Meeting the demands of women in business

Karen Gill co-founded the virtual business, Everywoman, to provide an Internet resource for female entrepreneurs. Catherine Chetwynd finds out how the business has fared in the world of Internet boom and bust

Karen Gill fits exactly the profile of the average woman entrepreneur in two ways. She left her job as Vice President of sales for EMEA at InterContinental Hotels after 15 years with the company because she wanted to start a family; and she planned to start a business in a sector that was quite unknown to her.

'I was 38, so it was a case of now or never,' she says. 'And if I had stayed, the next move would have been promotion. It would have been heavily political and I did not want that, nor did I want to wake up at 55, having spent my entire life in one company.'

So Gill left and had a baby. At the same time, Maxine Benson, a long standing friend of Gill, was moving back to the UK from New York, having been working in the film industry. 'We decided we wanted to set up a business together in TV programme development,' says Gill, who fondly imagined she would have a baby, work three days a week and it would all be easy to manage. Unfortunately not. 'I became a head case,' she says. 'I had no sleep and didn't work at all.

'We struggled to set up the company, trying to break into an industry in which we had no experience and no contacts,' says Karen Gill. 'We were very naïve.' However, she was not alone - 70% of women who start businesses do so in a field they have never worked in, so it is hardly surprising that they encounter the occasional obstacle. And Gill was constantly meeting women with children who were trying set up businesses and going through the same difficulties.

Inspired by these experiences, Gill and Benson set up Everywoman. They abandoned the original idea to provide a physical service with a crèche because it would have been too expensive. 'But a friend suggested we look at something in the virtual world,' says Gill. 'It was when the Internet was starting to touch the consumer. We found female-focused websites in the US such as women.com and decided to create an environment on the web.'

Then Everywoman got carried away with the Internet boom. 'We were viewed as an Internet business and media partners were interested in us,' says Gill. 'We were trying to raise finance for a huge site, although we were still delivering core information for women entrepreneurs and a large following of women was building a community on our website.'

After the boom came bust and the avid interest in the company disappeared. 'But by late 2000 our community was dictating the products they wanted and in 2001 we held our first major conference,' says Gill. 'Then the penny dropped as to what we should be doing with the business.' Everywoman developed from there as a resource and service provider for women entrepreneurs, delivered through the website, conference and training programmes, and networking events.

Gill and Benson never charged people to use the site. The original idea was to earn money through the Internet model - advertising and sponsorship - the formula that caused the crash. Now the company makes money out of its conferences, plus training and seminar programmes. The website has become a tool for providing information to the community but it is no longer the core business.

Hype

Karen Gill feels the Internet still has huge potential but she says there is a lot of hype about how you can do everything on-line. It is still essential to meet people. 'Starting a business is all about selling. You cannot grow any business without relationships,' she says.

Everywoman's business partners are IBM and NatWest. 'IBM has been with us from the word go,' says Gill. 'The company has long had global initiatives to support women. The company is working with us to try to understand why women are not embracing technology in the same way as men. This is partly fear, but bigger still is the lack of interest. For men it is a gadget. Women worry about what happens if something goes wrong, having spent a lot of money.'

Everywoman works closely with the UK Government and DTI, and technology was one of four key areas identified in research into where there is a gender imbalance - why women's businesses do not grow as quickly and strongly as men's and why there are barriers to starting up business in the first place.

Access to finance was another issue, with fewer women accessing appropriate start-up finance than men. Women are naturally more risk averse, so a man is more likely to put up his home as a guarantee against a business loan than a woman. Everywoman partner NatWest has invested considerable time and resources looking into how it facilitates women approaching them for business loans.

Networking also proved to be a stumbling block. 'Women are less well connected,' says Karen Gill. 'They do not belong to social networks. The Golf Club scene for women does not exist and, because so many women are starting businesses in areas they have not worked in, they have no established contacts.' This apparently crazy trend occurred because women and men set up shop for different reasons. 'Men's main motivation is to make money,' says Gill. 'Women start a business because of personal circumstances. They want flexibility and control, or they want to follow a dream - something they have passion about. Making money usually comes third.'

There are one million women business owners in Britain, which Gill describes as 'nowhere near enough', although Government policy to get business support agencies to understand the economic sense of encouraging women to start businesses should help. Says Gill: 'The idea is to make it more viable so that we get to the same point as the US, where 50% of businesses are started by women.'

And what did Karen Gill and Maxine Benson find difficult about setting up Everywoman? 'It was quite an adjustment to be entrepreneurial,' she says. 'Decision-making time, bureaucracy, politics, memos - these were all things I had moaned about in a large company but I still found I had to school myself out of them.'

And they made some wrong decisions. 'We did not take a big enough risk in the business and we listened too much to other people, rather than trusting our instincts and what we wanted for the business,' she says. 'And with hindsight, I would financially structure the business from the word go. We financed it ourselves and did not draw a salary for two years, which is very stressful. You have to decide how much you want to invest and get capital resources to take care of that period.'

The up side is flexibility. 'I organise my time as I need to and have not got someone looking over my shoulder saying, 'she doesn't get to work until 9.30am every morning, what's her problem?' The freedom is wonderful.'

Last year, Everywoman held its first awards ceremony with the Financial Mail on Sunday. 'We meet so many fantastic businesswomen but there are very few role models,' she says. 'There are thousands of women running great businesses and the awards are intended to highlight what they have achieved.' This year, Everywoman will hold a series of conferences around the country to address issues facing women business owners. 'We will also look for additional, more effective ways to distribute information that helps more women start businesses.' Everywoman's dream.

Catherine Chetwynd is a freelance journalist specialising in business travel, conference, incentive and exhibition writing. She also writes for The Times and the Financial Times.