The rise of women-owned businesses following the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a new state of play for women entrepreneurs.
Women-owned businesses have increased nearly 14 percent from 2019 to 2023 — making up 39.1 percent of all U.S. businesses, according to the 2024 Wells Fargo Impact of Women-Owned Businesses Report. During that time, women-owned businesses growth rate for revenue outpaced the rate of men owned businesses by 82.4 percent.
The Women Presidents Organization, a non-profit membership organization for women business leaders, recently celebrated the growth and gains for women entrepreneurs, at their annual “50 Fastest” award ceremony.
The list, which ranked the 50 fastest growing companies that have women at the helm, was based according to revenue growth from 2019 to 2023. From fertility care to health and wellness, the women on the list represented 50 businesses that have a combined $7 billion in revenue and have collectively employed more than 18,000 workers.
“There’s only 2.3 percent of women owned businesses that generate over a million dollars. There’s a huge disparity still. So, it’s so important to bring these women forward and inspire so many other women business owners so they can break down these barriers to get up there, especially for women of color,” said Camille Burns, CEO of the WPO. The awards ceremony, which was sponsored by JP Morgan Commercial Banking, took place in Colorado Springs during the WPO’s four-day conference for women entrepreneurs.
I had the opportunity to emcee the awards ceremony and interview some of the honorees about their best advice for entrepreneurs:
Durana Elmi, co-founder and COO of Cymbiotika on the importance of embracing failure:
Over the last four years, Cymbiotika, a wellness and health supplement brand, has gone from $1 million to $100 million dollars in revenue. The company co-founder and COO, Durana Elmi, said focusing on transparency, quality, and innovation has helped the company’s growth.
Her advice for founders looking to grow their businesses is to “stay true to your values, don’t follow the trends, and be prepared to fail and embrace it.”
Elmi, who is an Afghan immigrant, shared that the ability to embrace risk and remain resilient is a key to entrepreneurial success. “Failure is such a big part of the entrepreneurship journey, and the sooner that you can embrace failure and get back up and realize that every failure is a lesson learned. It’s growing pains. The key to successful business is resilience, so believe in yourself, and embrace the failures.”
Katie Kaps co-founder of HigherDOSE on being unafraid to pivot in order to scale
Katie Kaps co-founded HigherDOSE in 2016. Since then, the company tested several different concepts to make their business profitable. “We’ve pivoted now four or five times in our entrepreneurial journey,” Kaps explained. “We actually started off selling infrared heating systems to yoga studios.
Needless to say, that wasn’t a concept that scaled very well.”
From there the brand morphed into wellness spa locations, which grew the success of the brand, but still was not as scalable as Kaps and her team would have liked. “Then we really zeroed in on our product line, which is what we were looking for in terms of reaching the masses as quickly as we could.”
Pivoting HigherDOSE to a direct-to-consumer product line, which includes wellness accessories and gadgets like infrared sauna blankets and red light face masks, has been the key to its recent growth and expansion. Last year, the brand launched in Sephora. “I think you have to pivot and change and test a lot of concepts and don’t be afraid to totally let go of something if it’s not working.”
Gina Bartasi, founder and executive chairman of Kindbody on leading with customer insights
In 2018, Gina Bartasi founded fertility-clinic network, Kindbody — which is valued today at $1.8 billion .
Bartasi said part of the success and growth since then has been the company’s ability to listen to their customer and build with them in mind. “Our customers are employers who want direct contracting solutions with actual providers (which only Kindbody delivers), not simply virtual care navigation (which is easy to do).”
By leaning into the needs of their customer base from the start, Kindbody has developed a business model that is led by customer insights. “Our customers also want reproductive healthcare from experts that look like them.” As a result, Kindbody counts with almost 90 percent of its physicians being women and more than half identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color (BIPOC). “Diversity was built into Kindbody’s fertility and family-building care delivery model and our clinics are intentionally staffed to reflect the communities they serve.”
Bartasi also said curiosity and a strong work ethic are two critical traits for successful entrepreneurs. “I’m a curious person asking why the status quo exists and what can we do to make it better…always listen to your customer. They have the right idea, even if you don’t.”