Nell Merlino founded Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence to provide resources, business education and community support for female entrepreneurs seeking to grow their businesses quickly and sustainably. The model is women helping women, and the national nonprofit hosts monthly Meet Ups in South Florida and around the country for women entrepreneurs at all stages of growth. The organization’s national pitch competition will be in July in New York City and always attracts South Florida women. Visit www.countmein.org for more details.
Nell talked about her views on women in entrepreneurship in a Digital Debrief in today’s Business Monday. Here are some additional questions she answered.
Q. How would you describe your leadership style?
A. Inspirational, direct and fun.
Q. What does it take for an entrepreneur to be successful?
A. Know and go where the money is. Whether it's your banker, investors or customers, you need to know where your money is coming from. You should constantly be developing and deepening these relationships.
You also need to be sure you are doing what is going to make you the most money. To grow your business sustainably and increase revenues and profits you need to have a plan and focus your energy on implementing it effectively and on a clear timeline. Commit to a plan and keep your vision clear and at the forefront.
Q. You created Take Your Daughters to Work Day with the Ms. Foundation for Women nearly 20 years ago. Do programs like that still have value?
A. The focus of Take Your Daughters To Work Day was to grab girls ages 9-14, when they are most vulnerable to loss of self-esteem. To make girls more visible, valued and heard. To help them live their dreams. Yes, there have been significant strides in terms of opportunities for women and girls since then, but we’re by no means out of the woods. There are still far fewer women’s lives highlighted in the New York Times obituary column, for example, than there are for men. We need the work of women to be more regularly publicly recognized for their work in medicine, law, politics, business, the arts, to really have that sense of value come full circle.
Q. How did Count Me In begin and evolve?
A. The original concept for Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence was born in 2000. It was meant to be a multi-million dollar loan fund to help women entrepreneurs start their own businesses. Through what we thought was an innovative month-long campaign supported by leaders in television, on-line, finance and media, we planned to raise $25-50 million for the fund in online donations of as little as $5.
We were wrong. Overestimating women’s comfort level around making online donations, especially to a brand new group, and not foreseeing the impeding dot-com crash, our fundraising targets were way off. We ultimate raised only about $150,000.
I felt like a failure but decided to keep going. I kept talking to people and sharing the vision. Eventually, American Express loaned us money to make some micro-loans, which we did, but the program still failed to take off as originally planned. Within a year, my original partner bailed on the project, leaving me to decide whether or not to pull the plug or figure out a way to reassess our vision and find a way to move forward. I chose the latter.
I came across a U.S. Census report that indicated while women owned nearly half of the nation’s privately held businesses, four times as many men as women owned businesses earned more than $1 million in annual revenues. That article sparked a change in thinking about the mission of Count Me In: what if we focused on what women could do instead of what they lacked? With this revised vision, Count Me In took off and went on to introduce its signature Make Mine a Million $ Business program and other effective business growth initiatives for women.
Q. If you could have a conference call with any three living people, who would they be?
A. President Obama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Lady Gaga
Q. What keeps you up at night?
A. My next big move
Q. What’s a great day for you?
A. Inspired creative problem solving with others or alone along with beautiful bike ride or swim
See the rest of this interview here.