More than 11.6 million firms are owned by women in the U.S. These firms employ nearly nine million people, and generate $1.7 trillion in sales, according to 2017 data from the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).
They also account for almost 40
per cent of all privately held firms and contribute 8% of employment and 4.2%
of revenues. More so, data shows that one in five firms with revenue of $1
million or more is woman-owned.
This significant growth in businesses-owned
by women is the result of deliberate actions taken by the U.S. government
targeted at creating resources and networks for women entrepreneurs.
One of such actions was the
passage of the Women’s Business Ownership Act (H.R. 5050), some 30 years ago.
The Act was created to address the needs of women entrepreneurs by recognizing
the significant role they play in the U.S. economy and provide them with
additional resources to become stronger business owners.
This became one of the first
things that empowered women to be entrepreneurs on their own terms. It also
established the Small Business Administration (SBA’s) Women’s Business Center
(WBC) program.
The WBC program was the first SBA
initiative to focus solely on women, with a mission to act as the catalyst for
providing in-depth, substantive, outcome-oriented business services to women
entrepreneurs.
These include both budding and
established businesses, many of which are socially and economically
disadvantaged.
Today, there are more than 100
WBCs all over U.S providing an incredible service for women entrepreneurs that
help them to launch and grow businesses and create jobs.
In 2017 alone, the WBCs supported
more than 150, 000 women, resulting in tremendous revenue and job growth for
the businesses they served‒ $1.7 billion in revenue and 17, 000 new job creations.
DAILY GUIDE’s Jamila Akweley Okertchiri spoke with the Director of the
Washington, DC Women’s Business Center, Dee Claxton, during the 2019 Global
Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) Reporting Tour organised by the Foreign Press
Center of the U.S. Department of State.
Dee shared insights on the
centers operations, highlighting a few lessons developing countries can learn
from empowering women entrepreneurs.
Jamila: What is your
mode of operation?
Dee: We have
various workshop programs for the women consisting of general business
development.
So, we are designing our own
business plan template document that actually teaches female entrepreneurs how
to write a business plan, if ambitious, within two weeks.
We teach business plan
development from the perspective that you do not need to read a book or a
statement to actually crack a solid business plan.
Also, we have an advanced
financial literacy series workshop programme in place that teaches about profit
and loss statements, balance sheets and understanding financing. It is also
super critical because again an entrepreneur is not good at everything, right.
Most entrepreneurs know their
craft, they know their skills but not particularly finances, for example. That
is one of the areas we often see entrepreneurs get tricked up like not knowing
how to manage finances. So, those are some of the workshops that we offer to
women entrepreneurs out of the District of Columbia.
Jamila: Do you run
workshops for existing businesses at want to scale-up?
Dee: That’s a
good question, in addition to the business plan workshop for entrepreneurs, we
also teach a workshop called ‘Let’s scale’. ‘Let’s scale’ is primarily focused
on those businesses that have been around for two or more years.
We give them guidance on how to
grow their businesses. Again, that’s not a common area of focus for small
businesses. In that workshop we discuss risk, we discuss insurance issues or
insurance practices, basically best practices across the board, you know, how
to put together manuals to operate efficiently and effectively.
Jamila: What other
areas do you focus on in your workshops?
Dee: Again, emergency
preparedness, strategic planning are some of the areas of focus in our workshop.
In addition to that, we offer
government contracting workshops, so we teach government contracting – local
government contracting or federal government contracting – we have workshops
for both. Both workshops are very intense but they provide comprehensive
guidance on how to, what it looks like, who to reach out to for those who are
interested in government contracting.
Jamila: How do you attract
women entrepreneurs?
Dee: We are
funded in part by the SBA, which is a federal agency governing small businesses
here in the US. They advertise us. So, we get clients who reach out to us
because they have been in touch with the SBA and we also partner with
communities and organizations to exhibit at events.
We are also in the community
quite a lot conducting outreach efforts to let folks know that we exist. And
again, after a while and over time it spreads through word of mouth. So, it’s
the combination of both.
Jamila: Are there
any requirement for women who want to enrol at the center?
Dee: It can be
any woman owning a business. Except – we do have one exception. Unfortunately,
we do not provide or we are prohibited from providing services to non-profits
unless the non-profit is in the space of a small business or entrepreneurship
in some capacity. Other than that, there are no restrictions on what women
entrepreneurs do.
Jamila: One of the
challenges for women entrepreneurs is combining work and family. What role is
the DCWBC playing to ensure they have a balance?
Dee: Sure, so our
program is particularly designed particularly for women. Some of the programming
that we put in place is to accommodate the family life and the lack of economic
resources, so we focus on offering workshops after work hours.
So, these workshops normally
start at 6:30 pm through 9:00 pm because some of our clients are still
full-time employed while they are looking to embark upon the entrepreneurship
journey.
Other resource that we put in
place as we advertise is that we are kid-friendly. So, we allow children to attend
workshops and counseling with their parent if necessary. We embrace that and we
don’t shun children participating in our events.
Jamila: What are the
common obstacles you encounter as you work with women entrepreneurs?
Dee: One of the
most common obstacles I hear from my clients is accessing capital. That is a
common issue across many clients because without funding, then it is hard to
sustain a business. That’s one of the big deals.
And in addition to that, we hear
marketing and exposure. You own a business, you provide a great service, but no
one knows that you exist. You get one client, that’s great but it’s not
sustainable.
So, those are some of the common
issues that we hear most regularly and to address those issues we put programming
in place such as focusing our clients on helping them with branding and
exposure.
Jamila: How is the
center helping women overcome these obstacles?
Dee: So, we’ve
started a success story series. We have started interviewing some of our
clients who have made great business milestone in their business venture with
the intent to send it to the media and SBA for national exposure.
So, overall kind of helping our
clients with gaining that exposure in addition to partnering with banking
institutions and financial institutions to help them access capital.
Another measure is our
partnership with the Department Consumer Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) because you
know we have a client who is looking to register their business.
You know as a government agency
to officially begin a business and having a contact at DCRA is priceless. I
don’t know if your government agencies back home have layers of layers of
bureaucracy. Here in the US, there can be layers of layers of bureaucracy with
getting things done and push through government agency.
It can be a process, it can be
tons of documents on paperwork to complete or the timeline is just way too
long. So, having a direct contact on those agencies like DCRA is so super
helpful to help our clients navigate that process.
Jamila: Is there a
way you measure the impact you have had on your clients?
Dee: We measure
our clients based on particularly milestones and some of the milestones we measure
our clients successes on are how many jobs they created, how much revenue they have
earned for the year or if they received any government contract or were able to
access capital.
So, those are some of the milestones
that we use to measure the successes for our clients. Generally measuring
success for entrepreneurship is a long-term project because you see overnight
sensations and those are your Zuckerbergs, but that’s not the norm.
PIX SAVED IN NEWDAILY AS DEE
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