We make no bones about how passionate we are about entrepreneurship at Melanmag.com and while that life is not for everyone, all too often the most common reason cited for women not taking the steps to running their own business is fear and self-doubt.
Go Against the Flow is a wonderfully insightful book edited by Charu Sharma, herself a new entrepreneur who, keen to encourage more women into business, gathered wisdom and insights from established and up and coming women business leaders.
“I recommend that my college friends turning their passion for education healthcare or dance into businesses and they tell me they don’t know how to become an entrepreneur. They don’t yet know what start-ups are and how much they can achieve as entrepreneurs. Their risk-version and the lack of exposure is leading to a waste of incredible entrepreneurial talents. Young men and women get a good stable job. When they could instead use their potential to hustle to innovatively solve problems they are passionate about. The ones who are aware of the possibility is pertinent to entrepreneurship do not have access to resources or mentors in the field, and do you not know how to get their foot in the door, how to really get started.
Data show that women, especially, tend to be relatively risk-averse and self-doubting, and are less likely to believe that they are capable of running an enterprise or even to admit that they want to be in a position to run the show.
At some point or the other we all have thought about business ideas, but often we shut those down due to 1) inaction, 2) thinking that our idea is crazy or impossible, and 3) thinking that we are not prepared enough for what it takes to run a business. Forty years ago, not just anyone walking down the street could be an entrepreneur, but times have changed. Today, anyone with a problem, and a passion to solve it can be an entrepreneur. We are adaptive and innovative, and for us, nothing is impossible. Whether sixteen or sixty-one years old, we have the privilege to leverage technology to solve challenging problems, and make the world a more connected, resourceful, healthier, happier, and self-aware place. All we need to do is go against the flow and discover the risk taker within us.
Buy Go Against The Flow here
