February 15, 2021 7 min read
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Entrepreneurship is present within professional and personal purposes, but various factors can interpose when starting the adventure and inhibit female leadership; although based on the analysis of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) , when women undertake, they do so more successfully than men.
“The questions will be present in our lives at all times, but it is necessary to go back to the roots of these questions to understand their relevance or to know if they are only preconceived ideas before which we have to remove our fear and see them as thresholds that await us a new perspective to better understand the panorama and constantly add value ”, explained Ana Victoria García, founder of Victoria147 , who also delved into nine questions about female entrepreneurship and shared her answers with us.
Ana Victoria García, founder of Victoria147 / Image: Diego Fierce / Entrepreneur en Español
1. What do I need to start entrepreneurship?
Passion and patience are two great challenges in entrepreneurship, especially since they can contradict each other.
One of the great questions that women entrepreneurs usually face is estimating the start of their project based on how long it will take to obtain results, but the reality is that there is no average number of days or months, neither to take the first step, nor to see results. The important thing is to keep your mind focused, study the business model and the financial structure.
2. Will I be able to start a business alone?
Surrounding yourself with talent makes you stronger. The question of the entrepreneurs as to whether it is better to undertake in a company than individually always leads to the same answer: Yes, it is better to have a partner!
Whether the team is made up of family members, friends, or associates, joining a team will always be a great start. According to Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of the American edition of Vogue magazine since 1988, she mentioned in her Masterclass for YouTube that she does not believe in one-sided teams, since someone who is not challenged by their decisions is like a deaf person who you can never enjoy music. So lean on as many as you can and join forces.
3. Do I really need a strategy before starting?
Strategy is the tool for the future. The Business Plan is based on your undertaking. The books will state various fundamentals, but the essence lies in trying to calculate the course of your decisions with a clear view of where to go and how to prepare for the road. That is, the strategy is a set of actions and decisions related to each other to help you reach the goal.
4. Why am I afraid to undertake?
The path is as simple as you see it. No one is exempt from going through a crisis or facing a challenge. COVID-19 is definitive proof of this, but let’s take it as an example of a watershed that led many people to seek a new way of acting.
The fear of undertaking part of the ignorance of your abilities and the ecosystem, the most effective response is to fight it through knowledge and education. To do this, invest in professionalizing yourself and the fear will disappear. For example, get to know yourself better, recognize what moves you or what you want to achieve with your entrepreneurship. At Victoria147 we design the specialized course From Zero, to get ready to take the first step on the path of entrepreneurship.
5. What if the opportunity is gone?
The opportunities are constant. It is said a lot that if you miss an opportunity, it may never come back. From my experience I will say that this is not entirely true. Opportunities are created before us over and over again. They come under a different name, different packaging, and new cost, but they are constant.
Given this, it is important to analyze each opportunity, because they can be doors to success or unnecessary risks.
6. What if I am wrong?
Failures are the new ways of learning. Let’s think about that popular saying that talks about learning more from falls than from clapping. Clearer, neither the water! Leave behind the fear of criticism and open your arms to know everything interesting that exists around you.
Failures are the new ways of learning / Image: Depositphotos.com
7. How do I calculate the investment, the expense, the return and even my salary?
Make numbers your friends. One of the lame feet that many entrepreneurial women tend to drag is not understanding the finances of their project. The answer is to open the books, add, subtract and calculate the utility. To get to black numbers, it is necessary to build a yellow road in which each cobblestone is your financial knowledge and thus prevents some terrible bad witch from the west disguised as a deficit.
8. Is the customer always right?
Take into account other voices. Ensuring that the client is always right means that any objection, opinion, complaint, claim or suggestion made by a user should never be discussed or questioned. The answer is the opposite.
While always agreeing with the client reinforces your trust and manages to maintain the relationship with him, what happens when the client’s requests are not consistent? The key to answering this question is to see the situation from a different perspective: the client can be wrong in what he thinks, but never in what he feels. To solve this, give him effective communication. That is, listen to him carefully, offer him alternatives and when they have reached an agreement, offer an extra for those annoyances that could arise, but always prefer a happy client than a displeased one.
9. What do I need to start a global venture?
The other side of the world is closer than you think, but the idea is to walk with firm steps. At this point, the most important thing is to set short, medium and long-term objectives, in order to act with preparation, observation and constant readjustment.
For a brand to become global, multiple decisions are needed, which has to do with understanding the terrain of each country that goes from its viability to its legislation, investing and, most importantly, calculating the utility of the venture.