The numbers say women founders were feeling good about 2026 before it even arrived, and a report from investment banking firm Capstone Partners backs that up. Two-thirds of the women surveyed in the firm’s 2025 State of Women Entrepreneurs report said they expected revenue growth this year, and after a year where 56% of them saw it happen, the optimism had something real behind it. Women-owned firms also grew 44% faster than men-owned firms between 2019 and 2024, according to data from Wells Fargo cited in the same report. So yes, the numbers hold up.
Spring is a good time to look up from the work and ask whether your business is set up to support what you’re believing for.
Believing for something and preparing for it are two different things. Proverbs 21:5 puts it plainly, saying the plans of the diligent lead to profit, while acting too quickly leads only to loss. A season of renewal is a natural opening to look at your business with fresh eyes, identify what’s working, and get honest about what needs to change before you push forward. So consider this your spring reset, grounded in data and faith, for the woman who is serious about both.
Take a Hard Look at Your Profitability
When Capstone Partners asked the women founders surveyed what their top operational priority was for the next twelve months, increasing profitability came out first. Smaller companies with 100 or fewer employees showed the highest share of owners focused on profitability goals, which makes sense given what the broader economic environment has looked like.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 63%, named inflation as their top concern for company growth, a jump of more than 8 percentage points from the prior year’s report. Inflation is not going anywhere fast, and women in agriculture and the consumer and retail sector reported the weakest revenue growth as a result of sticky prices and evolving tariff policies. Regardless of your industry, spring is a good time to pull up your numbers and look at your margins, not your revenue alone. Revenue growth without profitability growth is a hamster wheel, and the data suggests a lot of women founders know it.
Audit Where Your Time Is Going Versus Where Your Revenue Is Coming From
One of the more telling findings in the Capstone report was what women founders said they needed most to support their top operational priorities. Performance improvement came out first at 43%, followed by additional capital at 40% and strategic partnerships at 38%. Performance improvement, in this context, covers a range of things, from reviewing how you manage your finances to identifying inefficiencies in your operations.
Pull your offers, your client roster, your service packages, and your calendar and look at them together. Ask where most of your revenue is actually coming from and whether the amount of time and energy going into each offer or client relationship reflects what it produces. A lot of women founders discover in this exercise that the area they’ve been neglecting is the one doing the most work financially.
Get Intentional About Strategic Partnerships
Strategic partnerships landed in the top three most useful resources for women founders across almost every operational initiative in the report. And while that might sound like networking advice dressed up in formal language, it carries more weight than a generic “expand your network” tip.
A strategic partnership for a Christian woman in business could look like a referral relationship with someone who serves the same audience from a different angle, a collaboration with another founder whose work complements yours, or a co-created offering that opens your work to a new audience without requiring you to build from scratch. Spring is a season of growth, and growth rarely happens in isolation. Who are the two or three people whose work sits adjacent to yours, and what would a real conversation with them produce?
Write Down Your Growth Goals and Bring Them Before God
Among the women surveyed who said growth strategies were their primary focus for the next twelve months, 88% planned to pursue organic growth strategies, things like expanding their offerings, increasing lead generation, and growing their online presence. What was notable was how many women founders, at 51%, also planned to pursue inorganic growth strategies like mergers, acquisitions, or raising equity capital, a higher share than the broader middle market business owner group at 42%.
Whether your version of growth is organic or more expansive, the common thread in that data is intentionality. Founders are not drifting through 2026. A spring reset means getting your goals out of your head and onto paper, then spending some time in prayer over them. Ask God to confirm what stays and what gets cleared out. A business strategy submitted to God is not a weaker strategy. It is a more grounded one.
One More Thing Worth Noting
The same report found that women, despite owning roughly 40% of U.S. businesses, received only 19.4% of SBA 7(a) loans approved so far in fiscal year 2025. The average loan value approved for majority female-owned businesses was also 31% smaller than loans approved for male counterparts. Those numbers have not moved in eight years of available government data.
Knowing the environment you’re operating in is part of the work. It does not change the calling, but it does inform how you prepare, how you advocate for yourself, and how you build. Women of faith have always built under pressure. Spring is a good reminder that the pressure is not the whole story.
Source: Capstone Partners, State of Women Entrepreneurs 2025. Survey responses were collected from 202 owners of private, women-owned, middle market companies between April and May 2025.
