Running a business, making sure it is profitable, and retaining key employees are challenges that all business owners face. However, women business owners may face additional challenges relative to their male counterparts, such as:
1. Building a strong support / mentor network
2. Accessing funding
3. Balancing business and family life
At Mercer Advisors, we understand these challenges and know how to overcome them. In fact, 50% of our client-facing team are women who understand the complexities of owning businesses from their own experiences as well as working with their clients.1 Learn how Mercer Advisors can be an important advocate for having a successful business, while also having the life you desire.
As a female business owner, I had a natural tendency to put the welfare of my employees above my own and my business. It was essential to surround myself with a network and community that provided support and resources.
Women Have a Harder Time Getting Business Loans Than Men
Women-owned businesses are more likely to get their loan applications denied than male-owned businesses. This means that many women reach into their personal savings to fund their businesses, which can have impacts on their personal finances.
Source: Fed Small Business Credit Survey, 2022
Mercer Advisors Helps Provide the Advice and Tools Necessary to Lead a Successful Business
We help female entrepreneurs access the advice and tools they need to lead successful businesses.
Mercer Advisors is here to help reduce the stress of juggling business and home responsibilities that can affect your success and wellbeing. Lean on us for support.
Our team is available to help with your pain points and to create open pathways to achieving your dream of owning a successful business.
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While being a female business owner is incredibly rewarding, it can present certain challenges. In our experience, women who have been able to assemble a team that can provide the right mix of expert guidance, advocacy, and emotional support have greater odds of success.
Learn complex financial planning and solutions that businesses need to succeed
You can get the benefit of our financial planning knowledge when we explain and show strategies for your business. For example, when to become an S-corp versus a sole proprietor, how and where to set up payroll, and set up retirement plans.
Access to funding remains a challenge for women-owned businesses; more than 50% of women-owned businesses are funded by personal savings.2 It gets more complicated if you don’t have a separate primary breadwinner at home. By far, the top priority of women-owned small businesses is more funding and financial help. Funding and sustaining your business require a solid but flexible financial plan, as it can take three to five years to generate income from your business. Our team can help formulate this plan and implement the right solutions for you, such as finding loans and tax saving areas. We connect clients with resources on all types of loans (mortgage, business, commercial) and we review loan documents to ensure they’re in your best interest.
Understand employee benefits and offerings
Offering retirement plans and benefits to employees comes with many legal obligations and takes considerable time to manage. But they are important for employee retention and should be part of the business focus. If you don’t have many employees, knowing the offerings and their tax implications will be different. As a woman business owner, you may also keep in mind for your female employees that women tend to have 65% less saved in their 401(k)s than men.3 We can help you with navigating employee benefits plans and encouraging your female employees to take retirement saving seriously.
Navigate challenges particular to women business owners
Women business owners can sometimes feel squeezed at both ends to keep a business afloat and take care of their children. One-third of women business owners have school-aged children at home.4 Whatever your family situation, we provide coaching services that help you feel in control of the decisions you make for both your home life and your business. In addition to coaching services, we can help with decisions about your business if you reach the point where you want to make changes. For instance, we can help with calculating the selling price of your business.
There’s an added layer of complexity when you’re a female business owner and most business owners are men. How do you navigate that complexity within your industry, and with your male employees? How do you fight the glass ceiling in your own business? These are areas where we have experience and can help you focus on thriving, regardless of the potential challenges.
Receive guidance on business issues that may involve a partner or spouse
It can be difficult to navigate tax strategies as a wife and a business owner with a joint tax return. So, a quarterly plan could help lessen tax impacts, for instance, so there’s more revenue to gain. There needs to be a plan and strategy for maximizing any tax advantages, as well.
How will it affect your household income if you make less money with the business than you did in a previous role or profession? Is your spouse a working partner in the business and you have different ideas about operations or finances?
The structure of your business will dictate the outcome of several situations. For instance, determining who will inherit the business? Or do you want it sold and divided amongst the family? Who has access to the business accounts? Does insurance provide for the proper beneficiaries? If you ever watched the TV show Succession, you know how these decisions can get problematic.
Part of our role is assisting with tax planning and strategies to help alleviate these types of concerns.
Align your goals and needs with those of the business and employees
Do you want to own a business and have more flexibility to be with family? Or are you looking for help with picking the appropriate business insurance and tax strategies? Part of our role is to advise on the best course of action from a financial and tax perspective and collaborate with you on a plan that feels right to you.
If you have employees, you’re supporting their livelihood – an additional responsibility to running your business and being profitable.
What do you ultimately want for your business? Does have it be sustainable? Be self-sufficient? Do you have an exit strategy?
The answers to these questions will help determine steps in a comprehensive and customized plan that we can collaborate with you to build for achieving your personal and business objectives.
Women Own About One Third of U.S. Small Businesses
There are 33 million small businesses in the U.S. Women own only 13 million of them.
Source: “Are Women-Owned Businesses as Successful as Male-Owned Businesses?” Score Association, 2023
1 Client facing employees include Client Services, Financial Planning and Family Wealth Services
2 “Special Report: Access to Fund Remains a Challenge for Women-Owned Business”, QuickBooks, May 31, 2022.
3 “How the Gender Pay Gap Affects Women’s Retirement”, U.S. News, May 4, 2023
4 Source: Gusto.com, “How the Pandemic’s Childcare Crisis Impacted Women-owned Businesses and Altered their Future”
