Over the last few decades, it has emerged as conventional wisdom that women are more entrepreneurial than men.

The list of reasons behind this phenomenon is long. Faced with glass ceilings in many large organizations, some females see less risk in walking away from a secure job because the brass ring appears out of reach.

Entrepreneurs enjoy more flexibility. If a business owner wants to structure her job so she can spend quality time with her children or other family members, she doesn’t need to get her boss’s permission.

Just take a walk through a drugstore or supermarket and look at who is the primary customer. Estimates are that females represent more than 60% of the shoppers at most mass market retail outlets. Sophisticated consumers are often female. Many are more likely to spend serious time shopping and perceive needs for new products than men who are stopping in and out of stores quickly to pick up shaving cream, six packs and baloney sandwiches.

Beyond questions and stereotypes, perhaps the most interesting question is what are the common traits of successful female entrepreneurs. This was the topic of a presentation given by Kevin O’Leary of the hit TV show Shark Tank at last month’s Invest In Women conference in Dallas.

Half of the portfolio companies O’Leary has invested in are run by women, yet they account for virtually all his positive returns. Before these ventures got off the ground, they had to get financing.

O’Leary said that those entrepreneurs who can persuade investors to pony up have three attributes: First, they have to be able to articulate the opportunity in 90 seconds. Second, they have to be able to persuade investors they are the right person to execute the business plan. Finally, they know their numbers and have a “comprehensive understanding” of how to execute their business plan.

But the highlight of O’Leary’s presentation was his list of the common attributes of female entrepreneurs who thrive after they raise capital. Nothing renders these traits exclusive to any single gender, but they include:

1. Successful women realize that employees are valuable assets, not friends or family members. The big challenge arises when they are the same person. Women have “more guts to fire them,” even family members.

2. Maintaining a clear line of command and setting reachable goals is critical, O’Leary said. Females tend to set achievable goals that are easy to make and build upon. Men often establish “stratospheric goals no one could make.” The upshot is broken morale.

3. The best executives are accessible. O’Leary cited the case of one female entrepreneur who gave her cell phone number to all 800 employees and said they should call her when they need to. “The phone never rings, but it creates respect,” he explained.

4. Delegate, delegate, delegate. Constant meddling can be counterproductive. “Set a goal and let them do it and get out of the way.” 

5. Do not procrastinate. A start-up business can lose precious time against rivals if, when it faces a major decision at a fork in the road, its executives deliberate too long before deciding on a course of action. “When it’s time to sever relationships, men wait too long,” O’Leary noted. “Women don’t wait to pull the trigger.” Another benefit of quick decision-making that he didn’t mention is that the sooner a bad decision is made, the faster the feedback so that the business can re-evaluate its strategy.

6. Successful female entrepreneurs tend to have superlative time-management skills. Time is a precious commodity in any business activity, and once a new business gets behind the curve and the competition, catching up can be costly and challenging.

7. Make service trump price. This is an area where O’Leary found that female-run businesses excel. All the women-led businesses in his portfolio ranked in the top quartile in customer service. Among other things, that requires having excellent technology. Businesses with outstanding service build great customer loyalty, he noted. After that is established, then you can always raise prices 15%. 

8. Use technology as a weapon. In today’s Darwinian business environment, if you don’t deploy technology offensively, your competitors will. Guess how that story ends. O’Leary didn’t mention it, but when Walmart became the nation’s dominant mass market retailer in the 1980s, its executives received detailed sales reports every Monday morning about which products moved in each store the previous week and which didn’t. It took competitors weeks to get the same information. Most of the latter are long gone today.

9. Make sure the boss does not always make the most money. O’Leary told attendees that in his successful female-run businesses the highest paid employee is almost always in sales and the CEOs are second. It’s not clear if the compensation consultants for giant public companies who get hired and paid lucrative fees by CEOs would agree, but in small businesses where sales growth is of paramount importance, the point is well-taken.

10. Know that business is war. “There are winners and losers,” O’Leary said. “It took me almost a decade to learn this.” You know all the clichés. Nice guys finish last or, in a line largely attributed to great football coach Vince Lombardi, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.”

Statisticians probably would argue that O’Leary’s sample of 32 portfolio companies makes for intriguing anecdotal evidence that warrants further investigation but is too small to draw sweeping conclusions. But regardless of how much weight one wants to assign to his gender-lens findings about the common traits of successful female entrepreneurs, they are valuable observations relevant to any advisor or client running a business. 
 

Evan Simonoff is editor-in chief and editorial director at Financial Advisor magazine.