A Journey of Struggle to Success
Women entrepreneurs are highly appreciated by everyone worldwide, but surveys and researches say that women entrepreneurs face numerous challenges, and struggle in the corporate world to sustain and climb up the success ladder. According to various reports, above 10 million businesses are owned by American women entrepreneurs, giving job opportunities to roughly 10 million people and generating more than $1.5 trillion in sales.
Aren’t these numbers showing the dedication and passion of women towards business? Believe it or not, many women struggle to run their businesses and end up packing their bags from the corporate world. Homemakers turned into successful entrepreneurs are entirely different from male entrepreneurs.
Today, in this post, we’ll shed some light on the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs and how they should overcome them.
What Are The Challenges Faced By Female Entrepreneurs?
Struggling to get accepted in the society (very challenging)
Undoubtedly, even successful women entrepreneurs are let down in the male-dominated industries, and people don’t acknowledge their skills and dedication. Believe it or not, women often struggle to gain foothold, respect and due credits in the sectors dominated by males for decades.
For a women entrepreneur, gaining fame and generating revenue isn’t the only objective. They have to put almost 100% of comfort and dedication at stake for getting their product/services recognised in the competitive world. It’s after years of work that they gain reputation and some limelight in the industry. If a female entrepreneur wants to build a reputation in the industry, she has to ignore the negative talks and build self-confidence.
Those negative comments literally kill the dedication and stop the women from unleashing their real potentials.
Balancing Family And Business Life (Very Crucial)
Homemakers turned into entrepreneurs have responsibilities of handling their businesses and even the family. As a result, women entrepreneurs have to devote their time to achieving an elusive work balance.
Many women quit their job and start freelancing or building their own support networks to launch their own businesses. After becoming a wife or mother, establishing the company is challenging, especially after a break in active career.
In this technology-driven world, everyone should prefer working with flexibility and giving equal time to the family and loved ones. All the budding male and female entrepreneurs should prefer investing in their brains rather than clothes and luxuries to become successful and independent in the corporate world.
Fear Of Failure
Profits and failures are the daily cups of tea of every entrepreneur. Women should keep their insecurities and failures aside if they want to dream big. In our opinion, if a female wants to become an entrepreneur creating plans is more important than learning about the latest business ideas.
If you get addicted to making plans, failures will never build negative thoughts in your mind. When someone tells ‘NO’ and ‘NO’ every time, instead of feeling demotivated, make it the learning moment.
The road to success is full of mistakes, setbacks, obstacles, failures, and ups and downs. But the same road can take you towards your goal; there are NO SHORTCUTS! Learn from your mistakes and try to avoid them in your next plans.
How Should Women Entrepreneurs Cope-Up With These Challenges?
Believe And Act Like Yourself
In the corporate world, many successful entrepreneurs are males, who are dominating almost every industry. As a female, there is no point in adopting the male traits for running a successful business. Instead of believing in the stereotypical male attitude, learn and act to be like yourself. Believe in your abilities and strengths and work on your weaknesses. If you’ve to adopt someone else’s traits to become successful in life, then you’ll not stay in the industry for a longer period.
Build The Support You Require
As already mentioned above, every industry is dominated by males, which makes women entrepreneurs feel isolated. The problem is there are hardly countable role models present for the women entrepreneurs to get motivated and inspired. As a result, women should look for opportunities for connecting with different audiences, attend workshops/conferences, and build their presence on the social media handles.
As for family life, a woman needs a support staff too. Ranging from housework helpers to dedicated Nanny or a day care center are required with kids in the family. Keep yourself part of active social media groups for quick help. Manage a healthy relation with neighbours. Knowing reliable resources firsthand are the most significant tools for a mompreneur.
Eliminate “The Working Mom Guilt“
If you meet any successful entrepreneur, he/she is never afraid of taking bigger bets and meeting with failures. As a result, whenever you’re launching your own business, there are possibilities of startup entrepreneurs meeting with failures.
Even if you’re successful and accomplish your dreams, your objective should be to eliminate the obstacles for avoiding feeling demotivated and devastated after meeting with failures. When facing these challenges, don’t let your inner negative side become active and start taking false actions.
Instead, move out of your comfort zone, evaluate your mistakes, learn from them, and come out from the isolation.
Foremost important never let the working mom guilt shadow your mental healthcare. As a mom-preneur you are already organising and managing a lot. People around try to pull you down either by making you villain or by labelling you as victim. Their objective is somehow to make you fall into that pit of guilt – neither a good worker nor a good mother. With good confidence and organised support staff, you would be able to afloat. Nourish your career as your youngest child.
There would be trouble times, be alert, keep alternate options ready, and keep moving on. A child is always proud of a successful mother.
The Takeaway
It’s natural for newbies to worry about their mistakes and get demotivated due to their insecurities and failures. Nevertheless, success becomes easier when you get with the right people, learn to manage your time, and start building new fruitful connections. In your entrepreneurial journey, you should not only build yourself but also help other female entrepreneurs.
Dr. VANEETA AGGARWAL
Founder – L’strategyq Advisors & Business STrategy e-Magazine,
Author, SPeaker, Coach & Former Associate Professor (Constituent Institute of Delhi University)