4 Steps to Becoming a Successful Woman Entrepreneur

For the budding woman entrepreneur, she hopes to achieve a challenging duality: to be successful in her working life with the additional responsibility of taking care of her family back at home.

Unfortunately, it is an incredibly challenging balancing act, especially if you’re reining in the reels of your own business or early-stage startup, whilst having to consider societal’s gender normative roles.

However, there are in fact many immensely successful women entrepreneurs who are doing a very commendable job transcending inherent societal prejudices, to become wildly successful and inspirational figures.

We’ll be offering some pearls of advice and sacred secrets that you yourself can incorporate into your own life to ensure your own success!

Wake up early and have a morning routine

It’s a commonly known fact that a morning routine can do wonders for one’s discipline and concentration. How you start your morning sets the trajectory for the rest of your day and can determine your productivity levels for the day.

As what Anne Dillard famously said, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Therefore, we should always seek to take control of our day early on instead of letting it command us. Many successful women entrepreneurs make full use of their mornings to energise and prepare mentally for the day ahead.

It does not necessarily mean that you should pack all of your work into the morning, but rather, use the morning as a period of reflection and preparation for your day ahead. In essence, you should use your mornings to think and mentally direct yourself to accomplish the things that you have to do for the day.

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Here are some tips:

1. Wake up earlier. Even if you have to clock in early in the mornings, make it a habit to get out of bed at least half an hour to forty-five minutes earlier. Having “no time” is merely an excuse!
2. Do some light exercise. Working up a little sweat in the mornings invigorates your body, and contrary to popular belief, actually leaves you feeling more energetic. Payal Kadakia, the CEO and Founder of ClassPass, goes for a 30-minute run or squeezes in a 10-minute core workout at home if time is tight that day.

Have an intuitive system for things you can “automate”

While it is inevitable that many business decisions will have to be made throughout the day, it is important to reduce the number of decisions we have to make and focus only on the important ones. Ever heard of decision fatigue? When you have one too many decisions to make, the quality of the decisions made may deteriorate rapidly.

Reduce the strain on your mental capacity and productivity by automating as many aspects of your life as possible. For example, if you can direct automated replies to emails sent to you after your stipulated working hours (yes, it’s important to carve out some rest and therefore no email time for yourself too!), you’ll feel less pressed for time to actually think about and answer those emails.

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Here are some of our choice tips:

1. Is trouble deciding what to wear to work every morning? It may seem like a frivolous problem, but it definitely isn’t — the way one presents herself is integral and speaks volumes about how other people may view her as a leader. The solution? Create your own work uniform like how Matilda Kahl of Saatchi & Saatchi did in order to simplify the perennial morning struggle. We suggest something reflective of your work environment and a little something extra to highlight your personality!

Never be afraid of change and failure

The fear of failure is often what holds us back from doing what our gut or intuition has staunchly told us to do. The direction you want to take your business towards may be uncharted or unexplored territory, or perhaps it’s an audacious idea that hit you in a dream. But what’s the worst that can happen?

As what Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx and the youngest self-made billionaire in the United States has said, “It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.”

One important affirmation we should all note is that as an entrepreneur, we are already doing the unconventional and charting our own distinct road in life away from the path of least resistance.

After all, failure is the mother of all success — and you’ll never be able to grow as a woman entrepreneur and as a person if you’ve never experienced failure and picked yourself up from the fray!

Here are some useful tips for you to get over your fear of failure and proceed into doing things you would never otherwise have the strength to do:

1. When faced with a difficult decision, think this — “What is the worst that can happen?” You’ll find that the worst that can happen is often not very debilitating at all.
2. You don’t have to care about what everyone thinks about you. While it’s important to take to the advice of choice people that you trust, don’t let the negativity of people you’re not accountable to keep you from doing what you believe is the best for yourself.

Accept that you do not know everything, and take it as an impetus for learning and growth

The most unwise thing a woman entrepreneur can do is to assume that she knows everything there is to know about her area of expertise, and therefore close the door to alternative opinions.

Remember that there is always room to grow, and it will help your journey towards becoming a successful entrepreneur if you give the opportunity to others and listen to what they have to offer! Even Marissa Mayer, the superstar CEO of Yahoo, listens to her employees actively and gathers knowledge from them. Why not apply that principle to your own business, too?

Acknowledge that you do not know everything, and be humble enough to listen to your employees.

Now that you’re privy to these tips and tricks, go forth and build yourself an empire-to-be! You can definitely be the that successful figure you’ve always looked up to and set an example for others to be inspired by — just continue working hard and you will get there.