Being a woman has its advantages and its disadvantages, but when it comes to female entrepreneurship, I think women are moving into their own. The statistics are promising as there are 8.3 million women-owned businesses in the US currently, and in the next five years, over half of all small business jobs will be created from women-owned businesses. The world is turning to women to be the new thought leaders – and we are definitely up for the challenge. As female entrepreneurs, we have significant advantages simply because we’re built differently.
(Photo credit: NEXT Berlin)
The first advantage I see is collaboration and collabatition -
Collabation is a word I heard not too long ago – it’s collaboration with your competition in an effort to move both companies forward. Women love to work together. We naturally gravitate towards creating relationships and partnerships. We like to do things in groups, we like to involve people in what we’re doing.
We want companies that make it easy for us to have a family, to live the lifestyle we want and support our values. I believe you’ll see a lot more flex time, work share, co-working and home offices. It’s exciting for young women now to “grow up” in a corporate culture that will have them in mind. We can have business our way. It can reflect the women we are and the lifestyles we want.
The third advantage is intuition. Men definitely follow their gut, but women have a much more sensitive sense of intuition. I was fortunate enough to interview Barbara Corcoran a few weeks ago. Barbara is the only woman among 4 men during the pitches. So I said to her, ”You really have an instinct for this. You seem to invest more in the people than in the company. What do you look for?” She told me she has a few ways to decide. First, she watches them when they come into the room. They walk up and stand in the room while the cameras are swirling around and they aren’t allowed to talk to the sharks. She watches how they handle this really uncomfortable situation. Do their eyes dart around the room? Are the sweating like crazy? Are they looking down or biting their nails? Or are the calm and ready to pitch? She watches carefully so she can assess what they are like under pressure. Then after a few minutes listening to their pitch, she asks herself if she would trust them with her kids. She said, “If I went to war and came back 3 years later, would I leave my two kids with this person?” If she has an overwhelming gut feeling of NO, she won’t go into business with them. If you watch the show, you’ve probably seen her size people up. You might notice that the men are very interested in valuations, sales, ROI, etc., but Barbara really pays attention to her intuition in addition to the numbers and you can see it’s mad her very successful.
The fourth and last advantage is tenacity. Ladies, we don’t give up do we? We work our tails off. We work a full day, come home, take care of the family, the dog, clean the house, it never ends. No matter what is going on in our lives, we don’t stop until we get what we want. If we come across a roadblock, we find creative ways to get over it and around it – all in stilettos and Spanx. We’re not afraid.
Entrepreneurship isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to be tough. There is a reason why women carry and deliver babies. We are tough! We have to be! The beauty of it is, we can be tough and we can be tender. I truly believe there is a spot for tenderness and compassion in business. ”It’s not personal, it’s business.” Well not for women – it’s personal for us. We pour our hearts and souls into what we create. It’s incredibly personal. I believe we’ll begin to see even more personal touch and attention from women-led businesses.
What advantages or disadvantages do you see between men- and women-led businesses?
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