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Today's woman entrepreneur - do you recognise her?

Written by: Sue Stockdale

Article Overview: How would you describe today's successful woman entrepreneur? Is she a focused individual driven to work all hours in the pursuit of profit? Or is she someone who balances work and time for family and social commitments? Sue Stockdale, author of Secrets of Successful Women Entrepreneurs outlines what she has learned about today's successful woman in business.

Today's woman entrepreneur - do you recognise her?

There has been a lot of research into the characteristics of women entrepreneurs and what makes them successful and it has been known for a long time that women are driven by a desire for independence, job satisfaction, economics and a need to achieve. These needs were demonstrated as early as 1878 when Catherine Cranston opened her tearoom business in Glasgow. This was a first in its day, and not the norm for women, but Catherine viewed it as an extension of her domestic duties at home, but for profit and it also enabled her to satisfy the need to help others.

I spend a lot of my time working with women entrepreneurs running all sizes and types of businesses.
It fascinates me to observe what motivates these women and how they achieve success.

A few years ago, I noticed there were very few women entrepreneur role models in the UK, so I decided to find them because I knew that lots of women were running great companies. I carried out interviews with ten of the top female entrepreneurs. These women included Michelle Mone, creator of the Ultimo™ bra whose lingerie is now stocked all over the world, and Penny Streeter OBE, Founder of Ambition 24 Hour Group,an international healthcare recruiter, recognised as the fastest growing unquoted UK company in 2002.

My interviews showed that the characteristics of these women entrepreneurs correlated with the earlier research. Today's woman has a strong need for achievement and a passion for her product or service. It is likely that she carried out some research into her market prior to start-up but also
relies on intuition and her existing business knowledge to judge whether a business idea is viable. That means that many women start-up in a sector that is already familiar to them.

The Need for Autonomy

A confident focused individual with self-belief and tenacity, today's woman entrepreneur has a clear vision of what she wants to achieve and will go out to make this happen. It's the letting go that they can find hard yet delegation is important for growth.

Values Led Business

Today's woman has strong personal values by which to drive the business. These values are founded on respect, integrity, ethics, honesty and a passion for excellence. Ironically, it is the dysfunctional cultures of backstabbing, politicking and dishonesty in some of the large corporates that drive women to start up their own business, because of their need for honesty, ethics and integrity.

Business commentator Margaret Heffernan, also discovered that this desire to run companies based on a different set of values by which to do business was common ais doing research for her book "How She Does it" which explained the phenomenon of how privately held businesses owned by women grew at three times the rate of all US privately held firms between 1997 and 2006. This staggering statistic revealed that women owned businesses in the US are now responsible for more payroll than all the Fortune 500 companies combined.

Trade off between work and life

Whilst today's woman will encounter challenges including finding finance and balancing work and life requirements, her determination and tenacity to succeed will shine through. Most of the women I interviewed said that they did not have much "life" balance but had consciously made that choice in order to focus on their business and getting it to the next level. It is this trade off between work and family that causes many women to create lifestyle businesses, where the business runs at a pace and income level that affords them time to enjoy with their children or family.

Sharing and Supporting

Today's woman entrepreneur leads her business in a manner that promotes genuine concern for others, team-working and openness. Amongst her measures of success are interaction with people and helping
others and she is open to sharing her learning and experience. On asking the women what was their greatest learning, they all talked about situations where they had made mistakes. So it's worthwhile to note that on the journey to grow a business, you need to expect things to go wrong, and the critical factor is learning how to remain resilient in the face of these situations.

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Article Tags: ambition 24, autonomy, business idea, business knowledge, clear vision, earlier research, female entrepreneurs, healthcare recruiter, international healthcare, job satisfaction, michelle mone, obe, role models, self belief, streeter, tenacity, types of businesses, ultimo bra, woman entrepreneur, women entrepreneurs



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