From One Owner to Another…

by Anita Brattina

Andrea Fitting

In a prior blog, I told you I was one of two companies lucky enough to receive the help of PowerLink in its first year. You probably wondered who the other company was – it was owned by Andrea Fitting – can you guess the name of her business?

Andrea was one of two companies that got a knock on their door in 1992 to receive a very special gift: a PowerLink Advisory Board. Andrea knew Barb Moore and trusted her. And the truth was, she was struggling with her marketing and branding company, Fitting Communications. The idea of having 6 corporate executives, a CEO, and a facilitator helping her run her company in a corporate board format with no fiduciary involvement seemed amazing to her. Why did she deserve such a high-powered team of people for such a low fee? (PowerLink calculates the value of staff time and donated time at 175 hours of time per year @$100/hour is a $17,500 of consulting time per year… a current PowerLink board can be awarded to qualified applicants for as little as $185/month). 

Andrea says it best, “If I had hired a group of consultants and paid them, they would have been accountable to me. With this group of executives all donating their time and giving it so willingly and generously, I was accountable to them.” Andrea went on to build a multi-million-dollar marketing and branding company in Pittsburgh with clients all over the country. Though selling her company in 2013, Andrea continues to serve as a volunteer advisor for PowerLink, and became the Chief Marketing Officer for a healthcare manufacturing startup, ComboCap, Inc. in 2016. Thank you, Andrea! 

Remember, of the 28 million companies in America, only 4 % (1.4M companies) exceed $1M in sales. Powerlink companies exceed $1M 33% of the time! That is the POWER of PowerLink!

If you are an owner of a company - we want you to share your story. It is probably amazing. And probably a story you don’t share with anyone. Over 25 years we have helped more than 300 owners in Western Pennsylvania and hundreds more across the US through ATHENA International (licensee of our PowerLink Advisory Board program for emerging woman-owned companies). As an alumna and the new CEO of PowerLink I was one of the people who got to sift through our 25 years of archives and meet with and talk to many of our alumni and advisors who shared story after story about how PowerLink changed their life.

We want to share these stories with you because like most success, the path is hidden under humility and hard work and rarely shared.

So if you own a business and have been helped by PowerLink (or want to be), please come to our 25^th Anniversary event and fundraiser to share your story (Register here). If you are thinking about PowerLink or have an active board now, please come and share your story (Register here).