2022 WBENC: Consultant Linda Denny

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from WBENC’s National Conference 2022. It’s been 25 years for WBENC, and congratulations to them for that big achievement. Right now, we are proud to be having an interview with Linda Denny, past president of WBENC. Welcome, Linda.

Linda Denny: [00:00:37] Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] So, 25 years, it’s pretty amazing, isn’t it?

Linda Denny: [00:00:42] The WBENC founding story is very amazing.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] So, share with us.

Linda Denny: [00:00:47] It’s just amazing that this organization came into being, and actually has prospered and impacted women’s businesses as much as it has. It’s exciting to think about. The organization was in the works for many years. Originally, women business owners were being certified by the minority counsel. And so, there were quite a number of women in certain locations around the country that were certified through the minority councils.

Linda Denny: [00:01:21] But when the minority council had a new president come in, and she said, well, White women aren’t minorities, this is for minorities, this is not for White women. And so, she literally just made them leave, even though many of them were very active in their councils and all. So, they basically got kicked out. But it was a blessing. I have thanked her many times, because-

Lee Kantor: [00:01:51] There was unintended consequences, right?

Linda Denny: [00:01:52] An Unintended consequence, that’s right. And what happened is there were women, of course, that were kicked out, were very upset about that, but there was a group down in Dallas, Texas that were particularly upset about it. And so, since there was a core group of corporate members down in that area or corporations down in that area that supported that particular council, they asked, would you, in fact, help us start a women’s council?

Linda Denny: [00:02:23] There needs to be a women’s council doing certification and replacing what we’ve just lost. And so, they hemmed and hawed around about that for, well, maybe we can do that, I don’t know, for quite a few years, frankly. So, these ladies just finally got to the point where they’d had enough. And so, they started being very aggressive about it. They went to the newspapers, they were on television. They were saying, this is not right.

Linda Denny: [00:02:57] And after a while, I think, frankly, they just shamed them into coming together to do it. But from the corporate side, also, they needed a council, such as WBENC, because they were—many of them wanting to start using women’s enterprises in their supplier diversity programs. But in order to do that, they were having to send their own staff out to review these businesses and to be sure that this really was a woman-owned business, not a man-owned business with a woman’s name on it.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:33] Right.

Linda Denny: [00:03:34] Because WBENC is looking at the ownership operation and control of a company. The certification does. So, in fact, they needed this. And so, finally, 11 corporations came together and decided that, yes, we should do this. And so, long story there, too, but to make it brief, they, over time, came together. They all put in a few bucks, and said, okay, we can start this. Susan Berry, the first president of WBENC, was hired to write the business plan and to help launch the organization.

Linda Denny: [00:04:21] And she eventually then became the first president of the organization. And the organization started with a certification standard that was very similar to what the minority counsel uses, but they did that because that’s really how—there’s regulations in federal law about how you can classify a business as minority-owned, women-owned, whatever. And so, those standards had to be very similar anyway.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] Consistent.

Linda Denny: [00:04:52] Consistent, absolutely. And they’re still consistent throughout the entire certification arena, regardless of its veterans, or people with disabilities or whatever. All the organizations that certify do so based on the same standards. And so, because these several hundred women had gone through certification already, they grandmothered about 500 businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] Kind of got a jumpstart.

Linda Denny: [00:05:23] Got a jumpstart, that’s right, into the organization. They went out to many of the women’s business development centers. And then, there were other organizations that had been working with minority councils or were supporting women’s businesses, and they became, eventually, the regional partners of WBENC, and WBENC is the national council that oversees the certification standards, et cetera, but it’s the local organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:56] Right, the 14 RPOs.

Linda Denny: [00:05:57] That’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:58] What were they at the beginning?

Linda Denny: [00:05:59] The Greater Georgia Business Council is the certification body for WBENC or they actually do the physical process.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:08] Right. They’re the boots on the ground in there.

Linda Denny: [00:06:09] They’re the boots on the ground and it couldn’t happen without them, believe me.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:13] Right. Exactly. But was there always 14 or was that something that just kind of grew over time?

Linda Denny: [00:06:19] There’s always been about 14. At one time, there was 15. And during my tenure as president, we kind of rearranged some of the territories a little bit. One of the original councils had more states than they could really manage. Georgia, for example, was just one state. Well, that didn’t make a lot of sense, because they were adjoining some of the states that they really needed to process and that weren’t getting as much services maybe they should have.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:48] Right. You got to spread the love.

Linda Denny: [00:06:50] That’s right. So, in fact, the Georgia Women’s Business Council became the-

Lee Kantor: [00:06:55] The Greater Women’s.

Linda Denny: [00:06:56] … Greater Women’s Business Council, because-

Lee Kantor: [00:06:58] Yeah, they used the G.

Linda Denny: [00:06:59] That’s right. Branding, who wants to redo all those logos.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:03] We don’t want that.

Linda Denny: [00:07:03] So, anyway, that is how the Georgia Women’s Business Council, including both or all Georgia, North and South Carolina came into being. And it’s been a really good change for all of the councils and it functions much better with the arrangement that we have at this point in time.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:28] So, now, what is the kind of the state of women’s business in your mind? You’ve seen this evolve over the years, obviously, you’ve been doing this for a minute. How has women’s business changed or has it?

Linda Denny: [00:07:41] I think it has, and I think it’s changed because people are more aware of it. Certainly, there’s been women’s businesses since ancient times.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:50] Right, beginning of time.

Linda Denny: [00:07:51] The beginning of time. And women are very entrepreneurial, and they’re very creative, and they have a lot of focus and drive if they want to. Just ask any child or many children.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:06] But to have this community where it’s so collaborative and everybody is helping everybody kind of get to a new level if possible, are you finding that more and more women businesses are taking a leap to becoming certified, or is this something still, you’re fighting this fight of, hey, this is worth it to the certification, get certified? It’s great that you’re a woman-owned business, but this is important not only for yourself, but also for every—the greater good for the whole.

Linda Denny: [00:08:34] I think that story is being told, and we’re seeing a lot of growth. WBENC, again, started with 500 certified businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:45] Sure. And where are we at now about?

Linda Denny: [00:08:46] And I heard Pam say yesterday that it’s almost 17,000 today.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:51] Wow.

Linda Denny: [00:08:51] And during my tenure as president, we went from a little under 5,000 to right at 10,000. And so, the momentum was really starting to grow. And in the last 11 years, then we’ve gone to nearly 17,000. But what’s exciting too is that we’ve seen certification work. Just yesterday, I had a conversation with a woman who was telling me about what an impact certification has had on her company. And I’ve seen businesses go from not even quite $1,000,000 in revenue to now $1,000,000,000 in revenue. And not every business has that capability.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] Or that dream.

Linda Denny: [00:09:35] Or that dream. That’s right. Not everybody wants a business of that size. But the people that do can do it. And certification has been a really important part of that, because it opens the doors to contracts. And you still have to go and win the business the old-fashioned way through service, and price, and all of the things that it takes to compete in a contract of opportunity, but in fact, women are blending those opportunities. And suppliers that are the corporate supply professionals have told me so often, we love women business owners, because we find so much better service, sometimes, so much better communication, et cetera. And so, that’s exciting.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:27] So, what does WBENC need more of? Do they need more of the business that’s already a million. that wants to be the billion or do they need more of the just getting started, and hope, dreams of being a million?

Linda Denny: [00:10:37] I think WBENC’s always going to have a variety of those businesses. We have certified businesses that were already well over $1,000,000,000 now. That’s a job, I got to have to tell you.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] Right. Well, it’s hard to even put them in the same category.

Linda Denny: [00:10:54] But then, the brand new businesses, sometimes, use this as one of their first marketing tools, which it certainly can be, depending on what the business is. Now, the local dress shop, that’s not going to work. But in fact, if you’re a business that will eventually have a B2B type of customer base, a business customer base, not consumer customer base so much, but it’s amazing what this can do, but you have to have the right expectations about that also. And that expectation, if you’re a brand new business, is that you have to take baby steps. And that means you’re not going to walk into some big corporation, and get a great, big contract. That’s not going to happen. Maybe you’re going to do business with other WBEs. Many of our our women’s business enterprises do business with each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:54] And that’s okay, though.

Linda Denny: [00:11:55] Oh, it’s wonderful. I mean, I always look for women business owner when I’m buying something. I love that women-owned logo, because it sure makes it a lot easier. But in fact, that may be the first step that a brand new business would take, is seeking to do business with other smaller businesses, not maybe the giant corporations.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:21] But that’s part of the-

Linda Denny: [00:12:22] But that’s the building process.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:23] Right. And this is something you learn when you immerse yourself in the community. It’s not like this lottery ticket that you join, and you’re like, where is my million-dollar contract? I’m here now. It’s not like that. You got to look at this as this is now part of my culture, and I am part of the community, and I got to kind of earn my way up the ladder. So, I’m going to start here, and I’m going to do the work, and I’m going to volunteer, I’m going to be a part of the group, so you can see I am a leader, I am a person that you can trust for this kind of work. And then, work your way up the ladder. And then, the opportunity is really, you can dream as big as you want to.

Linda Denny: [00:13:00] That’s exactly right. And that’s what’s so exciting about WBENC, is that as the leader of this organization or a leader in this organization throughout many years, really, almost from the very beginning, I could see those businesses come in, and I could see the growth and the excitement. And again, the businesses that were those million-dollar businesses today are those 800 million, $900 million, billion-dollar businesses. And you stand back and you think about the impact that those businesses have had on not just their employees, but their customers, their people that they work with. I mean, the-

Lee Kantor: [00:13:49] The ripples are real.

Linda Denny: [00:13:51] The ripples are real. There’s a little—I spent 23 years in the financial services industry and in a corporate career as part of that. And we used to tell insurance agents that a dollar spent in a community will multiply itself at least seven times. And so, you think about those billion-dollar businesses, just their payroll, the seven times that that dollar turns over in every community, those small businesses are where business growth comes from in this country, and that’s exciting to help that.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:33] Now, at this stage in your career, what is the most rewarding part of your journey? To see these people, like you said, starting out, where they were just a person with a dream, and now, they have this entity, and they’re impacting thousands and thousands of people. Do you have your own adventure or are you on your own—a new entrepreneurial journey?

Linda Denny: [00:14:51] I worked so hard for so many years for all of this. When I retired from WBENC, I did quite a lot of consulting with various kinds of companies and organizations.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:04] Large and small or?

Linda Denny: [00:15:07] Large and small. I helped what was, at that point in time, called the United States Business Leadership Network, which today is called Disability:IN. And they were wanting to start a certification program of their business owners that were disabled, and because they were not having any way of reaching into those corporate markets and the bigger markets that they wanted to be able to reach to.

Linda Denny: [00:15:37] So, I was hired as a consultant and worked very closely with the organization for several years. Establishing that, we established the service-disabled veterans part of that program also. And so, it was very exciting to work with them. And then, also, just structurally, how the organization was organized, and how their board was organized, and some of those kinds of things. I just did-

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] So, the foundational structure of the organization.

Linda Denny: [00:16:08] The structure of the organization along with the certification program, and helped bring them some good people that I knew would do a great job in leading some of those sections of their adventure, too. And I also worked with the National Veteran—NVOBA, National Veteran-Owned Business Association. I always have to stop and think about how to say that.

Linda Denny: [00:16:33] And helped them start their certification programs and also helped that organization be launched as a nonprofit organization, because corporate members were really interested in making sure that an organization that they supported with their corporate dollars was one, and the certification organization, I should say, was one that had the standards that are pretty standard throughout the industry or the certification industry, if you want to call it that.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:07] It’s becoming an industry. Like now, there’s a lot of them out there doing this kind of work.

Linda Denny: [00:17:13] The certification community, let’s call it that.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:15] Alright.

Linda Denny: [00:17:17] Anyway, I’ve assisted them in launching both the organization and the certification program. Again, helped them find some great people. We thought about that one very differently. And so, that certification program is done in a little different manner than what some like WBENC is. It doesn’t have regional partners or that kind of thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:38] But the standards are similar, right?

Linda Denny: [00:17:40] The standards are the same.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:41] That’s the key, right? The consistency of the standards. So, how they kind of do what they do is less important than as long as at the end of the day, they’re getting the result that everybody desire.

Linda Denny: [00:17:53] Well, the standard has to be the same. It has to be the same across the board. And I’m very happy to say that NVOBA today and Disability:IN with their service-disabled veteran designations, they have agreed to just make that—to make reciprocity between the two. So, if you’re in the database for NVOBA and you’re a service-disabled veteran, then you can be in the database for Disability:IN.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:22] So, you don’t have to kind of create the wheel again.

Linda Denny: [00:18:23] So, you don’t have to go through it all again, because frankly, the certification process is a pretty arduous one.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:29] But it has to be. Like it can’t be something where just check-

Linda Denny: [00:18:31] That’s exactly-

Lee Kantor: [00:18:32] … four boxes and you’re done. It can’t be like that.

Linda Denny: [00:18:35] That’s exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:35] We want to keep those standards as high as you want to keep them.

Linda Denny: [00:18:38] Exactly right. We inspect what we expect, and that’s a key management tool I learned long ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:45] It seems to be bearing fruit. It seems to be working pretty well.

Linda Denny: [00:18:48] So, it’s been wonderful to see those organizations really grow and prosper, and the impact that they’re having also. And certification has been kind of one of the things that I’m very proud of in my career. When I first came to WBENC, one of the very first things that Susan Berry assigned me to do was to work with the Gay Lesbian Chamber of Commerce or National Gay Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, because they were wanting to set up their certification program. And it’s mature. It’s been going for many years now. They’ve got thousands of businesses certified. And so, it’s great to stand back and just look at all of that chaos that I helped cause.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:35] Well, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, are you available on LinkedIn? Are you still doing consulting?

Linda Denny: [00:19:40] I am still doing some consulting. I basically am retired and play in my garden, except when I break my arm, as I have now. But other than that, yes, I most definitely am on LinkedIn and I’m available to-

Lee Kantor: [00:19:56] Have conversation to help people.

Linda Denny: [00:19:57] Have a conversation. I love promoting women’s businesses, and veterans’ businesses, and businesses with persons with disabilities, and it’s just been such a rewarding thing for me throughout all these years.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:12] Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Linda Denny: [00:20:18] Oh, thank you so much. And it’s been a pleasure to be with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:21] Alright. This is Lee Kantor, broadcasting live from WBENC National Conference inside GWBC’s booth, booth 1812. We’ll be back in a few.