The Great Resignation is an Economic Empowerment Moment
Written by Amanda Munday, a queer mama of two, the founder and CEO of The Workaround, and instructor of Build It: Start Your Feminist Small Business in 8 Weeks
In 2018, when my children were four and two years old, I quit my job leading marketing for a high-growth tech startup to open a day care and co-working company.
I jumped off the metaphorical cliff because I’m chronically stubborn. I’m also ambitious and was determined to circumvent the daily logistical and financial barriers of being a new parent trying to climb that corporate ladder. I resented the daily grind of day care drop-off and pickup when others could stay at work longer, not to mention fees that exceeded my mortgage and transportation expenses combined.
I didn’t start The Workaround from a place of certain success but rather by seeking autonomy — combined with a creative solution to a problem affecting so many — to unlock many avenues for my personal wealth creation (financial and social) and for a purpose-driven life.
Today my resilience gene is gnawing at me to motivate more marginalized people to consider the opportunity of small business. Not over-glorified tech startups, but small business. Entrepreneurship 1.0. What we did before the billionaires and pirates of Silicon Valley took over.
Remember what entrepreneurship used to mean?
I’m talking about the kind of entrepreneurship that doesn’t need a gatekeeper’s permission. The type of entrepreneurship where marginalized groups thrive. More than one million women own small businesses in the U.S., and that number could be much larger with strategic support without the intensity and limiting bias of raising venture capital money.
If the world has ever been ripe for an explosion of minority-owned small businesses, it’s now. So many of us were so dramatically let down over the last year. We didn’t survive a global pandemic to go back to a demoralizing role working for someone else.
Millions are already taking the first step. Recent reports indicate one in four employees are considering quitting their jobs after the pandemic. Not just for more flexible roles or ones with more substantial benefits, but for values-aligned work. Fifty-three percent of those leaving would jump industries if they had the training, according to a recent report. We no longer want to work to live. We are ready to build a life worth living.
How can I nudge you into betting on yourself instead? I’ve helped more than 500 parents in my space through the uncertainty and fear that stops so many from leaping into business ownership full-time. And I know that there is tremendous privilege in having the financial and caregiving capacity to risk income without full-time employment. But we won’t level out the stats without strategically helping each other succeed. It’s why I’m developing a future course along with Chairman Mom, a non-toxic community for womxn, to lead womxn through an 8-week process to go from dream to plan. Sign up for our free event on Tuesday, September 14 all about how to go from freelancer to founder.
Despite my zeal, I get that jumping off a cliff isn’t easy.
I am a bootstrapped founder who is revenue generating, not ventured funded. Someone who is debt financed to build a literal space for parents to exhale. When Toronto went into lockdown the first time, bankruptcy seemed certain. I spent months putting one foot in front of the other, watching better-funded competitors shutter around me. My breathing was often shallow, my sleep fragmented and night terror-filled. There have been many moments since where I unequivocally believed quitting my job was the dumbest choice I could have made. But I was wrong.
It was the answer to finally being free. Sometimes that means walking through fire — or living through a pandemic — to get there.
I am not a unicorn entrepreneur. I didn’t know anything about building out physical spaces or the logistics of owning a day care when I started. If I can build from nothing and survive a pandemic, you can too — especially as the world returns to eating, shopping, and thriving.
Whatever you do, don’t go backward. Mothers, through no fault of their own, need to rebuild their careers after bearing the brunt of the caregiving responsibilities during more than a year of being at home with children. Even before the pandemic, the number one reason women switched to part-time work was inaccessible child care. I’m rarely shocked when people tell me they’re leaving their role for a lower paying, part-time job with more flexibility.
Instead of sacrificing so much, is there an opportunity now, one that hasn’t quite existed before, to consider entrepreneurship? As Katica Roy says, it’s women-founded companies that will save the economy. Without purpose and combined with pay inequality, workplace discrimination, and limited career growth, I’m not at all surprised to see people, especially women, saying “enough.” If you ask me, small business is the answer.
Starting your own business, one in which you plan to make real money from the get-go (or close to it) can unlock your personal freedom and land you within the next great labor movement into self-directed work.
It’s worth noting that pursuing a small business is far easier than trying to raise and return venture capital. We know that Black women are systemically underfunded and only 2% of venture capital goes to women, period. That is especially absurd when you consider the power of the underfunded — have you ever met a more efficient worker than an exhausted parent who has to outperform her white male colleagues and get swimming lessons booked all while running on three hours of sleep?
VC’s loss can be your gain when you self-fund your own thing. You take all the risk, but you get all the rewards — financial and otherwise. Unlock your freedom and rebuild the economy for you.
