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& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | MARCH 25, 2003 TRENDS Q&A What Women Entrepreneurs Really Want Start the list with cheaper health insurance, says the founder of the Women President's Organization
Q: What's on the minds of female entrepreneurs right now? A: The key issues for our members are the health of the economy, war [with Iraq], health care, employee development, and access to capital and federal contracts. Also, networking continues to be the main tie-in for our members, so they're interested in identifying new leads and finding new approaches to their challenges in business. The top response to a question about "what issues are facing your company in 2003" was the economy. Almost 80% said they're concerned that tremendous cutbacks in corporate purchasing will hurt their business this year, and 60% said their business has already been adversely affected. Interestingly, 22% said their business was up, so we know that even in this market, some businesses and some locations continue to grow -- but 19% said they're worried that things are going to get worse this year. Q: With the exceptions of economic concerns and the war, the other issues sound like the perennial worries of independent business owners. A: Yes, these are the same concerns that we've seen cropping up often in the last few years. For instance, some 56% are concerned about health-care costs. We asked them if they'll be altering their employee benefits in 2003, and less than 1% said they plan to increase coverage. Twenty-one percent said they plan to decrease coverage, and 65% said they didn't plan to make a change. While the majority indicated they wouldn't change, many respondents stated that this was more of a hope [so] they could retain and recruit good employees. I recently did a conference call with the White House's chief economic adviser with 65 of our members participating. So many of them brought up health-care benefits -- the skyrocketing costs, and the fact that they value their employees and want to give them good coverage. They're distressed because their insurance costs are going up extensively every year. Some of them said that they switch insurance carriers frequently to get the lower introductory rates, because they're so committed to their employees and concerned about staff retention. Q: They also bring up employee development -- in what context? A: About 37% of our members listed employee development as a concern. That ties in with retaining good employees [which ties into] offering medical insurance and other benefits such as 401(k) plans and financial-compensation packages. Business owners are finding that many entry-level employees have communication problems. Their inability to speak, write, and spell well impacts their effectiveness. Once a CEO finds a good employee, she wants to continue developing and training her, and hold onto her with good benefits and compensation. Q: Is access to capital improving for women? A: Actually, that issue concerned 22% of our members, which is a lower percentage than we've found in the past, so I think access to capital has improved for women-owned companies. At one point, female CEOs had access to only 3% or 4% of the total venture capital available. Now that figure has gone up to closer to 10%. Q: What are some of the other issues that were raised by your members? A: Well, 20% are hoping for some payroll-tax relief and a quicker timeline for tax reforms that are supposed to become permanent in 2007. They would like to see the estate tax laws changed earlier rather than phased in over time, for instance, and they'd like to see their deduction limit for employee health-care costs -- which is now up to 80% -- go up to 100%, so they will be on the same footing with large corporations. Another 20% said they're concerned about government contracts and don't feel they have equal access to federal and corporate contracts as male-owned firms. In fact, there was a disparity found in a study done by the National Women's Business Council. It showed that although women-owned businesses represent 38% of all U.S. business, the share of prime federal contract dollars awarded to small, women-owned firms in fiscal year 1999 was 2.2%, up from 1.3% in fiscal year 1992. One reason given for the disparity has been that women-owned firms are not large enough and don't have the capacity to deliver on prime contracts, but this study definitely refutes that. It's just not true. Q: How did the Women Presidents Organization come about? A: I founded the WPO on April 1, 1999, after having worked in women's economic development for many years. During that time, I saw a lot of programs that helped women with startup companies, but nothing that focused on them beyond that point. In the late '80s, a lot of women in middle-management were laid off and had few career alternatives. Many of them were forced into starting their own companies. Now those companies are more mature and more successful than their founders ever dreamed they could be. That's when I realized we needed a program that would help these established business owners accelerate their growth. Q: What does the WPO do for these companies and their founders? A: The WPO is akin to the Young Presidents Organization, in terms of being a small group that shares expertise and experience, learns together, and cross-fertilizes each other. We have quadrupled in size since 1999, with 31 chapters around the country and 500 members now, but we still meet in small groups so everybody gets a lot of "air time." In order to really get peers together who are coping with the same issues, members have to be CEOs, company presidents, or professionals with senior management responsibilities and ownership stakes in their companies. Their companies must have a minimum $2 million annually in product-driven revenues or $1 million if they are service-driven. The average annual revenue figure for our members is $11 million, and as a group we represent more than $4 billion in aggregate revenue.  Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | MARCH |
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