Stairway to Entrepreneurship
My Saturday helping up-and-coming entrepreneurs at Goldup
We underestimate just how far from reality most people are when they think about how someone becomes an entrepreneur. Since it’s a relatively new thing in our society, we think that entrepreneurship is just obvious for some people, that it’s this magical thing, that it can’t be explained.
And yet nobody would expect an artist to paint the Sistine Chapel as their first work. Nobody would expect a musician to compose an opera as their first piece. Even Proust wrote a pretty bad book his first time out :)
Entrepreneurship is exactly the same. Entrepreneurs need practice, they need to go step by step, they need experience.
That’s why Alice created Goldup, a program for women who want to launch their online business. Doing e-commerce via Shopify is a first step toward becoming a super entrepreneur. It helps you to push toward concrete successes. And it lets women take a big step, in a warm, welcoming environment: earning money online.
Last Saturday, I spent all day at Goldup.
Besides being a welcoming place with a vast majority of women, it gives the men on our team (and I definitely include myself!) to understand some things that aren’t necessarily obvious when women are present as a minority.
The problem with minorities is that they can become invisible. It’s hard for the majority to have the right level of empathy for their problems, or even to just understand their problems. But when you hold 15 office hours with women, that’s when you can really see their problems.
I don’t have any great explanation regarding their specific problems, and really the explanations aren’t what I’m interested in; but here’s some of what I saw.
“Save the planet, our children and their future, otherwise I don’t deserve the money.”
We hear that women aren’t ambitious, but in reality, it’s because we don’t see their burning, all-encompassing ambition to make the world a better place.
Striving to have a real sense in what we do is a good thing. Needing to do something that matters, I get it. But that kind of pressure, to save the world, and so early in your voyage, is something that destroys value.
So let’s get back to the basics: Earning money is the goal of a business. And that goal is a noble one.
Yes, money in your pocket is better than money in someone else’s pocket.
No, charging the right price for a product isn’t taking advantage of anyone.
No, making a profit isn’t optional.
We should start taking steps, steps to create a generation of women who earn their living and make money without feeling guilty about it. That money will be a powerful weapon in making moves to save the planet.
“I don’t know anything, so I assume the worst.”
The entrepreneurs at The Family — even when they don’t know what they’re doing — have the tendency to assume that things are going to get better, that they’re going to come out on the other side. It’s that porous barrier between being recklessness and fear that lets an entrepreneur achieve the impossible.
Not every man is like that, obviously. But the entrepreneurs at The Family are. They don’t need to feel competent in order to feel like they can do it.
What really struck me on Saturday was being in the presence of so many women who were incredibly competent, and yet who felt like they weren’t allowed to do something. They always assumed that a lack of information really meant a lack of competence, and so they couldn’t move forward. No! You’ve just got to do it.
Yes, sometimes we don’t know what the results will ultimately be.
No, you don’t need to plan for everything.
Yes, improvising is a possibility, and it works!
I don’t know why this particular attitude is more present in women, but no matter the reason, it’s a real obstacle when it comes to entrepreneurship. The good news is that after the 4th office hour, I realized what was happening. It was much easier after that to encourage them to take risks. There’s no need to push hard, you just have to push in the right place :)
Entrepreneurship à la femme
Being an entrepreneur is like climbing a set of stairs. Everyone goes at their own pace, some people take the steps three at a time, others go up slow and steady.
6 years ago, I would have said something dumb, like “Man or woman, it’s the same battle.” But it’s more subtle than that: “Man or woman, it’s the same battle, but not the same set of stairs.”
Goldup opens a pathway for women, where they can learn to question their fears, to improvize, to accept the need to make money, to take the first step of entrepreneurship: selling online.
And something tells me that some of them are going to really like it, and keep heading up the stairway of entrepreneurship.
