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Women gaining strength from peers
Networking provides aid, encouragement
By Andi Esposito
BUSINESS EDITOR
Worcester Telegram and Gazette
UPTON- Suite 4, the headquarters of Precision Marketing Group LLC, is a snug basement office with a workstation, conference
table, chairs and sofa. While Susan LaPlante-Dube is at work downstairs, her youngest child is in day care, and a sitter comes by after school to watch two older siblings.
"The perception, especially for
women, is that if you have your own business and it is home-based and you have kids, that you are not really there for your business," said Ms. LaPlante-Dube, 39, who left a corporate software product marketing job
to found Precision Marketing Group five years ago.
To make sure clients know she means business, Ms. LaPlante-Dube added "Suite 4" to her Upton company's street address.
"That way, people don't ask
the question. You want to be taken seriously," she said.
But the seriousness of women-owned business is long past questioning. Women own a 50 percent or greater stake in nearly half of all privately held
businesses in the United States, according to the Center for Women's Business Research. These businesses generate $2.5 trillion in sales, employ more than 19 million, spend $546 billion a year on payroll and
benefits, and buy more than $103 billion a year in products and services.
Women-owned business "is a force to be reckoned with in terms of growth," said Ms. LaPlante-Dube, who was recently elected president
of the 200-member New England Women Business Owners organization. Founded in 1978, NEWBO sponsors monthly meetings, provides professional resources and educational programs, peer advisory groups and networking
opportunities for women business owners. Members operate startups to established companies with as much as $2 million in sales.
"If I had not found NEWBO, I am not sure I would have stuck with my business,"
said Ms. LaPlante-Dube, recalling the early isolation of a home-based venture that NEWBO meetings helped dispel, and the peer advice she got when she needed new ways of looking at her business.
"I have met women I truly admire and respect," she said.
Ms. LaPlante-Dube, who will serve a two-year term through 2006, hopes to make NEWBO, which meets at the Holiday Inn in Newton, more visible west of
Route 128, and increase membership, sponsorship and partner events.
Between 1997 and 2004, the number of women-owned firms grew at nearly twice the rate of all firms — a boom built on a foundation laid by
those who went before and the organizations, like NEWBO, they founded. Once typified by service-based sole proprietorships, women-owned businesses are now in every industry, with the fastest growth, according to the
Center for Women's Business Research, in construction, transportation, communications and public utilities.
Ms. LaPlante-Dube believes growth in the number of women-owned businesses is being driven by
experience — what women have learned from their predecessors that shows them entrepreneurship is a viable option — as well as an uncertain economy, plentiful resources, a desire for balance in their lives and, to
some extent, disaffection with the corporate world.
"We call them corporate refugees," she said, counting herself among them.
Women are choosing to "move away from the glass ceiling to create
profitable, high-growth organizations that can be strong contributors to the economy and themselves, and give something back to the community," she said.
Yet they continue to face challenges in financing
their businesses and in doing business with large corporations.
Nearly in unison, women business owners say growth is their goal. But women tend to be fiscally conservative, often caring more that their
business becomes profitable than whether it grows fast, said Ms. LaPlante-Dube. They are less likely to seek bank loans and lines of credit, and rely instead on credit cards and earnings, plowing money back into the
business even at the cost of their salary.
"For a lot of women, once they have their own business, they do it from a position of caution and responsibility to employees and an unwillingness to put the
business in debt," she said.
But relying on credit cards is dangerous because it costs more than going to the bank.
Working to change that attitude is important, she said, given the initiatives many
banks have to support women-owned businesses and the financing available through the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Women need to become more financially savvy and adept at discussing their balance
sheets, and banks needs to make their options clearer and be more flexible in providing financing under $200,000, she said.
Roadblocks to finding venture capital are being chipped away through programs such
as Springboard Enterprises, which prepares women business owners to seek equity deals and get them acquainted with the players, said Ms. LaPlante-Dube. "People do business with people they know and like. So you must
get inside of the network of investors to be visible."
To crack open access to large corporate and government contracts, women business owners must take advantage of certification programs such as those
offered by Massachusetts through the state Office of Minority and Women Business Assistance and the Women's Business Enterprise National Council, whose WBENC certification is accepted by more than 500 large
corporations, and many federal and local government agencies.
"These programs are absolutely worth it," said Ms. LaPlante-Dube. "They help corporations become more aware of quality and qualified women and
minority-owned businesses."
There's also the help available from simply asking — and telling. A benefit of NEWBO, she said, is that every member knows lots of other people, and if a business owner is trying
to get a foot in the door, it may be opened through friendships. "In a professional organization, you just start asking," she said, "and then let people know how great your company is."
Ms. LaPlante-Dube
said her NEWBO relationships have been critical in providing advice, help and new ideas at critical junctures in her business life, including a NEWBO roundtable of peers that kept her "objective, focused and on
point" when she renamed and relaunched her business, a provider of marketing services to high-technology and professional-services firms.
Since then, she has created her own advisory board.
"I'd like
to bring these benefits to even more women business owners searching for an organization that speaks directly to them and their needs," she said.
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