Female Entrepreneurs: How to be Your Own Boss
Written by Mattie Schuler Monday, February 01 2010
By age 30, many women have hit the milestones of their young adult years ‒ graduating college, maybe getting married, or, ugh, still living in their parents’ basement while searching for a job.
Cathy Dransman, Samantha Rose Hunt, and Jenna Edwards reached a different benchmark during their early adulthood. They started their own companies and trekked off in new, entrepreneurial directions.
“You get so excited about this business, and when things don’t happen right away, it’s kind of a letdown,” says Dransman, the 30-year-old partner and principal of E Studio Design Consultants, an Atlanta-based commercial interior design company launched about a year ago.
The company, run by Dransman and her business partner, founder and principal Melissa Clark, specializes in the hospitality field - catering to hotels, restaurants, retail stores, and spas. Dransman, a graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a bachelor of science in interior design, previously worked in Atlanta for Hirsch Bedner Associates, a hospitality design firm with offices worldwide.
Current projects for E Studio include, in Atlanta, the First Congregational Church and Bloom Salon and Spa.
Dransman is the architectural mind of the company while her partner specializes in the fabrics and the finishing of projects.
Since both women worked for large design firms before starting their own business, their venture wasn’t a matter of knowing what to do, but rather how to do it. As the company began, Dransman says she learned the business aspects by working with clients, planning the E Studio budgets, and writing out 90-day plans to focus their energy.
“This is the hard route,” Dransman says of working for her own company instead of sticking with the more typical 9-to-5 job. “Just because you start a business, doesn’t mean you will be making money right away.”
But E Studio did recently turn a profit for the first time, and the two women finally have the resources to pay themselves.
It is important, Dransman says, “to know your self-worth and not to doubt your talents. I think it’s important for designers and the creative industry itself to realize their talents and to not give work or ideas away for free. It’s easy to get taken advantage of in any creative industry because people think they can do what you do on their own. Part of getting past this belief is to educate people on the design industry and what exactly we do and how much thought and work goes into a job.”
Samantha Rose Hunt is the 24-year-old behind Social Lite, a business that has honed the new wave of social networks and “citizen journalists” into a marketing and public relations strategy. A graduate of North Carolina State University, Hunt worked as a journalist before grasping this change in how journalism is affecting the resources that corporations can use to market themselves.
“I realized that due to social networking, true journalism was becoming a thing of the past, and the internet was evolving to deliver news combined with opinion, on blogs,” Hunt writes in an email.
“Citizen journalists were everywhere and were not being represented to companies as artists and writers,” she says. Hunt began representing these people from a public relations standpoint, using her observations of how social media has influenced the internet. Her company combines the marketing capabilities available on the web with traditional promotions to boost her clients’ brand or product. Social Lite services include marketing plans, branding, plus web, application, and software design. 
Often, she says, bloggers are the first to witness – and subsequently report – breaking news. Social Lite represents bloggers who write product reviews, and she handles PR for companies.
“We do everything,” Hunt says, “from repping fashion lines to repping writers on their quest to become something more.”
Based in Chattanooga, Tenn., Social Lite, with three employees and two interns, moved into the black after six months. Although the business is doing well, Hunt still finds herself surprised by some clients, who doubt her knowledge of the market, mostly because of her age.
Jenna Edwards, 28, has run Queen for a Day, a nonprofit, for 10 years. The New York-based organization operates solely on the generosity of others, Edwards explains. She gets donations, and companies such as David’s Bridal help support Queen for a Day.
Unlike many nonprofits, Queen for a Day started with nothing ‒ no trust fund, no founder with deep pockets and a generous streak. Instead, then 19-year-old Edwards simply gave a tiara to a little girl suffering from cancer. From there, Queen for a Day was born.
“They had always wanted to have a tea party for the girls,” Edwards says of a hospital she visited, “so I started brainstorming.”
Queen for a Day volunteers visit hospitals and throw parties for children with cancer. For the girls, the parties are filled with make-up sessions, manicures and pedicures, and, of course, tiaras, which are donated by David’s Bridal.
For the boys, it is all fire fighters, policeman, and comic book superheroes. The parties help remind kids that they can still play and have fun like any other child.
“The simplicity of the idea and the power of it seem to make a huge impact not only on patients, but on volunteers as well,” Edwards says of the people helping in 25 chapters around the country. The effort is led by the board of directors, Edwards, and her mother.
Dransman, Hunt, and Edwards are in charge of their own destinies. They manage their own funds. They set their own goals. From a finished project for E Studio Design Consultants, a properly marketed product from Social Lite, or a toothy smile from a Queen for a Day patient, these women plan, work, and reap the benefits.
And each of these young women can boldly say that they’re doing it their way.
Social Lite
Queen for a Day
E Studio
Mattie Schuler is a Wisconsin native studying magazine journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She has written for Vox, the Columbia, Mo., magazine covering art exhibitions, contemporary ballet shows, and jam bands. Mattie is also earning a degree in psychology.
