Every day, more women are starting and leading businesses, driving economic growth in the United States. Altogether, they represent 42% of all businesses employing 9.4 million workers and generating $1.9 trillion in revenue each year. In honor of Women’s History Month, we wanted to highlight the impact of female entrepreneurs both at the Cultivate team and beyond.
Women at Cultivate
Cultivate was built by owners, for owners. Since the beginning, we’ve grown our team by pulling in entrepreneurs from different industries and backgrounds, striving to create a workplace that reflects the communities we serve.
With that focus, we’ve been able to beat industry norms by hiring more women and elevating them to leadership roles. Today, most consulting firms are male-dominated, with one survey showing that female professionals make up 39% of the total workforce and only 17% of total partners. At Cultivate, 22% of our partners, 36% of our leadership team, and 44% of our overall team are female. By bringing more intentionality, we’re moving towards raising those percentages to give women a bigger voice in Cultivate over the coming months.
Beyond just the numbers, the women of the Cultivate team have played a key role in shaping Cultivate and its’ culture.
- Nicole Gallop, Vice President of Recruiting & Onboarding, and Cassi Niekamp, Director of Talent at Cultivate Advisors, developed a recruiting and onboarding strategy to hire 48 employees over the past three years.
- Simone Ashkar, Director of Operations at Cultivate Advisors, has coached and trained dozens of Advisors and currently leads the east-coast team to ensure Advisors have continued support for their professional growth and development.
- Tina Moser, Strategic Financial Director, developed a financial valuation program, allowing small business clients access to a business appraisal for long long-term planning.
- Stephanie Guerre, Relationship Manager at Cultivate Advisors, has connected with over 1,000 small business owners to coordinate and provide nearly 900 hours of free advising.
- Our female Business Advisors have been instrumental in driving the Cultivate vision. Beyond partnering with hundreds of small businesses across North America, they continue to provide support and feedback to help develop future advisors.
- Our female-dominated Sales and Marketing team has been vital to the success of Catapult, Cultivate’s annual conference, as well as curating, creating, and providing thousands of videos, whitepapers, and other resources to our community entrepreneurs.
Without these women, Cultivate Advisors would not have seen the same growth as an organization, but more importantly, we would not have been able to support so many owners in the small business community.
Women in the Small Business Community
There are nearly 13 million female-owned businesses in the United States. In the past 20 years, female entrepreneurism has increased 114% with no signs of slowing down.
Within our own community of female entrepreneur clients, we’ve seen massive success this past year, including a business partnership team hitting 3x growth with their advisor, a solopreneur who doubled her revenue, and countless others who were able to pivot and adapt to the changing circumstances of a pandemic year while still managing to move the needle in their business.
At Cultivate, it is our mission to empower entrepreneurs. Because we believe so strongly in creating a world where all entrepreneurs can thrive, we will be partnering with the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) to provide additional resources and mentorship to their community. If you’re a female entrepreneur, consider checking out some of their amazing resources, and stay tuned for more about our partnership.
This month take a moment to recognize the amazing women who have made a difference in your community.
Casey Clark, CEO, Cultivate Advisors
Casey is a passionate entrepreneur who got his start owning a home service franchise. After nearly a decade, he successfully exited his role with 90+ franchise owners and over 600+ employees. Casey went on to create Cultivate Advisors with his business partner. As the CEO of Cultivate, his team has helped thousands of business owners reach their growth objectives through core business skill development and scalable systemization.
In both 2019 & 2020, Cultivate ranked within the top 800 fastest growing businesses in the United States on the Inc 5000 list. The mission of Cultivate Advisors is to partner with committed entrepreneurs to propel their business beyond expectations.
