About The Two Women

Matilda Butler

“A successful entrepreneur builds relationships. From the solid base of a community with shared interests come sales,” says entrepreneur and author Matilda Butler. “I’ve been an entrepreneur most of my life, possibly from the first time I made and sold mud pies on the sidewalk in front of my home and certainly from the age of 10 when, utilizing a new technology I invented, I made a dime for each fellow campers’ scarves that I washed and ironed. Over the past few years,” continues Matilda, “as I’ve coached women memoir authors, I’ve come to see the parallels between entrepreneurs and authors. While writing is about our stories, it’s also about communication and building relationships. That means getting read and selling books.”

“To build relationships, we used to travel to visit customers or go on book tours to meet our readers. Now,” says Matilda, “the Internet lets us create communities of customers and readers from our desks. We can not only reach more people, we can build better relationships and hence have greater sales.”

In a career spanning more than 35 years, Matilda has focused on business and professional women’s issues while working to create, aggregate and distribute information via digital and traditional publishing media. During her seven years of teaching and research at Stanford University, she established and chaired the Committee on the Status of Women for both the Association for Education in Journalism and the International Communication Association-thus helping to build awareness and open doors to more women. She went on to create and direct the national information clearinghouse, Women’s Educational Equity Communication Network (1977-1982).

In 1985, Matilda co-founded Knowledge Access International, a software company specializing in CD-ROM products. Among its clients were the World Bank, Dun & Bradstreet, Pacific Bell, McGraw-Hill, Pfizer, 3M and the US Departments of Labor and Agriculture. Matilda served as president until 1997 when she sold Knowledge Access to a large publicly traded company.

From 1992-1996, when companies large and small were discovering the Internet, Matilda was a director of the International Industry Association (IIA), serving on the Executive Committee of the Board for three years and as treasurer for one. IIA facilitated networking opportunities and monitored government policies for potential impact on the burgeoning digital information industry. In a 1998 award ceremony, the SIGCAT Foundation and the CD-Info Company acknowledged Matilda’s pioneering contributions to the development of the CD-ROM publishing industry. She’s been listed in Who’s Who in the West since 1978 and Who’s Who of American Women since 1975.

Matilda is the co-author of the 2008 IPPY National Book Award-winning collective memoir, Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story. She has published more than 50 article, contributed chapters to several anthologies, including The New Papyrus (Microsoft Press, 1986), co-authored a second award-winning book Women and the Mass Media (1980) and co-edited Knowledge Utilization Systems (1983). She graduated magna cum laude from Boston University with a major in communication. She received her M.A. in communication research from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Northwestern University.

In addition to working with women entrepreneurs, Matilda also teaches women’s memoir writing workshops and coaches women in using the Internet to build communities of readers and book buyers.

“Boomer women have broken barriers to entrepreneurship and shown how creative they are,” says marketing executive, author and editor Kendra Bonnett. “When I first worked in marketing, men always ran the company. Now, the “old boys network” has not only joined by an “old girls network,” but is being replaced by “Internet social networks.” Women entrepreneurs are in a good position to take full advantage of the new technology that helps build relationships and communities of clients and customers.”

“As an entrepreneur and author myself,” says Kendra, “I see that authors need to do today what women entrepreneurs have been learning over the past few years. Authors,” Kendra emphasizes, “need to use the Internet to develop a community of readers. Imagine a gigantic book club, reading what you write, discussing your work, even giving you feedback. That’s what can be achieved using the Internet, social networking, blogging, and even affiliate programs.”

When asked about authors today versus authors 10 or 15 years ago, Kendra says, “Just as men used to run all companies, so major publishers controlled what was published. All that has changed as new technologies and distribution channels have opened avenues to publishing. The problem is that most authors still envision the old world. They think, or perhaps just wish, that publishers give large advances, provide marketing dollars, and are supportive of their authors. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

Kendra continues, “Of the 1.2 million books Nielsen Bookscan follows, 950,000 titles have sold fewer than 99 copies. We work with authors to beat the odds and sell more books. Once we have writers on track with their stories, we focus their passions and knowledge into building a solid base of readers.”

Kendra brings her extensive experience to bear on each client’s individual needs–experience gained in more than 25 years using marketing to sell software, hardware, books, magazines, and business-to-business services. She specializes in giving her clients methods that enable their prospects and customers to make educated buying decisions. Her secret? Actually, there are two. First, she translates technical, often complex features into simple, compelling benefits. For her business clients, she imbues raw specs with emotion and value. But that is only part of the story. Even benefits are still just benefits until there is a relationship between the entrepreneur and her potential customers. Within the context of the relationship, the benefits shine and help convert prospects to customers.

Kendra has started three magazines, including the award-winning Profit Magazine for IBM. She left IBM to assist former Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon with research and spent 18 months interviewing more than 100 leaders from the worlds of business, finance, government and sports, including President Gerald Ford; Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz; CEO of W. R. Grace & Co. and President Reagan appointee to head The Grace Commission on waste and inefficiency in government, J. Peter Grace; journalist Jack Anderson; and Wall Street’s William “Billy” Salomon of Salomon Brothers.

In 1996 she joined the marketing firm Mark Stevens & Company and served as its president two years later. She began working with the Internet around the same time. And in April 1998 she hosted a two-hour satellite broadcast about Internet opportunities for small and growing businesses, sponsored by IBM and the US Chamber of Commerce.

Kendra is an award-winning author who has written more than 150 magazine articles and written, edited or ghostwritten seven books, including An IBM Guide to Doing Business on the Internet (McGraw-Hill, 2000). She graduated cum laude from Arizona State University with degrees in history and anthropology, has a Master’s degree in history from The College of William and Mary and further graduate studies in history at the University of California at Santa Barbara.