Journal Gets It Wrong/Right About Women Business Owners

I’ve been away for a while, but I saved one article I read in the Wall Street Journal on the road to share parts of with you because it has some commonly flawed thinking about women-owned businesses, but still offers good insights for women entrepreneurs.

The article starts by acknowledging the huge growth of women-owned businesses over the last three decades; that women launch new businesses at twice the rate as men, and that their growth rates of employment and revenue have beaten the economy big-time. Then the woman author, Sharon Hadary, founder of the Center for Women’s Business Research, goes off the path of entrepreneurial pride and laments that, despite those superlatives, “It is dismaying to see that, on average, women-owned businesses are still small compared with businesses owned by men.”

At that point my face tinged just a little bit purple and a small sputter was heard. Since when is business success measured just by size, and why is this woman doing that? She goes on to say that most men tend to start businesses to be the boss and to grow the business as big as possible, and she thinks the ‘big’ part is really essential for women to achieve also.

To Ms. Hadary,  the fact that women-owned business revenues are “still only 27 of the average of majority men-owned businesses” is a problem, even as she goes on to say that women start their businesses for different reasons than men; “to be personally challenged and to integrate work and family, and they want to stay at a size where they personally oversee all aspects of the business.”

Now, I am an executive coach who works with a lot of women business owners, and I can attest to the fact that women are very individual in their desires for their businesses, including revenues and size.

One woman I worked with is making deals for her products with major sports leagues, breaking her business into large-scale revenue and personnel expansion. Another wants a business of no more than twelve people and revenues of five million, max, more like a business family.

So my definition of business success is to create just the right business for you, whatever it is in all the details that will best serve your professional and personal goals. Big, medium, small, who cares, as long as your business is right for you.

Back to the article:  just as I was about to give up on Ms. Hadary for being more male than many men on this revenue and size front, she finally got to some other good stuff I think might be good for women entrepreneurs to consider. She talks about “what’s holding back so many women business owners”, and again relates that mostly to an outcome that’s about revenue and business growth. I think if we widen the ‘holding back’ issues she lists below to be more about “what holds back women entrepreneurs from having exactly the business they want”, it is a more valuable and accurate way to examine these issues.

Here are some of the ways she thinks women business owners hold themselves back from success:

• Women often fail to set high goals for growth. Very true, but women – and men – usually set goals only for revenues, leaving out other aspects of their business and their lives. Strong goals – and a strategic plan for the business – are needed for all of those things, or life doesn’t feel whole and satisfying.
• Women often start their businesses with fewer resources available to them than men. Sometimes true. This factor can drive women out of what they really want to do and into retail or personal services industries instead, for example, where the cost of entry is low, but so is the growth and profit potential.
• Research shows that women tend to think of debt as a “bad thing” to be avoided… one of women’s strengths is relationship-building, yet women seldom focus on building relationships with bankers. True again. Often women don’t reach out to the banker until they’re in trouble and REALLY need the money… the very worst time to start the relationship.

There are more good insights for women entrepreneurs in this Wall Street Journal article than I can highlight here, so you can go there and read the rest. Just remember you don’t need to define business success as being just about revenues and big growth.

Doug Hickok, CEO, Institute for Provocative Leadership , doug@IPLsmallbusiness.com