Born in a small farming community in Morgan, Utah, Linda Rawson defied the odds and founded a company that has achieved more than $1 billion in federal contracts since its inception. Her childhood was spent in a largely Mormon community, raised by a single mother who never went to college.
“I grew up in a predominantly Mormon community, a small religious farming community, and I have nothing but good things to say about the Mormon church, they provided me with food and help.”Rawson declared in an interview with DIARIO LAS AMÉRICAS.
His father, he confessed, “was an alcoholic and impulsive player and left home when I was about a year and a half.” However, his mother “was very resilient.” This is how she described her: “She was a very independent woman, very persistent. At a time when it was not at all popular for a woman to work and, in particular, a woman who was not married, her experience with the Department of Defense, on a military base, was a natural fit for her.”
Linda Rawson was a restless girl who found in nature the way to manage her attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: “I learned from a young age to work on a farm and I was very outgoing. My childhood was spent outdoors and working hard in a farming community. I consider myself lucky in all those areas. “I think the hard work ethic that comes from having to raise animals, produce a garden, not have a father around, makes you stronger.”
Break the molds
Linda Rawson broke the family mold. She started as an engineer software in the 1980s, something unusual for a woman in Utah, she admitted. She was the first in her family to pursue higher education and become a businesswoman.
In 2005, at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, he began writing software database manager for the 84th Radar Evaluation Squadron (RADES) and was hired by multinational software development corporation Oracle as a Database Administrator (DBA) to develop enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
“I started as a consultant. I went to do professional services for a contractor at NASA. From there everything began to develop and I established relationships with other companies,” said Rawson, a graduate of small business training from the prestigious financial institution Goldman Sachs.
In 2006, she founded DynaGrace Enterprises, a 100% women-owned, SBA-certified small family business in Utah, providing innovative information technology, engineering, systems integration, cybersecurity, and writing services to government and commercial clients.
His company has contributed to organizations such as the United States Air Force, the US Army, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the State of Utah. Over the years, DynaGrace Enterprises has secured more than $1 billion in federal government contracts.
On the path to reaching a position of success, several points were key for Linda Rawson: “The most important tool is to ask yourself what is the worst that could happen and simply believe in yourself enough to take that risk, even if you feel uncomfortable. , because the more uncomfortable the risk, the more you should do it. The most important tool is to believe in yourself. Because the worst thing that could happen is that you need to sleep on someone’s couch.”
In fact, in one of her books the author uses this phrase from Mark Twain that fits perfectly with her entrepreneurial mentality: “The secret to getting ahead is to start”.
A guide for other women with small businesses
In addition to running a company, Linda Rawson has the talent to pass on her business knowledge. This is the case of your book The Minority and Women-Owned Small Business Guide to Government Contracts (Government Contracting Guide for Minority and Women-Owned Small Businesses), published in 2016 and with several reissues thanks to its impact.
As he notes in the introduction to that book, “I didn’t know what I should have known when I started”; Hence this knowledge is so beneficial for those who wish to create their small business and offer goods and services to the United States Government.
Along these lines, at the beginning of February he will launch the book Women-Owned Small Business Mindset. From Scarcity to Abundance (The Women-Owned Small Business Mindset. From scarcity to abundance), which will later be published in Spanish.
That’s why “I wanted to share my knowledge through my experiences. I made changes to my lifestyle, I managed my stress, I imagined a better future, I used my intuition to know if the person I was doing business with was a good person or not.”
And he concluded: “All these tools are very important when it comes to wanting to achieve a goal. There are tools in the book and it also includes personal experiences.”
When offering advice to those who want to make a business idea a reality, he considers it necessary to clarify one point: “First of all, having an idea and getting it started are two different things. You have to change your way of thinking around that idea. And then you have to be a little realistic.”
He gave as an example some issues to take into account: “How is that going to happen? Do you have enough market research to be able to say that you are going to make money with that idea? You can take a side job and turn it into a full-time job, but you need to do your research before you do it, and then move forward with your own business.”
Regarding the role of women in the world of entrepreneurship and business, she admitted that “I wish I could say that there will be no gender discrimination in 2024, but it is still very common.” Therefore, she added: “Our role is to change that in some way, to change the perspective of women in business, that women are powerful and can do incredible things.”
Education and ingenuity
Creativity is undoubtedly an essential spring that allows you to move between managing a company, writing books and inventing. In his role as inventor, WeatherEgg stands out, a compact egg-shaped weather station. “It’s an idea that’s been sitting on the shelf for a while,” Rawson confessed.
To explain its usefulness, he gave an example: “Let’s say you are off the grid and traveling with a backpack, you have this device a little bigger than a chicken egg, and you can take it out and determine all the weather factors to predict what the next weather will be like. four hours. “So you can find shelter or just figure out where to be for the next four hours.”
Likewise, she is passionate about educating children about meteorological science. Here we must highlight his coloring book and his animated adventure characters WeatherEgg Kids.
“I really like children and I love the creative process of putting together a book for the little ones. There’s nothing like when a child opens that book and gets excited. I feel that children are the ones who are going to make a difference when it comes to climate change. We are going to experience very complex times when it comes to global warming. Even here near Salt Lake City, we have several days in January when our air is the worst in the country. We have to find some way to sustain our planet, or we will destroy ourselves. Children, the more you educate them, the more they start to think about solutions. “They are the key to our future.”
Another of his books, more intimate, is Reflections on Grief: Loss, Love, and Happiness (Reflections on grief: loss, love and happiness), which reveals their mechanisms to overcome painful episodes and regain confidence. This book was listed on Amazon as best seller in three categories (Death & Grief, Love & Loss, Happiness).
In her free time, Linda enjoys her family, photography, traveling, hiking, and keeping honey bees.
In these links you can learn more about Linda Rawson y DynaGrace Enterprises.
