Women’s Support Group Gets Creative
When designer and entrepreneur Sarah Shaw wanted to start a venture, she skipped the traditional steps. She didn’t do market research. She didn’t write a business plan.
Instead, she joined Ladies Who Launch, a support group and business incubator for women that recently held its first sessions in Southern California.
The group, limited to 12 women, met four times in the course of a month at a Laurel Canyon home, working through exercises, doing homework and using input from members to clarify their ideas.
The focus was on fun, friendship, support and action.
“Just hearing the vision that other people had for my company was so inspiring,” Shaw said.
She also was moved to launch Simply Sarah, a stylish website, at www.simplysarahshaw.com, that features her patented handbag holder and other accessories. The handbag holder has since been written up in the shopping magazine Lucky, in Family Circle and on InStyle.com.
Shaw and her sister entrepreneurs are a fast-growing segment of the business world. The number of women-owned businesses grew at nearly twice the rate of all privately held firms from 1997 to 2004, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research in Washington.
Ladies Who Launch, which is setting up two more incubators in Los Angeles and one in Orange County in July, is targeting the niche occupied by creative, entrepreneurial women such as Shaw, who seek to build ventures but are turned off by conventional business planning and definitions of success.
You won’t often find them joining traditional women’s business groups or slogging through business plan how-to classes. Many want to create companies that allow them to express their creativity yet are flexible enough to fit into their lives.
“It is really about breaking free of the traditional model of entrepreneurship and business, rethinking that model and embracing the feminine, without guilt or self-doubt, to move forward,” said Victoria Colligan, co-founder of Ladies Who Launch.
The national, for-profit networking group, based in Cleveland and New York, started four years ago, building a website and eventually selling franchises. In keeping with its own ethos, it worked without a formal business plan.
Ladies Who Launch now has 20,000 online members, most between the ages of 30 and 49. There are 25 incubators around the country and plans for 10 more this year. Still no business plan, though, said Colligan, a former lawyer and investment banker.
“We talk about it, but a lot of great things never would have happened, because things evolve and you have to be open to that,” she said.
Colligan and her group represent a vibrant section of the entrepreneur community that is attracting more attention. Pink magazine is a new bimonthly covering women’s business and lifestyle issues with a noncorporate sensibility.
Even academics are taking note of the trend.
“We’ve been talking about this demographic a lot at the business school,” said Elaine Hagan, executive director of the Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. “There is a huge opportunity for businesses and business schools to figure out how to work with these women.”
Los Angeles, with a large share of Ladies Who Launch members, is a key part of its growth plans.
“The appetite in L.A. for entrepreneurship is amazing,” said Los Angeles incubator leader Amy Swift, who paid $6,000 for an area franchise. Each of her five group sessions has had a waiting list, she said.
Participants, who pay $250 each, have included the daughter of a Major League Baseball player who wants to open a fantasy baseball camp in the Dominican Republic; a jewelry designer; an office assistant with dreams, since realized, of becoming a professional photographer; and a woman who creates baby blankets from antique fabrics.
They come together in the incubators, which offer a type of group therapy for female entrepreneurs. The women critique one another’s projects. They are encouraged to consider ideas and approaches offered by members, make connections and take action. Negativity is discouraged.
“Women just have a different approach,” said Swift, a copywriter and brand strategist in the beauty and fashion industries whose clients have included Ralph Lauren and Nuala by Puma.
“And that is what we kind of celebrate and acknowledge inside the incubator,” she said, “because it is easy to feel wrong or disconnected from the way our culture has it that we should launch.”
The company’s website, www.ladieswholaunch.com, was designed with that difference in mind. Hot pink is used liberally. Drawings of shoes, lipstick and accessories serve as navigation tools, leading visitors to case studies of successful female entrepreneurs and a marketplace of member products and services as well as business and lifestyle ideas.
And for those who can’t bring themselves to buck tradition, there is a comprehensive business plan outline.
Incubator graduates can pay $400 to attend an additional eight to 12 meetings a year and events through Ladies Who Launch’s Live program, which often incorporate shopping and spa visits. About 50 -- almost all of the L.A. graduates -- have done so, Swift said.
They are attracted to the energy and the support, which spills beyond the boundaries of the meetings. Members of Shaw’s group typically fired off 10 to 20 e-mails to one another a day, offering advice, encouragement and contacts, she said.
“The primary product is community and inspiration,” Swift said.
Colligan and co-founder Beth Schoenfeldt have captured that philosophy in print. Their first book, tentatively titled “Ladies Who Launch: The Essential Guidebook to Launching Anything and Everything,” is due next year from St. Martin’s Press. Their plans also include a magazine and incubators in Europe.
Whatever the venture, the company vows to stay focused on connecting motivated women in a supportive way with an eye toward results.
“What we do with our incubator program,” Colligan said, “is try to put a structure around what women do well naturally.”
Also
The National Assn. of Women Business Owners will hold its annual conference June 1 to 3 in San Francisco, featuring speakers and workshops on planning, publicity and risk management, among other topics.
For information, visit the Los Angeles chapter’s website, www.nawbola.org.
Cyndia Zwahlen can be reached at cyndia.zwahlen @latimes.com.
