Women’s History Month began Thursday, March 1, 2012, and ends Saturday, March 31, 2012. Women entrepreneurs are known to be successful and have differentiating characteristics to their male colleagues in fact Erotic Capital is one of the more controversial measures and gender arbitrage one of the most opportunistic.
That being said, everyone has challenges on their way up the ladder or success. A recent article by Lauren Carlson highlighted the 5 ways women sabotage their success. I thought it was worthy to bring them to your attention because by knowing what they are, you can avoided or at least minimise them.
Here is my take on the 5 ways women sabotage their success, using Bree Robbins Top Dog at Paddington Pups as a mini case study.
1. Being Afraid of Self-Promotion
The concept of self-promotion is an Exponential Marketing Strategy called preeminence whereby you create a professional persona that transcends who you are in a relevant context so people know who you are and what you’re about. if you are shy, let your results speak for you. Every time you accomplish something, you don’t have to scream it from the rooftops, but let people know what you’ve done. Everyone wants to deal with a “winner”.
Psst! Did you notice that Bree’s title is Top Dog – not CEO or Managing Director?!?! Hmmmm… Something to think about!
2. Undervaluing Themselves and Their Services
When you promote yourself and your products, you want to do it in a natural, fun way. As the short video below demonstrates. You don’t have to be flamboyant or provocative to sell yourself and your products. Do it naturally and authentically, just don’t sell yourself short by NOT doing anything.
3. Not Asking for Directions
This is where women can make the most improvement – to get the advice, coaching and mentoring that men have been getting for decades.
Listen to Bree’s experience with the devastating floods that swept through her doggy day care facility. She has been a coaching client for several years – you can hear the wisdom that defies her youthfulness because she has learned how to think strategically about business to deal with ANYTHING that is thrown her way.
4. Making Relationships the Priority
When Paddington Pups was flooded, 200+ clients came to the rescue helping get the business back on its feet in a record 8 days. That is priceless – not on financial grounds but because it shows that there is a real relationship withing the Brisbane dog-loving community so strong that it can overcome the worst of circumstances.
Relationships of course also extend to the commercial, advertising and promotion aspect of your business. For example, Bree nurtured a relationship with Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer and was ‘rewarded’ with a site visit and an extensive interview (shown below).
The lesson here is: Don’t be shy – follow your dreams and aspirations!
5. Being Afraid of Making a Mistake
Even though women do tend to be perfectionists, all successful entrepreneurs have this gene, it also causes an affliction called perfectionis.
Just remember that “perfection is the poison of profitability”. Trying to be perfect all the time is not only impossible, it’s not profitable. Perfection is NOT necessary for success. Seeking perfection is admirable and necessary for excellence, but there comes a time when “good is good enough”.
For example, blog posts. It’s better to get 1 or 2 out every week with timely, relevant information than to try to create perfect prose only once a month.
I always tell my clients that with more than 3,000 pages of content on the Internet (including 7 blogs) I have more content with typos and grammatical errors than most people have IN TOTAL CONTENT. Of course I do go back and edit them when they are pointed out, but I don’t hesitate to blog and try to get it perfect each and every time… I just do it as best I can – like this blog post. It’s not ‘perfect’, but good enough to give you some solid advice you can put into practice!
So there you have it – my take on a great article by Lauren Carlson that I hope helps you run up the ladder of success two rungs at a time!
As a woman I want to help promote and lift the profile of female sports coaches. I was asked to commentate this year in January on fox sports and the reason why I got the opportunity without any training in commentating and literally learning as I went along was because they were so few female presenters it gave me the chance to get my foot in the door! It was great for me 🙂