Paying It Forward for Women Entrepreneurs
November 14th is International Girls Day, and though we might not know exactly what kinds of jobs will be available when they’re ready to work, we do know what pressures they’re likely to face.
It’s a great opportunity for women business owners, including those who don’t have children, to pass knowledge on to the next generations. And if anyone helped you on your path, it’s also a great time to pay it forward.
Girls need to know the basics of science
No, I don’t believe everyone needs to be in a STEM career. Young women who are interested in science can explore those possibilities, but even those who aren’t need to understand the scientific method. That’s our best method so far of understanding our world.
The scientific method is important for women entrepreneurs, who use it to determine their offerings, price points, and marketing. (For more detail, see this article.) In an age of deepfakes, AI that can digitally reanimate dead people and bots that use our “social” media for the purposes of stirring up and dividing us, it’s critically important that they know how to determine what’s real.
This includes biology, especially young women’s own bodies. What their brains need (including rest and fun), how the various organs work, and how to nourish them. Their sexual organs and proper names for everything. (I don’t love that little kids learn vague terms, but at least in high school the various body parts need their proper names.) Who gets to touch their bodies and what consent means. All of this is great for boys too.
And: what hormones are, how they work, and how to get back to baseline after a stressful event. In other words, how to self-soothe in an empowering way, instead of numbing through drink/drugs/sex/etc.
Women entrepreneurs can serve as role models. At least, the ones who aren’t at risk of burnout because they’re just pushing through the day instead of prioritizing and delegating.
Since many of us are at A Certain Age, we can also share our peri/menopausal journeys so they don’t end up in their 40s and 50s like we did, screaming What fresh hell is this? when a new symptom pops up. (Apologies to Dorothy Parker.)
Girls need to know the basics of finance
Some women proudly state that they’re bad at math, which a) shouldn’t be a point of pride (sorrynotsorry) and b) doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with finances. Women can find online calculators to help them put together a spending plan and a retirement plan (and any other financial issues); no one needs to be good at math to be in charge of their finances.
It’s not just paying immediately into savings, either. While a savings cushion is good, women need to learn how to invest their money. Leaving it in cash isn’t safe because of inflation.
Women all know we live longer than men, but the answer to that isn’t to keep your money in safe investments the whole time. Knowing how to invest in stocks – and not blow up the plan due to temporary market downturns – is critical.
Here too, women entrepreneurs can serve as role models, whether or not you’ve hired a bookkeeper/CPA to handle your taxes. You can show how you think about money, set aside money for taxes and savings, and anything else a young woman might need to know.
Girls need to know how to think critically
Don’t worry, humanities degrees aren’t useless. All women (and men) need to be able to think through complicated, nuanced issues whether they prefer STEM or not.
We’re in a world where politicians knowingly lie with every word out of their mouths, and some supposed “legacy” media does as well. Not to mention all the bloggers and vloggers out there just making sh*t up. Young women need to know how to look for sources that are credible and think about issues for themselves.
They need to know about common cognitive biases, such as recency bias, where people believe that the last info they got was the right one.
And especially confirmation bias, where all details that support your own worldview get cherrypicked as true and everything that doesn’t is labeled false or ignored. The problem is that “gut sense” or “common sense” is often wrong when it comes to more advanced technologies and situations where you might need to use them.
This is where we Gen X entrepreneurs can really shine. Because, as one meme on Facebook says, You have to give it to Gen X; our sneering distrust of everything turned out to be right.
I often won’t even read articles if the title is something I already know/agree with. I want to read an article that claims the opposite of that, or hints that new information has come to the surface. I’m also careful about sources. Cui bono (who benefits) is key knowledge in the 21st century.
Girls need to know how to use technology and inner wisdom as tools
I think the best thing anyone can do for the girl/young women in their lives is to make sure they can’t access their smartphone 24/7. They need to know how to do certain tasks by themselves before they outsource it to AI. Like writing an essay, since writing is how you discover what you think, per Joan Didion. Relying on their smartphones will leave them unable to do these things as adults.
Put the phones away for eating and sleeping at the very least. Hopefully homework too, so they can bang it out and get it done instead of playing on the phone. They need to reclaim the phone as a tool, not a very small entertainment device.
They also need to know about their inner wisdom, and where it’s applicable and where it isn’t. Our inner wisdom is fine-tuned to place where we are in a society, our own values, and what we want out of life. Young women may need some time to develop these ideas.
What our inner wisdom doesn’t know about is any technology developed in the modern or Industrial Age eras. Inner wisdom doesn’t know jack sh*t about investing, so don’t listen to it about the market. It also doesn’t know jack sh*t about medicine.
Women have not been served well historically by doctors, and that is a documented fact. Our bodies aren’t considered for different medical trials and doctors are often dismissive of women’s pain, especially if the woman in question isn’t white, thin, young, and conventionally attractive.
I personally have had good experiences with female doctors, and I also know that others have not. I understand why women might look to alternative health practices, but the problem is that what people refer to as “Western medicine” is usually based on evidence, not on guesses.
I think there is absolutely room for some natural or alternative health practices IN ADDITION to going to the doctor. Use aloe vera when you’re sunburned, gargle with warm salty water when your throat hurts, etc. But colloidal silver isn’t going to help you breathe when you have five pulmonary emboli (blood clots in your lungs) – you need a steroid to breathe and then some blood thinners until the clots dissolve.
Taking horse dewormer and/or horse tranquilizer isn’t going to help you with your seasonal allergies or when you try to do a leap in ballet class and come down the wrong way, thus breaking a bone in your foot almost all the way through. (True story.) Though the horse tranquilizer could help with depression when paired with some therapy!
At the same time, it is important to listen to your gut about the things it does know about. For example, that you shouldn’t take the job at a wealth management firm when no one you interviewed with has any sense of humor whatsoever. Or that someone is out for their own advantage and doesn't really care what happens to you.
Or that the situation you find yourself in, even for no reason that you can logically see, is bad in some way. If a young woman’s instincts are telling her to run from a parson, a party, a person, or whatever, she should probably obey that instinct – inner wisdom will tell you when the vibe is off with other people.
The flip side of that coin is that women often collaborate very well, and teaming up with someone else can help a young woman scale the learning curve faster or just reach her goals sooner. Inner wisdom can also help here in the choice of partner, with the awareness that grifters and con artists often seem like good people.
A young woman’s biggest tool is her brain,and women entrepreneurs who also use their brains as their biggest tools can help them hone it.
Recap (tl;dr):
Whatever the future holds, there are things that young women need to know and that women entrepreneurs can help show the way.
If you’re a woman business owner struggling with not having enough time to mentor even though it’s something you’d like to do, click here to set up your free Laser Focus Acceleration Session.
Photo by Mehdi Benkaci on Unsplash.