OUR BUSINESS CASE:
Women-owned businesses make up 39% of all firms in the U.S. and employ 9% of the workforce, yet they generate only 6% of national firm revenue. This disparity is largely due to three key factors:
✅ Women-owned businesses are concentrated in lower-revenue sectors such as healthcare, retail, and service industries, which traditionally have smaller profit margins.
✅ Existing business models were designed by men for male-driven industries, failing to account for the unique needs and strengths of women entrepreneurs.
✅ Access to capital and networking opportunities remains limited for women, further hindering their ability to scale.
To solve this, we need to redesign the ecosystem supporting female entrepreneurs by creating models that not only promote work-life harmony but also provide targeted support for growth in high-revenue sectors, ensure equal access to capital, and foster networks that empower women to lead in industries traditionally dominated by men. This would unlock the sector's full potential, with women-owned businesses poised to generate trillions in revenue if the right ecosystem is in place.
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Summary Business Deck
Sales & Marketing Plan
What Do We Do?
At Makana, we help B2B training, coaching, mastermind, and franchise businesses create profitable, scalable ecosystems that drive client success, with a special focus on breaking statistical barriers for women in business. Our designs aim to increase the number of female entrepreneurs, improve the financial performance of women-owned businesses, and develop work-life harmony business models that better support working women.
We specialize in transforming businesses to better serve women in three key ways:
Turnkey Solutions
Streamlining training programs into turnkey solutions and design ecosystems that enable companies and clients to scale effectively.
Client Driven Success
Refining core offerings based on client outcomes to improve success and strengthen company accountability, transparency, and performance.
Leader Alignment
Reigniting passion and purpose for founders and CEOs by realigning with their True North, while reimagining their enterprise with a powerful future vision
Feeling misaligned despite your dedication to clients and the pressure to grow can be overwhelming. We believe financial success shouldn't come at the cost of relationships, health, or purpose. At Makana, we help founders and CEOs achieve both purpose and profit. With over 30 years of financial and entrepreneurial experience, our team has consulted with companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 firms. We're passionate about serving underserved communities, building benefit corporations, and empowering women entrepreneurs to achieve work-life harmony while breaking financial barriers.
it is not all unicorns & rainbows
What We Learned.
Discover how we turned lemons into lemonade.
Encourage professionals to grow their strengths.
We started by requiring all owners to provide both accounting and tax solutions.
Those who excelled at accounting, but lacked the tax experience invested in professional growth, learned how to deliver tax services, and even became a Certified Tax Coach. This investment didn't generate a love for tax. Instead, it had the opposite effect. We noticed a common theme - turnover on tax teams run by professionals stronger in accounting especially during tax season.
Those who excelled at tax, but lacked the accounting experience usually hired bookkeepers, moving away from the CPA level technical expertise that was our standard.
We ultimately removed the requirement to offer both accounting and tax solutions and allowed CPAs to focus on their strengths and encouraged collaborations with other complimentary franchise owners.
Work-life harmony must come first.
In the beginning, we focused on top line growth and franchise owners were allowed to hire team within the first year. The training combined 2 stages of growth: Employee to Solo and Solo to Firm Owner. It was too much too soon. They were growing, but they weren't happy.
Realizing that we had misprioritized, we corrected course in 2023 and split the training system into 2 Tiers:
Tier 1 (Employee to six figure Solo practice)
Tier 2 (Solo to seven figure Firm)
This split allowed Tier 1 owners to enjoy a flexible, work-from-anywhere solo practices (working 20-40 hours per week). Those who wanted to grow into firm ownership could do so without external pressures.
The Tier 1 training shifted focus from top line growth and began a system of tracking work life harmony scores in 4 areas (finance, family, firm, and fitness). This resulted in a massive improvement in satisfaction and work life harmony scores increased to an avg 8/10 for each owner in 2024.
There is freedom in structure.
Though most of the tech stack was defined and under management at franchise launch in 2020, we gave owners the choice on which tax software and client workflow management tool they wanted to use. That freedom of choice took away family time and forced owners to research, train, and implement new systems.
Realizing more choices isn't always better, we selected the tax software and workflow management tool and took complete control of the tech stack in 2023.
A STARTING POINT
Redesigning for the Future of Accounting
for Women by Women.
Over 60% of the accounting industry is women, yet only 10% of owners/partner are women. We believe this disproportionate relationship of women in ownership positions is a design problem of the accounting firm. It was designed by men for men starting in the late 1800s, with the first female partner joining in 1951 over 50 years later. We are excited to redesign the industry to address the work-life balance issue in the industry, especially for women. Together, let's launch and grow the most women owned practices in the industry, and exponentially exceed the national average of female owners in the accounting industry!
Here is a peek at our current network:
5,554
Number of
Accountants
2,176
Number of
Entrepreneurs
2,190
Active Facebook
Group Members
339
Podcast
Episodes
>100k
Podcast
Downloads
12
# of CPA Practices Launched
9
States
OUR TEAM.
Mayumi Young
Founder/CEO
Christine Silvas
Care Manager
Joan Weiss, CPA
Controller/Billing Manager
K'Lani Bowers
Financial/Billing Specialist
Dawn Goldberg, CPA
Community Manager
Gaurav Kamboj
Tech Manager
We are proud to be part of an organization where values and family still matter, where we enjoy all of the people we interact and collaborate with, and where everyday we have the opportunity to make a difference.
Meet the Founder.
Mayumi Young
Entrepreneurship | Finance | Education
CEO of a Public Benefit Corporation & Founder of 4 mission driven ventures since 2000, Mayumi is a former CPA, Price Waterhouse auditor, and International Finance Director with over 30 years of accounting industry experience. She has personally consulted start-ups to Fortune 100 multinational corporations, and has launched & mentored countless entrepreneurs. Mayumi has faithfully served thousands of people around the globe, and has lived her passions: entrepreneurship, finance, and education.
"Makana" means "gift" in Hawaiian. Our mission is to inspire businesses to embrace accountability, transparency, and purpose—all while achieving financial success. If you're ready to elevate your business and make a global impact especially for women in business, Makana is here to help.
Aloha,
Mayumi
