October 25, 2006. I just returned from the Make Mine a $Million Business 2006 Awards Event in New York City yesterday. What an inspiring day! Sharing the stage were an impressive list of bigwigs (Hillary Clinton, Suze Orman, Nell Merlino of Count-Me-In, Susan Sobbott of American Express, Dany Levy of Daily Candy, Valerie Morris of CNN), as well as 30 women business owners who each gave 3-minute elevator speeches about their companies, and of course the 1000+ entrepreneurial women in attendance. What occured to me as I watched the day's events unfold was how REAL it all was. I loved the way that the pros shared the stage with the regular women like you and me. The audience was both impressed by the pros (all of whom seemed to sincerely care about the cause) and inspired by every woman who blinked and stuttered a bit through her presentation. Women in the audience would gasp in awe when a business owner said she had gotten to $750K in revenue, or had managed to sell 1200 units of product through QVC, or had grown her spa location to 4000 square feet. We also admired every one of them for getting up and telling her story to 1000 people, not to mention the TV cameras-- after all, these women are the likes of construction management consultants and pet food company owners, not famous conference speakers. That's why I think that the various constituencies hosting yesterday's event "get it." Women entrepreneurs want to hear from other women like them, not just from superstars (and coincidentally, the same kind of women who are profiled in Smart Women and Small Business). My only suggestion for the organizers is that they broaden the acceptable models for creating million-dollar businesses to include businesses that women buy and go on to transform, franchises that women acquire and make their own, and family businesses that daughters take to a new level. That strategy will help the movement find the additional 750,000 million-dollar businesses they need to grow to 1 million strong.
-Ginny Wilmerding
