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September 1, 2004, Women in Business: Industry Outlook

Published in Utah Business

By Staff

WOMEN-OWNED businesses in Utah are currently undergoing a dramatic growth spurt, and the trend doesn't appear to be slowing. A 2004 study by the Washington, D.C. based Center for Women's Business Research found that Utah leads the nation in the growth of the number of privately-held businesses that are at least half-owned by women—an increase of 34.7 percent from 1997-2004, compared with a national average of 17.4 percent.

The inaugural Utah Business Women in Business roundtable, held at the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, brought together a dynamic group of women leaders from business, education, law and government to discuss the growth of entrepreneurship among women in Utah, the larger cultural contribution of women in the workforce, the current business and legislative climate and other issues that impact opportunity for women in business.

Participants included: Sherron Bienvenu, consultant and Professor Emeritus; Shauna Bona, McKinnon-Mulherin; Betsy Burton, The King's English Bookstore; Caryn Beck-Dudley, Utah State University College of Business; Gladys Gonzales, Mundo Hispano; Kim Jones, Verite Multimedia; Pat Jones, Dan Jones & Associates and the Utah House of Representatives; Louise Knauer, Attorney at Law; Linda Kofford, Associated Representatives; Crystal Maggelet, Crystal Inns; Karianne Marcum, Creative Expressions; Nancy Mitchell, Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce; Pollyanna Pixton, Evolutionary Systems; Connie Saccomanno, The Winner School; Maxine Turner, Cuisine Unlimited; Vicki Varela, Kennecott Land: and Kathryn Wilcox, Kencraft.

Special thanks to our sponsors for this roundtable, Workforce Services and Grant Thornton LLP, and to our moderator, Jan Hemming, outgoing president of the Utah chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). Thanks also to Cactus & Tropicals for providing floral arrangements for the event.

Let's start by hearing about your organization, the role you play and the most difficult challenges you have encountered in building your business or moving up the ranks.

BONA: I am co-president and co-founder of McKinnon-Mulherin. We're an information design company, which basically means we're writers and artists who understand business. We help clients create proposals, training documentations and presentations that put money in their pockets. In the seven-plus years we've been in business, I think our greatest challenge is managing growth, quality and cash flow in a pretty variable economic climate.

KNAUER: I'm an attorney; I practice with five other people. We've carved out practices and lifestyles that worked for us. I guess the biggest issue for me is not being too much of a soft touch and valuing my work, not feeling as though my job is to help everybody on earth.

BURION: My business is the King's English bookstore. We've been around 27 years. The biggest challenge we have faced by far is the national chains. For about ten years, it looked as though we might not make it. Now, business is better.

WILCOX: I'm the vice president of production at Kencraft, a candy manufacturing company in Alpine. We manufacture a creative, handmade product that's unique in the marketplace. We've been around about 37 years, and I've been there 11 years, and I feel very lucky. I really haven't had challenges moving up into the management level. I've been able to work with some very intelligent, very sincere, very wonderful men who have given me opportunities to prove myself and challenge me.

GONZALES: I am the publisher and owner of the Mundo Hispana newspaper. We've been around for 11 years. Our biggest challenge, I think, has been to convince marketing teams of big companies that there is a huge Hispanic market out, and they need to invest dollars in advertising to reach this market. We have been very successful lately. I think the change of the Census 2000 that proved that there really are Hispanics in Utah has made a big difference for the growth of our newspaper.

BIENVENU: I am a professor emeritus from Emory University in Atlanta, where I taught for 20 years. I also am a visiting professor in the international MBA program in Helsinki, Finland and have had a consulting, training and speaking practice for the past 18 years. My focus is communication, from professional competencies to corporate communication strategy. But my passion and research has always been gender differences in workplace communication.

What I always hoped I could bring to Utah was the concept that your options should not be limited based on your gender. Sometimes I have a good audience for that and sometimes I don't. Since I became Shreveport, Louisiana's first female disk jockey in 1970, I have always taken a job formerly held by a man and had to work twice as hard to prove that I was half as good and often paid half the money.

DUDLEY: I'm the Dean of the college of Business at Utah State University. Before that, I was a lawyer for a short time, before I moved into academia. I was the first person to have a baby on tenure track. How people viewed that was always interesting, because academic settings are not set up for people to have babies. Really, stereotyping has probably been the major challenge. At a university, you would think they would be much more open, but in fact, gender stereotyping has been a major problem.

TURNER: I own Cuisine Unlimited, a 23-year-old off-premises catering service. We have done many national events, and recently began our first international event, at the Athens Olympics. I started the company 23 years ago on a shoestring and all my wedding gifts—I think I have one piece of silver left. Certainly one of our greatest challenges is that the cost of doing business has no borders anymore; our costs are the same nationally and sometimes now even internationally. However, we live in a very conservative community where budgets are really the bottom line. It's very challenging to maintain profitability when we're challenged on a regular basis by low budgets within this community.

VARELA: I'm vice president of public policy at Kennecott Land, which is building enduring communities on Salt Lake Valley's west bench. We own a parcel of property that's about the size of the City of San Francisco. We are very committed to sustainable development and long-term strategy that will create communities where my children and many of your children will choose to live. I've had lots of different chapters in my life, and I think the biggest challenge for me has been maintaining lifestyle balance, in that I tend to be drawn to work that I get so passionate about that I have to be very careful to manage all the interesting parts of my life carefully.

KIM JONES: I am the CEO of Verite, an 11-year-old digital communications agency that specializes in communications for sales, marketing and training. We also have a Web-based suite of applications that back up business processes for communications campaigns that do registration, testing and certification, content management and e-commerce. I have been honored in the past to chair the board of the Utah Information Technology Association (UITA).

I haven't had a lot of problems in this state in being able to succeed—I've been afforded every opportunity and have taken them. My biggest challenges have been that the local economy is very tight-budgeted. Lucky for us, we're a national firm, so I can pay my employees above-market rates, which they should be paid to begin with. Also, there are so few women in technology in Utah.

SACCOMANNO: I own an activity center called The Winner School, which is like one-stop shopping for parents. If we don't have it, you don't need it. It's a wonderful place to work; I probably have the only job that you walk in the door and get hugs just for showing up. I have also sat on the advisory board of the Office of Child Care. The biggest challenges were getting started, keeping up the quality and paying my teachers what they are worth. We have also outgrown our building, so we are being creative in housing all of our kids and keeping them safe and occupied and having fun.

PAT JONES: I'm co-owner of Dan Jones & Associates in Salt Lake City. We do public opinion and market research. We've been in business for almost 30 years. I'm primarily a qualitative researcher, which means I moderate focus groups here and around the country. I also serve in the Utah Legislature. I'm one of the few Democrats up there, and it's been a great opportunity. I would say cash flow is always a huge problem for any small- or medium-sized business. I think personal issues are always challenging. Eventually, the buck does stop at the top, which I'm sure all of you experience.

MARCUM: Creative Expressions is a specialty embroidery and screen printing advertising company that's been in business 20 years. We do just about anything that you can put a logo on. I would say that our largest challenge is that it's hard to train for what we do because so much of what we do is different and it's always changing. I would say that maintaining employees and paying them enough to keep them happy is definitely a challenge. Working with family has been very interesting. I work with my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law and another brother. There are issues with family versus non-family members.

MAGGELET: I'm the founder and managing director for Crystal Inns, and I'm also on the board of directors for Flying J. The biggest challenge that I face is definitely time management: wearing many, many different hats and setting very high expectations for myself—that I can be the best mom, the best contributor in my business, juggle and do everything perfectly in the very short amount of time we all have.

MITCHELL: I'm the executive director of the Women's Business Center here at the Salt Lake Chamber. We help women get started in business and to grow their businesses. Thus far, we've been a public partnership between the U.S. Small Business Administration and the Chamber. We're facing some funding challenges right now: at the moment, we have no more funding from the SBA for the Center. I thought I should mention the major challenges that the clients coming in face: one of them is being taken seriously in business; the other is funding.

KOFFORD: I've owned Associated Representatives for 22 years. We are a sales and marketing agency for major equipment manufacturers of electrical products, primarily for the power industry. When I started my company, there were literally no women in the power side of the business. I was a real novelty.

Some of the challenges I faced were questions like, 'Is this your husband's business?' Or, 'Did you inherit it from your dad?' Or, 'What are you doing when most women your age are home baking cookies and having more kids?' When I first started, I thought if I could survive the first five years I'd have it made. That's truly a misstatement propagated on people who start their own businesses. Some of the challenges I've had over the years have been living through the construction cycles, and competing with larger businesses for employees and benefits.

PIXTON: I own a company called Evolutionary Systems that I started in 1996. We look at businesses as a system and figure out what's wrong with them in all areas of the business and how they interact—instead of helping fix part of the company and seeing the impact being diluted by other things going on. Recently we started a think-tank on fear in the workplace, with seminars and articles coming out that we want to share with the larger community; we are seeing that fear is keeping people from being innovative and productive and happy employees. The biggest challenge I've seen is that in Utah, it's very difficult to reach some of the executives in larger companies through the networking that goes on in the state.

Much has been said about stereotypes toward business-women working in an environment where the majority of executives are men. How do these stereotypes manifest themselves? How do you respond to them, and have you seen things change over the years?

VARELA: My experience is that in many chapters of my career, I have been the only woman, or one of a very small number of women, in the decision-making process. Men want to be better at understanding how to work with us, and don't know how, so I always view it as an opportunity to collaborate with them in making it easier. For the most part, I've had very few encounters with men who intended or wanted to be sexist.

KIM JONES: I think, ultimately, as a woman you need to prove your value with men. They're not used to seeing that value, so the best way to prove your value is to be articulate, intelligent, and successful. If you can do those things, many men are receptive to treating you with respect. Some are not. Some will never change. I like to think at 45 I can see them coming. It's not always easy.

MARCUM: We've had many experiences where a salesman comes in to sell us a piece of equipment, and the entire discussion is directed towards the men who are in talking with us, often a printer or production manager. The salesperson assumes that the women standing there talking with them are not the decision makers. People walk into our business and hand us a business card and say, 'Have your owner get back with me.' The assumption is there must be a man involved somewhere. They don't realize that there is no man involved.

Why do you wake up every morning and do what you do? And what combinations of qualities and beliefs have worked best in developing your particular leadership and management style?

BURTON: In almost any successful business, I think there is something that you really can't attribute to gender, and that is a passion for what you are doing. Beyond that, for a woman, an enormous motivator for running your own business is to be able to control your life. I think that we purposely structure our businesses so that we can have an outside life, for instance, that has to do with family. We really work outside the box to do that.

And the one difference I see is what I call our "clandestine doctorate" that we achieved if we raise a family. We learn multitasking, of course, but also conflict resolution: if you have more than one child, you're an expert. If you have ever raised a teenager, you know not to listen to what they say, but to watch what they do. I think insight about relationships and behavior modification is an enormous advantage that women have, which men are beginning to acquire as they enter the realm of family.

SACCOMANNO: My motivation is that I love what I do. I look forward to walking into school every day and working with the kids, the challenges of finding new things for them to do. So it's the passion for what I do that motivates me.

I grew up in a family-owned business. My father always told my sister and me we could do anything we wanted to do if we set our mind to it, so we did. We always owned our business and had control of what we did. We are used to working through problems and looking at them as challenges instead. We're peacemakers. We want to make sure everything is okay everywhere, and we do whatever we need to do to make sure that happens. We listen. We are goal oriented. We know what we want to achieve, and do whatever it takes to get there. But I don't know if that's a gender thing. I think sometimes it's a characteristic that you grow up with and the way you were raised and the way you look at life in general.

MITCHELL: I, too, love my work, and I get to meet women like you all the time. I love to see success stories of our women's business owners, see them get a loan, see them complete their business plan, and even some of them who come in and receive counseling and decide not to go into business.

WILCOX: My motivation has actually changed from when I first entered the business world in an entrepreneurial setting. I did it because I wanted to prove to myself, not necessarily to men or anyone else, that I can do this. I've become less of a perfectionist over the years, and I've had to, because wearing many hats, having a family, you can't do it all. My motivation, now that I have teenagers, is to be an example for them.

GONZALES: My motivation every morning is to make of this world a better world for everyone, to do better for my family and for myself, to improve our financial situation, but also to bring something good to the community. Being in the media is a lot of responsibility, and the media has a lot of power. I want to improve the image of Latinos in Utah, and at the same time, to promote understanding between both communities.

I have seen through the years that I am getting there. I see that the newspaper has various levels. It has a political level, an economic level, a government and a community level. And I see my family getting excited about what Grandma is doing and who Grandma was when she came to this country 13 years ago and who is she today, how can she improve the lives of other people and make changes.

How do women's leadership styles impact the bottom line? A Cornell University researcher discovered that companies that made Working Mother magazine's "Best Companies to Work for" list, as well as the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, were more likely to have a higher market capitalization. He concluded there was a strong correlation between women-friendly, women-enlightened and women-led companies and financial success. Do you see these same signs?

VARELA: In some ways, the obviousness of this is hilarious in that basically we are saying that it is good to have a demographic group that represents 50 percent of the population as a key decision maker. End of story. If, at the end of the day, we're half of the consumer population, then any smart business needs to have us as senior officers, making critical strategic decisions.

MARCUM: The way we lead our business is almost purely emotional. We believe in and love our employees. And they know that we care about them, so in return, we have a commitment, loyalty and work ethic that I don't think you would find in a business run by a man. We are willing to make exceptions, and understand that a child had to be picked up at school right then—and that it happened last week and will happen in the future. We believe in them and in their families.

PAT JONES: I think that it used to be, and maybe still is in some companies and even some industries, that women have to prove they are competent and men have to prove they are incompetent. I also wanted to mention that women make 80 percent of the decisions in our country, and that's what people don't understand.

I see huge differences on the Hill with how women pass legislation. There are only 22 percent of women across the nation in the legislatures. We need mentors, and someone to encourage us to run. And we run for purposes that are different, so our issues are very different. I think it's very, very important to have, as Vicki said, representation from half our population, both in business and in government across the board. That's my speech and I'm sticking to it.

WILCOX: We pride ourselves in being a family-friendly company. We have 340 employees, of which 300 are women. The management team is all men, except for me. What I've been able to bring—and it hasn't been strictly my own input, but because of the women—is creative ideas to help figure out how to be family-friendly. The men don't have that experience. When the kid is sick, they grab their briefcase and leave, knowing that Mom is going to take care of the problem—whether she works or not. The family-friendly ideals and programs we have developed are putting money in the employees' and the company's pockets.

BIENVENU: No one argues that men and women, as groups, tend to—note the qualifiers-bring different qualities to the table. If you look at profiles of women millionaires, what is remarkable is that they have come into traditionally male environments and brought these wonderful feminine skills with them. So the women who are really successful are there because they know when to use the traditionally feminine skills and when to use the traditionally masculine skills in order to get what they want. Men usually just go on and do it the way they've been doing it. So they haven't learned what we have learned.

TURNER: Having owned my own business, I see that the style of management has really, truly changed over the course of time. So I have had to change to fit into that and what is more acceptable in interacting with employees. I find it very interesting that even though I set the standard of the company and the expectations, it is actually my sons who are more nurturing and user-friendly to employees.

BECK-DUDLEY: I don't run a business, but I am in charge of quite a large budget. And what amazed me were the inequities within that budget. I see people who do the same job being paid very, very different rates. And I don't know if that's gender-based, but if men don't care about that, I am appalled. It seems to me they are willing to say, 'Well, that's the rate they negotiated, so that's a fair rate,' as opposed to looking at the broader issues.

A recent national study shows Utah as the number one state in the percentage growth of women-owned business. The study showed that there were approximately 102,000 firms generating $ 23 billion dollars in sales and employing 217,000 people. This makes a profound statement about the Beehive State. What do you think are the contributing factors? And is it different being a businesswoman here in Utah than, say, on the East or West Coast?

BONA: First, I think the conservative, more traditional environment makes it more likely that a woman would decide to become an entrepreneur in order to have the power she wants and the ability to control her business future. I clearly saw a glass ceiling for me where I was that was based on religion and gender. I wanted to be the room parent. I wanted to be a Girl Scout leader. I wanted to be a good partner to my husband. And I wanted to have a personal life. And so I saw that having my own business would give me that capability.

Another thing I think people forget when they think about conservative, traditional LDS culture is that we also have a tradition of educating women. Women strongly value education in LDS culture. So you have a lot of smart women in a position to make decisions, who want a work-life balance.

BECK-DUDLEY: I think that's interesting, because in the Business School at Utah State, we see a lot of women start school, but they leave before finishing at a much higher rate than the national average. So I have speculated that because there are not a lot of large employers in Utah, there are few places for women to go who are well educated and interested in working in an exciting environment. A second thing is, I think the college dropout rate really impacts the entrepreneurship rate, because you can start your own business without a college degree. So if you are smart and passionate and have a couple years of higher education, then drop out for whatever reason—usually to get married—then decide you want to work, starting your own business is an absolute perfect option for you.

KIM JONES: I started my business because the people I worked for couldn't see the vision of the technology I wanted to support. The second big reason was so that I could work out of the house. I had two kids who were entering into teenage-hood in an environment where they were the outsiders looking in and. So for the first six years of the company, I literally had programmers in my basement.

As a Utah transplant, I believe that the business environment is very, very different here. I would say some of the biggest reasons are, when I go into a conference room in a meeting in California or on the East Coast, I feel a more level, diverse playing field to begin with. The backgrounds and competence brought into the situation are so diverse that you just feel like you are walking into a level playing field. In Utah, I don't feel that same way, and in order to succeed here, I think it requires tremendous tenacity and consideration, and strategies that really force you to think differently.

PIXTON: I was raised in Utah and started to work here. Then I worked internationally, and found it's not a level playing field internationally—it's better than that. They value and revere their independent thinkers, and it's a delight to work over there. When I returned here in '96, I didn't feel like it was a glass ceiling; I felt like I was in a box. Not only is it above me, but I couldn't move my elbows. It was terrible. I was so determined to help make workplaces a better place for people to be, the only way I could see to do that was to start my own company.

Do you think women entrepreneurs, with our newfound economic clout, are having an impact on economic policy? Which economic policies, in your mind, need urgent attention?

VARELA: I'll speak to the first one: Are women entrepreneurs influencing public policy? I would say it's the reverse. I think public policy is influencing a better environment for women entrepreneurs. I think public policy has been an environment where women have been able to get to higher places faster, because in public policy, it's recognized that women are half of the democracy.

Corporations are slower to learn that women are half of the buying public. So in the time that I've been evolving in my career, I've seen so many public policy leadership decisions that have enabled women to succeed in business. An example would be Title IX, which finally gave us a level playing field in sports. And I think that changed young women's views about themselves quite fundamentally, because they saw they could compete. Other examples are women's access to law school and the growing number of female judges you now see in the state.

BONA: I think the one area where I would like to see women have a bigger effect on economic policy is health care and child care. We talk a lot about work-life balance, but health care is so crippling to small business. I think we need to have more influence there.

KIM JONES: I don't know a lot about public policy or how it's impacting or not impacting my business, to be honest. I do know health care is a huge problem. I have 24 employees, and it's a tremendously huge problem.

PAT JONES: There is a lot of talk right now about economic development. That's very important, but I'm going to step out on a limb and say I don't think many men understand how they're all tied in together: child care, economic development, health care, helping small businesses with their premiums and those sorts of things. It's all interconnected. It's been interesting over the last few years to see that chasm between philosophies.

Only about ten percent of all venture capital goes to women. What's your experience with financing and which sources tend to be most favorable to you?

BONA: Banks still are our number one best friend. I think people talk about getting venture capital for women businesses, but I think it goes the other way. When we looked at our options for venture capital, one of the main reasons we were going into business for ourselves was to control our lives. We were so fearful about venture capital and what it might mean to our ability to have the work-life balance we wanted and the business that we wanted, we didn't even seek it.

When you decide that you are all about freedom, to go to the typical white, male sources for your money seems kind of contradictory. We need more women-focused, women-funded venture capital.

KIM JONES: I think the numbers are indicative of the fact that women tend to be self-funded. Because we can persevere and because of the tenacity we have, I think we are more willing to figure out how to self-fund the thing rather than go to VCs, who are going to control a huge amount.

What is the status of the 'glass ceiling,' and where does education fit in the process?

KNAUER: I think there's no question that there is a glass ceiling in the big law firms. There are almost no law firms in town that have named women as senior partners. I've been involved in Women Lawyers of Utah since I was a law student.

What women are more likely than men to do is leave law firms and establish their own practices, like the women in my office. I don't they do it primarily to make more money. We would all probably make more money if we stayed at our big law firm as midlevel partners at $ 200,000 a year—not the million dollars some senior partners make, but more than most of us make outside the big firms.

I think the glass ceiling exists because there still aren't the contacts for women. The big work comes to the males through contact with the other males in the community. I think it's also a little bit of a fallacy when we talk about women in the judiciary. We have more than we did 20 years ago, but I don't believe there's been a woman appointed to the district court bench in eight or nine years. Justice Parrish was just appointed to the Supreme Court, because she was not only extraordinarily bright and competent but also extremely well connected. But we need to get more women on the trial bench.

BECK-DUDLEY: When you get to a certain level in an organization—my husband and I were both faculty members, so now we face that—someone's career has to give. There's just not enough time in the day. Sometimes I think the persistence of that glass ceiling comes from what you really want to do in your life and whether your partner is willing to sacrifice something they are passionate about in order for you to succeed.

I am very concerned about women in Utah. A number of students at Utah State come from Utah. As many women as men come, but don't finish their education. It is a serious, serious problem. It's partly because they quit and go to work while their husband finishes, rather than both going to school. Also, there's not good funding for Utah higher education, and parents don't support their children in higher education in Utah. Children support themselves.

MAGGELET: I think that glass ceiling is always going to exist for women, or it's going to be very hard to break through for years and years, because women just have different goals and priorities, different ways we like to live our lives. Most women aren't willing to give up other opportunities we have and other important roles we play in society for the sake of our careers.

We've talked a lot today about entrepreneurship and the freedom it can give you, but in reality, is it always about freedom? When I started the Crystal Inns, 80 hours a week, seven days a week wasn't really freedom. As I became pregnant with twins, I realized how hard it was going to be to raise women.

I think a lot about what is the right thing to do. Is it better to stay home with your kids and run them here and there? Is that the best example for my daughters? Or are you a better role model, and in the end a better mother, if you show them that they can succeed and do other things? That is a constant struggle. At the end of the day, we are still programmed as women, and don't necessarily want to make the sacrifices it takes to break that glass ceiling—because somewhere along the way, I don't care what we say, it is a sacrifice on the family side.