. . . her first brush with venture capital financing came serendipitously.

The year was 1994, and Meine was working hard to launch O'Currance Teleservices, a Draper-based telemarketing firm whose sales force would work from home instead of a call center.

Meine had devised the idea of a home-based business shortly after leaving Morris Air, where she had been vice president of operations until the Salt Lake City-based budget airline was bought by Southwest Airlines in 1993.

A few years earlier, she had proved the concept to Morris Air CEO David Neeleman. A test showed the productivity of reservation agents who worked at home jumped 15 percent.

So when she left Morris Air with a generous severance package, Meine decided to start a telemarketing business based on the same model.

"It occurred to me that I could go out and start my own business and use home agents. At the time, it seemed like the logical thing to do. I had a great idea and nobody was doing it," Meine, 49, said.

Zions Bank provided a $50,000 signature loan and a $100,000 home-equity loan. It wasn't enough, however, to buy the equipment O'Currance would need. So a loan officer introduced Meine to someone at Wasatch Venture Fund, a Salt Lake venture-capital firm, which agreed to invest $300,000 in the fledgling company.

"I didn't even realize what a great decision it was to have them as partners until later on," Meine said.

"They invest in you. They take a piece of your company. But they also sit on your board and give you advice. They tell you when you should hire a professional. They introduce you to people you would never be introduced to. But they don't want to run your company," Meine said

O'Currance's sales in its first year totaled only $70,000. By 2001, they had reached $4 million, as agents sold everything from exercise equipment and cosmetics to instructions on getting out of debt and making money through real estate.

Meine sold her 600-employee company in 2007 to Riverlake Partners, an Oregon-based private-equity firm. By then, annual sales were $22 million. Meine credits her husband, a marketing expert, for the increase.

"Initially I thought I'd get to $5 to $10 million. When we really started marketing, it was pretty exciting to me that we could create a business that big."

Barbara Zimonja

. . . expected to live in Utah no more than nine months when she moved to the state with her graduate-student husband in the late 1970s.

Instead, Manhattan-born and Chicago-raised Zimonja built Premier Resorts International, a Park City-based company that today manages vacation properties in nine states and Mexico.

Zimonja started modestly. Condominiums were sprouting in Summit County, but almost nobody was in business to care for them, so she started a housecleaning company, financed largely with credit cards. She was soon getting requests from owners to do more.

"They would say, 'Well, why can't you paint it? Why can't you fix it? Why can't you rent it?' I said, 'Well, I can.' "

By 1980, A.B.C. Cleaning had morphed into a property management company, Park City Resort Lodging. In 1987, Zimonja bought a controlling interest in Deer Valley Lodging, then in 1994 sold both businesses to Premier Resorts, which was owned by BET, a British transportation equipment manufacturer.

Premier eventually became a unit of Rentikil Initial, a $6 billion British services company that acquired BET in a hostile takeover in 1996. A year later, Rentikil named Zimonja president of Premier.

Zimonja said Premier's relationship with Rentikil soured after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which hurt bookings at properties under Premier management. The 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah helped, but vacancies increased again in the early days of the Iraq war in 2003.

Zimonja, now 60 years old, and chief operating officer Bradley Goulding bought back Premier in 2004 in a deal financed by the seller. Today, the company manages 8,000 rooms in Park City; Sun Valley, Idaho; Telluride, Colo.; Los Cabos, Mexico; and several other resort locations. The company has 1,700 employees. Revenue last year exceeded $100 million.

"Women worry too much about the male factor," Zimonja said. "Do what you like. Do it well, and you'll succeed. Stop worrying about the boys."

Becky Anderson

. . . says nothing in her background explains how she established For Every Body, a Lindon-based business that today is one of the largest privately held, woman-owned candle manufacturers in the country.

"Mortgaged my house, is how I did it. It started out as a place for my daughters to work, and it was a hobby for me, and it exploded into what it is today. We ship candles all over the world.

"I'm blown away. Never in a million years . . ." 48-year-old Anderson said.

Anderson launched her business in 1995 with a retail store in Provo's University Mall that sold bath and body products she had developed in the kitchen of her former husband's apple farm. The store seemed a good way to unshackle her four daughters from agriculture and still teach them the value of hard work.

"I didn't want them driving tractors," Anderson said.

The farm has long since disappeared under a housing development, but Anderson's business is thriving. In 1999, she added candles to her product line. Sales took off the next year when For Every Body started selling candles nationally. The products now account for most of the company's $25 million in annual sales.

The company employs more than 200 people in a large manufacturing plant capable of pouring 100,000 candles a day. Another 10 people staff offices in Thailand, Vietnam and China. Customers include Kohl's, Home Depot, Hallmark and Lowe's.

Anderson's credentials are unusual. She took chemistry courses at Brigham Young University, which helped when she was developing bath and body lotions in her farmhouse kitchen. Yet, she also studied business and finance before dropping out of college in 1984.

Much of her expertise is self-taught. Anderson is a voracious reader, sometimes devouring two or three books a week. Reading 30 trade magazines a month, keeping CNBC on in her office and attending trade shows also keep her sharp.

"I can kind of predict what the trends are going to be. We're just very quick to change."

Anderson hired a chief executive officer in 2006 to manage the company's rapid growth. The decision freed Anderson to focus on product development and sales.