As with any attempt to offer broad advice to a specific category of people, it is impossible – and incorrect – to make generalised assumptions or sweeping statements. With last month marking International Women’s Day we’ve all taken our annual dose of female empowerment across social media with individuals and companies reminding one-another how important gender equality and equal opportunities are to them. Here at Cranfield School of Management, however, we don’t restrict our gender equality preaching to a few weeks in March but we work at empowering female leaders 365 days a year through research and the delivery of dedicated executive courses.
We recently reached out to some of the highly inspiring women who have completed Cranfield’s Business Growth Programme and who now run incredibly successful businesses to find out what, in their experience, it takes to be a successful female entrepreneur. We posed them some pretty standard questions – why did you start the business, what were your challenges, what advantages did you have as a woman and what advice would you give other women starting out – and we were delighted by the spectrum of answers we got. It turns out that, while being a woman can bring certain challenges, it is not necessarily a factor that determines success or failure.
As for any entrepreneur, regardless of gender, we found that the reasons for starting a business varied from simply having a brilliant business idea, to seeking a better work-life balance. One respondent, Annika Bosanquet, founder of Wrapology, left her day job as she felt that her career progression was stunted: “I was excited by an idea that a colleague had and I just couldn’t help but go for it! I felt my previous employer had restricted growth for my career as I was not a specialist and was doubtful of working long term in a corporate structure.” And in line with some sources that state that women have a higher tendency to start a business to have more flexibility to manage family commitments 1, this was the case for Eleanor Harris, founder of Magic Words Therapy in Milton Keynes.
But once you’ve taken the first step, what are the kinds of challenges that female entrepreneurs run into? Again, there is no one-size-fits-all answer and what we’ve found is that this particular aspect varies massively according to the industry sector the business is in and whether or not it is typically male dominated or not. In terms of managing entrepreneurship alongside family life, those with young children do seem to feel the burden more than their male counterparts – or at least it is so perceived. Another challenge that was mentioned relates to being respected as female entrepreneur and that at the beginning it can be difficult to be taken seriously.
But surely, if there are gender-specific challenges there must be gender-specific advantages too, right? Jane Lambert, founder of ECG Training, firmly believes that women have superior abilities to build and nurture relationships which she has found critical to her success as a business owner. Annika, on the other hand, has found her gender to be mostly disadvantageous in her sector, not perceiving any particular advantages at all. Others believe that there are neither specific challenges nor advantages to being a female entrepreneur, that it’s just down to the individual.
Drawing from their own experiences, we asked our female businesswomen what advice they would give others who have recently embarked on the entrepreneurship journey. From believing in yourself to ensuring you maintain a healthy work-life balance, our interviewees were all too happy to provide insights. Some of the more specific tips included learning to “be succinct and direct in your communication” and to always “come prepared with the commercial outcome in mind”. Further advice included a reminder to maintain the passion for what you do, as this is infectious and will help to draw people in. Having a clear vision and strategy and sharing it with your team has proven useful, as has finding a business partner or support group with whom to vent about business matters.
To read the full interview, please visit: https://bit.ly/3dnGXdX
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1 https://www.inc.com/margaret-heffernan/why-women-want-to-be-entrepreneurs.html
