{"id":3751,"date":"2016-05-05T12:10:01","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T17:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bizwomenrock.com\/?p=3751"},"modified":"2016-05-05T12:10:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T17:10:43","slug":"7-insider-secrets-female-entrepreneurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bizwomenrock.com\/beta\/7-insider-secrets-female-entrepreneurs\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Insider Secrets From Female Entrepreneurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dayna Evans<\/a><\/p>\n

On a very high-up floor of 1 World Trade Center on Thursday, a couple-hundred businesswomen came together at the Women\u2019s Entrepreneur Festival to share their best-kept work secrets. Between panels and workshops, a lively keynote and cocktail hour, and a lavish lunch of wraps! and orzo! and ice cream!, the group discussed the sunny realities of what it\u2019s like to be at the top, or at least somewhere vaguely near it.<\/p>\n

I explained to two female entrepreneurs at lunch \u2014 one of PinkWisdom and another a content strategist \u2014 that the day\u2019s jargon was a little foreign to a person like me, whose only relationship to business is nosily getting into other people\u2019s. But all the talk of investments and seeding and the reality of being a bootstrapping entrepreneur made me feel mildly hopeful for the future of women changing the ratio. Why shouldn’t this terminology be more available to any woman who chooses to grab for it? Sharing openly and honestly and directly about what happens when women make it behind the closed doors that men have historically guarded like watchdogs was the theme of the day, and I came out wishing that even more women may someday join them.<\/p>\n

Interested in starting a business? Or just curious to know what those people on Shark Tank must be thinking as they face those grumbling sharks? Here are seven of the most interesting insights from the conference.<\/p>\n

Cybrids are the future. During her a.m. address, Erica Orange, EVP and COO of the Future Hunters, brought our attention to a new term that I\u2019m quite sure very few of us had ever heard before. Cybrids are \u201ccyber hybrids,\u201d under-18-year-olds who learn how to swipe before they know how to crawl. Orange asserted that millennials are statistically risk-averse, and \u201cas a whole were not entrepreneurial at all\u201d (I might suggest that\u2019s due to graduating college during an economic recession), but cybrids, Orange claimed, are interested in self-starting and will continue to be. As Orange put it, \u201ccybrids are what are really going to shape the future.\u201d
\nIf you want to start a business, start small \u2026 At a panel of women business owners whose companies had grown from bare-bones to modest empires, Kate Whiting, CEO and founder of Educents, said the best thing to do when thinking about starting a new business is to \u201cTake smaller chunks of what you want to do, then exceed those chunks.\u201d That way, the thought of starting something doesn\u2019t seem so daunting or overwhelming, and you\u2019ll be happy to have exceeded your own expectations.<\/p>\n

… But it\u2019s important to remember that \u201cit\u2019s very hard to come back from a bad culture.\u201d As the British say, start as you mean to go on. If you start a business, Whiting added, it\u2019s essential to have an understanding of how you want your business\u2019s culture to operate right from the get-go: \u201c[Culture] cannot be an afterthought.\u201d Do you want your company to be hard-partying and freewheeling? Then it\u2019ll probably stay that way forever. Are you caring and encouraging of your staff from the ground up? Then most employees will continue to feel that a long way down the line. While all members on the panel claimed it was a challenge to draw in great talent initially, once it happened, their businesses grew according to the culture they had set up from the start.<\/p>\n

Accept that you don\u2019t know everything. Beatriz Acevedo, founder and president of Mitu, explained that she was comfortable knowing that she was in the dark about some things. \u201cI was Googling terms under the table that Google execs were throwing at me. It\u2019s okay to not know,\u201d she said at a panel on getting customers, users, and clients. \u201cGive yourself permission to say, ‘I don\u2019t know, but I will learn.’\u201d To add to that, Diane Hessan, CEO of the Startup Institute, added, \u201cThe big skill to have is curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be able to sell your vision \u2014 not just to investors, but to everyone. This seems somewhat self-evident, but most of the information being transmitted at this event was from women expressing the importance of thoroughness of vision. In a world where female business owners are few (but growing in number), there is nothing more valuable than being aware of what you want to put forth into the world. Being steadfast can only help in communications to investors, consumers, and future employees. \u201cBut,\u201d Courtney Nichols Gould, founder of SmartyPants, added, \u201cyou really need to be a good listener\u201d and accepting of feedback and criticism when it applies, which is why …<\/p>\n

Rejection is simply information. One of the bigger focuses of each of the panels was \u2014 refreshingly \u2014 how the women CEOs and bosses handled the emotional toll of being rejected by investors, particularly male investors who did not understand the value or place of their projects and products. Lisa Abeyta, a founder and CEO of APPCityLife, put it plainly that \u201crejection is simply information. Failure is data that tells us something didn\u2019t work.\u201d The important thing, instead of wallowing in being turned down for meetings or investors or anything, is to follow up and ask why.<\/p>\n

>>>READ MORE<<<<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dayna Evans On a very high-up floor of 1 World Trade Center on Thursday, a couple-hundred businesswomen came together at the Women\u2019s Entrepreneur Festival to share their best-kept work secrets. 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