The Bad Girls' Guide to Business: WTF?
What is the "Bad Girls' Guide to Business?"
For right now, it's a 30-day series of blog posts designed to help women entrepreneurs break the "good girl" habits that are holding them back and begin to accelerate the growth of their businesses. Eventually I hope it will become a book.
Why should you care?
There's a lot of stuff to read on the Internet. Why should you care about this?
Here's why.
Over the last decade, women-owned businesses have been growing. From 1977 - 2007, the number of women-owned firms grew to 7.8 million (a 44% increase). During that time, women-owned businesses added 500,000 workers to their payrolls, while businesses owned by men shed about 2 million jobs.
At the same time, according to a U.S. Department of Commerce report:
Businesses owned by women are 'likely to be smaller, more likely to fail, and different from businesses owned by men along a variety of measures' [...] These firms have lower levels of financial capital, use less outsider debt, generate less revenue and pay their workers smaller salaries.
As Rebecca Blank, the Department of Commerce's undersecretary for economic affairs, put it:
In virtually every dimension, women-owned businesses lag far behind men-owned businesses.
There are a lot of reasons why this is the case.
I believe one of those reasons is that women grow up learning to be "good girls." They are taught to look pretty, smile, follow directions, and please others. They are rewarded for getting good grades, looking cute, avoiding conflict, fulfilling the expectations of authority figures, and keeping their desires in check.
As it turns out, "good girls" make fabulous employees. But as entrepreneurs, those "good girl" habits keep women from doing what they need to do to be successful.
It's time for women entrepreneurs to give up on being "good" and begin striving for greatness instead.
Who are the "Bad Girls of Business"?
As part of this blog post series, I will be interviewing a number of women I call the "Bad Girls of Business."
Completed interviews (videos to be posted soon):
- Naomi Dunford
- Carol Roth
- Elizabeth Potts-Weinstein
- Sarah Robinson
- Catherine Caine
- Pace Smith
- Natalie Sisson
Upcoming interviews:
These women have built successful companies and believe in the importance of teaching and helping other women to do the same. They have overcome (or never internalized) the kinds of "good girl" habits that are holding other women entrepreneurs back.
And they reject the notion that women have to look, act, or be a "certain way" in order to be successful.
They are an inspiration to me and, hopefully, to recovering "good girls" everywhere :)
Click here to nominate someone you think is a "Bad Girl of Business."
Click here to view all posts in the "Bad Girls' Guide to Business" series.