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Letter to the Editor

An interview with a woman company owner who has some interesting ideas about women and entrepreneurship.

A 'typical' reader, Joline Godfrey, sets the magazine straight on women, entrepreneurship, and role models for the 1990s

All this began with a letter that arrived in our offices sometime last fall. It came from an obviously intelligent and devoted reader who felt she had discovered something about us that called into question the magazine's relevance to her. She did not mince words:

" Inc., you let me down. Four years ago, I flexed my entrepreneurial muscle, started a company, and became one of your regular readers. You've kept me up to date on who's doing what. You've offered up good ideas, cautionary tales, and management visions I can be comfortable with. But lately I've felt more irked than inspired. Try as I might, I couldn't quite put my finger on the source of my discomfort. Then you sent me your Tenth Anniversary issue, and -- in one of those awful illuminating flashes -- I got it. Inc., my buddy, my partner, my friend, you're sexist."

She proceeded to note the dearth of women in the issue generally, as well as our failure to include even one woman on the Dream Team of entrepreneurial visionaries. "Let's get this straight," she concluded. "I do not think you should edit your magazine by the numbers or establish any system of quotas. What bothers me is that you can't seem to see us. You cite statistics showing we're out here by the millions, but very few of us show up in the pages of Inc. When we do, we're usually in the sidebars and short items. We're almost never the heroes or the role models. So what gives, guys? Are we invisible? Or are you wearing blinders?"

The letter was signed Joline Godfrey, chairman, Odysseum Inc., Boston.

Godfrey's letter was not, in fact, the first we had received on the subject, nor were her concerns particularly new. Three and a half years ago we even ran a cover story entitled "Why There Aren't More Women in This Magazine" (July 1986). The truth is, we ourselves have long wondered why we don't see more examples of women-owned growth companies. Her letter offered an opportunity to come up with some fresh answers. We called her up and arranged to get together. At the time, we had no thought of publishing the conversation in the magazine.

But we found what she had to say so challenging that we invited her back, and this time we brought a tape recorder. Her comments went far beyond the issue of Inc.'s putative sexism. They spoke to the changing nature of business and the changing values of entrepreneurs, and they were relevant to everyone who runs a company.

By way of background, Godfrey was trained as a psychologist and worked for 10 years at Polaroid Corp. In 1986 she left to found Odysseum, which provides team-building seminars for corporate clients. Backed by $500,000 in venture capital from American Research & Development and Entertainment Media, she and her colleagues quickly established a national presence in the corporate meetings industry. Today Odysseum's customers include American Airlines, General Electric, Cigna Insurance, and American Express. The company registered 1989 sales of $500,000, with 12 employees.

We should note that Godfrey does not claim to be an expert on women entrepreneurs or to speak for anyone but herself. Nevertheless, we find her opinions compelling, if only because they force us to question so many assumptions we bring to the process of growing a business.

Joline Godfrey spoke with editor-in-chief George Gendron and executive editor Bo Burlingham at Inc.'s offices in Boston.

INC.: We've just been through a decade in which women founded upward of 2 million businesses. So why aren't we flooded with examples of fast-growing women-owned companies?

GODFREY: I can think of two possible explanations. One is that you're not really looking for them. The other is that you don't recognize them when you see them.

INC.: Isn't there a third possibility? Some people have argued that a lot of women are not so much founding companies as creating jobs for themselves outside the corporate mainstream. If that's true, we may not see as many of these businesses as we'd expect, because the vast majority just aren't growing.

GODFREY: Perhaps, but I know plenty of women whose companies are growing, and I'm not sure you'd see them either. People tend to see what they're prepared to see -- what their expectations make them ready to see. A lot of women-owned businesses may not fit your expectations of what a growing company should look like. They don't fit the traditional model.

INC.: How would you define the traditional model?

GODFREY: I mean the Make Money, Get Rich, Grow Fast, Devote Your Whole Life to This Thing model. It's a model that's very popular with men. When I talk to men about what's involved in starting a business, I find that a lot of them have the same set of assumptions. They believe you have to work 100 hours a week; you have to give up your family; you have to sacrifice everything to the business; and so on. Whereas most women I know have a completely different set of assumptions. They think you have autonomy; you set your own hours; your routine is entirely flexible. Now those are two very different approaches to the same process. Clearly you can do it either way. You make choices. But the choices you make are going to have a big effect on the kind of company you build.

INC.: Are you saying that this is a matter of gender? Do you really believe that women have one approach to business and men have another?

GODFREY: It's not a matter of gender. It's a matter of values. It's a matter of what you think is important, what you want to achieve, and how you want to achieve it. Obviously there are women entrepreneurs with traditional values, and men entrepreneurs with nontraditional values. But I have to say that I think women generally go about building a company differently from the way men do it. And that may help explain why you don't see more growing companies owned by women.

INC.: I don't follow.

GODFREY: You don't see them because, to you, they don't look like growing companies. The people who run them don't fit your image of "real" entrepreneurs. They're not like the guys on your Dream Team -- Steve Jobs and H. Ross Perot -- who I admit are pretty interesting fellows, by the way. They're dynamic and exciting. They're also visible. You recognize them. You're prepared to see them. They embody the great American story of individual success. But, meanwhile, you're missing an entirely different type of entrepreneur that's emerging right now, and a lot of these new entrepreneurs are women.

INC.: Now wait a minute. An entrepreneur is someone who takes an idea and turns it into a business. I understand that different people have different styles and abilities, but isn't the process fundamentally the same, whether the person is Steve Jobs or Joline Godfrey?

GODFREY: On one level, I suppose it is. If you were to ask me my business goals, I'd tell you I want a very successful company that's a great place to work, makes a lot of money, and has a product we can be ridiculously proud of. I suspect Steve Jobs might say something similar.

INC.: What do you mean by a different type of entrepreneur?

GODFREY: It has more to do with the way you set up the company and the way you operate. Control, for example, is not a big deal for me, but I have a killer need for independence. The two don't go together. If you insist on having a lot of control, people are going to be very dependent on you, and I really want to avoid that at all costs. What I want is control of my time.

INC.: How many hours a week do you work?

GODFREY: I work all the time, but that's not the point. When I talk about controlling my time, I mean something else. For example, my partner, Jane Lytle, and I made an agreement early on that we'd each take off one to two weeks at a time, once a season, to do whatever our hearts desire. Travel. Go to museums. Whatever. But not related to the business. And we promised we wouldn't break that agreement, no matter what. We said, "OK, we'll design the company to meet this need."