Celebrating Women in Business
We celebrate Women in Business this weekend, and if you’re a woman you probably have mixed feelings about this. First, heck yeah! It’s always a good time to recognize the women among us making stuff happen in business. And secondly, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to have such a thing because women in business would be just as unremarkable as men in business. The reasons for there being less women in the business world and women making less money than men are more complicated than I want to discuss here, but I will say I sometimes think we women are too smart for our own good.
Our dreams, whether they be starting our own businesses or doing some other kind of creative enterprise, oftentimes get put on that back burner so long that eventually our stove starts running low on gas and we wonder if we’ve missed our chance. In so many ways, men and women have taken on new roles from the traditional ones, but still we see that women continue to be the ones primarily in charge of caring for children, caring for aging parents, and making sure people get cleaned and fed and the light bill is paid. We’ve all been in a place where our dreams and goals come last.
Even if we get some breathing room to think about a plan, we sometimes suffer from that cliche of paralysis by analysis. We don’t want to risk all the things that are necessary for the well-being of those around us for our “personal” dreams. But I want to tell you, some of my best business moves happen when instead of doing what makes sense, what’s “smart,” what’s safe, I jump in feet first.
Open up my own restaurant when I have no idea what I’m doing and I’m taking care of my parents and my two young daughters? When I’ve got no money and no fall-back plan? On paper opening a restaurant made no sense, but somehow the universe kept pulling me toward it like the moon pulling on the tide and it felt like I better catch that wave or stay on dry land forever.
Were there days I wondered if I’d made a mistake? Oh, plenty! But there were also days when I realized my fears had been so silly. The strength that it takes to do the day-in day-out taking-care-of-life stuff gives women a huge advantage in business. We are used to multi-tasking, being interrupted, working past the clock, and making sure everybody gets along. What works for us outside of business works for us within business too. In the early days of LuLu’s, I found myself relying on all the skills I’d gleaned from all the jobs and all the personal experiences and relationships I’d had up to that point. Having all that insight to bring to my business made me a wise, capable, confident, problem-solving person who found success putting her dreams into a business.
So, if you have a dream simmering back there on the burner, it’s never too late to cut up the heat and stir up all the ideas you’ve been dropping into the pot during those fleeting few moments here and there between other commitments and responsibilities. And if you feel a little push from the universe, don’t be afraid to jump!
