Claim the Word Entrepreneur
Now is the best time women in entrepreneurship.
There are so many resources out there for you. It is a buzz topic. It’s a conversation that you can have. You can get groups of women talking about entrepreneurship right now in a way that would have been more difficult five or ten years ago.
Today, women are naturally starting to identify with the term entrepreneur. Women are seeing that it is valid and it is okay to express who they are and their gifts through their work without any apology.
Validating Your Time as an Entrepreneur
But, I think the hardest thing that most women face is still advocating for themselves. I see women finding it difficult to make trade-offs, especially in regards to their families. We find it difficult to outsource things that we could outsource, like laundry, like cleaning.
I think the challenge women in entrepreneurship face goes back to our complex relationship with how we validate our time.
- Could I actually put a hundred dollars to the dry cleaning bill so that I don’t have to iron this month?
- Could I pay a woman or a man or a service to come in and clean my house?
Yes, I can do it, but that’s not the point.
The point is me validating my time and my skills as an entrepreneur to such an extent that I am willing to channel them all into this one thing, this one entrepreneurial venture where I am not replaceable. That’s a trend that has been difficult for decades, and that continues to be difficult.
Make Big Choices
And that is really where I would like to see women encouraging each other and saying, “Okay, you want to go do this big thing? What choices are you going to make?”
Instead, I often find that women make non-choices. They just pile it all on and think, “Well, I’ll just keep doing everything.” It doesn’t work like that. So I would encourage women in entrepreneurship to make big, bold choices and real choices. Those yeses – those big yeses – require a lot of nos.
Beth Troy has been on stage at OCEAN Conference, and shared this wisdom in a backstage video. You can view the video on YouTube, and continue learning from Beth at bethtroy.com
