Women lead charge into ownership

But after working for him for about a year, she came to a realization.

“I pretty much was left to my own there,” Mitchell said. “And I realized while I was there that, ‘Hey, I can do this.’”

Mitchell returned to her hometown of Springfield in March and started Mitchell Chiropractic and Rehabilitation Center, at 1015 E. Republic Road.

As a woman starting her own business, Mitchell is not alone, according to Courtney Price, an author and the founder, president and CEO of Denver-based consulting firm VentureQuest Ltd. LLC.

Price was scheduled to be in Springfield for a Sept. 18 presentation, “Trends in Women’s Entrepreneurship: Key Challenges & Opportunities,” at Drury University’s Clara Thompson Hall.

Price said women are leading the entrepreneurial charge in a number of sectors, including health care and professional fields.

Another local woman to become an entrepreneur is Brenda Van Eps, who started an interior design firm in April after nearly a decade with Butler, Rosenbury & Partners.

While Van Eps’ decision to strike out on her own was not entirely her own – she was laid off in March, when the architecture firm downsized roughly 8.5 full-time equivalents, or 10 percent of its total work force – she said the idea had always been on her mind.

“When I was laid off, I used that as a springboard to start my own business, and it’s been great,” she said. “Since I’m the only designer working on my projects now, I can really control the design. That’s a new thing for me.”

Opportunities

As they have throughout American history, small businesses continue to drive the nation’s economic engine, employing more than 90 percent of the country’s workers, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

According to the SBA, there are nearly 10.4 million privately held women-owned businesses nationwide, employing almost 13 million people and generating nearly $2 trillion in sales.

In Missouri, 42.9 percent of the state’s privately held businesses are at least 50 percent women-owned, according to the Missouri Women’s Council. That represents 210,000 of Missouri’s private businesses, which is a 75 percent increase compared to 2002. Those businesses generate $42 billion in sales and employ nearly 300,000 people, according to the council.

Price said the variety of Web sites created in recent years catering to women entrepreneurs and stay-at-home moms give women more options – and numerous programs exist to help with funding.

“There are a lot of micro-loan programs that focus on lending small amounts of money to women who may not have the capital or may be seen as not traditionally bankable,” Price said.

She also mentioned angel networks – including the Springfield Angel Investor Network recently started by the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce – as an option. “That local network could create a rosier picture for the women-owned businesses in the area,” Price said.

Financing

While SBA is doing its part to help more women get their start – the organization approved more than 24,000 loans to women worth more than $3.5 billion in 2007, the last year for which numbers are available – Price said financing remains one of the biggest challenge for companies.

Three out of four women-owned businesses start with less than $5,000 in funding, and 52 percent of female owners use a credit card to start their business, compared to 18 percent of overall startups, Price said.

“(Women) are not well represented in receiving equity funding, and the impact is that they aren’t as represented in wealth creation as men,” she said. “It also means they can’t scale up (their business) the way a male counterpart could.”

For her chiropractic venture, Mitchell secured a $100,000 SBA-backed loan from Countryside Bank, combined with an undisclosed personal down payment.

Van Eps, meanwhile, said she had few startup costs; she operates from her home, so the only initial costs were to purchase the needed computer-aided-drafting software and install a small library area in her basement for her portfolio and books of carpet samples.

Challenges

Mitchell and Van Eps said they faced different challenges in their quests to run their own businesses.

For Van Eps, the issue was connections.

“You have to get out, make introductions, join organizations and meet people to find the business,” she said. “That’s not something I had to do at my previous jobs.”

She added, however, that she thinks women can sometimes more quickly make personal connections with potential business partners.

For Mitchell, the issue has been overcoming preconceived notions. Her field, Mitchell said, is not one where women are strongly represented.

“I get asked all the time, ‘Where’s Dr. Mitchell?’ When I say it’s me, they’ll say, ‘But you’re a woman. You’re a chiropractor?’” she said. “They think that chiropractors are usually men. I get that all the time in the community. I think once people realize the situation, they’re OK.”

The disadvantage, however, is outweighed by the intrinsic advantages of being a woman in her field. Mitchell said that since mothers are often the first person in a family to see a chiropractor, she can make a quicker connection than a male doctor.

“I also feel like I have an advantage with children. They tend to be more comfortable – especially female children – with a female doctor,” she said. “We do a lot of school physicals, and those high school girls are more comfortable with a female physician.”

The biggest advantage Mitchell cites is the built-in support system for women entrepreneurs.

“The female business owners in Springfield do so much for each other,” she said. “There are all kinds of networking and connections for female business owners that I can take advantage of. And most chiropractors here aren’t female, so that’s an advantage. The women business owners really stick together here.”