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"Ladies, did you know that you&amp;amp;#8217;re starting new businesses at double the rate of men? Let&amp;amp;#8217;s take a second to brag about how more than 200,000 ventures launched in 2012 were run by women, and about how businesswomen are kick-starting the economy; since the 2008 recession, the only businesses that have provided a net increase in employment are publicly traded corporations and privately held majority-women-owned firms. Basically, women are killing it on the entrepreneurship front. Glamour celebrated all this start-up success in our first-ever Glamstarter Awards in our June 2013 issue. And last night, editor-in-chief Cindi Leive hosted a discussion with seasoned start-up queens Coco Rocha, Iman, Elizabeth Cutler, Piera Gelardi, and Dylan Lauren. Whether your vision is to grow a candy empire (Lauren), a mega social-media following (Rocha), a fitness phenomenon (Cutler), or [insert your own million billion-dollar idea], here are a few nuggets from them to you re: how to succeed in business: If you can&amp;amp;#8217;t find it, make it. Elizabeth Cutler, co-founder of SoulCycle Cutler hates to work out. Or, she did until she came up with a uniquely communal approach to spinning and transformed her vision into others&amp;amp;#8217; addiction. She had to be crafty about the process; when she couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t find a space to open SoulCycle&amp;amp;#8217;s first location in 2006, she turned to Craig&amp;amp;#8217;s List. She admits she funded the company&amp;amp;#8217;s early growth on her AmEx, maxing it out to the point where she couldn&amp;amp;#8217;t even buy toilet paper. But now SoulCycle has plenty of TP&amp;amp;#8212;along with plans to open another 60 studios worldwide by 2015. All that was just to create a type of exercise she liked! It&amp;amp;#8217;s the product, stupid. Know your business. Iman, founder and CEO of Iman Cosmetics, Skincare, and Fragrances During her 16-year modeling career, Iman received request after request from other black models wanting to borrow her homemade foundation. &amp;amp;#8221;I stopped reading Vogue and started reading the Census Bureau to learn how quickly America was becoming more multicultural,&amp;amp;#8221; she said. &amp;amp;#8220;You have to know your product. I became an expert at making foundation for women of color.&amp;amp;#8221; Read your contracts. Every word of them! Coco Rocha, first high-fashion model to surpass a million followers on Google+, costar of The Face In building her reputation and social-media following, Rocha has learned to lay out (in writing!) what she stands for: absolutely no nudity, political references, or religious artifacts will appear in her shoots, for example. Even when you&amp;amp;#8217;re starting up, she stresses the need for women to specify parameters and use contracts as an opportunity to negotiate for themselves. &amp;amp;#8221;They&amp;amp;#8217;re two-way documents,&amp;amp;#8221; she said. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s OK to say what you want.&amp;amp;#8221; See the big picture. Dylan Lauren, founder and CEO of Dylan&amp;amp;#8217;s Candy Bar Beyond supplying NYC with lots of Bazooka and one giant sugar rush, Lauren&amp;amp;#8217;s flagship 15,000-square-foot candy shop is designed to sell customers a sweet experience. &amp;quot;Dylan&amp;amp;#8217;s is merging fashion, art, and pop culture with candy and the life that goes with it,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;#x27;s about reliving childhood.&amp;amp;#8221; Reach out to your role models. Iman and Rocha Rocha idolizes Iman, and when she sent the older model-entrepreneur a tweet telling her so, Iman not only responded&amp;amp;#8212;she answered a long list of Rocha&amp;amp;#8217;s questions. &amp;amp;#8220;You will not believe how, when you reach out to other women executives, you will be lifted up,&amp;amp;#8221; Iman said. Aim to create a place you&amp;amp;#8217;d want your daughters to work. Piera Gelardi, co-founder and creative director of Refinery29 If you&amp;amp;#8217;re going to invest all your time in your start-up and get your employees on board to do the same, you want work to be a place you like going. &amp;quot;Refinery is all about making a more creative life,&amp;quot; Gelardi said. &amp;quot;And I&amp;#x27;m inspired by the people I work with every day.&amp;quot; Impressive, right? Find even more advice from our first-ever Glamstarter Award winners. Photos: Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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