Angela Vithoulkas

Mummy, Mum, Mother

May 12th, 2013 | Author: Angela Vithoulkas

Mummy, Mum, Mother was first published on Women in Focus.

Women in Focus is a website and initiative by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It is a place for women to be inspired, informed and connected with other women in business in Australia and around the world. Angela Vithoulkas, CEO of VIVO Cafe Group, radio broadcaster of Eagle Waves Radio, public speaker and Councillor of the City of Sydney, will be the Guru on the Business Beat section and will be providing weekly articles on all things small business.

These three variations on the same word show the evolution of how I have responded to my mother over the years. As a very young child, it was always the pleas for “mummy”, from a cry of pain or a complaint about my brother or a demand of some kind. As a teen, it was the groan of “mum”, a long drawn out sort of “you have no idea what you are talking about” name. Then, there is the graduation of superiority and the arrogance of “mother”. Finally, I know everything because I just do and that’s that.

I have had the extreme privilege of having the greatest business woman in the world being my mentor my whole life, my mother. A woman, who arrived in Australia at the age of sixteen, had no English language skills and no family. She certainly never had a mentor of her own or a mother that she could look up to. She faced challenges and, as a young woman, lived through some of the most horrible personal moments that she still can’t talk about publicly. However, this has never let that stop her. In fact, I’m not sure a technology has been invented yet that could stop her and she is now seventy-two.

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I Don’t Do Time

May 8th, 2013 | Author: Angela Vithoulkas

I don’t do Time was first published on Women in Focus.

Women in Focus is a website and initiative by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It is a place for women to be inspired, informed and connected with other women in business in Australia and around the world. Angela Vithoulkas, CEO of VIVO Cafe Group, radio broadcaster of Eagle Waves Radio, public speaker and Councillor of the City of Sydney, will be the Guru on the Business Beat section and will be providing weekly articles on all things small business.

I’m too busy, I’m flat out, there aren’t enough hours in the day, my diary is jammed, I have no work life balance, I wish I had more time, I wish I could get more done, I’m too tired, I HAVE NO TIME.

If you haven’t heard any or all of these before from either you or others then I can only assume you have no human contact on a regular basis. I have no problem putting my hand up first here and saying that this type of internal and external conversation used to take place on very regular intervals for me. Until I became so busy that time no longer made sense. I know there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day. Oh, and I was very aware of the fact that there are seven days in a week. But none of that helped.

Let me paint a picture of what my “schedule” can be. I own several businesses including a café, a small business radio station which broadcasts live, I blog here for Women in Focus, I have speaking engagements AND I am an elected City of Sydney Councillor. So basically, I added a full time job to my three other full time jobs. Immediately, I was being asked “how are you going to do it?” Then it went into “how do you cope and get it all done?” And the final straw that broke and enlightened the camel’s back was “where do you find the time?”

That’s my all time favourite.

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Respectfully Retrospect

April 16th, 2013 | Author: Angela Vithoulkas

Respectfully Retrospect was first published on Women in Focus.

Women in Focus is a website and initiative by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It is a place for women to be inspired, informed and connected with other women in business in Australia and around the world. Angela Vithoulkas, CEO of VIVO Cafe Group, radio broadcaster of Eagle Waves Radio, public speaker and Councillor of the City of Sydney, will be the Guru on the Business Beat section and will be providing weekly articles on all things small business.

It’s not unusual to want to learn from your business mistakes or misfires, indeed you shouldwant to do this. But I believe there is a discernable difference between evaluation of performance and the nasty habit of continuously looking over your shoulder and self criticizing your efforts. Most of us do tend to learn from our pain but like most business owners we usually only do this when the proverbial hits the fan. It’s so much easier to take the perspective “if it aint broken then don’t fix it” or make the assumption that no news is good news.

I don’t like to compare the health of my business to that of my own – but just as we don’t usually go to the doctor until we absolutely have to since our magic health wand doesn’t seem to be doing its job, but when we have had personal health scares or business health scares we tend to be more about the preventative. So I want to know why we don’t do a lot more preventative evaluations without the need of a bad experience to motivate us.

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Sustain Maintain and Gain

April 3rd, 2013 | Author: Angela Vithoulkas

Sustain Maintain and Gain was first published on Women in Focus.

Women in Focus is a website and initiative by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It is a place for women to be inspired, informed and connected with other women in business in Australia and around the world. Angela Vithoulkas, CEO of VIVO Cafe Group, radio broadcaster of Eagle Waves Radio, public speaker and Councillor of the City of Sydney, will be the Guru on the Business Beat section and will be providing weekly articles on all things small business.

Sustainability is the new LBD in business. It appears that you simply must have it for credibility to be part of the in crowd and meet your obligations as an owner or manager. It seems to present us with two extreme points of view – the true believers who completely get it and the ones who are more selective about which boxes they tick. Too cynical for you? But wait, there’s more.

I have my own opinions on the definition of Sustainability and exactly what it means to me and my business, but it’s still not quite about me – yet! Let’s break it down into the general terms and peel away a few layers of what I call “S.E.E” – Socially Viable, Environmentally Responsible and Economically Feasible. If you can S.E.E it, then you can do it, but leave out any part of S.E.E and it’s not sustainable. Sustainability is as much about the environmental impact your choices have on the world as it is about the older previous-definition-pre-environment-proper-business-meaning: can you maintain, manage and afford the decision you are about to make for your business. The question these days is now, I believe - is it sustainable.

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Using Social Media to Grow your Brand: A Case Study

March 25th, 2013 | Author: Angela Vithoulkas

This article was written by Tasnuva Bindi and was first published on http://www.dynamicbusiness.com.au/ on 19th March, 2013.

Last week, She Inspires hosted a seminar with small business owner, Angela Vithoulkas. She spoke about using social media to brand her cafe. Here’s what she had to say.

I walked in through the doors of the seminar space and was warmly welcomed by Belinda Stinson, owner of She Inspires. I saw men and women chatting, giggling and nibbling away on the snacks. It was all about networking with fellow small business owners before the seminar began. The turn-out was impressive, given the Small Business Idea Exchange Centre only launched a couple of weeks ago, and it was easy to tell everyone was enjoying themselves.

The beginnings of social media as a marketing tool

The star of the seminar was Angela Vithoulkas, award-winning owner of VIVO cafe. She presented a personal encounter of her journey as a business owner through thick and thin, and how social media allowed her business to recover after Australia was hit by the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2006, during which she lost hundreds of customers.

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