What Obstacles Face Women Entrepreneurs and How to Overcome Them
What Obstacles Face Women Entrepreneurs and How to Overcome Them
As a female entrepreneur you may feel as if you’re facing an uphill battle. Some women, depending upon where they grow up, who their family is, and what type of community support they have, feel as if they’re all alone. But there are things you can do to overcome all the challenges you might face. It all starts with you.
Improve Your Self-Confidence
Just because you are female doesn’t mean you have some sort of genetic anomaly preventing you from being successful in business. In fact, you can use all your femininity to improve your business. If you develop your self-confidence, you can succeed in anything you set your mind to. Success starts inside. Take a course, learn all you can, push your boundaries and your confidence will bloom.
Finding Financing 
It can be harder for women to get financing and funding for their business ventures; not because they’re not worthy, but just because they don’t have the connections that men often have in the business world. This is not always true, and if it is it doesn’t have to stay that way. You can learn to make better connections so that you can find funding for your ideas. Get involved with your business community and you’ll soon make the right connections. Never give up.
Family Blocks
Often times the biggest obstacle in the way of a female entrepreneur is her family. Spouses, children, parents can all interfere by putting blocks in your way. Even Debbi Fields of the cookie empire had that problem where her spouse and her parents pooh-poohed the idea of her selling her now famous cookies. She didn’t listen, and look what happened.
Cultural Expectations
There is no question that the culture you grow up in can make a huge difference in whether or not you feel as if you’re set up for success. While a lot of these forces are changing in first world countries like the USA and Canada, there are still expectations that once a woman becomes a mom, her first job is her family. You can overcome this too by not accepting that status quo. Fathers are important too and should take an equal interest in their children. If you let them, and expect them to, they will.
Stresses Surrounding Your Choice
Often times, women are more affected by stress surrounding their choice to become an entrepreneur. This is mostly because women are often not as good at compartmentalizing their day as men are. If you set up care for your kids, and outsource household chores, you will be able to focus better and cut down on stress. Remember, it’s also okay to take your kids to the doctor, or go to the school play. You don’t have to choose.
Choosing a Niche
There are so many things you can do as a woman entrepreneur that you might get stuck at square one trying to choose what to do. The thing is, you might be tempted to choose a stereotypical niche or you might choose to purposely avoid those niches. The way you should pick, though, is to throw out those ideas and choose what you’re good at and what you love that has a market. Do your research and choose based on facts and figures along with your heart, not expectations or preconceived ideas.
Making Connections
It is true that when you attend business meetings currently, you’re going to find mostly men at them. This is not because women aren’t good at business, but women still have to fight their way out of their home responsibilities more than men. But go anyway and make connections. You can also start a woman entrepreneur club of your own or find one locally to attend.
Failing to Plan for Success
A lot of women who want to start their own business, especially moms who are currently stay-at-home moms, don’t realize that they can be successful and so they don’t plan for it. They see their business as a hobby when it is just inches away from being a real success that can support their family better than any job. You can overcome this by not making that mistake. Start planning now for your success and take yourself seriously.
Women honestly don’t have many more challenges than men in the business world today, other than by perception. But, perception is reality as Dr. Phil says. You have to work toward fighting that perception that businesses are for men and not women with your family, society and yourself. You are just as capable as anyone else and you have plenty of role models and examples to prove it.
Please share your thoughts on this in the Comments section below.
0 Comments