Women entrepreneurs are starting small businesses at approximately twice the national average for all startups. Despite some inaccurate stereotypes, the evidence is that they are in every industry, from small consulting firms to medical high technology. As a result, there have also been many new resources and mentors popping up specifically aimed at women.
In most cases, the lifestyle questions asked and the answers given are essentially the same for all entrepreneurs, whether they be men or women. But according to a new book by Adelaide Lancaster and Amy Abrams, The Big Enough Company, based on years of helping women entrepreneurs, the road to success for women does involve its own unique set of hazards.
All surveys of women business owners show that women's business concerns tend to skew towards issues such as finding work-life balance, startup financing, and marketing. But a key problem the authors found even among the best women entrepreneurs was trying to do too much at once. Here is a short list of impacts they commonly reported and all mentors have seen:
- You feel overwhelmed. This is easy to do when your to-do list is threatening to swallow you whole or when you're staring your big bad goal in the face. Your work is never done, but that doesn't mean you need to spend your life catching up. Pace yourself.
The antidote and solution to doing too much is doing less and, of course, doing it well. That doesn't mean to do less overall, but do less right now, at this very moment. This entails the following:
In the past, women have often come to entrepreneurship with fewer resources available to them than men. With this book, and the wealth of other information now available, the tide has turned, and every woman entrepreneur should be able to create a business that works for them. That's the real definition of success. Go for it!