Women Business Owners Hang Shingle, Now and 25 Years Ago

Women Business Owners Hang Shingle, Now and 25 Years Ago

So many women, for different reasons but with the same entrepreneurial spirit, decide to go out on their own and start accounting firms. One, Nancy Kirby, remains grateful to the men, two in particular, in her upstate New York business community who vouched for her 25 years ago, helping her accrue clients when she opened her firm in 1979. Another, Deborah Bailey-Browne, just opened Deborah Bailey-Browne, CPA & Associates, in April 2004 and says she looks to Kirby and other female CPAs for support and inspiration.

“Unfortunately, it’s still a boys’ club,” Bailey-Browne admits. “And we need to make it more of a girls’ club.”

Since the late 1980s—even within the past eight years—there has been an explosion of women-owned businesses across the country. This year, with numbers over 10 million, they account for nearly half (47.7 percent) of all privately held firms in the United States.

New York state, with a total of 682,105 women-owned businesses in 2004, ranks fourth in the country, behind California, Texas and Florida, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census analyzed by the Center for Women’s Business Research. But it can’t be ignored that just a quarter of a century ago, Kirby felt resistance as she tried to penetrate a male-dominated profession. She says she started her firm, now Kirby Beals Maier CPAs PLLC, almost by default because she wasn’t happy with the work options where she lived, in Elmira, N.Y.

“I saw there were issues in my [then current] firm,” Kirby said. “There were not that many women in the profession, so I acted on my entrepreneurial streak. But I was in my mid-20s, a young woman trying to convince men in their 40s that I was competent and that they could rely on me.”

“I needed someone to endorse and encourage me,” she added, indicating that needing men she knew in the business community to support her was not a crutch; it was critical to her success.

Bailey-Browne did not speak about the same importance of or need for male endorsement to build a client base. She is grateful for the group support of women.

“A lot of women I have reached out to have been very supportive of me being an entrepreneur and capitalizing on the smarts of other women who want family plus career,” Bailey-Browne said, citing the New York State Society of CPAs as a crucial resource. A Society Board of Directors member herself, Bailey-Browne looks to the leadership of other members, like Sandra Napoleon-Hudson and Kirby, as role models and sounding boards for ideas or issues.

Feeling a sense of communal support seems to be crucial to the success of women business owners.

Both women employ other women. Bailey-Browne’s firm is staffed entirely by women, and Kirby, who now partners with two men, Peter Maier and Rick Beals, had a female partner in the past. Both say that clients, usually women, have approached them for business because they specifically wanted a female CPA or a firm with a woman partner or owner. Kirby is most proud when a female client or former employee tells Kirby she motivated her to get more out of her career, often rising from a secretarial-type job. In doing so, Kirby passes to other women the torch that men once handed to her.

Bailey-Browne would like to see even more cooperation and support among women business owners. Citing the cattiness of the women who were eliminated from the last season of NBC’s reality series “The Apprentice” as an example, she thinks women are most powerful as a group when they mentor each other. “Men, they mentor. We need to do that too.”

“Apprentice” backstabbers aside, women do seek out mentors. A January 2004 study by the Center for Women’s Business Research showed that U.S. women owners of firms with $1 million or more in revenues are nearly twice as likely (18.3 versus 9.3 percent) as their men counterparts to seek the advice of someone they considered to be a mentor.

Niche Market No Longer?

Growth in women-owned businesses has outpaced that of other firms. Since 1997, the Center for Women’s Business Research estimates that women-owned firms have grown at nearly twice the rate of all firms (17 versus 9 percent). Growth in employment by women-owned firms has been even more dramatic: 24 percent compared to 12 percent for all firms.

This surge, while a positive mark of women’s impact on business, also means the marketplace is more competitive. The niche market that once attracted clients to women-owned firms may become obsolete, no longer a feature of distinction for potential clients.

The market has become so competitive, Kirby and Bailey-Browne agree that a young woman thinking about her professional future should not necessarily focus on opening her own firm, although that may one day happen. College graduates, when considering job options, should look at a firm’s male-to-female ratio, its history of promoting women to the partner level, and its distribution of responsibilities among male and female employees.

The statistics and the stories from these two women pave the way for more women business owners to hang their shingle. Kirby says it best: “The whole professional environment has changed from the ’70s, when doors were closed, to now, when they’re wide open with a red carpet rolled out.”