Why do so many women start businesses—but so few successfully scale them beyond the startup stage?
In this episode of the cityCURRENT Show, host Andrew Bartolotta sits down with Sherry Deutschmann, founder of BrainTrust to explore the unique challenges women entrepreneurs face and what can happen when women founders have the right community, resources, and support around them.
Sherry knows firsthand what it takes to build and scale a successful company. Her own entrepreneurial journey took her from working as a maid with a high school education to building LetterLogic, a company she grew debt-free to approximately $40 million in annual revenue before a successful exit.
Today, however, Sherry is focused less on telling her own success story and more on helping other women write theirs.
Through BrainTrust, she’s building a community designed to help women entrepreneurs overcome the barriers that often prevent promising businesses from reaching their full potential.
In this conversation, Sherry discusses the disparity she sees in business growth, including the statistic at the heart of BrainTrust’s work: only about 2% of women founders reach $1 million in annual revenue, compared with approximately 7% of men.
The conversation explores why that gap exists, including access to capital, networks, mentorship, confidence, resources, and the challenges women can face while simultaneously balancing leadership with responsibilities outside the business.
Sherry also shares stories of women within the BrainTrust community and why she believes women growing businesses alongside other women can be a powerful catalyst for success.
Sherry’s story demonstrates what’s possible when an entrepreneur has the opportunity, determination, and support to scale—but her work today asks a bigger question:
How do we make that opportunity possible for more women?
Learn more about BrainTrust and its community of women entrepreneurs at: www.ourbraintrust.org
