Small Business Stories - Women Owned Business Research Survey from RSM

Susan Solovic: Lorrie Keenum moves mountains as President and founder of a rapidly growing excavating company Mid-West Trenching and Excavating. Keenum, is one of millions of women entrepreneurs literally changing the business landscape with the impressive success. Lorrie Keenum: We talk about my greatest key to success is probably just never give up, failures not an option it will work out. You just have to make it work out. Susan Solovic: Keenum, is one of millions of American women finding success through business ownership. Federal Research in 2006 found a woman owns enterprises grow it twice the national average. These enterprising women are the subject of a series of research reports by RSM McGladrey. The third study that 2007 survey of women business owners. Included 650 women own firms in 35 states, to provide new insights into the world of women’s entrepreneurship. Pat Ewert: What was your motivation for starting their business, these are things we haven’t really look at in the past and we found that work like balance wasn’t as much as we thought it was going to be was their motivators were things like trying to take an idea and really make it happen. Be your own boss, be more in charge of your own time. Susan Solovic: Nearly 85% of the respondents in the survey are like Keenum confident in their abilities to succeed and the research shows they are, about half of the respondents reported revenue growth of more than 10% of the previous year while an impressive 32% had revenue growth of more than 20%. Pat Ewert: As businesses grow we found that our women business owners started relying more on stronger management teams, outside the advisors were very happy to hear that every set of advisers that there accountants are number one. Susan Solovic: It is often, assumed that women are more risk adverse than men but when the researches ask how much risk would you take or have you taken to start or expand your business more than 60% so they had used or would use up to 95% of their personal savings to start or expand their businesses. Pat Ewert: And we found that 95% of our respondents were willing to not only use all of their personal savings but also put their house on the line which is against what everybody thought so this was really ground breaking for us. Susan Solovic: The 2007 survey of women business owners revealed some differences in financing including our reluctant to tab out by capital. Pat Ewert: Zip women are using outside finances or other people’s money it could be one of the reasons why their businesses don’t grow as quickly as other businesses. So yes, we did find that women preferred that is it was like the last thing that chose to do and also we found that the larger the business the more willing they were to use it of people’s money. Susan Solovic: The research revealed 38% of the women entrepreneur’s survey had never gone to a bank for financing. Only 9% of the women businesses and the study received equity financing and of this group 56% received the funding from friends and family. Almost half, 48% of the respondents see the economy as the top business challenge they have. Pat Ewert: One of the things you’ll find in the survey is that there are lot of insights from women business owners who was one of the things that was the most fun about putting this together as we got a lot of feedback from female entrepreneurs about what would they do differently. Some of the things that jump out of this is they overwhelmingly said if “I had it to do all over again it start earlier”. Susan Solovic: More than 60% of the women business owner surveyed are married and more than 67% of the respondent have children. Almost 40% of the women with businesses in the highest revenue category started their firms when they were between 20 and 29 years old. More than 60% of the enterprises surveyed had been an operation for six or more years. These are just a few of the important findings and the 36 page research report produce with the University of Chicago, the committee of 200 and the National Association of women Business Owners. To view the complete research, go to www. RSMMcGladrey.com and look for surveys under resources. I’m, Susan Wilson Solovic reporting for sbtv.com where small business is our only business.