Women are everywhere in the working world. Around 48% of the global workforce is female! These numbers show us that it’s not uncommon for a woman to have a career, and to want to focus on making a success out of her skills. It never should be again!
So why does it feel so imbalanced when it comes to business ownership? Various factors come into play here, and we don’t have time to go into them all! However, there is one running theme that many female business owners bring up themselves: a lack of self-belief, or a lack of access to tools that allow for self-belief.
When you feel like you can’t run a company, you’re far less likely to ever take the plunge. This means there are potentially millions of women out there who have never gotten to explore business ideas and innovate a useful product that so many people could use.
It’s important that women can work, and we praise the work they do no matter how small it might seem! But big ideas need encouragement too.
So, if you’re a woman who wants to start her own business, it’s important to develop your sense of self-belief first. When it comes to your career, your faith in yourself to set goals and achieve them is the one thing that’ll always carry you through. And that’s not all self-belief is good for!
Imposter Syndrome is on the Rise
We all feel a little out of place from time to time. Sometimes that’s thanks to a minor mistake that’s made us feel silly, sometimes it’s because someone was rude to us. In these cases, it can even be easier to deal with the feeling, as there’s an external reason that we can move past and forgive ourselves for.
But most of the time, the feeling has an internal source. And amongst female entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses, this feeling is on the rise. In the face of all the other talent in your niche, it can be very easy to get in your own head. Thoughts like what have you done that can even compare, how do your achievements match up, you shouldn’t even be here, etc., can cause a pit of anxiety to form in your stomach.
If that’s something you battle with regularly, it’s important to remember that the feeling is disproportionate to the reality you’re dealing with. There’s a reason you’re being invited along to events, and people are reaching out to work with you. Even when criticism is leveled at you, remember how far you’ve come.
You’ll Be Able to Focus on Building Skills, Instead of Lamenting Them
If you’re both a woman and a business owner, you’re often expected to know it all. You probably hear success stories from other women all the time about overcoming impossible odds and building a business from nothing. If you don’t have a similar story, the pressure around this narrative makes you feel like you should discard everything you’ve achieved so far.
However, self-belief can help you to turn your mind around. It prevents this element of peer pressure from getting you down. When faced with the idea that you’re lacking a necessary business skill, self-belief is what’ll help you acknowledge there’s a gap and then move past it.
After all, you can learn something new every single day, and that’s an important thing to remember in a situation like this.
This is especially true when it comes to handling money. Cash flow is one of the hardest things to manage as a new business owner, but if you’re open to building your management skills around positive cash flow, you’ll reduce all worry when looking at your base profit line. If you believe you can learn and become a better version of the business owner you currently are, half the battle is already won.
Self Belief Helps You Set Actionable Goals
Sometimes known as SMART goals, these are milestones you want to hit in your career that are well defined, can be visualised, and aren’t so outlandish you’ll never achieve them.
That’s a common mistake entrepreneurs make, but as a female entrepreneur, knowing you could fall into this trap can be much more damaging. After all, women in the workplace are more likely to feel like imposters, and accidentally making self-defeating objectives will only feed into this.
But when you have a strong sense of self belief, you’ll be far better able to set these goals, as you know what you’re capable of, and you’ll find it much easier to think about a future with you and your company in it.
It’ll Make You a Better Leader
Belief in yourself means belief in your decisions. When you know you’re making the best decision for yourself, your company, and your employees, that belief and passion is going to come through in the way you speak and act.
If you don’t have a belief in yourself, it’s going to be very hard to make these kinds of hard and potentially life changing decisions. You’re not going to come across very well as a leader, because you’re not really sure what you want or where you’re planning to go next.
Often this is due to anxiety, which can be a killer in the business world. Working to move past it is something all entrepreneurs should strive for, regardless of their gender.
However, this doesn’t mean you should never ask for advice. If you need to talk to someone in the know, or you need to hold a meeting to ask opinions from your team, feel free to reach out.
You’ll Be Able to Support Other Female Entrepreneurs
Being focused on your own career is a fine thing. You want to achieve success, you’ve got a clear plan of how to do so, and you’re taking steps every day to get closer and closer to your end result. As far as self-belief goes, you’ve got a healthy cushion of it behind you, helping you to look both inward and outward when it comes to your capability.
That’s an amazing thing to have on your side. And you’ve worked hard to make it so! But there are still female entrepreneurs out there who struggle in this area. If you can position yourself as someone who’s been where they are, who knows how it feels to see yourself as not belonging, you can be a part of what inspires the next generation.
Growing with self doubt is common, and it’s going to happen to all of us at some point. But when the career world is already hard enough for a woman, make sure you share your journey with those who haven’t quite come to their self belief realisation yet.
Self Belief and You
Women have been in the workplace since time immemorial. They’ll continue to be there for years to come. That’s why self-belief is one of the most important things a female entrepreneur should have.
Believing in yourself is the least you can do for your career, so why not give yourself such an invaluable tool from day one? You don’t need anything other than a clear sense of who you are, and the ability to see the positive in what you can do. Everyone has that in their back pocket! It might take some time to build, but that’s what you’ve got as a business owner.
Leave a Reply