What I've Learned About Women Entrepreneurs and the $1 Million Journey with Adrienne Garland of She Leads Media

About this episode

Adrienne Garland reflects on insights gained from 200 conversations with women entrepreneurs on their journey to building businesses worth over a million dollars.

After 200 conversations with women entrepreneurs building toward $1 million and beyond, Adrienne is recording live from Santiago, Chile, where she is leading a global field experience for Rice University MBA students. One pattern has emerged that nobody in this space talks about enough: the journey for women entrepreneurs never ends. In this solo episode of the She Leads Podcast, I look back at what these conversations have taught me since I first launched the show as Sugarcoated. The women founders who crossed the million dollar mark did not stop there. They started thinking about impact, exits, and how to help other women in business get to where they are. And the women still on the journey have dealt with massive debt, career resets, and loss that would have taken most people out of the game entirely. Fewer than 4% of women-owned businesses ever get past a million dollars, under 2% of venture capital goes to women, and the Fortune 500 numbers are barely moving. I lay out what those statistics actually mean and what I believe needs to change. I also get into something we do not say out loud enough: not every woman supports other women. I have seen it, and I talk about where…

People in this episode

Host: Adrienne Garland

Topics covered

• women entrepreneurs
• business growth
• million dollar journey
• impact
• supporting women in business

Keywords

• women entrepreneurs
• business growth
• million dollars
• impact
• venture capital
• support
• debt
• career resets

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: She Leads Media, Rice University

Places: Santiago, Chile

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