Awed By Business, Women Turned To Awed

 

Out of 33 women in my seminar who wanted to start a business, only two of us admitted we wanted to make money doing it," says Judith Gallagher, owner of Daffodil, a flower and gift shop in Carbondale, Pa. "Everyone else said they wanted to help mankind."

Women don't always enter the business world with the same background, skills, or expectation as men, and as a consequence, many of them fail. Five years ago, Beatrice A. Fitzpatrick, then a member of the New York City Mayor's Office of Education Affairs, decided to reverse that trend. She got a $124,000 grant from the U.S. Commerce Department and set up the New York -- based American Woman's Economic Development (AWED) -- a corporation offering counseling for prospective and established women business owners.

Since then, almost 9,750 women have participated in AWED programs. The organization offers, among other programs, a series of 24 evening seminars over an 18-month period. Participants learn about on-site audits and business plan reviews, get assistance from volunteer business advisers, and receive follow-up advice from marketing and management analysts.

"I had a degree in art, but no business background at all," says Gallagher, who participated in the 1980 seminar series. "I got help with bookkeeping, banking, and even negotiating with people."

Claire Scholz-Fleming, the president of Dragons Are Too Seldom, a puppet manufacturer in Deadwood, S.Dak., with $70,000 in annual sales, used AWED's referral service to contact attorneys and mail-order companies. Her partner and accountant traveled to New York twice this year to meet with AWED consultants and an accountant. "It gave us a chance to discuss problems we didn't even realize we had until we started talking about them," she says.

Last year individual telephone counseling was added to AWED's services. An applicant completes a detailed questionnaire on her business background, her "strong and weak points," and the areas of business she particularly wants to strengthen. AWED schedules a 90-minute telephone counseling session with an expert in the entrepreneur's own field. The organization can call on more than 35 counselors in areas ranging from mail-order retailing to boutique management.

In spite of recent federal-funding cuts necessitating a $25 charge for the telephone service and $350 for the intensified 18-month seminar program, AWED is planning to expand to other cities.