Putting the Focus on Women-Owned Businesses

The Ripple Effect LLC co-owner Keri Gaul had to accept she couldn’t do it all.

As a small business owner, Gaul said she had to build a team of consultants to whom she could delegate specific tasks that were just too time-consuming when she tried to do them.

“It pays for itself 10 times over but you do have to get to the point of: ‘I can’t do this,’” Gaul said Tuesday during a Women2Women lunch.

That is one of the lessons that speaker and environmental sustainability consultant Diane Osgood of Oswego emphasized while discussing why women-owned businesses tend to be less profitable than male-owned enterprises. The Woman2Woman lunch is a regular program offered through the at Ralph's Place at Blackberry Oaks Golf Course in Bristol.

About 40 percent of businesses are owned by women, up from 5 percent in 1974, but 70 percent of women-owned businesses earned less than $50,000 in revenue last year, Osgood said.

“Why is that?” Osgood asked the room full of women. “We’re capable. We’re skilled. We’re ambitious.”

Research shows that women have less access to venture capital, tend to take on more family and household responsibilities, have less robust business networks and are more reluctant than men to delegate. She also said women tend to be less focused on technology and on revenue generators, compared with other aspects of the business.

Osgood encouraged women to build a diverse network, including men, while searching for peers rather than mentors.

“If you tend to look up to a mentor, you’re never going to see yourself as an equal,” Osgood said.

She also encouraged women to look outside of their business to improve their business.

As an example, she talked about a female construction company owner affiliated with Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence, a non-profit that helps women grow small businesses. At a certain point, the construction company owner decided she needed to hire someone to help out her and her family on Saturday mornings.

The extra “regeneration time” was vital for growing her business, Osgood said.

“I don’t know about you, but that’s where my best ideas come from,” Osgood said.

After the program, Chamber ambassador chairwoman Carrie Niesman, of , said she related to many of the concepts, even though she wasn’t a small business owner.

Niesman also was struck by figures Osgood shared about the economic impact associated with local residents increasing spending at local businesses by 10 percent. Small businesses account for three-quarters of new jobs nationwide and reinvest 60 percent more in the local economy than chains.

“Those are huge numbers,” Niesman said.