National Women's Small Business Month 2009

The United States Small Business Administration and Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence are working together to promote opportunities for women entrepreneurs through education, training and counseling. This alliance will help strengthen and expand small business opportunities for women Welcome to the SBA and to our celebration of Women’s Business Ownership Month. My name is Ana Harvey and I'm the Assistant Administrator for Women’s Business Ownership. Well, let me tell you, there is no better way to celebrate women’s increasingly important role in the economy than to sign a new strategic alliance between the SBA and Count Me In, one of the leading providers of resources, business education, and community support for women entrepreneurs. This is an organization that grew from being the first online microlender to helping build million-dollar enterprises owned by women. So this the first of what I hope will be many strategic alliances forged with some very special organizations that share our mission and goals. I am really determined to get the word out to many, many more women than ever before, about the many, many ways the SBA can help them start their businesses - the right way. Count Me In can count on the SBA to provide access to training and counseling, access to capital, and to contracts for women who are ready to grow their business to a million dollars and beyond. We are here to provide access and tools and opportunities for women and men like Ana who are going to choose to start their own businesses, grow their businesses, and create the jobs, drive the economy, have the success we need. From 1970, five percent of the businesses were owned by women. Now we’re up to thirty percent. That’s seven million businesses. And we at the SBA over index in loans to women-owned businesses, minority-owned businesses, and veteran-owned businesses We are three to five times more likely than a conventional lender to make a loan to a woman-owned business. That is part of the fabric of what we do. Partnerships like the one we have really have a lot of leverage. We have a lot of people in our constituencies through our bone structure and we now have a great partner that we can work with going forward to get even more value out to these women business owners. A lot of women get into business and stay isolated and think that for it to be theirs they’ve got to figure it all out themselves. And, in fact, what you’ve got to do is surround yourself with people who are really good at the stuff you’re not good at so that you can grow the business. But what if we together took that a step further, and found 750,000 women, right now, who want to grow their businesses. Because in that process they would create three to four million jobs. They could not get to a million dollars and not do that. The Office of Women’s Business Ownership in that we get our grant money from OWBO, as it’s called, at the Small Business Administration, where I'm part of a wonderful sisterhood of 110 other women’s business centers around the country, all of which serve our own constituencies in a unique way. Whether we are rural, or whether we’re urban, whether we’re on the east coast or west, each women’s business center tailors itself to the community that’s there. That women’s business centers are very relational that we come and we do a little more hand-holding that no matter where you go to visit a women’s business center there’s not going to be a dumb question. We’re going to explain our terms to you, we’re going to hold your hand, and I also like to say that we’re going to give you a little kick every once in a while to make sure you've got that business plan, to make sure that you’re making - that you’re doing your smart planning before you’re investing. So we’re there to support you, whether it’s here in Northern Virginia or anywhere else of the other 110 women’s business centers from around the country. We are an online organization. People usually e-mail us, they see us on the internet, or they hear about us from friends, or they see us on TV, because we’re on news programs. They go to the website and find out, and then usually e-mail someone. We have webinars, we do meet-ups across the country, and we’re also always happy to talk to people on the phone. We do live competitions across the country, and also online, to encourage women to set a goal and then start using the tools that we have and the tools that the SBA has to grow their businesses. We keep women accountable, we work with women in all 50 states. We have women in the program in rural Alaska, in Hawaii, everywhere. The internet’s everywhere, we’re everywhere. The Small Business Administration’s women’s business center in Springfield, Virginia, and started taking classes on the ABCs of how to start your own business, and it really gave me the foundation and the fundamentals to understand how to properly begin to establish a company in the state of Virginia. The most important thing to do is to build a roadmap and the way I liken it is, would you know where you were going if you didn't have a map? Where are you going to, how are you going to get there? So the most important thing is your roadmap, which is really your business plan, and building your business plan and working out the details will help you actually think about how to better build your business. The second thing is to consider who is going to be on your board of advisors. And I think that’s really important because when you’re building out your business you are going to find that there are areas that you have absolutely no expertise in, and don't even want to learn - do you want to be a lawyer and an accountant, and run your business at the same time? So what you want to do is build your board of advisors in the smartest way you know how, and that is to reach out to your network and if you don't have your network, build that too.