Hydee willis: expressing herself.

• Author: Sweeten, Elizabeth
• Position: People - Businesswoman and owner of Creative Expressions Inc.

UTAH ONE OF THE FASTEST-GROWING women business owner states, so it stands to reason that the more we can learn from each other...the more power we will have, and the better the community will be," says Hydee Willis. Her gaze is unflinching, her voice unwavering, her tone friendly but resolute. This woman means everything she says. So if she says businesswomen in Utah are a force to be reckoned with, she believes it. "You can't be an observer," she says, "participation never stops."

Her resolve serves Willis well as this year's president of the Utah Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She's also the president and owner of Creative Expressions, Inc., a nearly 20-year-old multimillion-dollar-per-year commercial embroidery business. A staunch supporter of other women business owners, Willis never intended to "create a mega-company," she claims. "It just evolved."

Willis' entrepreneurial roots go back to her childhood, when she used to play with her younger sister. "She was always the schoolteacher, and I was always the business owner" Willis recalls. "I always had the cash register. I always envisioned myself being in charge of something." And for most of her working life, Willis always has been in charge. "I've always worked for myself," she explains. "My business experience has been exciting and challenging as well as difficult and discouraging. I have gained immense wisdom from my many mistakes."

Before starting Creative Expressions in the basement of her home in 1983, she was an owner and partner of Carry Covers, a nursery soft-goods business that produced quilts, crib bumpers and other baby products. But her own growing family prompted Willis to sell that partnership. With her husband's encouragement, she purchased a computerized embroidery machine, then a new technology, to start a home business.

Creative Expressions soon graduated from the basement to a strip mall space and eventually moved to its current 13,000-square-foot building. "Our growth happened naturally," Willis says. "We haven't gone out and bought machines with the hope that we would get business. We...