Mind Your Own Business: OKC best city for women entrepreneurs, study shows

Mind Your Own Business: OKC best city for women entrepreneurs, study shows
By Paula Burkes
Copyright © 2016, The Oklahoma Publishing Company

Oklahoma City is the best city in the nation for budding female entrepreneurs to start a business, according to a a study released today by Merchant Cash USA, a Las Vegas-based small business financial lender.

“Oklahoma City is a mecca for young professionals and entrepreneurs who can excel at various industries in an area which is extremely friendly to the small business owner,” CCO Darrin Landau said.

Oklahoma City — home to more than 19,000 small businesses — Is No. 1 due to its great cost of living, low unemployment rate, and the revitalization currently happening in the city, Landau said. The cost of living for someone self-employed is more than 10 percent below the U.S. average, he said.

Rounding out the top five cities nationwide are San Antonio, Portland, Des Moines and Houston.

Merchant Cash USA used 2015 census data to rank the most highly-populated cities according to cost of rent for a home or office space, number of small businesses per 10,000 people, and the average unemployment rate per city. The company also looked at what grant and loan options existed for women-owned businesses and asked various female small business owners, through a third-party email campaign, to rate the city in which they lived on a 10-point scale on such factors as cost of living, small business climate, opportunities available to females business owners, and friendliness of individual consumers to small businesses.

According to American Express OPEN’s State of Women Owned Business Report, more than 9.4 million women own businesses across the United States – which is roughly 30 percent of all businesses in the country. The firms bring in more than $1.5 trillion in revenue and employ nearly 8 million U.S. individuals.

In Oklahoma, some Tulsa women have found success through franchising. Meanwhile, Oklahoma has a chapter of the Women Presidents’ Organization, which helps women from diverse, noncompetitive industries invest time and energy in themselves and their businesses to take their companies to the next level.

Read the story at NewsOK.com.