With unwavering dedication and doggedness, an increasing number of successful female entrepreneurs are emerging across several sectors. Most of the current crop of entrepreneurs are ensuring that they not only create marks for themselves by leaving no stones unturned, but also serving as inspiration for other female entrepreneurs who are just starting out.
A Woman’s elastic behavior will see her bounce back from array of adversities such as childhood sexual abuse, toxic relationships with herself, food and money, domestic violence, and so much more. It is therefore little wonder that women make exceptional entrepreneurs when they put their hearts into it. No business comes without its associated risks and possible failures, even when you strategically evaluate all the risks associated with your kind of business and prepare accordingly, setbacks will still occur but one must ensure that initial failures especially do no dispirit the overall vision of any business.
It is crucial to however find an answer to the question “Why do you want to become an entrepreneur?” The response to this question is the key to success, this is your story, this is the point through which the world begins to connect with you. There are several stories of women who start out small businesses just to make ends meet, but even in that, lies a story. How do we as female entrepreneurs begin to infuse and communicate our authentic selves into our businesses in ways that put us in a place of power.
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We constantly undermine ourselves, searching for that elusive solution we believe exists outside us. Getting your business aligned with you, your values and personality is essential. As a female entrepreneur, when you finally realize that you have all the experience and resources you need to just get started, you begin to understand that success is always under construction. As you get clearer on your message, you also begin to get a proper understanding of who your ideal customer is, and this shows up both in how you approach marketing your business and basically how you interact with clients.
In trying to represent your business and showcase it as a strong and powerful brand, it is important to project the same aura from your personality. Most small businesses see the founders wearing all the caps at different times, sometimes even at the same time. How do you then reflect your personality in the way you interact with your customers, through your disposition and the words you use when you speak about your business and your brand. Every business will only go in the direction in which it is being stirred so knowing who you as a person even before defining who you are as a business owner cannot be over emphasized.
Female entrepreneurs face self-doubt in so many ways, whether that doubt rises from looming societal bias, past experiences, or experiences of people around, this diffidence will continue to undermine strengths and make real meaningful success seem farfetched. Almost everyone has a phobia for failure, but women are most affected by failure and this often hits hard on their confidence. An article on TIME, why failure hits girls so hard, states that when girls make mistakes, they are more likely to interpret the setback as a sign that they lack a certain ability — a factor much harder for girls to change. Boys, on the other hand, tend to attribute failure to more controllable circumstances. What we may see as failure is simply slice of success from which we must learn from. Google’s Nigerian Country Director, Juliet Ehimuan Chiazor once said, there is no failure, only feedback.
The fantasy of work-life-balance is a possible myth that has left several female entrepreneurs and career women stuck in a bubble that this creates. The guilt from the seeming lack of attention for certain aspects of our lives can be crippling but it is important that women learn to show up for the different parts of their lives when necessary and create working systems around the important parts of our lives. Female entrepreneurs tend to have the superwoman complex, especially in a clime like ours that generally equates asking for help as a sign of weakness but it is simply impossible to do everything alone especially when trying to build a strong brand.
Every barrier is a winning strategy waiting to happen. Even though this year 2020 just seems to be throwing chaos especially for the survival of businesses, it is crucial that we embrace it. Updation and innovation of businesses cannot be confined to a one-time activity, it is imperative to focus on generating new ideas aimed at facing these glass cliff opportunities and achieving next level success in business. Always believe in yourself, remember your essence, the reason you decided to get on the entrepreneurial ship in the first place and let that be your motivation as grow your business.
Weyinmie is a development expert with special focus on Gender, Financial Inclusion and Enterprise Development. She has over 8 years working experience across several sectors – oil and gas, extractive sector, not for profit management, leadership, and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. She is the founder of Wevvo Nigeria, a resource and community-based platform that supports single female breadwinners.
