Did you, or are you running your business as a part-time or full-time venture? Why?
It always FELT like full-time! But I am a serial entrepreneur. I even had a business when my kids were growing up—a cleaning service. I could and did help clients all day long, as long as I had control over my own schedule. I was able to manage the work without feeling that I had to be somewhere from 9-5. Even now, a lot of the work I do doesn’t happen during 9-5. I have a lot of appointments or meetings during that timeframe, but a lot of my work happens early in the morning or late at night. So, it has allowed me to have a life but I’ve never been constrained by the 9-5 work day. I can take breaks when I need to take them. The one exception to that of course is when you have a retail store. I had one of the first weaving and spinning stores in the country during the 1970s.
Were your parents entrepreneurs?
No. My mom was a teacher and dad was a chemist.
Did you take on a partner in your business at any time?
No. Although at this point in time, starting this year, I have been working with a group of people collaboratively and we are thinking of creating a consortium in a more formal way. I’ve had employees but never had a partner. I’m hoping someone will step up in the future, but no one has yet.
If you had to start another business, what have you learned that you might do differently—either about yourself, or about how to run a business in general?
The thought of that is horrible. One of my concerns now is this idea of a consortium, because it almost feels like another business, and I honestly have enough on my plate right now.
You just have to follow your passions and love what you do. That is what is so engaging about entrepreneurship. When you start something you love it—it is the drive, core or seed that determines how you create your business, and your life. There is an emotional and personal connection to your work as an entrepreneur that most people don’t find in a job. Some people do, but most people don’t. With a job, for most people, they end up compromising fun in order to get paid for work. If we insist that we love what we do instead, rather than hate what we do if we get paid, the world would be a much better place. Most businesses never get the gifts that you can bring to work and to the world. When you start your own business, you have a real chance to create an environment where you absolutely love your work, and in turn, everyone around you can love it too. If you have a great idea and implement it in a way that makes people hate it, what’s the point?
That’s where values become so important. Values frame the content for creating a business that is full of life. You have a verbal reminder of how to be and how to make whatever it is that you’re doing a delightful experience. Chip Conley has a company called Joie de Vivre—the joy of life—and that’s also how he treats his employees and customers. You can do this as an employee or entrepreneur too, but as an entrepreneur you have more power to make that happen. As an employee, you’ll have more limits. If you love your work, though, that helps. If you’re just there for a paycheck, that’s really hard to do. We seek joy in our families or volunteerism or other ways when we don’t love our work. But it puts a huge stress on us that truly doesn’t need to be there. We are here to love and have fun! Some just aren’t focused on that, but we all should be.
Did you start your business with your own capital?
Yes, it has been mostly all my own capital. Now I’m in the fortunate place of having a financial angel giving me some help. But, I’m also now in the place where I’m trying to raise capital. Women go to banks to get money, and that is not where you get capital for a business. It’s a whole different game to raise capital, as I said before. I think this is a difference between men and women. With men, if they like another guy, they are willing to give him money to run his business. I don’t know if it has something to do with the mother in us as women, but there’s something where men don’t think we can handle the ugliness that can happen in business.
There is a code that must be cracked to get capital. I learned about this at CEO Space, but you have to find someone who is willing to share the secrets with you. Guys have a network, so if you have a relationship with someone, they’ll tell you. My dad taught my brother about money, but not me. He assumed I’d grow up, get married, and the man would worry about that. That’s changing to some extent, but it is really hard to figure out how to get money unless you have friends with money. Also, the investors out there who have money to give to you are mainly men…about 95% of them are men. Men respond better to other men. It is a relationship that they understand.
It is also my own personal belief that if a man doesn’t grow up with a sister, he doesn’t really know what to do with women in business or how to treat them. They don’t view women as peers. I think a lot of sexual harassment is really men trying to figure out how to relate to women in business, because men treat men differently. It goes back to my previous comment about the ranking thing—men are constantly ranking themselves against each other. When men run into women in business, they either think they are moms or something else but NOT peers. I’ve seen that in corporations too. Women were well respected by their male peers, so they were treated as part of the guys’ club. But, the women didn’t perceive the men respected them AT ALL. It’s sad in some ways, because women who have done amazing things simultaneously felt absolutely disrespected, but they actually weren’t. Men felt they weren’t appreciated either.
What about the challenges of the roller coaster income as an entrepreneur?
I think what I found teaching high school kids is that some found entrepreneurship can be a challenge when they realize they need the stability of income and healthcare insurance. When you’re an entrepreneur, income goes up and comes down, and it can be a struggle. That’s why it is important to save before starting a business. It is going to take some time for the income to come in when starting, unless you’re extremely lucky. Understanding income flow is big deal. That, and dealing with ambiguity.
Why do you think more single/divorced and widowed women start more businesses than men in their respective categories, and does your theory match your own rationale for starting a business?
I am a serial entrepreneur; that is how I live. I like the freedom and ability to do what I want to do. My first business was actually selling gold jewelry. That was a big deal in the 1960s, because it was the first time you could sell gold outside of a jewelry store. I had a stock of gold jewelry and I’d visit friends and they would buy from me. But it allowed me an income, to enjoy what I was doing, and it was something that was all mine. I was able to be who I actually was at “work.”
Also, I think for women with children, it is really tough to leave them behind and go back to the workforce. For example, now I’m watching friends who just had kids re-enter the workforce, and someone else is raising their children. It’s not the mother, because she’s at work. That is a really painful thing to do. Entrepreneurship gives you both worlds—the ability to make a reasonable living working for yourself and a LOT of control over the kind of life you have in a way you could never do within corporate America as an employee.
What is your personal definition of success, and have you achieved it?
My personal expression of success is fully expressing myself and really feeling like I’ve made a difference in the lives of others by doing so. I’ve had moments of this with my teaching and consulting (which in a way is just another form of teaching). When I work with clients, it is always very gratifying to see where they go and how much they can achieve. We just did a strategic planning event for a client; it far exceeded everyone’s expectations and went in directions that could not have been predicted. That to me is success.
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