The new business arena is built from recycled shards of the glass ceiling.
It is a welcoming space for women entrepreneurs, where collaboration, consensus and diversity reign. Much of it is virtual as more women choose to do business online. The number of female founders and owners has increased dramatically in recent years, and the impact of female-led businesses is significant in terms of revenue and employment.
A 2018 report by the SCORE Association, which provides a free mentoring service to small business owners, shows women-owned businesses grew 45% – five times faster than the national average – from 2007 to 2016, accounting for 39% of the 28 million small businesses Americans, employing nearly 9 million people and generating more than $1.6 trillion in revenue.
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Betsy Dougert, Director of Communications for SCORE, says, “We follow Small Business Administration guidelines that define small businesses as businesses with less than 500 employees and less than 10 million dollars in revenue. SCORE also classifies companies with 0 to 4 employees as micro-enterprises. The vast majority of our 350,000+ customers are micro business owners…. The average business starts with $5,000 or less in capital.
American Express' 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report, covering the period 2007 to 2018, finds that women lead 40% of businesses of all sizes – an increase of 58% – and employ 9.2 million people, with revenues of $1.8 trillion. Women of color make up 64% of startups, with African Americans leading the way, followed by Latinos and Asian Americans.
American Express attributes the rise of women's entrepreneurship to both the opportunity and necessity. Women surveyed by SCORE cite four major motivations:having the experience to start a successful business, being financially prepared, following a passion, and wanting flexibility in their lives.
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Women of all ages are starting businesses. While the majority – 76% in SCORE's report and 65.5% in American Express's – are between the ages of 35 and 64, millennials and seniors also make their mark.
Although most find businesses in sectors like retail, healthcare, education, arts, travel, food service, marketing and other professional services, some are choosing traditionally male fields like construction and manufacturing. While women starting businesses in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) are still rare, this is changing thanks to a boost from two bills enacted in 2017, the Women's Empowerment Act in entrepreneurship and the INSPIRE Women's Act.
Dougert wants women entrepreneurs in all fields to know that SCORE's 10,700 volunteer mentors are with them every step of the way. "We're here for the life of your business," she says, adding that "all resources are free because they're prepaid with your taxes."
Modern female entrepreneurs come from feminine strengths such as networking efficiency, empathy and an inclusive holistic mindset to tackle issues as universal as the future of the Earth and as personal as the daily challenges of being a woman. Some even believe that motherhood, which once diverted careers to the “mom track,” makes them more productive in business.
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Futurist, economist and trailblazing author Hazel Henderson sees this as a big moment for female entrepreneurs:“One of the benefits of women now is that we are very good at improvise, and we've learned that there are all kinds of niches, that you don't have to be a big, powerful, well-capitalized organization to provide good service.
Henderson, a self-taught expert with four honorary doctorates and several best-selling books to her credit, has advised government agencies including the National Science Foundation. Passionate about “building a green, clean and knowledge-rich future”, she founded her company, Ethical Markets Media, in 2004, at the age of 72. “I have a lot of fun,” she says. “We are a typical internet-based global media company, operated out of the garage of my house.” Her home in St. Augustine, Florida also has a studio from which she airs a television series and distributes it to business schools and public libraries around the world.
Growing up in a typical British family, Henderson noticed the overbearing way his CEO father handled money, keeping his smart and capable mother at home and strapped for money. Later, studying economic theory, she saw the same patriarchal thinking in the texts that most financial managers relied on:a narrow view of market risk and interest rate risk, ignoring large-scale risks. scale such as income inequality, climate change and water shortages.
She teaches financial managers to let go of stranded fossil fuel assets, realize the benefits of what she calls "ethical finance of biomimicry, operating your business according to the principles of nature” and acting in the best interest not only of shareholders but also of stakeholders – employees, customers, the community and the planet. Ethical Markets Media operates as a socially responsible B-corporation and tracks billions of dollars of green sector investments around the world.
Henderson says the big picture comes easily to women entrepreneurs:“Women connect all points.… Almost any forward-looking business looking at all of these issues and how to turn them into positive opportunities tends to be led by a woman.”
She advises women starting a business, “Don't take no outside investment unless you absolutely need to,” and even then, “Make sure investors are fully aligned with your values and understand your business plan in its long-term goals and objectives. .
“Women connect all the dots.…Almost all forward-looking companies…tend to be led by a woman.”
Raising a family is a long-term goal for many women, including Sarah Lacy, an intrepid Silicon Valley journalist, internet entrepreneur, and single mom. She launched her first company, PandoMedia, an investigative journalism site covering the tech industry, in 2011 while on maternity leave from her job as editor at TechCrunch.
Lacy discovered that motherhood made her a better entrepreneur as well as a better version of herself. In his 2017 book A womb is a feature, not a bug she writes:"There is something liberating in realizing that owning one's motherhood could bring as many benefits in public life as denying it."
The book chronicles how women are breaking down the long-standing “mothering wall,” the belief of male executives that women can be good managers or good mothers, but not both. Raised by a mother who put off her career, believing she "couldn't be a perfect mother and a perfect teacher at the same time", Lacy admits that she, too, has long bought into this myth, but surrenders. now realize that “most successful entrepreneurs get down to business. “I came into newsrooms and worked in male-dominated environments, and every manager I had, male or female, managed to scream,” she recalls. "It wasn't until I became a mother that I realized that dealing with screaming people is a really good short-term motivator, but it's a really bad long-term motivator and a really bad one. way to build a culture.
“When you have a kid, yelling and bullying don't work. You can't tell a 2-year-old you're going to fire him if he doesn't get potty training.
She believes motherhood enhances universal feminine traits like collaborative leadership, empathy, consensus building, active listening, and proficient multitasking. To lead effectively, she says, “you really have to learn how to meet people where they are, how to be empathetic, how to understand what will motivate them, how to understand why they are stuck where they are and how to handle everyone differently. , the same way you raise your children differently. »
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The importance of sisterhood – “one woman both standing up to a hostile environment, and all of us supporting her” – is a theme that runs through Lacy’s book. In 2017, she launched her second business, Chairman Mom, which she describes as “a subscription-based platform where hardworking women can help each other solve the toughest problems they face.”
The desire to champion “invisible” women inspired former IBM executive Sharon Hadary, Ph.D., to found the nonprofit Center for Women's Business Research in 1988. At that time, notes she said, women-owned businesses were perceived as small, not growth-oriented, and not creating jobs or income.
Her research team, based in the Washington, D.C. area, sought to identify what women needed to grow their businesses and “to show that women business owners were actually running great businesses that were contributing to our economy,” she says. "In our first press release, the main one was, 'Women-owned businesses employ more women in the United States than Fortune 500 do so worldwide. ”
This revelation led to Hadary appearing on ABC Good Morning America , which, in turn, led to a flurry of phone calls asking to buy the research report she had mentioned on the show. “Companies took notice and lawmakers took notice,” she recalls. The next link in that chain of support was $10 million that Wells Fargo lent to women entrepreneurs the following year.
In the book How Women Lead , co-authored with Laura Henderson and published in 2013, Hadary outlines eight success strategies women can use to embrace their strengths, stand up for themselves, and design their own careers. She says:"Today, looking around me, what inspires me is that so many women are saying, 'Yes, I can! »»
"Today, looking around me, what inspires me is that so many women are saying, 'Yes, I can!' ""
Hadary wants to hear from many more women saying this in the future. She hosts Enterprising Women events for high school students to focus on STEM, talk with business owners in related fields, and learn how to present themselves professionally. “We need to make sure that we help them see…that they can take control of their lives and their destinies and that they have the skills and knowledge to do so,” she says.
Mina Shah, formerly a top trainer with Tony Robbins' organization, inspires confidence in adult women through a year-long program of monthly Mina meetings hosted by 300 chapters in 52 countries. Through group discussions and holding each other accountable for actions, participants work to learn their worth and then claim their worth.
MAGDA HERNANDEZ
In her TEDx talk, “What Happens When Women Stop Believing the Lies,” the Miami-based motivational speaker encourages women to break free from the sexist myths they have internalized in society and family as well as of the “intimate lies” that they tell themselves. “We are in transition,” says Shah. "We're getting to a place where we understand it's OK to be a woman, it's OK to speak up, it's OK to be ourselves, it's OK to take leadership positions. »
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Shah says it was hard to leave Team Robbins, where she had worked for more than four years, loving her job, feeling validated and performing at the top of her game. But her inner voice told her she had another goal to fulfill. She moved in 2012 and founded Mina Shah Enterprises the following year, supporting herself with consultancy income. “Mina meetings are profitable by design,” she says. “I'm proud to say we've been profitable since year one and every year since. Each of these entrepreneurs recognizes that while unconscious bias still plagues female leaders, male-female business partnerships produce some of the best outcomes for all parties involved. While their feminism is strong, so is their desire to make men allies.
Hadary says, “Especially when it comes to access to capital, until men are part of it. solution, we will always have challenges.”
Lacy mixes her CEO roles with mothering her son, Eli, and daughter, Evie, with the help of their dad (her friendly ex-husband ) and her supportive boyfriend. She is a big believer in networking and building relationships with colleagues of both genders. “If I hadn't spent 20 years building relationships and building trust with some really good men in this ecosystem, I would never have made it past the starting block as a founder,” she says.
“The next hundred years will be called the female redemption. »
In her book, Lacy quotes Andy Dunn, former CEO of menswear company Bonobos and one of the president mom's early investors, saying, “The next hundred years will be called the female takeover. And by "takeover" I don't mean "Run for the hills, guys!" I mean “Your life will be improved by female ancestry.” Cautioning against getting too attached to gender, Shah emphasizes fostering mutual respect with everyone. “Women focusing on their own confidence, their own lives, the way they present themselves, is really what's going to move the needle for everyone,” she says.
“ Really mature men know what the planet needs right now is for women to be in complete partnership,” Henderson says. "And maybe to lead for a while." »
Related: How men can help women fight gender inequality
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of LadiesBelle I/O magazine.
