The common perception that women primarily start small, hobby-related enterprises that are less likely to grow is contradicted by substantial evidence showing that women own firms in all industrial sectors, and that many do want to grow them in size and scope. (Diana Project Women Business Owners and Equity Capital: The Myths Dispelled, sponsored by the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, 2001)
In fact, women-owned businesses are holding more than 52% of all the health care and social assistance business in this country with the possibilities in oral health care just beginning. (The National Women’s Business Council 2011 www.nwbc.gov/facts/women-owned-businesses)
Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute Executive Summary 2010 (www.smallbizdom.com) found that women business owners/managers are:
• More diligently engaged in strategic and tactical facets of their business
• More proactively customer-focused
• More likely to incorporate community and environment in their business plans
• More receptive to input and guidance from internal and external advisors
• More committed to creating opportunities for others
These projections are based on:
• Faster growth rate of women-owned business vs. male-owned
• Higher college graduation rates by women vs. men
• Women-dominated job categories will grow by 50% by 2016
• Women-owned businesses are more often self-funded than male-owned, less reliant on bank financing where lending practices are more restricted
Ernst & Young Executive Summary, Nature or nurture? Decoding the DNA of the entrepreneur 2011
Key findings of the report found entrepreneurial leaders are made, not born. The experience one can gain in their field often leads them into an entrepreneurial adventure. The termed “transitioned” entrepreneurs, is used for those who have gained experience in the traditional employed setting, and then set out on their own.
The myth that entrepreneurs are mavericks, unable to cope with office dynamics and tiered management organizations are often the reason for creating a more sustained and balanced environment where everyone is engaged, contributing on individual levels for the healthiest business model.
The Ernst & Young Executive summary found entrepreneurs share common traits, intuition and a synergistic belief that events result directly from and individual’s own actions or behavior. Besides a genuine knowing, most entrepreneurs endure the element of risk and the see the reward of opportunity all in the resilience of failure. The entrepreneurial leader views the pulse of the business culture through the eyes of the customer/client/patient, community and environment. This business leader is able to acclimate sustaining the business and services as a whole.
