Women Founded and Led Businesses are Creating Superior Returns for Investors

The year 1986 was a pretty eventful one for women.

• The Oprah Winfrey Show debuted nationally in September of 1986.
• Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” and Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” were rocking the music charts.
• Strong women personas were featured on hit TV shows like Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Cagney and Lacey, and Murder, She Wrote.

Unfortunately, 1986 was also the year where the “glass ceiling” was introduced and highlighted to mainstream America. As you most likely already know, the Glass ceiling is a metaphor that highlights the forces and issues that prevent female professionals from reaching senior management positions.

Fast forward 35 years, and as we sit here in 2021, women still struggle with in-equality when it comes to females in senior executive leadership roles.

I guess we called ourselves “progressive,” and as long as it doesn’t pertain to women in business, we can use that term. Yet the DATA has shown that women-led businesses have, on average, yielded a higher return than their male counterparts. In a cited study by Finland’s Nordea Bank AB, “Between 2009 and 2016, publicly listed companies that had women as CEOs or heads of the board, had a 25 percent annualized return, compared to 11 percent for the MSCI World Index.”

It was also cited that Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest assets managers with over $4.9 trillion in assets under management, performed its own research and found similar results.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Fidelity Investments announced the launch of the Fidelity Women’s Leadership Fund. “The global equity strategy will invest in both growth and value stocks and focus on finding companies that include a woman as a member of the senior management team, are governed by a board for which women represent at least one-third of all directors, or in Fidelity’s opinion, have adopted policies designed to attract, retain and promote women.”

Independently, S&P Global issued a report detailing a 24-month study they conducted. “Firms with female CEOs and CFOs have produced superior stock price performance, compared to the market average. In the 24 months post-appointment, female CEOs saw a 20% increase in stock price momentum, and female CFOs saw a 6% increase in profitability and 8% larger stock returns. These results are economically and statistically significant.”

The data and surveys speak for themselves.

This is NOT a statistical anomaly. It’s a direct correlation that proves women are great business leaders.

Investors are finally starting to wake up to these facts.

History of Visionary, Innovative and Technology Forwarded Thinking Women Entrepreneurs

There’s been a history of successful women entrepreneurs and companies to prove it.

Mary Kay, Tupperware, Avon, and Amway built their multi-billion dollar businesses on the backs of women who wanted to become financially independent with socially engaged parties. These companies pioneered direct-to-consumer business models that allowed enterprising women (and men) to build their own successful businesses.

Oprah Winfrey came along next, and she had the vision and savvy to hold onto her production rights for her television talk show. Leveraging those rights, she was able to create and launch HARPO Productions, her own production company that she used to parlay her success as a daytime talk show host into a successful multi-media production company. She became known as the “Queen of All Media” and holds the distinction of being the richest African American of the 20th Century. Her net worth as of 2009 was $2.7 billion and as of 2020, reported as $3.5 billion.

Recently, companies like Young Living, DoTerra, and Stella and Dot have intertwined technology and digital marketing to further enhance direct-to-consumer business models that appeal to the next generation of digital-savvy woman business builders and consumers.

Next Generation of Women Entrepreneurs

Instead of fighting against the proverbial glass ceiling, a new generation of women leaders are trailblazing their own paths by creating, launching, and leading their own billion-dollar companies.

…They’re doing it their own way and with their own style.

In 2017, Katrina Lake, Founder of Stitch Fix (NasdaqGS: SFIX) became the youngest female to take a company public at the ripe old age of 34. Most recently, she was outdone by Whitney Wolfe Herd, who took her dating app company, Bumble, public at the age of 31 in February 2021. Ms. Herd now holds the title of being “the youngest woman to take a company public.”

Dana Settle, co-founder of venture capital firm Greycroft, and Katherine Power, CEO of Clique Brands, were recently interviewed on financial news channel CNBC discussing Bumble’s success. They both credited Bumble’s success to Ms. Wolfe Herd’s vision and execution, as well as the ability to develop a focused culture, and create a company that has a value that aligns with modern consumers. Consumers want brands and leaders that share their values and speak to them in a way they haven’t ever experienced before. They also touched on how there’s a need for increased woman start-ups and female investors to create a more effective ecosystem. You can watch Ms. Settle and Ms. Power’s entire interview here.

Former hedge fund manager and current TV personality, Jim Cramer identified the reasons women are leading successful consumer packaged goods businesses.

• They know the purchasing power of women
• They can understand what’s being purchased
• They can identify the opportunities

You can watch Mr. Cramer’s sound bites here.

Women like Katrina Lake and Whitney Wolfe Herd have built successful businesses that appeal to their core customer demographics.

They also serve as inspirational guideposts for other entrepreneurial women, like me, who have aspirations to build and lead our own successful businesses.

Greenfield Groves is the Right Company at the Right Time

I founded Greenfield Groves because like Katrina Lake and Whitney Wolfe Herd, I also saw that women were being underserved and not catered to correctly in the growing wellness services category.

I started my own personal journey towards wellness and better health, and found the existing solutions were lacking in one way, shape, or form.

I set out to build a company with specific core values on developing a consumer-focused business consisting of wellness products and telehealth services that work together. They can be tailored to one’s own personal needs with transparent ingredients and a supply chain, all wrapped around rich, educational, and relevant content.

We also are purpose-driven and have elected ourselves to be a Benefit Corporation (B Corp), are in the final qualification for B Lab certification, which reinforces our socially conscious efforts and shows that we aren’t just talking about it, but are doing it.

For the better part of two years, we’ve invested our own dollars and time to build the foundation of our company, brands, and products. You can CLICK HERE to read more about Greenfield Groves.

We are ready to bring in additional investors to help fuel our growth and want to do so in a way where we can offer up our investment opportunity to everyday people.

We want investors, like YOU, who can also be our customers, who believe in the ongoing movement and momentum of socially caused and driven companies.

Hope You Enjoyed the Read!