Big SmartsCo News!

So we're super giddy right now as we found out this week we won Make Mine a $Million Award from American Express OPEN, Count Me In and the Women's Leadership Exchange. This is a pilot program through Count Me In (women small businesses - I highly recommend checking them out for micro loans) which includes a $45,000 loan from American Express OPEN and a "Dream Team" of business coaches from the Women's Leadership Exchange to create specific business plans to reach $1 million in annual revenue.

The coaches and mentors include: Nely Galan, CEO of Galan Entertainment and producer of The Swan series on Fox and called the "Tropical Tycoon" by the New York Times Magazine and named "one of the most powerful young executives in Hollywood" by Entertainment Weekly; Dresdene Flynn-White of Action International; and Vivian Shimoyama of Breakthru Unlimited, and many other successful women entrepreneurs. It's really quite cool and I can't wait to get started on the whole thing.

But we almost missed it all, as last week during our move to an awesome new office in SF's SOMA district, we had a series of Murphy's Law incidents from a technology perspective. First, the phone company canceled the DSL order for some strange reason, then our phone guy went on a bender and disappeared mid-way through the project, then apparently our email server when down, and finally our phones got forwarded to a disconnected line. So we didn't get the message that we were finalists for the award. After making one last call on Monday afternoon that actually went through, we learned that we did make it and were supposed to be in Long Beach at that very moment and the presentation was the Tuesday morning!

So I hopped on the next flight to Long Beach (so glad Jet Blue now has that route), and got quick run down of what was involved: telling the entire SmartsCo story in 4 minutes. I can't even describe what I ate for breakfast in 4 minutes, much less talk about the last 3 years of my life, but somehow I was able to convinced a packed room and panel of judges that we deserved the award. Well, actually all the six finalists were also able to do so as the panel could not pick just three winners from the strong group of finalists and in an unprecedented effort were able to raise additional capital from Microsoft and Merrill Lynch and sign up three new coaches at the conference. I'm really thrilled to share the award with 5 other great women who are venturing out with a wide variety of cool and creative businesses: Cha Cha's Doggie Day Care; Bonnie Plotkin Bail Bonds; Little Twig, personal care products for children; a music learning system company; and Marian Farms, a biodynamic farm.

I now take back every four-letter word I've uttered about Microsoft in the past. They tell us that just 3% of women-owned U.S. businesses generate more than a million dollars in annual revenue, compared to 7% of men-owned businesses in the same category. This program is designed to grow winning businesses into sustainable million-dollar enterprises. I know we're going to get there (and far beyond that) in no time.

My faith in corporate America giving back to the community is renewed. Stay tuned for entries on this blog about our experience in the program - who knows maybe we'll be on Nely's next reality show.

Yippy!!!