QWANtify awarded the winner of Wisconsin’s Make Mine a Million Business for Women
July 17, 2007 · by Tammy Adler
Back in January of this year I became aware, through Laurie Benson a friend of mine and our corporate counsel Foley Lardner, about a national woman business award that was considering piloting their program through each state in the United States, beginning with Wisconsin.
The program is called Make Mine a $Million Business. This award, through Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, is the leading national not-for-profit of on-line business loans and resources for women entrepreneurs to grow their micro businesses into $million enterprises. Count Me In’s Make Mine a $Million Business program offers money, mentoring, marketing, and technology tools to help grow women-owned businesses to the $million mark.
As we learned in the January meeting, 40% of businesses in the United States are owned by women, though only 2.6% of those businesses have revenues of $1M and above.
Nell Merlino, the woman who created Take My Daughter To Work Day (later changed to Take My Child To Work Day), decided it was time to change this trend and help woman-owned businesses strive for and reach beyond the million dollar mark.
She brought together companies such as EMC, AIG, OPEN for American Express, CISCO, Federal Express, Intuit, QVC, M Booth, and the Coach Connection to create a community where women entrepreneurs may think BIG, overcome barriers, develop leadership skills and grow their enterprises.
There were 110 Wisconsin applicants. Fifteen finalists, including QWANtify, were selected out of the original pool. Each finalist was notified and required to give a 3-minute presentation, to an audience of 400, during the May 21 finals describing the products or services offered by our company; the date we started our businesses and our experience running the company; our target market/major clients/sales technique/competitive advantage/and numbers to quantify the market opportunity; business goals and how we plan to reach $1M; and how we will benefit from the program. The audience and a panel of judges then selected eight awardees, one of which was QWANtify.
I believe the power of this award is not the award in-and-of itself, rather how each of us chooses to utilize the services and networking provided by the Count Me In team and their partnering companies. When we chose to utilize services from AIG to analyze our current business insurance portfolio and potential insurance gaps, OPEN from American Express to analyze and grade our business financials, CISCO to analyze and provide suggestions for our networking and telecommunications infrastructure, network with other awardees, and work together toward reaching our goals, we see the power of the award at it’s best.
I look forward to being a part of this prestigious organization, and working together with others to reach our potential.
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