Nehlsen Notebook

I AM A WOMAN, and I Own the Business

By Nancy Nehlsen - Owner  7.13.10

Nehlsen Communications has been a woman-owned business since the day in 1972 when I put my Smith Corona typewriter on my kitchen table and started writing radio and TV scripts.  When I decided it was time to be recognized as a woman-owned business I imagined a nice group of people nodding and smiling at my youthful struggle to make something of myself from the kitchen of my mobile home.  

But the good people from the Women’s Business Enterprise (WBE) were not touched by my folksy chronicle of “small town girl lives the American Dream”.  They wanted absolute proof there were no men lurking in the storage room of my business playing me like a cheap marionette. 

In fact, it seemed from the months of grueling paperwork, emails and phone calls that they didn’t want me to have male relatives, male friends or male children (of which I have two).  One major stumbling block came when they demanded to see a paper trail of the financing I used to start my business, which would have consisted of a 38-year old receipt for the typewriter my Dad loaned me the money to purchase.

There were forms, telephone conversations, essays, financial records, more forms, emails, more forms.  If not for my stubborn determination to have myself recognized as a woman and a business owner I may have just given up and let people continue to guess about both.

WBE_Woman-Owned_Business_Certification When the extremely pleasant lady from the Chicago office of the WBE arrived in my office I jokingly referred to the sinister distrust they seemed to have toward innocent small business people like myself.  “You have no idea,” she answered with a smile, “how many times we go to check out a ‘woman-owned business’ and find the alleged owner of the business sitting at a reception desk answering the phone while her 'non-owner' husband lounges in a cushy office making deals with clients all over the world.  We are protecting you from the people who will take advantage of this certification to get more business.”

Wow, I wouldn’t have guessed that people stoop to lying about their business ownership instead of just getting out there and selling business on their own merits.  “Do people lie about other minority categories?” I asked.

“That can be a problem, too,” that answer surprised me.  “We want to protect all of our minority applicants from imposters.”

So there you have it.  People all over America are pretending to be female, African-American, Asian…whatever will get them more business.  Now I understand why we jump through such hoops to become certified and I really do appreciate what the WBE goes through to protect us.  And the good news is – now everyone will know that I AM WOMAN, and I own the business.

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