Santa Fe is the best place to own a business as a woman

Santa Fe Great For Women-Owned Businesses

Aside from the whole “They may have limited access to water” concept, New Mexico is a place everyone should consider moving in the next eight years — and especially women who want to own their own business. This comes from NerdWallet, who do a lot of mostly-interesting-but-maybe-I-don’t-know-if-there-is-a-broad-takeaway studies. Here’s the one on female business owners, complete with this chart:

Best Places For Women-Owned Businesses

Some cities on here are a little weird on face (Monroe, Racine, and Lancaster come to mind), but the rest of the list makes sense on face.

33.7% (a third, basically) of all businesses in Santa Fe are owned by women, and here’s a bit more context:

New Mexico’s capital city tops our list for its high percentage of businesses owned by women and its affordable cost of living. The city’s tourism industry attracts at least 1 million visitors each year who come to enjoy the city’s rich arts culture, adobe-style architecture and breathtaking views of the southern Rocky Mountains. Over 80% of the city’s restaurants are locally owned, including Annapurna’s World Vegetarian Café. Wildflower International, an information technology provider to the federal government that says it is the largest woman-owned business in the state, is also based here.

If you check out this post, a standard $100 in America is worth $105.49 in New Mexico — that’s better than Arizona (its neighbor) and better than Texas (which has a ton of growth) and is pretty much the best in the American Southwest (Oklahoma is better, and I guess that’s the Southwest, but eh).

Here’s more on Santa Fe, including the stat that nationwide there are 9.1 million businesses owned by women; they generate $1.4 trillion for the economy. If you remember yesterday’s learnings, the entirety of New York City economically generates about $1.3 trillion per year. So, female business owners as a class are about the same size as New York City economically. That’s pretty cool.

There are also three Colorado cities in the top 20, and Colorado Springs is a great place to live if you’re single, so … get out west of the Mississippi and chase those business and relationship dreams.

 

Ted Bauer