The glass ceiling and your new business

Starting your own business is a tough, and female entrepreneurs must quickly learn what does and doesn’t work if they want to expand a company.

“The best advice I was given from another female entrepreneur was to choose a salary to live off of and put everything else back into the business — you have to invest back into your products, marketing and sales pipeline for your company to scale,” says Jessica Cooper, founder of Young Eden, a sustainable fashion e-commerce marketplace for children.

Here’s more advice from female entrepreneurs breaking glass ceilings:

Pick the right business model

Building a successful business is a pure numbers game — find a viable business model that will generate enough profit margins for growth, plus have the ability to bring in recurring revenue.

“If possible, use a sales-first strategy to sell your product before you invest in creating it,” says Cooper. “For example, drop shipping, digital products and print-on-demand models are good case studies to look at for a consumer business, while data companies and freemium models are helpful to consider for a business-to-business model.”

Take advice with a grain of salt

“It’s an almost universal experience for women entrepreneurs that the most well-meaning of friends and loved ones will offer ‘advice’ that is tantamount to ‘don’t do it,’” says Dawn LaFontaine, founder of Cat in the Box, which designs, manufactures and sells cat condos.

“Chances are you’ll hear that it’s a bad idea to start a business at this time in your life or in the economy, or you’ll hear stories of all the failed businesses their other friends started, or some other words of warning,” she says.

The best bet is to consider what’s been said but don’t let it be the final word. Only you get to decide whether you should start a business.

Network naturally

An essential part of being a business owner or entrepreneur is networking, a skill in which women are often naturally gifted. “My first year in business, I would tend to overbook myself at ‘business’ events,” says Sarah Loy, a career adviser at the Gallacher Cochran Agency representing American National Insurance Company in Las Vegas.

“A lot of these events were at night, so I felt like I was sacrificing time with my family. I also didn’t like the ‘forced’ nature of the events. It left me exhausted and definitely didn’t fuel my passion.”

Luckily, with some advice from mentors, Loy realized there needn’t be a hard line between business and life. “I can create connections with like-minded people and grow a referral-based business any time, any place,” she says.

Don’t play down to competition

Laurie Ehrlich, MBA, founder and chief strategist at Elevate Marketing Co., a marketing and business strategy consultancy in Lansing, Michigan, says the best piece of advice she has received — and has since paid forward — is not to play down to the competition. Use competition to your advantage.

“If there’s a huge piece of business you can’t take on yourself, bring on another subject matter expert as your subcontractor,” she says.

Develop a brand identity

If we learned anything during COVID, it’s that a brand identity is crucial to expand your online presence.

“So, make sure your site is keyword-rich, mobile friendly, loads quickly and produces meaningful content,” says Paige Arnof-Fenn, founder, and CEO of Mavens & Moguls, a global strategic marketing consulting firm. Those attributes are the price of entry for effective SEO, she says.

If you don’t brand yourself online, others will brand you instead, she advises.

Eat rejection for breakfast

Tenacity and flexibility are the two more essential characteristics of being a founder.

“I’ve been rejected more times than I can count at an initial go around, and while it’s never easy to get used to rejection, you learn that it’s an acquired taste,” says Samantha Flynn, owner of Junipr Public Relations, a strategic communications firm with offices in Chicago and Philadelphia.