The Annual MasterCard Worldwide "Women In Small Business" survey shows that the number of women majority owned businesses grew at almost double the rate of all businesses (42% vs 23%).
That is great news! We are both starting businesses and retaining ownership.
All, but one, of the challenges to female led small businesses don't surprise me. They are the classics.
- Stretching ourselves across multiple roles and projects (21%),
(aka being an average woman)
- Healthcare costs (12%),
- Balancing family and work (11%),
and
- Lack of time to focus on generating new business (11%).
Which did I find surprising? The last one. Lack of time for sales and marketing.
Not that we have plenty of time for sales and marketing. Not by a long shot. I set aside a couple hours a day for my book promotions and I still don't think that is enough.
But what is surprising and healthy is that we recognize we don't have enough time. Usually, although it is business critical, sales and marketing is low down on an entrepreneur's busy to-do list.
Other interesting insights include that 41% of us use an accountant for financial management (29% use software) and that 18% of female led small businesses don't have a business credit or debit card. Yikes. I couldn't survive without mine.
Comments (2)
I think women have come a long way from what it was 10 or 20 years ago... and again these statistics bolster that
Posted by Utah SEO | May 8, 2008 4:31 PM
Posted on May 8, 2008 16:31
Kimber,
You’ve posted some very interesting statistics here. While it’s clear that women entrepreneurship is on the rise, there’s still a lot of guidance and time required to get these businesses into the stratosphere. It’s getting easier though, and with modern conveniences like the internet, women have a new chance to expand their business to a vast spectrum of potential consumers. For instance, have you heard of Office Live Small Business? It’s a new release from Microsoft, and it’s designed especially to facilitate the everyday tasks of a budding entrepreneur. It has a great website layout designer that requires no HTML experience (for the less web savvy) and a highly organized e-mail system that even checks the status of sent messages. You can consolidate your invoices and look at reports of day-to-day traffic on your site, and tag your page to specific key words.
There’s plenty more information at http://smallbusiness.officelive.com
Oh and I forgot to mention that Microsoft not only hosts everything on your website free of charge, you even get a customized “.com” domain name! It’s a really cost-effective and easy way to bring any mompreneur business up and running on the internet. Please check it out, and if you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me! I work with Microsoft and would be more than happy to answer any questions you or your readers may have. Again, thanks for the great read. Let's hope the future holds a big place for women entrepreneurs!
Best,
Kimberly
Posted by Kimberly Rosenberg | May 8, 2008 5:15 PM
Posted on May 8, 2008 17:15