WOC Entrepreneurs Going Big

At MDW, we are committed to solving the following:

Barriers in access to:

-professional, industry & business coaching to WOC small business owners and entrepreneurs

-funding & capital to WOC business owners and entrepreneurs

We propose that through the fund:

-WOC will attain business coaching, mentorship, and capital needed to grow their businesses. 

-Women awarded scholarships via MDW Fund get access to our four-month online business program (www.mdwmasterclass.com), reducing the program cost from $6000 (Full Pay) to $3000 and get access to our Executive MBA level course, materials, mentors, and funding opportunities. 

If scaled our impact would: 

Help 2500 women entrepreneurs annually: 

-grow their business to 1 million dollars in revenue annually

-scale their businesses with the result of increasing personal wealth & income for women/WOC 

-Create jobs for thousands of Americans through the "Scaling Up" of WOC small businesses 

- understand how to access funding, Venture Capital, and grants 

At MDW Fund, we feel strongly that every entrepreneur should have a chance to build a successful business regardless of race, gender, or geographic location. 

Today, nearly half of women-led businesses are founded by WOC. Yet, there is still inequality in the factors that allow companies to grow and thrive, like access to influential networks, business training, and capital resulting in drastic differences in revenues. The average annual sales for businesses owned by WOC was $27,752 in 2012 compared to $143,731 for all women and $170,587 for white women. 

Female small business owners - WOC business owners specifically - are one of the most overlooked and under-leveraged resources we have in the United States. Yet, they are a critical part of our economic recovery. In 1972, just 5% of small businesses were women-owned; by 2019, that percentage rose to 42%. During the pandemic, women business owners kept their businesses going even though few received government pandemic relief. 

The MDW Fund has provided scholarships to 42 women since 2017, and we are proud that they have generated a collective additional $4M in revenues. We have proven our business model and are ready to scale up to serve hundreds of more women.

The Million Dollar Women Fund provides a $3,000 scholarship and a $1,000 in cash grant to women of color entrepreneurs running small businesses who pay themselves less than $50k a year. 

The scholarship gets them into our' Women Who Dare' program, which includes access to MDW Masterclass (total cost for the four-month program is $6k, and $3k paid by the Fund when a woman received a scholarship), meetings with our MDW Fund program coordinator, coaching, mentorship and training about accessing capital. Typical results for our graduates are that they double their revenues, hire more people, raise capital, and within a few years, they are volunteering on boards, investing in other women entrepreneurs, and becoming role models for their communities. 

Our solution is to help WOC Entrepreneurs "GO BIG" in Business. The social impact of an economically empowered women will result in: 

• financial & food security for women, low-SES families & single parent households 
• close the economic gender gap
• grow the economy 
• increase educational attainment for at-risk populations
• increase social protections for women & children, i.e. healthcare, social security, disability, workman's comp. 

We are working with women of color entrepreneurs (primarily Black and Latinx) who run businesses making a minimum of $75k gross revenue. To qualify for our scholarship, they must be paying themselves less than $50k a year. Our program coordinator works with our members individually and on group calls. They participate in our community via Zoom sessions, live webinars, our private online community, and our regular online and offline gatherings.

We make it accessible for ambitious WOC entrepreneurs all over the U.S. to get the equivalent of an Executive MBA and benefit from targeted business training without going into debt. Because we offer our course,100% online, a woman entrepreneur who enrolls in our program is able to complete the program while she is still running her business, taking care of her family and remaining in her community 

Problem: Disparities in resource allocation, capital funding, professional networking opportunities, and access to industry knowledge between WOC small business owners and their white & male counterparts. 

Our Target Population: WOC small business owners & entrepreneurs across America, specifically those from marginalized, low-SES & disadvantaged backgrounds.

Solution: We drive resources to Black, Indigenous, Latinx and WOC/female entrepreneurs and innovators. Specifically, we provide women in our program the tools, skills & network needed to scale their business, resulting in the hiring more employees/contractors(job creation), increasing personal wealth, and becoming role models for other small business owners (increased social capital). 

At MDW Fund our solutions team is comprised of: 10 people who are working in various capacities. 

(1) Julia Pimsleur: Founder of MDW & MDW Fund

(1) full-time staff: Elissa Larabee

(1) part-time staff: Anire Ikomi, MDW Fund Program Coordinator

(3) contractors: NA

(4) Board Members (other workers): 

        - Denise Harris: MDW Fund President

        - Erin Coles: Board Secretary 

        - Stephanie Cartin: MDW Fund Communications Director

        - Jessica Robinson: Board Treasurer

Our MDW Fund board and team is comprised of women from diverse ethnic, racial, and socio-economic backgrounds, which reflects the diversity in our community.

President of our Board,  Denise Harris, is an African-American woman who brings 20 years of leadership in corporate America and is an executive coach working with leaders worldwide. 
Erin Coles, secretary of the board, is a small business owner and graduate of our program. Erin also serves on the board of Women-Owned (a Latina-led nonprofit for women small business owners). 
Jessica Robinson, board treasurer, is a CEO of a cybersecurity firm is also an African-American woman. 
Stephanie Cartin, is the CEO of a social media company and founder of the popular Entreprenista podcast, which features successful women entrepreneurs. 
Our program coordinator, Anire Ikomi, is of Nigerian descent and is a former student of Julia Pimsleur’s from her class about fundraising at Parsons/The New School in NYC.

The innovation of our approach lies in: 

1. Removing Barriers to Access of High-Quality Material
   1. Our solution makes access possible by lowering the cost threshold to business coaching, mentorship & knowledge usually only accessed through a traditional (full-time/residential) MBA, eMBA program
   2. Offered Fully Online since 2015, allowing more women to enroll in our program without uprooting their current routines & lives
   3. Our demographic includes a high percentage of women ages 40+. We are providing the tools and resources to up-skill for women who have become "entrepreneurs by necessity" after experience job loss or forced retirement
2. Specific & Targeted Training & Resources Widely Applied
   1. Our program has distilled and condensed the most important knowledge needed for entrepreneurs to successfully grow their business and revenues
   2. Our program is applicable to any industry
   3. To our knowledge we are the only program in the country that is specifically revenue-based. Meaning we are focused on increasing revenues for female small business owners

In our 4-month business program we use a combination of:

1. E-Learning (Online content & downloadable material developed by MDW Founder Julia Pimsleur hosted on our Masterclass portal)  
2. Live coaching: sessions 2x per month by Julia Pimsleur 
3. Masterminds Sessions: Held virtually with other female founders & small business owners
4. Mentorship: Access to established & successful CEOs/finance professionals working at the highest levels of their industries. 

In our 4-month business program we provide:

• Step-by-step business training via four-month online program. Our course modules are: 

1. Leadership Mindset
2. Business Strategy
3. Finance
4. Marketing
5. Sales & Distribution
6. Efficiency & Execution
7. Building Productive Teams & Team Management 
8. Establishing Powerful Networks

• Unlimited support from our dedicated MDW Fund Program Coordinator & MDW Operations Manager

• Live Q&As with scaling coach Julia Pimsleur and guest entrepreneurs 
• Training to Increase sales via more effective marketing, outsourcing, and planning

• The framework for greater confidence about going big, with other high-growth women entrepreneurs

• Access to cash grants for digital marketing services and/or hiring a virtual assistant

• 1:1 Mentorship from successful founders, CEO's and Finance C-Suite professionals with expertise in: 
  1. B2B Business
  2. B2C Business
  3. Building Teams 
  4. Business Strategy 
  5. Efficiency & Execution 
  6. Fundraising 
  7. Legal 
  8. Marketing 
  9. Product-Market Fit 
  10. SaaS 
  11. Scaling 
  12. UX Design

• E-learning software and platforms are ubiquitous and used by institutions of higher learning and other educational content providers worldwide. 
• We host our Masterclass content on Squarespace, and also host content on Kajabi. We host our Masterminds & Q&A's on Zoom.
• This years MDW Summit will also be hosting virtually, platform TBD. 

At Million Dollar Women, we are committed to dismantling systemic racism, and we are challenging ourselves to step up even more during this time.* 

More and more women are STARTING businesses, but very few are "going big." Studies show that 90% of women who run businesses in the U.S. generate under $100,000 in revenues per year and have no employees. This means that many women have created jobs for themselves, but they have no benefits, no vacations, and no job security. We want to help women learn the business skills and get the coaching they need to make more money, employ more people, and become leaders for other women and girls to follow. They will also hire more people, generate revenues that add $1.7T to the GDP, and then join boards and invest in other women entrepreneurs, creating a kind of "multiplier effect."

There are three main obstacles to women of color who want to grow their businesses:

• Lack of role models
• Less access to capital
• Little or no business training

At Million Dollar Women, we are unique in that we address all three of these obstacles via our Million Dollar Women Masterclass, a four-month online coaching program. Just awarding funding or giving grants is not enough, and sometimes it can be just a bandaid if the business owner doesn't get the right business training or have the right network of support. We help women expand their businesses by providing business training, access to capital, a supportive community, and role models in the form of mentorship by experienced entrepreneurs. 

The Million Dollar Women Fund allows us to provide scholarships to WOC business owners across the U.S. making it possible for a woman business owner to get the equivalent of an executive MBA, so she can then get to $200k, $500k, and one day, $1,000,000 in revenues. Every dollar goes to helping a small business owner regain her footing and not just survive but thrive, even in these challenging times. 

****For a visual representation of our TOC please see https://juliapimsleur.com/fund

Million Dollar Women & Million Dollar Women Fund Goals, 1-5 years:

1. Enrollment: 10x growth by 2025
   1. To increase the number of women we reach from 250 per year to 2500 per year
2. Grow our Team
   1. Hire COO in 2021
   2. Grow our full time staff 2x annually to increase to 32 full time employees by 2025
3. Invest in New Technology
   1. Build out our current platform and update our software, videos, and e-learning materials
   2. Integrate with AI
   3. Streamline our current systems to increase efficiency and optimization so that we can reach a greater audience with less error 
4. Overhaul Our Curriculum
   1. Build out our current course & program to include additional tracks that focus on specific industry
   2. Update our curriculum content, material and videos
   3. Hire additional instructions who specialize in niche areas 
   4. implement a coding/tech/software development component into our current program
5. Establish Partnerships:
   1. National Organizations, Financial Institutions, Firms, etc

Barrier to our Goals: 

1. Financial
   1. Access to capital & raising capital is limited at this time due to our small size
2. Technological
   1. Technology changes are happening so rapidly and with our small team we are unable to keep up. We would like to hire more specialized staff to address this need.
3. Our Small Scale
   1. We are actively looking to to expand into other markets 
   2.  We wish to expand internationally but do not have the resources, we have had to turn away prospective members from Canada, Europe, Central America, because we are not equipped to handle an international arm at this time

Data we wish to collect: 

• Graduate Revenue
• Graduate Business Growth
• Employment Data
• Stats on Income
• Capital Funding Increase 

• Lumimary
• Ellevate
• WeNYC
• Texas Women's Foundation
• WeAreWomenOwned
• The Crew (pending)
• RRiveter (pending)

In Development- with added funding we hope to hire more staff so our CEO, board and Head of Operations can work to develop a formal business model in 2021.

Our Social Venture  MDW is profitable and allows us to sustain the MDW Fund a newly incorporated 501c3.

Will vary depending on how quickly we roll out new tech and hire team members.

At MDW Fund, we are passionate about helping WOC entrepreneurs. We feel strongly that every entrepreneur should have a chance to build a successful business regardless of race, gender, or geographic location. 

Today, nearly half of women-led businesses are founded by WOC. Yet, there is still inequality in the factors that allow companies to grow and thrive, like access to influential networks, business training, and capital. This leads to drastic differences in revenues. The average annual sales for businesses owned by black women was $27,752 in 2012 compared to $143,731 for all women and $170,587 for white women. 
Female small business owners - and WOC business owners specifically - are one of the most overlooked and under-leveraged resources we have in the United States. Yet, they are a critical part of our economic recovery. In 1972, just 5% of small businesses were women-owned; by 2019, that percentage rose to 42%. During the pandemic, women business owners kept their businesses going even though few benefited from the billions the government gave out in pandemic aid.
The MDW Fund has provided scholarships to 42 women since 2017, and we are proud that they have generated a collective additional $4M in revenues. We have proven our business model and are ready to scale up to serve hundreds of more women. We would be honored to work with New Profit and MIT Challenge as it would allow us to reach more women and have a far more significant impact.