“You can’t grow a business until you grow the business owner,” says Wynne Briscoe, Director of the Maryland Small Business Development Center, Southern Region, “Their personal behaviors are often duplicated in their business behaviors.” Over 30 years of business consulting, she has seen many women struggle in their businesses. For example, she says women often work alone without growing with a team of employees. Many women don’t price their products to market value, and women don’t have the same level of impact as their male counterparts in the marketplace.
Even when comparing women and men across the same industry, with similar benchmarks, every time, women come under the results of their male counterparts. Briscoe says it is due to the core issues that women suffer from. Often worthiness (or lack of worth), the lack of value, and the lack of feeling confident in their products, services, and abilities are the root causes of their business problems. Women are more likely to put their products on sale, offer coupons and discounts, and underprice their products and services. Very often, male counterparts are priced with industry benchmarks, seldom on discount, and are less open to haggling or negotiations. Briscoe says, “That stems from the feeling of unworthiness,”
That is why the theme of this year’s Women’s History event on March 2 was “I Am Worthy!” she says, “When we addressed the women in the audience with this theme, it was to peel back the layers. We weren’t talking to the businesswoman beautifully dressed sitting before us. No, we wanted to talk to the little girl inside her—the little girl who has been struggling with worthiness and self-worth her entire life, and now she’s an adult who’s struggling to run a successful business.”
Briscoe walked the audience through an exercise to address the areas of unworthiness in their lives, personally and professionally, peeling back the layers of inadequacies where they felt unworthy, devalued, and undervalued. “As we walked through this exercise, it empowered the women to release the limiting beliefs of unworthiness and embrace their value and their worth,” she said. “We ended the experiences with a roaring celebration from the attendees in the room declaring, ‘I Am Worthy!’”
Keynote speaker, Ambassador Dr. Margaret Dureke, empowered the room by sharing her personal experiences, and how throughout her professional life, she has stepped into her worthiness and now has a thriving business. She and Briscoe say they had people come up to them over and over saying it changed their life. Dr. Dureke is also a familiar face among Charles County businesses in her role as a Business Retention and Expansion Consultant with the Charles County Economic Development Department.
A Women’s Business Showcase followed, which featured businesses from industries including skin care, jewelry, business coaching, professional services, and apparel. Each business owner was given an opportunity to speak five minutes on stage to promote their business. Briscoe says, “It was inspiring to witness the organic business-to-business networking, as the women assisted and supported each other.”
Briscoe has been an Executive Business Consultant since 2001 with her own consulting firm and started with the Maryland SBDC, Southern Region in 2016. She would love to help business owners walk through the issues discussed at the Women’s History event and welcomes business owners to reach out to her on LinkedIn.
