Female entrepreneurs face persistent challenges as they strive to grow their businesses. These include unequal access to capital, bias in contracting processes, and the fact that women—regardless of earning power or professional credentials—are far too often expected to shoulder a disproportionate share of responsibility within their families and homes.
These challenges aren’t new, and they aren’t going away anytime soon, either. But female entrepreneurs can and do still find ways to overcome daily obstacles. Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that despite all the headwinds they face, women are the beating heart of America’s small business community.
Women are the heart of America’s small business community. Here’s how they’re building sustainable ... [+]
While celebrating the millions of women who’ve overcome the odds, let’s uncover some of the most successful strategies female leaders use to build sustainable businesses.
1. Create a People-Centric Environment
Most sustainable businesses place people at their core—at both the interpersonal and community level. Here, people means not just every stakeholder in the business but everyone the business impacts in some fashion, from employees and customers to members of the wider communities where those employees and customers live and work.
People-centric businesses are more likely to be ethical, socially conscious, and environmentally friendly. These values lie at the heart of organizations like Nice People. This woman-owned enterprise creates consumer-facing brands that stand out in today’s oversaturated market and showcase the personality and creativity of the people behind them.
“If you think about it, there are three different types of relationships you can have — those with your team, your direct network, and your client or customer base,” says Amber Asay, CEO of Nice People. “As long as you’ve built and sustained strong emotional connections with all three, then that’s where you’ll have the best-produced work from your team, access to the best resources and referrals from your network, and loyal support from your audience. What you do or offer is only second to the people around you, always.”
To build a people-centric business, foster strong relationships with your team, network, and customer base. As a female entrepreneur, it’s especially important to tap into professional support networks. This will lead to a strong foundation for success and ethical practices.
You can find support nearby in local chapters of women-oriented business organizations like the National Association of Women Business Owners. And you can find it on a regional or national level, in state women-and-minority business offices, small business groups, and grantmaking organizations built by and for women leaders.
2. Define Your Purpose
Maya Angelou once said, “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” This is inspiring on a personal level, for sure. It’s also a guiding light for women entrepreneurs with no patience for the ordinary—entrepreneurs who know that customers and prospective employees respond to bold, clear statements of purpose.
If you’re committed to building a sustainable business that stands the test of time, define its purpose early on. Publicly define your mission statement and a concise set of values—your corporate DNA. Doing so can differentiate your business and attract like-minded people.
Embracing uniqueness and authenticity also fosters personal growth and empowers female entrepreneurs to stand out in a competitive business landscape. By clearly defining your mission and values, you can captivate your audience with your distinctive vision and unwavering determination.
Whatever you do, don’t bury your purpose. Feature it prominently on your website, in your marketing collateral, or anywhere else space allows. Otherwise, you’ll look insincere, which is a potential brand-killer.
3. Leverage Creative Financing Strategies
It’s a statistic so distressing that it is scarcely believable: Companies run exclusively by female founders received just 2% of all venture capital dollars deployed in the United States in 2023.
In other words, companies run by men only, or a mix of men and women, received 98% of all venture capital dollars. In a world where far more than 2% of high-growth companies are led by women, this highlights a massive gender imbalance in access to capital markets.
This needs to change, but that won’t happen overnight, and your business doesn’t have time to waste. So, for better or worse, you’ll need to embrace creative fundraising strategies. One place to start is crowdfunding, one of the few corners of the capital markets where women actually do better than men.
“Globally, women are more successful at crowdfunding than men: 22% of campaigns led by women reached their target, compared to 17% of those led by men,” says Techstars CEO Maelle Gavet.
Unfortunately, crowdfunding isn’t enough for capital-intensive businesses. To build a truly sustainable business that’s liquid enough to wait out what could be years of negative cash flow, you’ll need to embrace the power of bootstrapping, friends-and-family financing, and non-dilutive channels like public grants, tax financing, and debt markets. In short, embrace an “all of the above” financing strategy that takes nothing off the table.
4. Embrace Continuous Learning
Great entrepreneurs know when to admit when they’re wrong—or they just don’t know the answer. They also know that entrepreneurship, and life in general, are ongoing learning processes.
Great entrepreneurs embrace the idea of continuous learning. This is an important trait for any leader, particularly in high-growth industries, but it’s even more important to instill in company culture. It’s okay if this manifests differently than it might in an individual. Some of the world’s most respected firms embrace the related principle of continuous improvement.
Constant learning is baked into the idea of continuous improvement, which is all about making iterative enhancements to existing processes rather than grasping for step- or sea-changes.
Continuous improvement follows a four-step “plan-do-check-act” process, according to the American Society for Quality:
- Plan for a change
- Implement the change in a pilot project (Do)
- Measure and analyze the results (Check)
- If successful, implement the change on a wider scale (Act)
Continuous learning isn’t glamorous; it’s often a slow, quiet grind. However, continuous learning is an important ingredient in the recipe for a sustainable business.
Final Thoughts
Female entrepreneurs don’t need to reinvent the wheel to build great businesses. You merely need to embrace proven principles that have worked for your predecessors. That means focusing on building people-centric businesses, defining the business’s purpose and exploring creative financing strategies. That also includes leaning on other successful female leaders to create a virtuous circle where everyone rows in the same direction and business flourishes.
