Dr. Dawn Nicole McIlwain

I attribute my success to one thing that I've gotten right: I know how to put the right people together. I'm very big on building community, which is why I have a successful small business community at ProcuraFind. I have a knack for collaboration, and I think I learned that way back when I was doing Agile enterprise transformation, because part of Agile is putting teams together and getting people to work together who might not ordinarily work together. I found out I have a knack for calling a person and another person and saying, hey, I think you guys should pair up, I'm going to put you together on a panel so you can talk about this, and typically that panel is wildly successful. I have a knack for seeing opportunities and how people can work well together. If you take that on a grander scale, it's the reason why I can take a small business and position them very well with a large business, and they almost always work very well together. It solves the problem for the big companies looking for a vendor, for a small business vendor.

The best career advice I ever received comes in two parts. First, the moment you decide to be a leader, to be great, and to change the world, you don't have to ask for permission. I think people wait for permission to do the thing, their God-given purpose. They're waiting for approval, they're waiting for validation, and I have a book coming out about this called Do It Anyway. If it's your cause, your purpose, you don't have to wait for approval and permission from others. That advice helped me greatly because I talk about in my new book how I waited for permission when I started this company. I was trying to play nicely and seek permission and allies, and I didn't realize that I was enough. The cause was enough. Just move forward and do what you gotta do. The second thing is that a lot of people don't give themselves credit for already knowing what they know and teaching at the level that they know. I find a lot of people feel like they're not qualified to teach someone something until they graduate all the levels. That's incorrect. I tell people, hey, if you pass the second grade and you move to the third grade, you're qualified to tell other second graders how to pass the second grade, and you can teach on where you are. You don't have to wait 20 levels up to start being effective right now where you are.

Find the thing that you love. Find the thing that keeps you up at night. That's the thing. I think most women are looking for the thing that someone told them that they're good at, or that someone wants them to do, instead of the thing that deep down inside they're really passionate about, that they can't stop talking about. The reason they don't pay attention to that thing is they don't think that thing is enough. They either don't think that thing makes the money, or that that thing has sustainability, or that thing will take them far. But you would be surprised if they could tap into that thing, and by that thing I mean the thing that keeps me up at night, the thing people naturally call me for, the thing I can talk about with my eyes closed, with my hands behind my back, that's so natural. That is the thing that's going to make them really wealthy and really valuable to the rest of the world. Tap into that thing.

The biggest challenges and opportunities right now in my field is that I am finding a ton of women businesses and small businesses who are service-based businesses, meaning they provide a service. However, I'm not finding people who create things anymore. There's a shortage in my field of creatives, people who invent things, people who build products, like those people who go to Shark Tank. We need people who create things. There's a gap right now. I'm trying to find those people to put them on store shelves and to connect them with clients like Lowe's or Target, and I'm trying to find, in 2026, people who create things today. I think that there are people in their respective towns and cities who are creating, like beads and jewelry, and they're doing it in the background as a hobby, maybe a friend or family member knows. But I need them to come full forward. I need to be able to find them and say, hey, this is actually good enough to be sold. I want to help you. And we can't find it on the main stage, so to speak.

Honesty and integrity are most important to me. Integrity is so important to me, meaning you are gonna do the right thing, even when I'm not around to validate it. I would say integrity, honesty, trust, and transparency are very important to me in both my work and personal life.