beyond!

I was particularly struck by this question from Natalie: “I thought it was interesting that of all the people you asked why they wanted to change careers, the number one reason was to become self-employed. What does it take to successfully transition from working for a company to working for yourself?”

During 2010 – this is something I’d love to explore in my writing & speaking work, specifically understanding more about the personal finance habits of successfully self-employed women… and what all working women can learn from them.

In about an hour, I am going to meet with my business coach, Jennifer Davidson of Reality Check Coaching, to brainstrorm how I am going to bring my authentic self to my new website. I am a financial planner specializing in privately held women owned businesses. i am thrilled to bring my own values into my practice which include community involvement and philanthropy. After that, i am meeting with my friend Della Rae to set up my side business, Contact Kim, which is a personalized matchmaking service. I have learned (the hard way!) that the best way to grow one’s business and expand all possibility to “Take on the World” is to find great advocates (and friends) who will be honest with you about EVERYTHING, including dress, voice and approach.

I love this blog! So many like-minded women entrepeneurs on here! I am inspired to upgrade my art/design business (www.sandrabdesigns.com) with more products and to be much better with bookkeeping which is not my best skill. Just like everything else, you must do a little bit every day and also have an organized system in place. I am already forming habits such as reviewing my bank accounts first thing every morning rather than my email, having it set as my internet home page helps a lot to remind me to stay right on top of things. I also live in Maine and work with horses, two challenging avenues to make money…..let’s face it horses were meant for royalty for a reason! But I have also started my own blog about the training I do with my horses and hope to have a successfull blog like this someday!! Thanks again for such a great blog!
[rq=1685905,6,blog][/rq]Training Douwe-Part 1

My career plans for 2010 are to stay organized. Many people people make resolutions and as Alexandra points out, don’t keep them because they are hard to achieve. My strategy for the new year is to start fresh – clean out my office, clean up my RSS feeds, update my Twitter account (following and followers)…and just stay super organized. Lots of advice out there, but this is what works for me.
[rq=1678405,0,blog][/rq]alexgorbokon: G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S ed cals.