Real financial power

National Small Business Week celebrates America’s entrepreneurs

Leading Colorado’s celebration of National Small Business Week on May 4 at History Colorado were Betsy Markey, SBA Distirct VIII administrator; Maria Contreras-Sweet, (LEFT) administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration and Gov. John Hickenlooper.

By Jan Wondra

On May 4, Denver scored an honor over hundreds of other American cities when Maria Contreras-Sweet, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, arrived in Denver to celebrate National Small Business Week. Speaking that day at a breakfast celebrating women-owned business, as well as at Colorado’s SBA luncheon at which Colorado’s 2016 Small Business Person of the Year was honored, Contreras-Sweet struck a celebratory chord.

“We’ve had 73 months of consecutive job growth and the majority of those jobs are coming from small businesses,” said the woman who once marshaled friends to start a California financial institution focused on funding women-owned small businesses. “I believe in just slamming that door open [for business startups]. If there isn’t funding for women-owned businesses, then we just need to create our own institutions.”

Nationally, the number of women-owned firms increased by 45 percent between 2007 and 2016.

“Women are creating businesses at a rate five times faster than the national average,” U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter said. “Women are blazing the trail for other women.”

Access to working capital is key to small business creation and women have been less likely than men to seek funding to start businesses. Up until now, that is.

Colorado now has an estimated 221,000 women-owned businesses, employing 173,200 and contributing roughly $31 billion to the state’s economy.

“It’s important that women support other women,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, adding humorously that “Women are getting ready to take over and men just don’t realize it yet.”

A scarcity of funding is something that DeGette experienced early when as a young attorney she needed a $5,000 loan to buy office equipment and furniture. She was told she could have the loan if she opened a $5,000 bank account.

“I told them if I had $5,000 I wouldn’t need the loan!” DeGette said.

She eventually got the loan from a credit union by securing it with her 1975 VW Rabbit.

Progress doesn’t mean that women are starting businesses in equal numbers across all business categories. In fact, the Small Business Development Center reports that some categories should be creating more women entrepreneurs.

“We’ve discovered that women with Ph.D.’s in STEM fields are less likely to become entrepreneurs. We want to change that—we want to see more women go on to start their own businesses,” said Fiona Arnold, executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Opportunity. “You all should know that almost all of the funding in the SBDC is federal funding.”

Finding qualified employees is one of the biggest challenges for small businesses, women-owned or not.

“My biggest problem now is the labor pool,” said Teresa Porter, CEO of ISYS, the 2015 Colorado Small Business Person of the Year. “We have to increase our labor pool of engineers and tech specialists in this state.”

Once women start companies, they appear less likely to dream as big as men do.

“Women are less inclined to identify the biggest possible vision for their companies, said panel participant Sue Heilbonner, founder, and president of MergeLane. “Instead of dreaming of running a $50,000 company, we tell them to envision what it would be like to run a $5 million company.”

Colorado’s entrepreneurial environment

Also on May 4, Colorado’s SBA luncheon honored Colorado’s ability to create companies, including our own governor’s small-business experience, which has netted him a place in the SBA Hall of Fame.

“Four out of every 10 businesses in Colorado are led by women,” said Hickenlooper, who said access to capital is critical for all small businesses. “This is ground I know well. Thirty years ago this year as an unemployed geologist, I started my brewery [Wynkoop Brewery]. Back then, people said, ‘What are you thinking?’ I got turned down for a small-business loan by 32 banks. It wasn’t like I needed that much—rent back then was about $1 per square foot in LoDo. I just kept trying.”

Silberman and Ink Monstr win big

Administrator Contreras-Sweet presented a 2016 National Small Business Person of the Year award to Reed Howard Silberman, who founded Ink Monstr in 2004 following a career on Wall Street and a stint as a ski bum.

Silberman said he’d accept “not a small-business person of the year, but as Colorado’s small-business team of the year.”

The firm is a large-format graphic design, video and printing company located on Holden Place in Denver. With the help of SBA financing, he was able to expand to a 10,000-square-foot facility that now employs 13 people. Plans are to expand into global markets.