Female empowerment - an elusive and sometimes difficult concept, is Julia Pimsleur's life's work.


Having penned her award-winning business book Million Dollar Women last year, she now hopes to take the success and message of the powerful book further by holding a Million Dollar Women Summit in two weeks. Because the book's focus was to encourage and school women on how to take their businesses to the million dollar mark. Pimsleur is keenly aware of the lack of female representation in the upper echelons of business. To wit, she is laser-focused on helping to close the gap in this sense by coaching the aspirational entrepreneurs of today.

Pimsleur's summit marks a departure from typical conferences where attendees are preached to rather than engaged with. Keynotes from peers, mentoring sessions and face time with a plethora of executive talent will allow an opportunity not only for networking, but for brand enhancement, quality advice and a level of establishment one can only derive from being immersed in an exclusive event such as this.

What drove you to put the summit together?

You know that quote, "Do the one thing that scares you?"

I wrote Million Dollar Women because as an entrepreneur I was mad about two statistics: only 3 percent of all women entrepreneurs get to one million in revenues (meanwhile, it's 6 percent of men) and only 4 percent of venture capital is invested in female-led companies.

Now I am on a mission to help one million women get to one million in revenues by 2020.

After my book Million Dollar Women was published I started coaching women from all over the country on how to scale up their businesses in my Million Dollar Women Masterclass. They loved being in this online community but then they started asking "when are we going to meet in person?" I really had no plans for a summit at the time but it felt like these were signs that it needed to happen and was the next important step in the Million Dollar Women movement. But I was also terrified! I had never raised corporate sponsorship dollars, I have never organized an event for 150 people and I knew I'd need to call in pretty much every favor-which I have. The summit is going to be a game changer for the women who attend, as it includes coaching, interactive workshops, and a pitch competition.

What can budding female entrepreneurs expect to gain from the summit?

The summit is designed to help women fill in their knowledge gaps so they can accelerate their businesses more quickly. We survey all of our attendees and ask them what they need to learn. Then, we put them in interactive workshops on those topics with top-rated teachers.

We also match each attendee with a female founder coach in their same industry who has "been there, done that" and can provide lessons learned and contacts.

We end the day with a pitch competition, in which five attendees will present their companies to five judges (who would typically take months to get in front of), and one will walk away with a $50,000 investment and additional prizes.

Tell us a little about some of the event speakers.

The Muse's CEO Kathryn Minshew, who has spoken at MIT and Harvard, will serve as a keynote speaker, and will deliver a talk called "Breaking Down Barriers And Scaling Up". Alpana Singh, a restaurateur and Grand Master Sommelier, will join her as a keynote speaker delivering a talk on "Big Wine, Big Business". Other event speakers and panelists include Kim Kaupe and Brittany Hodak, co-founders of ZinePak; Chole + Isabel's CEO Chantel Waterbury, and Desert Jet founder Denise Wilson. Additionally, there will be a mentor from across a variety of industries to cater to all attendee questions.

What will the Pitch element add to the summit?

I go to a lot of women's festivals and conferences where people tell their success stories of fundraising or bemoan the lack of funding.

We decided to do neither and instead use that time to create an opportunity for five women to pitch in a relatively friendly and supportive environment and walk away funded.

I am passionate about seeing more women raise capital and scale up their businesses, so I am especially excited about this part of the summit.

Why, in your opinion are women so far behind in terms of becoming large-scale entrepreneurial success stories?

We have been starting companies at nearly twice the rate that men have over the last two decades but we are not yet "going big" in large numbers. This needs to change. Women really just need three things to get to the million dollar mark and beyond: the right mindset, skill set and network.

Why did you choose Microsoft as the summit HQ?

We are thrilled to be holding the summit at Microsoft, as they are such a friend to small businesses and to women entrepreneurs specifically. We have a deep partnership with them as they are true champions of female founders.

Will this become an annual event, and will there be summits in other cities?

The Million Dollar Women summit will be an annual event and we are in conversations with partners in other cities. For this, stay tuned!

What are you looking forward to most about the summit?

I am most looking forward to seeing the faces of the 150 women, knowing this will be a game changer for so many of their businesses. I wish I could have attended something like this when I was scaling up my business, Little Pim. I am also excited to celebrate the summit with the Justice League, my incredible advisory council, who conceived and executed the event with me and are a class A group of Superheroes!


WRITTEN BY

Amy Corcoran