E-mail a friendNell Merlino
airdate March 11, 2008
Recipient of Forbes Trailblazer Award, Nell Merlino is the creative force behind Take Our Daughters to Work Day. She's also cofounder and CEO of Count Me In, a nonprofit that helps women obtain business start-up loans. In '05, she launched the Make Mine a Million $ Business campaign, to inspire one million women entrepreneurs to reach $1 million in revenues by 2010. Merlino is a Fulbright Scholar who's worked in two state governments, as an advance woman in presidential politics and a union organizer.
Full interview. (7:59)
Nell Merlino
Tavis: We continue our "Road to Wealth" series tonight with Nell Merlino, cofounder and CEO of Count Me In for women's economic independence. The ambitious nonprofit program is providing loans to women entrepreneurs across the country in hopes of inspiring them to reach total annual revenues of $1 million or more.
She's also the creator of the very successful Take Our Daughters to Work Day program. She joins us tonight from New York City. Nell Merlino, nice to have you on the program.
Nell Merlino: Oh, it's such a pleasure to be with you. Thank you.
Tavis: I'm so anxious to talk to you about where this idea comes from. It's a good one.
Merlino: It struck me, I started Count Me In about eight years ago, and we were going along making microloans to women across the United States, and we weren't overwhelmed with applications. And I started to look at that and discovered that there were many more women who had started businesses who'd kind of got stuck. They couldn't get sort of beyond sort of $200,000 in revenue.
And then I went and looked at the census statistics and found out that of the 10.5 million women in business, only 2.6 percent had gotten to $1 million in revenue. That's like 243,000 out of 10.5 million. That number so blew me away that at Count Me In we created this program called "Make Mine a Million-Dollar Business" to help women grow their microbusinesses to million-dollar enterprises, and it has just taken off all over the country.
So we obviously, I think, hit a chord with women who were struggling with they've got a good product or service but they couldn't figure out how to get over, you know, that $250,000, $300,000 mark.
Tavis: That raises a few questions right quick. Number one, what was it primarily, what did you find consistently, if anything, that kept them at that $250,000 limit, so to speak?
Merlino: I think one of the biggest things was women take a lot of their at-home behavior to work and think that they've got to do everything themselves. And if you're doing everything yourself, you can't grow. It's fine like the first couple months you start maybe you're running around doing everything, but if you've got something really good, you've got to get other people to help you.
And I think women thought, and some still think, that for it to be theirs they have to do everything themselves. And in fact, the opposite is true. It's counter-intuitive, almost. The more people you can get in there to help you, the bigger the business can get, and in fact the more time you can have to spend with your family or do other stuff, other than just steadily working in your business.
Tavis: And your definition, Nell, of microloan is what?
Merlino: Microbusinesses and microloans go anywhere from - a microbusiness is anywhere from startup to $250,000, a microloan is anywhere from, in the U.S., say $5,000 to - it's really $500 to, like, $10,000. The financing we make available through Make Mine a Million is a $50,000 line of credit sponsored by Open from American Express.
They have come in and actually decided that these women are so great, and they were women they weren't meeting, that they are now extending lines of credit to them which is a huge step in growing a business.
Tavis: So tell me what you know at this point about what the tracking is telling you with regard to the success you're having trying to get to this number in 10 years.
Merlino: We already have 45,000 women signed up on our website who express the intention of growing their business to $1 million. So we are actively working with them, and then we do a competition. We do them regularly. We just did one in Phoenix last week, we're doing one in Newark on June 3rd with Mayor Booker, and women go to our website, they apply, and they compete for a wonderful awards package that gets them coaching and mentoring, which is probably the most important thing.
They also get to be part of this community, which is the other thing that we have found: women need to be together with other women who are trying to do the same thing. They need to be with other women who are trying to grow to $1 million, because they're not competitive so much as really collegial in helping each other figure out whatever the stumbling blocks are that they're hitting, and those competitions drive a lot of interest and a lot of just extraordinary inspiration.
We have 122 women that have won that competition so far, we've been doing it officially for two years. Twenty-eight of that 122 have already gotten to $1 million. Some of them have done it in under a year, have gone from $300,000 to $1 million in under a year.
The woman who is was the top performer in this group won in June of 2006; she was stuck at $400,000 in revenue for three or four years. She's now at $5.7 million.
Tavis: Wow.
Merlino: So I am so encouraged. She's based out of the Los Angeles area, actually, Garnette Newcombe. She has just - she needed help learning how to delegate and got hooked up with some technology from Cisco that really helped her expand her business very quickly.
Tavis: What kind of business is she in, I'm just curious?
Merlino: She has a business called Human Potential. She is training people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, people who've been downsized and people coming out of prison, how to get back into the workforce.
Tavis: Why do women need extra help in the first place, Nell?
Merlino: I don't know that we need extra help, but we only got the right to business credit in our own name in 1974, so we haven't been doing this that long. So it's 30 years we've been working at this. There are a million men who've gotten to $1 million; there are a quarter of a million women who got there without our help.
But I think there really was a need for somebody to invite women, to suggest to women, that they might want to grow their business to $1 million. Nobody'd ever said it to them before. It was either these really big businesses like Martha Stewart or Oprah who get into the billions or there was a lot of talk about start-up. What this group is actually called in the literature, they're called the missing middle, and they're there, stuck in the middle. They're making an okay living but they are not at a point where they really have stabilized the business so that they can grow it to, you know, $1 million, $2 million, $5 million, whatever their aspiration is.
So I think nobody asking them, I think the issue of access to credit and capital continues to be a challenge, but the more you're focused on what you want to do and that you understand you need help and you need a vision for your business, I won't say it's ever easy but you have a greater likelihood of getting the financing that you need.
I am certainly seeing that from the women who win our competition, banks who turned them down six months ago turn around and offer them money because they've been recognized by these companies, by this not-for-profit organization. They're in their newspapers, they're on TV because they've won this thing, and that makes a difference.
Tavis: And how are women of color specifically faring?
Merlino: They are doing really well. Garnett Newcombe, who I mentioned, is an African American woman. We have out of the 28 that have gotten to a million there are four African Americans, for Latinas, and they are setting the pace, actually, in the group.
In a survey we've recently done of our online community, the African American women particularly express more confidence in their ability to get to a million than any other group in the country, and they are demonstrating that. Leah Brown in North Carolina has a - she helps big pharmaceuticals to get much-needed drugs to market with all those different companies, and she has recently gone from I think $800,000 to $2 million.
Theresa Daytner, who runs a construction company, she's a Latina. She has six children and has figured out how to grow her business and take care of six kids, and her husband recently has come to work for her. There is real power in these groups to I think demonstrate to other women in their communities that this is doable, but also because they have just really got it going on from what I have seen, in every competition we have.
Tavis: I love it. It's Make Mine a Million campaign; it's run by Nell Merlino. Nell, you're doing righteous work and I'm glad to have you on the program.
Merlino: I am so happy to have been with you. Thank you.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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