Less than 7% of McHenry County businesses are women-owned but those that are ‘get the job done’

In 2017, Sara White of Marengo was a busy wife and mom of three children and two dogs who was running a hectic household while looking for a part-time job to use her master’s degree. She wound up a business owner.

White said she walked into HyperStitch, a custom embroidery and screen printing business in Marengo, and asked if they needed part-time help. Three days later, the owner of that business called and asked if she wanted to buy the company.

She discussed the proposition with her husband, learned what it would take to run a business of her own, met with bankers and bought it.

She admits that being a business owner is challenging. All her other responsibilities still exist, so running her own company “is just one more plate in the air,” she said.

White is among just 682 female business owners in McHenry County out of a total of 10,843 businesses, according to data provided by the McHenry County Workforce Network Board.

White said there is a lot of “pro-women business discussion.” However, to truly support women business owners, as well as women who work while raising families, is to recognize they face different challenges than men.

“We do see a lot of press about patronizing the businesses that are run by women, but I don’t know that we really understand why it is important or why those businesses are at a disadvantage,” she said.

She is not making excuses, but feels there needs to be greater understanding that working women face different challenges than men.

[It’s] just one more plate in the air.”

—  Sara White, owner of HyperStitch in Marengo

When women work or own the company, unlike most men, they still are expected to handle household responsibilities at full speed, White said.

“All seven of my employees are women, and most of us are moms. So when one of our kids is sick, we don’t go to work,” she said.

However, all the work still gets done.

“It is just kind of an understanding that the household and the children are our responsibilities and the work comes second to that,” White said. “I just don’t know that in an environment with men that is the case.”

Her employees “do a fantastic job” of getting the work done, no matter what it takes, but White wants people “to appreciate that that is what it looks like to have women-run businesses.”

Susan Dobbe-Leahy, owner of Dobbe Marketing & PR in Crystal Lake, said women-run businesses work because women “laser focus on their business.”

“In spite of many distractions, they get the job done,” said Dobbe-Leahy who has owned her marketing company since 1989. “Yet, women make up the majority of our society’s caregivers for children, the elderly and disabled. Often these are non-paid roles as family members, not professionals, on top of their full-time jobs.”

In spite of such challenges, she said, the businesswomen she has known over the past 30 years “are phenomenal.”

“They are organizers and achievers who know how to maximize each moment and minimize unproductive distractions while supporting each other,” she said.

Women are good at knowing when it is time to work, time to chat and when it is time to make decisions.

“Women leaders in business are good at that, in part, because they make a lot of decisions,” Dobbe-Leahy said. “They make decisions every day, for family, for [those] in the workplace, and some people diddle over [making decisions] but women have to decide and move on.”

Still, women must work on finding balance, knowing when it is time to be done with work, rest, go to bed, wake up the next day, make a new list and begin again, she said.

“Life is rarely in balance, so each moment must be experienced for what it is,” Dobbe-Leahy said.

Jill Dinsmore of Crystal Lake has been president of JA Frate Inc. for 10 years. Before leading the freight and logistics company – headquartered in McHenry and founded by her father, Doug Jennings, 81, in 1971 – she worked in various roles in the business.

She said her strengths that make her successful in a traditionally male-dominated industry are her “love” of structure, consistency and problem solving, as well as the ability to network and find the right people to help solve the problems she cannot.

She also said more women are joining the industry in various roles and are quite successful.

“Our industry is very much a firefighter industry,” Dinsmore said. “A day in transportation is never the same. There are always, always problems to solve. I can bring in a team of problem-solvers together and keep them rallied around getting the job done because of the structure we put in place.”

Dinsmore grew up with three siblings helping with her dad’s business, whether organizing paperwork or cleaning the office.

Although she became president at a time when her children were grown and on their own, she always worked and was a corporate wife with a husband who traveled often.

As many working women do, she put pressure on herself to meet everyone’s needs.

“I had days when I didn’t feel good at anything. You can’t give enough to work, you’re not giving enough to your kids, you’re not giving enough to your spouse, yet you are just desperately trying to hold it together.”

After coming to the terms with the fact that she is “not a perfectionist” and being OK with that; and letting go of having to be perfect and understanding it is not going to get done all in one day, her mindset changed.

As a working woman, balance is challenging and now Dinsmore said her mantra is, “You can do it all, you just can’t do it all at the same time,” she said.

Dinsmore encourages women not to shy away from opportunities they feel unprepared for.

“A great lesson is, nothing good ever happens when you say no,” Dinsmore said her father has always said. “When you say yes you can only grow and have opportunities. You might be uncomfortable saying yes to something you never did before, but that is when the good things happen.”

Dinsmore said she has been offered opportunities she was not qualified for and “jumped in.”

She read, researched, studied, asked questions of those who had been down a similar path, and learned what she needed to know and made it work.

Dinsmore adapts this in her current role in solving transportation and technical problems.

“We will try different things to solve problems,” she said.

For women seeking business opportunities to be successful in she suggests researching and finding where people need help, “asking good questions” to learn how they can help.

Then, like her dad did, find a need and “find a way to fill that need in a unique way that is not currently being done.”

After finding that need and setting up a business, Dinsmore said bring in people with complimentary skills, those who are the “yin to your yang,” and “create a good place where people feel cared for and cared about.”

Still, some can be intimidated by the financial side of starting or growing a business.

Mark Piekos, manager of the Illinois Small Business Development Center at McHenry County College, said that fear, felt by many entrepreneurs, partly is due to “imposter syndrome.”

The thought is, “I am good at what I do, but not good at the business side,” Piekos said.

To help combat such doubt, the college facilitates free, monthly advising and training roundtable groups specifically for women growing or establishing businesses. They are led by Dobbe-Leahy.

“My advice to women in business is to remember that no one has all good days,” Dobbe-Leahy said. “No one wins every time. Take time for yourself so you can give to others. Realize that each day is long enough to get what is really needed done. Know that if you are doing your best, it is enough.”