Nice network for the ladies who launched
Seasoned entrepreneur Rachel Lewis, is a strong believer that patience is power. But when she founded a network for fellow female entrepreneurs, she did not have to wait long for membership requests to flood in.
Launched in June last year, the New Zealand Women’s Entrepreneur Network (WE) attracted over 1200 members in its first 3 months. The network now totalled over 2200 women.
Lewis said she was motivated to start the WE network because she was seeing a lot of her peers try to start businesses while juggling a family, and struggling or giving up on their dream business early.
‘‘For me, I started my business when I was so young, I made all the mistakes in my 20s and I had time to grow the business without the stress of a family.’’
When she was 22, Lewis cofounded a nanny agency called Kiwi Oz in London that supported New Zealand and Australian nannies moving to the UK. The business expanded overseas and now has employees in London, Auckland, Wellington, and Sydney. Lewis, now 37, directs from afar and is a full-time mum of a threeyear-old.
She said the WE network had a broad spectrum of experienced business owners and women just starting out, but the majority are women in their 30s to 40s.
‘‘I think a lot of women are making the decisions to make businesses because they’ve chosen to turn their back on a corporate lifestyle and they’re kind of thinking, ‘Why am I even bothering with the glass ceiling when I can just walk around the building and start my own business?’’’
In the December 2016 quarter, 13 per cent of company directors in the NZX and 27 per cent of company officers were female. Lewis said women often chose to start a business because the corporate lifestyle was not meeting their needs, but the skill set did not always translate.
‘‘We’re doing it in a way that complements life as a woman and allows them the time they need to build their skills, before they start investing a lot of money.’’
The WE network offers monthly boot camps to teach small business skills. Lewis said it was recognised that women often received less funding, time, resources and support in the business world, and that could knock their confidence.
‘‘One of the real goals is getting women to move from thinking their business might be able to generate $30,000 to $40,000 dollars a year, to thinking this could be a serious operation with hundreds of thousands of dollars in turnover and something that can have an impact on the economy.’’