10 Challenges and Triumphs of Being a Female Founder
Being a female founder in the world of entrepreneurship comes with a unique challenges and triumphs. While the road may be paved with obstacles, the journey is also sprinkled with victories that make it all worthwhile. In this post, we'll explore some of the most common challenges faced by female founders and celebrate the remarkable triumphs we achieve.
1. Challenge: Gender Bias
Triumph: Breaking Stereotypes
Female founders often face gender bias in the business world, with investors and clients assuming their abilities based on their gender. The triumph lies in breaking these stereotypes and proving that success knows no gender.
Once I was asked to join a think tank to contribute ideas to improve entrepreneurship in my community. The group consisted of primarily men with one other woman and me. In the group were well known venture capitalists, angel investors, and community leaders.
During one brainstorming session, I raised my hand to contribute an idea and I was met with blank stares and silence from the men in the group (the only other woman wasn’t able to attend that day). The very next person to raise his hand reiterated my idea as if it were original and the group sprung into action talking through how it could work and even praised him for his insight saying, “That’s great idea. Let’s talk through that.”
I felt shocked that this happened and didn’t talk about it for years because I thought I was the only one. Later I found out this situation isn’t unique to me. Every woman has her own version of being undervalued simply for being female.
It showed me the value of surrounding myself with people who live out their values and vote with their time and money about how they want the world to work, including valuing everyone’s ideas, not just male’s.
2. Challenge: Access to Funding
Triumph: Resourcefulness
Securing funding can be more challenging for female founders, but many have triumphed by tapping into alternative sources, such as crowdfunding, angel investors, and venture capital firms that support diversity.
Growing slow and incrementally is possible through bootstrapping, but for those who don’t have the funds to get started in the first place, capital is critical.
Resources like Illinois’ The Women’s Entrepreneurship Hub or SCORE offer paths toward financing and even offer free mentorship and guidance along the way. The key here is to take action to get connected and show up to receive guidance.
One important consideration is having a detailed plan for financing. How women manage money in our personal lives is often how we manage money in business. Have a ton of consumer debt and no budget? Everybody’s gotta start from somewhere, but it’s important you address those shortcomings so bad habits don’t spoil the funding you do secure.
It’s not enough just to secure the money. Important money management qualities like budgeting and delayed gratification are crucial for maintaining a cash flow positive business. It goes without saying, having a solid business plan with well thought out revenue streams and managing costs also ties into navigating business ownership through the ups and downs.
One money management tip I’m teaching my young daughter is asking the question, “How can I afford it?” We dream together about owning a SheShed and matching Vespas one day. In the SheShed, we plan to have spa days, a fridge with fancy foods, like mini pb&j sandwiches, and shelves to sit her stuffy’s. It’s fun to imagine, but I teach her through this fun activity that the money has to come from somewhere. I’m intentional in our conversations to ask, “How can we afford to buy the SheShed?” and teaching her about passive revenue opportunities (renting out her bike or scooter, for example).
We can’t go back in time and give our younger selves a seat at the financial conversation, but we can empower ourselves to create good money management practices in our adult lives and pave a new path and teach financial literacy to the next generation.
3. Challenge: Work-Life Harmony
Triumph: Build a business around your life and not a life around your business
Balancing the demands of running a business with personal life can be daunting. Women often fit their businesses into the cracks between other major priorities, like caretaking, being the fabric of the community, and household tasks that society tends to assign to females. The triumph here is creatively finding ways to prioritize personal priorities (such as fitness), delegate tasks, and maintain healthy work-life harmony.
Setting boundaries and planning intentionally are critical to women running businesses while also playing pivotal roles at home and in the community. (Read: 9 Unexpected Tips to Achieve Work/Life Balance as a Female Entrepreneur) To create harmony, we must sharpen the two skills of planning ahead and setting boundaries. Planning ahead allows us to create efficiencies with higher quality outcomes using the limited time we have. Setting boundaries keeps out anything that creates friction or isn’t meant for us.
Life can be chaotic. Dedicating time, energy, and money into defined priorities creates harmony between the demands of business and the demands of personal life.
4. Challenge: Networking
Triumph: Building Strong Communities
Networking in male-dominated industries can be tough, but many female founders have triumphed by creating their own networks and communities (like the online Founding Females Mastermind for female entrepreneurs) to support one another, share resources, and foster mentorship.
For so long, women have come into business following the male playbook. The truth is, we don’t need to stand toe to toe with men. We only need to stand toe to toe with the best version of ourselves. Women do business differently. We have different motivations than men for creating our businesses. We problem solve differently than men. We build and foster relationships differently than men. That’s why I wrote Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business that walks women through exactly how to create a business on their own terms in a way that works for their lifestyle and inspiration.
Networking is no different. Many women I know have an aversion to hard sales. It feels gross. But when we create relationships with trust, women feel the necessary safety to do business.
We only need to stand toe to toe with the best version of ourselves.
5. Challenge: Imposter Syndrome
Triumph: Self-Confidence
Imposter syndrome can plague even the most successful female founders, but the triumph comes when we learn to recognize and overcome it, gaining the self-confidence we need to lead our companies.
I hear over and over again how intimidating it is to walk into a room full of strangers. I feel that too. One moment of bravery can be a game changer in entrepreneurship. Personally, as I’ve continued to put myself in situations that feel a little scary, the voice telling me I can’t do it gets quieter and quieter. There’s no substitution for “doing the thing.”
The antidote to Imposter Syndrome: A willingness to learn while stepping forward growing a business.
6. Challenge: Lack of Role Models
Triumph: Becoming the Role Model
I’ve noticed that women are hesitant to tout their accomplishments. For whatever reason, women default to waiting until someone else notices their accomplishments. Because of this, many of our groundbreaking achievements go unnoticed. Female founders who succeed should become the role models themselves, paving the way for the next generation of women entrepreneurs.
Having a mentor is a game changer, but it’s something that important relationship in business tends to come organically and with time. Alternatively, women are amazing at creating community and we should leverage this to our advantage. Seeking peers who pour into one another through an entrepreneurial community of shared belief and culture gives women a leg up in business because through dialogue and peer mentorship, we pass along hard-fought wisdom from one trailblazer to the next.
7. Challenge: Managing Growth
Triumph: Scaling Successfully
Many female founders face the challenge of managing rapid growth, but their triumph comes when they successfully scale their businesses and navigate the complexities of expansion. I always say, “Create assets, not paychecks.”
Learning profit strategies (like in this Profit Strategies $10 Mini Course) tailored for female entrepreneurs and approaching business with a 10X mindset can inform next steps as we’re growing our small businesses.
8. Challenge: Gender Pay Gap
Triumph: Closing the Gap
Female founders often face the gender pay gap, but many have triumphed by ensuring that their businesses prioritize equal pay and offer equitable opportunities to all employees.
One of my favorite reasons for running my own business is so I can charge by the value I create for clients rather than by the hour (We talk about how to do this inside the Founding Females Mastermind for female entrepreneurs).
Plus, charging by the project incentives me to get better and better at my craft and become more efficient with processes so I get paid the same for doing less work. By knowing the return I create for my clients (for example, the $90K additional revenue I helped them generate in ONE year), I’m able to set my pricing accordingly, rather than wasting time worrying about the dollar per hour comparison that often keeps women’s heads underwater.
Setting my price in comparison with someone who does this work for a corporation is missing the point. They pay me as an investment, and I create multiples in returns back to their bottom line. There’s no reason to race to the bottom charging by the hour.
Through Founding Females, we open up the conversation about important female entrepreneurship topics like how to recognize the value you create for clients inside our communities for women to learn how to step outside the box and away from challenges like gender pay gap altogether. We openly and generously share strategies for creating a sustainable business by earning appropriately for value created. Join the conversation inside the Founding Females Mastermind.
9. Challenge: Managing Stress and Burnout
Triumph: Resilience
Running a business is stressful, and burnout is a real risk that often comes as a natural byproduct of ambition. Women spin plate after plate. We’re incredible community contributors. We weave the fabric of family life. Plus, we’re contributing to your families’ financial well being by stepping up to run businesses. Female founders who triumph learn to manage stress effectively, build resilience, and find strength in adversity. Finding work/life balance as a female entrepreneur is one of the biggest challenges we.
That doesn’t mean it’s not hard. Having a community of support to learn from and peers who can encourage and uplift you creates the difference between folding and evolving into a more capable version of yourself who can handle the demands with ease. When it comes to burnout, “rest, don’t quit.”
10. Challenge: Risk taking tends to be skewed
Triumph: Leveraging community and planning.
A growing body of research outlines differences in how men’s and women’s brains are wired and how they function. Note, the research doesn’t support that one brain is better or worse than the other, just that they work differently.
For example, the size of the hippocampus and amygdala are different, as well as how the two brain hemispheres work together. Women’s brains tend to be more oriented toward people than things, whereas men’s are the opposite. Brain differences translate to behavioral differences, and that includes in business. Even perception bias in our American culture tends to assign risk as a more appropriate behavior for men than women.
Whether perception bias or biology, studies show that men tend to take more risks than women. That’s not a bad thing if we know how to leverage strengths. Our superpower as women is twofold. First, women hedge this difference by teaming up with other people relationally. Two (or more) minds are better than one. We have a propensity for community and because of that, we tend to share resources and wisdom.
Secondly, women tend to think through decisions more thoroughly before taking action, which helps us line up the necessary resources. Sure, it’s true that you have to take action and prevent analysis paralysis if you expect to become successful, but that doesn’t mean you have to take action without informing your decision making, which is what women are amazing at based on the wiring of our brains!
Conclusion:
Being a female founder is not without its challenges, but the triumphs that come with it are all the more sweet because the process of overcoming obstacles shapes us into ever more capable contributors to a world that needs our gifts.
Remarkable women break down barriers, inspire others, and prove that gender should never be a hindrance to entrepreneurial success. As we celebrate the challenges and triumphs of female founders, we also recognize the importance of creating a space well suited for women that helps us all thrive.
Female business resources
Female business mastermind: Founding Females Female Entrepreneurship Mastermind
Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business (with free access to the resource suite)
Related Articles for Female Entrepreneurs
About Founding Females®
The mission of Founding Females® is to help women build thriving businesses. We create safe spaces for women to share business challenges and receive peer support.
In addition, Founding Females® offers an online female business mastermind, a how-to guidebook for female entrepreneurs called Dream, Build, Grow: A Female’s Step-by-Step Guide for How to Start a Business, and in-person events, like an annual women’s business conference and local Founding Females® Meet Ups.
Founding Females® was founded by small business educator, Francie Hinrichsen. She believes anyone with a dream on their heart can pull up a seat to change the world through entrepreneurship. Click to learn more about working with Francie.
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