Supporting Women Who Mean Business
Let’s just eliminate the word “businessman” from our vocabulary, shall we?
Women are in business. And we mean business.
According to Wells Fargo’s “Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report,” there are 14 million women-owned businesses in the United States, making up 39.1% of all businesses in the U.S.
Women-owned businesses employ approximately 12.2 million people and generate $2.7 trillion in revenue. And the growth rate for women-owned businesses has been larger than men-owned businesses during and since the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s amazing that even though women were often more significantly challenged by the pandemic, women entrepreneurship has grown during this extremely difficult time.
This week is National Business Women’s Week, and October is National Women’s Small Business Month. It’s a good time to celebrate the significant impact that women are making to our economy and also to consider the challenges still faced by women in business.
Challenges
For starters, 90% of women-owned businesses (12.6 million) are “non-employer” firms. In other words, they are solopreneurs - like me. While not having employees can make business ownership easier in some ways, having to “wear all the hats” is certainly a challenge when we don’t have the time or the specific talents to do all the things needed to run and grow a successful business.
Next, revenue is a challenge. Women are often creating businesses in “helping industries” – providing essential services such as child-, elder-, and special needs-care as well as other healthcare, social assistance, and education services. However, providing these services comes at a cost. Women-owned nonemployers average less than $50,000 in revenue. (I’m familiar with this reality.)
Access to capital remains a significant challenge for women business owners. Women often take on the risk of leveraging their own personal / family savings in order to grow their businesses. (Men typically secure outside funding.)
Lack of affordable, quality childcare is an obstacle for mothers, who typically take on more of the responsibility for family caregiving.
Women in business struggle more than men with work-life balance, stress and burnout, and lack of peer support.
Two Life Preservers
As I’ve navigated the treacherous waters of entrepreneurship, I’ve been grateful to have two reliable “life preservers” – in the form of two helpful frameworks, one for my overall life, and one for business.
The REALIFE Process® is not just a set of tools and resources I share in my coaching. It’s the process I use to order and align my whole life. It’s a life management system that helps me lead a life that is more purposeful and more productive. Through this process, I’ve gotten clearer about my “being” – my real self, including my needs, values, strengths, priorities, and purpose. This clarity then helps me align my “doing” – my activities, work, time, calendar, recreation – with my real self. I’m able to live authentically and in a better rhythm with myself.
In short, the REALIFE Process helps me discern, articulate, and live from a Modern Day Rule of Life.
And The REALIFE Process has a partner that helps me do the same sorts of things for my business.
The REALIFE 7 P’s of Business™ helps me organize my business so that it too is purposeful and productive. This business framework, developed by Teresa McCloy of The REALIFE Process, empowers me to strategically analyze my business and tend to the essential pillars for sustainable growth.
In honor of National Business Women’s Week and National Women’s Small Business Month, I want to share a glimpse of this framework here. I know that some of my readers are women business owners (facing the challenges named above), and I know this tool might just be the life preserver you need to be able to catch your breath, recalibrate, and move forward again.
The REALIFE 7 P’s of Business™
The REALIFE 7 P’s of Business™ is a set of seven key areas that are foundational to building and nurturing a thriving business.
And for those of you who work in the non-profit or ministry worlds, this framework can still apply to your work as well. Truly, they are the 7 P’s of any organization, so feel free to consider how these apply to your work setting.
For each of the seven concepts, I’ll offer some questions that should help you understand what that pillar means for your organization and can also help you evaluate how strong your organization is in that area.
In fact, you can even complete a short assessment on your business (or organization) by downloading my free guide, From Stress to Success: 7 Simple Strategies to Scale & Sustain Your Business. Grab this great tool, print it out, and give your business a rating (from 1 to 5) for each of the seven P’s.
Purpose: Why does your organization exist? Do you have a clear mission statement? What are your core values? What is your three-year vision? If you are spiritually rooted (one of my business’s core values), an important question is “What does God want to accomplish in the world and for others through this business?”
Plan: How do you strategically move forward? Do you have annual and quarterly vision meetings? Are you attentive to these 7 P’s, regularly evaluating their health? Do you set quarterly projects and create effective plans to accomplish them? If you have a team, do you have consistent and effective meetings to ensure that you’re staying aligned with your plan?
Product (or Service): How well defined are your products or services? What needs further development? Are you clear about your audience, and do you know how to effectively reach them? How often do you evaluate and refine your products or services?
Particulars: Do you have a scorecard or dashboard that tracks the numbers that give you the best understanding of your business? Do you know which numbers or metrics truly tell the story of your business and help you evaluate its success? What are the goals for those numbers each month, and who tracks those numbers? If you have a team, does everyone on the team have a metric that they are accountable for?
Processes: Have you identified the core processes that make your business run? (These can be organizational, financial, operational, or other.) Are those core processes documented? Do you have a central place where processes are stored? And do you have a rhythm of regularly reviewing and updating those processes?
Problems: How do you address problems in your business? Do you have a process for identifying, tracking, and resolving issues? Do you use a creative problem solving approach to generate innovative solutions? Do you follow through with action steps to resolve and prevent problems and devote time to addressing important challenges?
People: Do you keep a comprehensive list of your vendors stored in a specific place? Do you have a process (#5) for regularly reviewing and updating that list? How do you track your customer/client data? What’s your process for communicating with and retaining clients? If you have a team, do you have a clear scope of work and job description for each team member? Do you communicate effectively with each team member, including regular reviews?
How did you do in your assessment of your organization?
Don’t be discouraged if you notice a lot of ratings that are “3” or less! The goal of this assessment is to help you identify the next key priority area to work on. There’s always room for improvement – building a business is never “done.” However, assessing your business according to these seven categories can help you organize and prioritize the next areas in which you need to grow strategically.
The REALIFE SHE-EO Program
I’ve been lucky to benefit from using both The REALIFE Process and the REALIFE 7 P’s of Business in my life and business. But I’m not keeping that goodness to myself!
In January 2025, I’ll be launching the Western New York chapter of The REALIFE SHE-EO Program™. This six-month program provides women business owners and top-level leaders with a holistic approach to personal and professional development. It helps women business leaders create harmony in their work and their lives so that they can build the business and sustain it for the long haul.
There are lots of groups and programs that help women focus on business growth, but they aren’t designed to fully address the whole woman behind the business and guide you through a systematic process to also help your personal life. There are lots of life coaching programs out there, but they don’t help you lead a successful, strategic business.
REALIFE SHE-EO is the best of both worlds. It helps women scale their businesses but ensures that they do it in a way that allows them to be full individuals and actually enjoy the lives and businesses they are building.
REALIFE SHE-EO is a 6-month program that includes monthly group sessions and one-on-one coaching. The group sessions will connect like-minded women in business, creating a powerful, supportive local network. The individual coaching helps participants apply those tried and tested frameworks to their unique lives and businesses for maximum results.
If you live in Western New York and you’re interested in learning more about the REALIFE SHE-EO Program, please reach out so we can set up a time to chat. The challenges of running a successful business as a woman are real. You don’t have to go it alone!
Final Note
As noted earlier, women are making an impact in the economy, in their communities, and in their families through the engine of their businesses. And we can all help them to amplify that impact.
How can you make an intentional effort to support a small woman-owned business?
I encourage you to consider where you spend your dollars – both within your organization and in your personal life – and look for ways to support businesses owned by women, especially women of color.
And let’s not forget the importance of supporting economic and civic policies that support women entrepreneurs (e.g., making childcare affordable, improving access to capital, and continuing programs that address the specific needs of different groups). Closing the gaps could add billions if not trillions of dollars and millions of jobs to the economy.
When it comes to making a major impact, women mean business.
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