From the CEO’s Desk
If You Can See It, You Can Be It
I
don’t know where this adage came from,
but it sums up our purpose for this issue.
If more of us in the publishing industry fail
to tell the stories of women in business, their
insights and experience will never be heard.
The stories of women who are open to sharing
it all can be game-changers for other women in
their life choices, whether in starting a business,
building a business, or rising to the C-suite.
What an inspiring group of women profiled
in this edition! Their motivations to start their
franchise systems, fund them, and overcome obstacles provide invaluable lessons for all.
In this, our 3rd Annual Issue
on Women in Franchising, we’ve
put the focus on female founders
and co-founders. The 15 brands
we selected have built cumulative
annual system-wide revenues of
almost $1.4 billion, opened 2,000
locations, and have helped countless women (and men) realize their
entrepreneurial dreams through
franchising.
We were surprised that we could
only identify about 75 franchise
companies founded or co-founded
by women. (We’re sure there are
more out there, and we’d like to
hear from you!) The lion’s share of these brands
were started after 2000—no surprise, given the
trends of women business ownership in the
years preceding.
Common challenges cited by the founders of
the 15 profiled brands that they say men don’t
face to the same extent as women, include:
1) balancing family with leading and building a company;
2) greater difficulty financing their dreams
(a male banker told one of them to go home
and raise her kids!);
3) being judged when assertive as overbearing or too a