At time of writing, for a variety of reasons, being a female entrepreneur can be more challenging due to the patriarchal society that still permeates in much of the world. What if you knew in advance what some of those challenges were and dealt with them before they caused you to self sabotage?
In this interview, Judith Molnar shares several insights with Ben Chai on the challenges female entrepreneurs face. These challenges are not exclusive to women so men please take note. This interview was taken at the JT Foxx family reunion (now Mega Success event) for wealthy entrepreneurs and business people.
Should you have a slow internet connection or cannot hear the interview, you will find a summary of Judith’s tips below the video. However we recommend you watch Judith as there are more in-depth insights on surviving a business disaster than our notes may provide.
Female Entrepreneur Challenges
Be more assertive
Judith’s main point was that women especially one that is a female entrepreneur would benefit from being more assertive. Too many times she has seen someone being too flexible with how they operate and then end up doing someone else’s work for them.
This is also known as being a “Yes” person, a people pleaser, and a pushover. In our efforts to make the people around us happy and satisfied we end up spending all our time working on helping other people and not enough time on helping ourselves. The solution is to become more focused on achieving our goals, on working on our projects, on learning how to say “No”.
An easy thing to say, but a difficult thing to master.
In order to become assertive, you first need to know what it is that you want. Once you know what your goal is you can easily make decisions about which “Yes’s” you make and which “No’s”. If someone asks you to do something that takes away time from completing your goal, the “No” becomes much easier.
Once you start saying “No” to people, you’ll start to wonder what else you can say to people. You stop being as afraid of potential conflicts. So, in the future when someone’s behaviour isn’t acceptable you can approach them in a calm manner and deliver a resolute “Stop that”. That is the secret to being assertive.
Female Entrepreneur
What’s holding women back?
Judith identified three main things that hold women back.
Identification between the mother and the father
All of us struggle with our parents. They can be difficult, demanding, and sometimes just rude. One key reason we don’t push ourselves is due to fear about what our parents would think about us.
For example, a mother may put pressure on a daughter to “settle down and have kids”. A father may have some, perhaps, dated opinions about gender roles. At some point, we need to ignore them and decide for ourselves what our life journey will be, and the person we want to evolve into.
Self-esteem
Woman are constantly bombarded with advertisements, news stories, and societal pressures that are intent on lowering their self-esteem.
This leads to thoughts like, “I can’t do this,” “I’m not good enough,” “I’m not supposed to do something like this”. Part of being an entrepreneur is learning how to positively channel those thoughts and keep them under control.
One way to build self-esteem is to keep a “Win’s Journal”. Every day in a notebook or journal, write down three “Wins” that you’ve had that day. This may be something like “Made a Sale,” “repaired a car,” or “Cooked a delicious meal,” literally anything that you would consider an achievement.
Whenever you have self-defeating thoughts, read through the journal and spend time basking in your achievements.
Fear of failure
One of the biggest fears that all humans have… is the fear of failure. The fear of failure typically comes from the fear of rejection. We associate failure with being ousted from a social group, and our primitive brains instinctively worry that being out of a social group means death!
In our modern times, we don’t need a social group to survive as, in the western world, many of the things we once had to fear (finding food, not getting eaten, warmth) are taken care of with technology.
Yet, the fear of failure still echoes in our minds.
You’ll never get over your fears. However, you can learn to control it. There are many techniques to this and if you’re interested in learning about them, contact Judith at www.Facebook.com/livsvision.
Huge thanks to Judith for sharing her business insights with us. If you found this interview helpful do
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