Women's business gains still impressive

The following article was published in the Charleston Post & Courier's Business Major, a featured monthly column in the Business Review Section on November 24, 1997.

Women profile business success

November 24, 1997

By DOROTHY P. MOORE
Special to the Post and Courier

     In our recent nationwide study, we conducted field interviews with successful female entrepreneurs in twelve cities across the United States, including major metropolitan areas where the proportion of women-owned businesses was the greatest. Many had achieved recognition as an Entrepreneur of the Year in their city or state and had a clearly defined role as CEO, president, or owner.
     Criteria for selection as a participant included such dimensions as organizational professional or managerial experience prior to launching a business, firm longevity, and present major managerial role in the company now owned.
     The entrepreneurs were all accomplished. They earned at least as much and usually more than in the former corporate position. The typical female entrepreneur thinks of her business in terms of a career rather than a supplement to the family income. She has come to the business well prepared due to her previous experience, and she brings with her not only managerial skill but marketing, financial, technical, planning and networking savvy.
     Consistent with the 1992 Economic Census of Women-Owned Businesses, U.S. Bureau of the Census, and the March, 1996 National Foundation for Women Business Owner's extrapolation, our data confirm growth patterns among women business owners who have established firms in construction, wholesale trade, transportation, communications, and manufacturing. Other areas with a strong concentration were in high tech, architectural, engineering, finance, and health care, fields previously dominated by men.
     Jill Martin, a San Francisco based entrepreneur, trod a path to ownership characteristic of others in the study. Working for a large firm, she initially found corporate life exciting. There she had opportunities to make crucial contacts, acquire and polish skills, and gain experience. She learned the basics of management: how to hire people, set employee goals, design personnel evaluation systems, and practice leadership techniques. Like all young managers, she made mistakes, and she learned from these, too. Doing various tasks, she learned how to identify markets, develop products, merge delivery and advertising strategies, run a national sales campaign.
     Eventually dissatisfied with the organizational culture, she left a major firm to launch her west coast designer label sportswear company. The fast growing organization produced five collections a year, manufactured and imported from three foreign countries and the United States, serviced over 1400 accounts nationally - and grossed over a million dollars in the first year of business. She sold her trademark to another apparel company. Today, her trademark line is sold in better metropolitan markets and in catalogs nationwide.
     Entrepreneurship offered what Jill wanted: independence to accomplish something, the opportunity to be creative and develop, and the chance to make money.
     For both women and men, researchers suggest, perceived opportunities and job freedom are universal reasons for business start-ups. Female entrepreneurs often have other, equally compelling motivations. Some stepped off the corporate track because they sought opportunities unavailable in corporate environments, opportunities to innovate and develop, to manage better than they had been managed, and, most critically, to create environments different from the corporate cultures they had experienced. Jill's reason for leaving her firm is as typical as it is lyrical:

     "I live in San Francisco, and I liken the disillusionment in a corporation to a creeping fog. In the night time, the fog slowly comes in from the ocean and goes under the Golden Gate Bridge. You are really not aware of it at first, and eventually you hear the fog horns in the distance, and those fog horns indicate a change in the environment, a slow creeping disillusionment."

     For female entrepreneurs, success means a number of things. Most important is the enjoyment of being in charge and the power to make decisions. Business performance, as calculated by profits and growth, comes next. And after that comes a "web effect," an outreach dimension that includes such factors as employee satisfaction, helping others, balancing family and work, and making a contribution to society.
     Other entrepreneurs left large corporations because they always had the entrepreneurial spirit. Diane Harris, President and owner of Hypotenuse Enterprises, Inc., twice included in BUSINESS WEEK'S list of the "Top 50 Women in Corporate America," leveraged her experience of 28 years with Bausch & Lomb to open a mergers and acquisitions advisory business, specializing in the niche of corporate development outsourcing and consulting. The Achievements of Denise L. Devine, founder and CEO of Devine Foods, Inc., have been chronicled in ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE, BUSINESS PHILADELPHIA, and WORKING WOMAN, which listed her company among the twenty-five companies to watch. Prior to founding Devine Foods, she held senior management positions at Murray, Devine & Co., Campbell Soup Company, and Arthur Anderson Company.
     Not all successful female entrepreneurs come from corporate and professional backgrounds. Merna Popper, Publisher and Editor-in-chief of WOMEN'S NEWS, who also owns several businesses in New York and has her radio show on WVOX, will be the first to tell you that she went to college with the idea that she would find Mr. Right, marry, raise a family and trail off into the sunset. During a recent talk show in New York she told me that she realizes that was an idealistic dream among women of her generation. She now firmly believes that the key to success is to identify your own strengths, find your niche, and surround yourself with those who compliment that set of strengths. Not only is Merna a successful entrepreneur but so is her 25 year old daughter who has her own rock band and stages major performances around the country.