Recently I went to review business plans for the first ever Home-based Business Plan competition at BYU where I am a volunteer Advisor. For the past 8 months we have tried to reach the women students at BYU and get them excited about competing for $5000 cash and sharing their awesome business ideas in this contest. Today we read the plans submitted and there was only 1 from a female student. This was incredibly discouraging to me because they are the primary reason we started this competition!
We had several events leading up to the competition deadline and I spoke at a few of them… there were a lot of women there, even 2 weeks ago at my lecture “How to Write a Business Plan for Beginners and Procrastinators” the room was packed, standing room only, and there were at least 20 women there… so yes! I’m discouraged with the turnout for the competition largely because for me, being a participant/competitor is what started my FIRE in business… I loved the excitment, the networking, the mentoring, the opportunities. I’m also frustrated because we have hundreds of Startup Princesses who would LOVE that kind of money and probably can’t qualify for any college business plan competitions right now.
So I brainstorm… what stops the women from competing??
Perhaps the key factor in getting the business plan done for students is that it just seems “hard” since they’ve never done it and if they aren’t a business student, they don’t know where to begin. I was at this place when I started my first one, so I know how it feels. We tell them to use Palo Alto Business Plan software and provide it for FREE… I used that to do my first one.
Another factor may be they need more mentoring, yes… large group events are great, but perhaps they don’t know that they can get one on one help with their business plans at the Center for Entrepreneurship at BYU or they can get help at the Small Business Development Center.
I’m also guessing that the financial end of the business plan may be intimidating for women who are unfamiliar with how to create a balance sheet or represent their financial projections in a spreadsheet. This was also me! I had never done that before so again, getting help was critical for me.
Another problem could be lack of confidence in their idea. While they may want to do it, they may not think it is good “enough” to compete with it.
Where do we go from here? How can we increase the female applicants?
First of all, it’s the first time BYU has offered a Home-based Business Plan competition so it will take time for students to learn about it and want to participate, based on the success of the first one, I’m sure our numbers will increase overall.
I feel that we need to get into the colleges that have a heavier female population and give out fliers, see if we can get them excited about the opportunity
BYU already has a women entrepreneur lecture series (Here is mine from last Fall) however, the class was attended by a lot of Freshmen who may not be ready to actually dive into writing a plan at this stage of their college career. So, we need to reach the juniors and seniors, the MBA students… where are they and and how do we get them to see what they’re missing?
What ideas do you have?
Maybe we could try marketing the competition as “step one” in creating a business.
I find that many of the women who I mentor on campus have an IDEA only. They have not taken their idea to the next level or really any level of action. I think this is where mentoring can be so essential for these women. They need to be pointed in the right direction and given concrete instructions/tools as to how to take the next step.
If the contest is marketed as a “first step” in creating a business (although it may not actually be the FIRST STEP), maybe that would be less intimidating.
That said, I think there are many many entrepreneurs out there — male and female — who are full of ideas that they will never act on. Call it human nature or whatever…
The mantra I say over and over in working with the students is to JUST START. Start somewhere!
And a GREAT place to start would be to enter this contest!