Women Entrepreneurs Shattering Stereotypes

Jill Blashack Strahan, 48, was sitting in her bathroom reading a magazine at three o'clock one morning in 1994, trying not to wake up her husband and son, when she had what she calls her "ding ding" moment. "I'd always felt unfulfilled, as though I hadn't yet found what I was meant to be doing," she says. "Then, in an instant, I figured it out. And I could just feel that it was right." On the spot, she decided to start Tastefully Simple, a company that uses in-home tasting parties to sell gourmet foods. Nothing about this late-night scene in Alexandria, Minnesota, would necessarily have pointed to Strahan one day becoming a wildly successful entrepreneur, but that's what happened: In 2006, Tastefully Simple brought in revenues of $120 million.

According to modern myth, the typical entrepreneur is a twenty-something man who is geeky, emotionally immature, and one sleepless night away from fame and fortune. It's a caricature given iconic status with the ascent of men like Bill Gates, Marc Andreessen of Netscape, and the Google boys, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. But while their stories do fit the mold, pretty much everything about the stereotype is wrong. In the United States today, it's women who are the driving force behind new businesses. According to the Center for Women's Business Research, women-owned companies are growing at nearly twice the rate of all firms. They employ more than 12.8 million people and spend about $550 billion on salaries and benefits; they also generate $1.9 trillion in sales.

I've started and run three businesses of my own, and yet, because I didn't fit any of the cliches of entrepreneurship, I always felt as if I were an oddball. But now, after teaching a class on the subject at Simmons College, in Boston, and writing a book, How She Does It, I run across other women business owners almost every day. What strikes me about them is not how incredible they are, but how normal. In April, for example, I attended a gathering of 550 members of the Women Presidents' Organization. Here was a room full of women who were, yes, smart, energetic and good company. But they weren't child prodigies, superwomen, or Einsteins. They were simply people who had been lucky enough to find something they were good at and loved doing.

The myths of entrepreneurship matter because they can be discouraging to anyone who doesn't fit them. But women entrepreneurs are pouring trillions of dollars into the U.S. economy and creating over seven million jobs a year. And they're doing it on their own terms -- which may be the biggest news of all.

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