There may only be 10 women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but that doesn't mean women aren't an important force in business.

The facts speak for themselves. According to the Center for Women's Business Research:

- 41 percent of all privately held U.S. firms are owned by women

- Nearly 10.4 million firms are owned by women (50 percent or more), employing more than 12.8 million people and generating $1.9 trillion in sales.
 
- For the past two decades, majority women-owned firms have continued to grow at around two times the rate of all firms (42 percent versus 24 percent).

The Business Report turned to some of the many women business owners in the Boulder Valley to see what kind of advice they have to offer other women.

In 1991 Lisa Gutekunst was a dental assistant who through successive trips to Fiji got to know and love the island well. She also became friendly with Bill Gleeson, the owner of Matangi Island Resort, the place she usually stayed. When he came to U.S. to do a trade show, he asked Gutekunst to help. Her knowledge and enthusiasm impressed Gleeson.

She began representing Matangi Island Resort at trade shows from her home in Colorado. In 1994 she set up one of the first travel Web sites. Perceiving people wanted more of a package than just a trip to a resort, she opened her travel agency, Longmont-based South Seas Adventures, in 1995. "South Seas was started on a $350 commission check," Gutekunst says.

Gutekunst had seen a new market arising. Thoughts of love were focused on Hawaii, but hadn't crept out further into the Pacific. "No one was specializing in romance and honeymoon travel. We were at the forefront." Now 75 percent of her $5 million business is honeymoon/romance.

Gutekunst's advice:

1. Be conservative. Be smart on the decisions you make. Don't be frivolous when you're getting a bit bigger.

2. Grown slowly. Have a vision for where you want to go.

3. Have a backbone. As a woman in business you're playing in a man's world.

Gutekunst believes that while women have to be very strong in the work place, they also can bring compassion.

 "Kill 'em with kindness," she says.

Helen Roe
Capstone Inc.

Helen Roe was an employee of a company that lost a contract. The client approached her and said, "I can't hire your firm, but if you were to start a business I could hire you."

With two business partners, Roe launched a one-client company. After a few years the company became more directed. Capstone Inc. now has 37 employees plus about 10 contractors. The Broomfield-based company offers professional services in project management, cost estimating and systems integration, and its client is often the federal government. "Our commodity is personnel," Roe says.

Roe's advice:

1. Love what you do. "I can't think of anything more important. Especially as a small business owner, you just live and breathe the businesses."

2. Stay on top of the trends. You need constant education - stay up with the technology.

3. Partner. There's strength in numbers. Some businesses stay small because the expertise of the owner can only handle so much. Those who are successful know when to hand it off.

Heidi Flammang
Camp Bow Wow

Heidi Flammang's business plan for a doggie day-care center crashed with the plane that killed her husband. She went back to pharmaceutical sales. But a few years later her brother came to her, reminding her of her business idea. He offered to run operations if she did the business side. She used her own money, and in 2000 Camp Bow Wow was born, then located near downtown Denver.

It was a year before Flammang gave up her day job. In 2002 she opened a second location in Broomfield. Due to demand, she soon started looking into franchising, and Camp Bow Wow became a franchise in August 2003. The corporate office moved to Boulder in 2004.

 "I didn't have a clue what I was doing," Flammang says. But one of her clients connected her with the International Franchise Association. She had wonderful mentors and a "tolerant" first franchisee in Castle Rock.

Now there are 45 locations, and she's sold more than 200 franchises.

Flammang's advice:

1. Find some folks who have done what you're doing and who will mentor you. Join industry associations and go to trade shows.

2. Always overestimate the amount of cash you're going to need. The No. 1 reason small businesses fail is lack of funds. "A lot of people think they can bootstrap anything. It's terrible when six months into the business you have to close your doors," Flammang says.

3. Surround yourself with great people who are smarter than you. Invest resources in great people. Hire a consultant if you can't afford to hire someone full time.

Flammang says it's easy in the beginning to hire young, inexperienced people; because of their energy and enthusiasm, may seem you're getting two for one. "But one good employee can take the place of three or four." More experienced workers have more of a work ethic.

Flammang compares running a business to playing a video game, where things can pop up left and right that could take down the business. Surrounding herself with good people has been essential. What she brings to Camp Bow Wow is marketing. "I'm very marketing focused. I'm all about the brand and letting people see the passion for the business."

It's there in the company slogan: It's all about the dogs.

Lynn Milot
Grandrabbits Toy Shoppe

For Lynn Milot, it's all about the kids. She started living her values as a young woman when she got legal guardianship of five Navajo children. Later she had three biological children. So when she was working as the scholarship director of a Montessori school and dreamed of starting a business, it was with the idea that a business could be a positive social force for children who she thought deserved more of a commitment by society.

Borrowing money from family, Milot opened Grandrabbits Toy Shoppe Oct. 3, 1977. "It was such a funny feeling, like we put all this energy into it, and wondered 'will anybody come?'"

She claims to have known nothing about business, but had the good fortune or good sense to be the only specialty toy store in Boulder at that time. The store had lots of traffic and lots of business from the start. The original store was 3,000 square feet, but as neighboring businesses left over the years, she took over their spaces. Now Grandrabbits inhabits 6,700 square feet.

In November 2004 Milot opened a second, 4,200-square-foot store in Superior. And while she started the Grandrabbit's Internet site in 1996, just this year she's put energy into it to make it a "third store."

Milot's advice:

1. Hold fast to the vision. Always remember your goal. But be very adaptive about the means to achieve that goal.

2. "The most important thing is to get the best people on the bus and have them on the right seat on the bus," Milot says, borrowing language from Jim Collin's "Good to Great."

3. Once you recognize something is not working act on it quickly. The rule is the same for inventory and personnel. "If an item isn't selling, I donate it." And if an employee is making others tense, despite their talents, they are not retained.

"I do a lot of experimenting of the right seats on the bus," Milot says. She finds, however, that, "The job is to meet the goal, not for everyone to do the same thing." So if an employee gets the work done at 4 a.m., that's OK. "If you adapt the job to the employee's life, they are grateful and more productive."

In terms of the idealism Milot says: "I think it's important to think about what we can really do."