As a female business owner in the male-dominated world of finance, Brenda Zamzow-Frazier said she has developed a strategy for “dealing with the boys.”
“A fair amount of my ability to interact with the boys in business comes from playing golf,” said Zamzow-Frazier, chief executive of accounting services and financial consulting firm the Zamzow Group. “It puts me in the same league with them.”
While hitting the links offers an opportunity to connect with her male peers, she interacts with her female counterparts through the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She was recently elected treasurer of the group, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization for women entrepreneurs.
Zamzow-Frazier she said that didn’t always know she would become a business owner. When she first moved to Los Angeles in 1987, she worked for Ernst & Young and Fox Entertainment Group.
“I thought I would always be a corporate gal,” she said.
Her point of view changed when she “caught the entrepreneurial bug” working for an Internet startup from 2000 to 2001. “I realized the buzz and energy you can get from being a decision-maker,” she said. She launched the Zamzow Group on Jan. 1, 2004.
While she enjoys being the one making the big decisions at her firm, Zamzow-Frazier said the recession has been tough. She has reduced expenses by 55 percent from 2008 to 2009. Her cost-cutting included moving from her office space in Beverly Hills to less expensive accommodations in Arlington Heights, and she has “gotten creative” with employees’ hours, trying to reduce them without letting people go.
Zamzow-Frazier, 47, lives in Arlington Heights with her husband of three years, comedian-entertainer Craig Frazier. The two were married in a golf-themed wedding.
In her free time, the Wausau, Wis., native follows her favorite team, the Green Bay Packers. She has a whole room dedicated to the pro football team at her home, but recently “de-Favred” her house when former Packers quarterback Brett Favre moved from the New York Jets to the Minnesota Vikings.
“The Jets were hard, but I was OK with it. But the Vikings? Come on,” she said of Favre joining one of the Packers’ biggest rivals.