Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Growing up, we watch our mothers to figure out how we shouldperceive the world. So if your mother, and your mother'smother, own businesses, the entrepreneurial spirit is oftencontagious. "I can't remember my mother articulating in somany words that I should pursue whatever I wanted to do,'says Polly Baumer, owner of Many Hands Magazine, a holistichealth quarterly in Northampton, Massachusetts. "What was muchmore evident was the impression I got from watching someoneactually [go after her dreams]. I watched her create a business andmake it happen.'
Baumer comes from what she describes as "a littletribe' of women entrepreneurs. Her mother, Margaret JaneStrong, started a business that provides art tours of Europe; hersister, Margaret Jane Mason, owns Mrs. Mason's LusciousTemptations, a candy manufacturing company in Southfield, Michigan;and most of her female cousins have dabbled in businessownership.
The matriarch of this entrepreneurial wellspring wasBaumer's grandmother, Catherine Sweet Anderson. A woman whoresisted every stereotype society wanted to squeeze her into,Anderson found her calling as a homebased business owner in the1920s. Discovering from her husband, a vice president of marketingat Pillsbury, that the company was throwing away wheat germ, shepromptly decided to collect the wheat germ, bag it, and sell it tofriends and people in the community. Eventually, Anderson sold thebusiness to a party who later sold it to the Kretschmer family,which has since become the best-known name in wheat germ. "Shewasn't hesitant about making her presence known in theworld,' Baumer says.
As Baumer watches her 15-year-old daughter enter youngadulthood, she expects the legacy to continue. "Realizing youcan do anything you want,' says Baumer, "is a form offreedom that you want to pass down."
Metro Link
They're already the champions of national and stateeconomies. Now, according to the latest study by the NationalFoundation for Women Business Owners (NFWBO), we're discoveringthat entrepreneurial women dominate economic growth inAmerica's top 50 metropolitan areas as well. Women-owned firmsin these metropolitan statistical areas total nearly 4 million,employ 9.8 million workers, and generate $1.3 trillion in sales.Between 1987 and 1996, these women-owned businesses grew fasterthan businesses in general, sometimes by as much as 2.2 to 1.
"For the first time, we have current information on womenin these metropolitan areas,' says Sharon Hadary,executive director of NFWBO. "And we're seeing tremendousgrowth rates. In some of these cities, the number of women-ownedbusinesses has gone up by as much as 131 percent in the last nineyears.' Today, more than half the number, sales, andworkers employed by women-owned firms overall sprout from these 50cities.
What's more, the skyrocketing growth in the number ofwomen-owned businesses is being surpassed by their growth in salesand employment, indicating a second trend: "Women-ownedbusinesses,' says Hadary, "are getting larger andmore sophisticated."
