Women’s Group Offers Help for Businesses

The Los Angeles chapter of the National Assn. of Women Business Owners has been providing business referrals, management development assistance, education programs and networking opportunities for more than 20 years. With 500 local members, the chapter is NAWBO’s largest and fastest-growing branch nationwide. Executive Director Sonya Levy recently discussed the three main questions the organization receives from local business owners.

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Q: How can NAWBO help a business grow?

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A: We have alliances with 30 major corporations that want to do business with women. So we make introductions between women business owners and corporations like AT&T;, Pacific Bell and Southern California Edison.

In addition to that, we have relationships with government agencies like the city of Los Angeles and the Small Business Administration to help identify government contracts that women business owners are eligible for, and we help them negotiate the paperwork process. We also provide referrals to other small businesses to help members grow their client base.

I or one of the members of our board actually consults with our new members to determine what kinds of referrals they’re looking for, like where they want to do business, and then we search our network. We can look through the database based on business categories, annual revenue or what have you. We’ll call our contacts, and we will help our members find what they need.

We have a database of about 7,000 women business owners, corporations and government agencies who look to us for advice and help in finding people to work with. If it’s appropriate, we will call these contacts or write a letter on behalf of our members or just steer them in the right direction with several referrals. We’re kind of like an old boys’ network, but for women.

We also tap into the expertise of our board of directors, their experiences as seasoned women entrepreneurs and what’s been helpful to them in starting their businesses.

In addition to business referrals and business development, we provide educational programs that help members upgrade their own business skills in terms of creating a business plan, developing a Web site, marketing, human resources and other areas you need to know to be successful. We also help our members build their management teams, helping them find an accountant, an attorney, marketing experts and other people they need to have on their team.

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Q: How can NAWBO help me find capital?

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A: We get that question a lot, and we answer it pretty much two ways. One is we let them know about the lending programs of some of our major corporate partners that are financial institutions like Union Bank of California, Wells Fargo Bank and Bank of America.

The second thing is we try to get them to consider some of the government lending programs and have them check out the SBA’s Web site and Pacific Coast Regional Small Business Development Corp. in Los Angeles, which administers a state small-business loan program. So we start them off with that, and they might come back and say they are looking for something different. At that point, we can refer them to some of our members who actually help people find capital.

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Q: What resources are available to help entrepreneurs get started?

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A: We like to reinforce the fact that there are other women entrepreneurs who can serve as mentors. This is a group of women that has found a great deal of success and is extremely willing to give back and mentor others.

There are more than 360,000 women business owners in Los Angeles alone, and that is just a great resource to hear how other women balance their families and their businesses, how they got started, how some of them in three years ramped up to an $80-million business.

We encourage people to do a lot of networking and reach out and talk to other women entrepreneurs as a resource. And then secondly, we have a great relationship with 23 affiliate organizations. These are women’s organizations that specialize in different industries.

One of them is the Women’s Enterprise Development Corp. This Long Beach group offers entrepreneurship training, a 12-to-14-week course that walks people through the steps of establishing a business. So we refer people to programs that they can take advantage of to really get started.

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The National Assn. of Women Business Owners, Los Angeles chapter, can be reached at (213) 622-3200 or at nawbosonya@aol.com. Its Web site is https://www.nawbola.org.