Women Entrepreneurs Grow Global™ (wegg®)
wegg was established in February 2008, became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in June 2015, and aims to serve you — a businesswoman whose operation is currently primarily local.
wegg mission
Our mission is to educate, inspire and nurture women business owners and entrepreneurs worldwide on how to go global so they can run healthier businesses and create a new future for themselves, their families and their community.
wegg vision
Our vision is a world where every woman business owner has the opportunity and ability to take their business global wherever they may be located.
You are one of nearly 126 million female entrepreneurs worldwide.ª
According to Babson College (2012):
Female entrepreneurs in most developing regions report lower levels of internationalization than male entrepreneurs. Developing Europe (24 percent) and Israel (27 percent) show the highest level of internationalization among women entrepreneurs. The United States and Latin America and Caribbean, have the second lowest among the regions (7 percent).
Developing regions show smaller average differences between female and male business owners in the percentage who sell at least 25 percent of their products or services outside their national borders. Developed economies show greater gaps, with more men engaged in international trade than women. Israel presents an exception, with men less likely to sell outside their national borders.
Your business might be a fuel company, a basket retailer, or a construction firm. It may be three months young or a century old.
For example, whatever your specific situation, your enterprise could reach its next level and levels beyond your wildest dreams. The way there is through globalization. Here are just six reasons why global is the way to grow.
1. Globalization can increase your revenues/profits and simultaneously hedge your business for local/regional busts/booms, currency fluctuations, supply shortages/gluts, and shifting consumer tastes. Toyota, Tata, and GM would have significantly higher costs of doing business and greater risk if they remained local or even regional auto companies.
2. Globalization can enhance your brand name, making marketing more cost-efficient — and powerful. All the world loves Coca-Cola, not just Plano, Texas, or Southern France.
3. Globalization gives you leverage with both domestic and worldwide powers-that-be in government, finance, and commerce. When Google or Apple talks, people in high places pay attention.
4. Globalization opens access to new markets, diverse networks of ideas, best practices, and insider knowledge/contacts. That’s exactly why fledgling Lenovo decided to be multinational.
5. Globalization creates jobs. As you grow your business globally, you must support the additional workload. Hiring people is the solution and we know that the strength of our country lies in its ability to create jobs that help people live and prosper.
According to the White House Council on Women and Girls, studies have found that women-owned firms that export not only earn more, but also employ more people and are, on average, more productive than women-owned firms that do not.
6. Globalization is way cooler than selling to the guy or gal next door. What sounds better: “We sell natural bristle hair brushes throughout the Chicagoland market. Some of our best customers who run hair salons down the block pick up their orders from our facility” or “My company sells natural bristle hair brushes all over the planet. Customers in Dubai, France and Argentina, for example, not only buy our brushes but talk us up on social media platforms and visit us in person when they want a lesson on how a company makes the best brushes in the world?”
ª Source: Global Entrepreneurship Monitor(GEM) 2012 Women’s Report. Click here for immediate download of the study (PDF file).
Related articles:
Why Female Entrepreneurs Are Key to Global Development
Women Are Confident in Their Own Businesses and the U.S. Economy (refer to “challenges for exports”)
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) Women’s Entrepreneurship Report 2016/2017
