How Facebook is super-charging female entrepreneurs
The #SheMeansBusiness training sessions empower the women behind businesses to promote and grow their companies
Emma Jones, the founder of Enterprise Nation – a company that supports small businesses – believes we need more women starting and growing businesses. “Because,” she says, “as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says, when women succeed, we all succeed.”
This determination to empower female entrepreneurs led to the partnership between Facebook and Enterprise Nation, and the launch of the #SheMeansBusiness programme in 2016.
“We’ve already trained just over 13,000 female founders to start or scale their business,” says Jones. “It’s responding to the female founders who say what they’re most in need of is digital skills to make them savvy in promoting, servicing and growing their business. There are now 24 trainers operating across 50 regions in the UK.”
The free #SheMeansBusiness training sessions, Jones says, are called meetups because “we found that all the female founders desperately wanted to meet and learn from each other, not just the experts”.
Between six and 15 women attend each half-day workshop, which gives them ample one-to-one attention. There are also occasional highlight events, the most recent for 300 female entrepreneurs where the likes of Emma Bridgewater spoke of their success.
And it wouldn’t be a Facebook campaign if it didn’t include online aspects.
“We have lots of Facebook Live Q&As, which means if you don’t have a session near you, there’s the opportunity to attend these live events remotely,” Jones adds.
Enterprise Nation is used to delivering campaigns for partner brands. “We work on everything from the UK’s biggest start-up show, through to connecting small businesses to buyers from big retailers,” Jones explains. “It made absolute sense for us to deliver the #SheMeansBusiness programme with Facebook.” Referring to Facebook Community Boost, a twoday training event for small businesses to help boost their digital skills, expand their networks and grow their businesses both here in the UK and further afield, Jones said: “This two-day event, on 13 and 14 November, is Facebook saying, ‘We take enterprise seriously and want to help businesses get more prepared for the future’.
The morning will be focused on small businesses, the afternoon will be a celebration of #SheMeansBusiness, while day two will be focused on export, an area where Facebook has been an international enabler, especially for businesses on a budget.” Success stories include Ruth Bradford, who started her business The Little Black & White Book Project selling children’s books using Facebook to reach a larger audience, and Martha Brook, who built her stationery business on Instagram.
With one in five businesses in the UK started up by women, and 375 million people connected to a UK business via Facebook, Jones believes the #SheMeansBusiness programme is set to create huge numbers of jobs, as well as turning women into tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.
To find out more, visit facebook.com/communityboostlondon