The stereotypical corporate boardroom full of middle aged white guys still rings true far too often. Hence the continuing need for projects like Count Me In and the Make Mine a Million $ Business project sponsored by American Express Open and Cisco. The simple premise? Help woman-owned businesses grow. Unfortunately, women-owned businesses face obstacles, some subtle and some not, that men-owned businesses don’t face. While times are changing, they aren’t changing fast enough (according to my wife and daughter). According to American Express, only two percent of women-owned businesses generate one million dollars or more in annual revenue. This despite the fact that women-owned businesses are the fastest growing segment of the small business area. Men-owned million dollar businesses outnumber them by a factor of eight-to-one.
So let’s give a hand to American Express and Cisco for helping our wives, daughters, and mothers fight the same small business battles fought by our husbands, sons, and fathers, but not more. Didn’t your mother teach you to play fair? So let her face a fair playing field in her business. More details here from American Express and Cisco.
