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A Million Women Making $1 Million
The idea that she could create a generation of women millionaires came to Nell Merlino after she read a disheartening statistic: 70 percent of businesses owned by women are really small. "Most startling to me," she says, "was that out of 10.5 million women-owned businesses, only 243,000 are at $1 million in revenue. I really had to sit down and think about that because I knew there were a million men at the $1 million mark."
In 2005 Merlino launched the Make Mine a Million $ Business (M3 for short) campaign. Her goal was ambitious: to inspire (and help) one million women entrepreneurs to reach $1 million in revenues by 2010.
Why $1 million? "It's a turning point in a business," says Merlino, 54, cofounder and president of Count Me In for Women's Economic Independence, the leading national nonprofit provider of online micro loans for women entrepreneurs. "It says that you are serious, that you can hire the people you need and access financing in a way you couldn't before."
Women with businesses that are at least two years old and at $250,000 or more in revenue compete at M3 events in large cities for a smorgasbord of assistance: $50,000 in financing, business coaching, mentoring and technology. Once the entrepreneurs apply online, as 2,800 did in 2007, a team of experts selects 20 to 30 finalists to each give a three-minute "elevator" pitch. (You have to be able to present yourself and your company quickly, says Merlino, in case you run into someone who can help you.) A live audience and a panel of judges pick the winners. It's American Idol meets The Apprentice.
Of the 100 women who've won, 32 have already hit the $1 million goal. "That is huge," says Merlino. She speaks proudly of the winners -- she knows their stories by heart -- but it is Garnett Newcombe's story in particular that speaks to the can-do magic Merlino has created.
A Los Angeles woman in her early 50s, Newcombe set up Human Potential Consultants to train veterans, recently released convicts and others to return to the workforce. "She was making $400,000 a year in revenue and doing okay, but she was stuck," Merlino recalls. "She couldn't figure out how to grow the business."
Newcombe filled out the application at 3 a.m, then forgot about it until she found out she was a finalist. "She gives a terrible presentation at the rehearsal," says Merlino. "She goes out, buys index cards, changes her presentation, comes back the next day and blows everybody's mind -- and wins."
Newcombe learned two lessons from the coaching that followed: how to delegate responsibility and when to ask for help. "In barely a year, Garnett is at $4.2 million in revenue, with $18 million more in contracts. She's gone from 10 employees to 80. She's just sailing!"
Like so many of the women, Merlino says, Newcombe lacked self-confidence. "Often it's about money. They don't know the best way to ask for it or what to do with it or even to pay themselves, as was Garnett's case. Things that are not brain-breaking, but if you don't know them, you don't know them."
Merlino's passion for her work is obvious -- and inherited. Her late father, Joseph Merlino, was a New Jersey state senator. Her mother, Molly, was a painter and an art teacher. "My parents so loved what they did," Merlino says, "that I thought early on, Wow, I want some of that."
After college, Merlino was a union organizer, the advance woman for two Presidential campaigns and a high-level administrator in two state governments. By 1988, she felt stifled by bureaucracy and struck out on her own. Addressing social issues appealed to her. Her approach: Take a problem and find an inspirational solution. An early brainchild was Take Your Daughter to Work Day.
When asked what she wants her legacy to be, Nell Merlino doesn't hesitate: "A million women, making $1 million in revenue, four million new jobs and $700 billion pumped into the economy. I know I'm going to see that. I know I am."
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