Top Challenges of Female Entrepreneurs and How to Solve Them

Kris Plachy: Hey everyone. I'm Chris Plaquey, and this is How to Lead for Female Entrepreneurs and Founders because the best way to grow a business is to grow the person who's running it. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hello. Hello. I'm Chris Plaquey, master coach, and you have found the How To Lead Podcast. For female entrepreneurs, I'm so glad that you're here. If you're a returning listener, welcome back and if you're a brand new listener, welcome. I'm so glad that we're gonna be able to share some interesting conversations together.

Listen, if you're a female entrepreneur, I know that there's a lot of experts out there trying to get your attention. Um, you know, they wanna show you how to market your business. They wanna show you how to run your business. They wanna show you how to, uh, make more money, get more clients, you know, do advertising on Facebook.

There's lots of people out there, uh, working really hard to get your attention. In this space that I have here, I believe is pretty unique because what I focus on here is really the people part of your business. You know, you started because you had an idea. You had something in the world that you wanted to put out there, right?

Whether it was a service or a product, you have a solution that you've worked really hard to get into the hands. Of others. And once you do that successfully, it's so invigorating, right? You finally tap into the client or the customer that wants what you have. And it's so exciting because you start to sell and make money and realize that people want what you've thought about for years.

And then what happens is you grow. In order to be able to get this product or service to a larger group of people, you have to scale your own business, and that means you have to add bodies to your business. But there's a problem with that because as soon as you start adding people to your business, it changes how your business runs, right?

Because it's not just you anymore. And that's normal. But in my experience, most of the female entrepreneurs that I work with as clients weren't managers or leaders beforehand. They're certainly leaders in their, in their field. Because you've, you've identified this idea and you've made it happen, but maybe you don't have all that management mechanics, right?

Like, how do I actually deal with employees? How do I hire them? How do I. Fire them. How do I hold them accountable? If you're brand new and you're just starting to add people to the team, there's a lot of trepidation, right? Like, how do I know they're the right person? How do I even figure out who the right person is?

And then really some even bigger questions, you know, who am I as this business leader, this president, this principal, this owner. And so on this podcast, that's the work we are gonna do together because I don't believe there's enough of that available for women like you. And so, and this is my expertise, I have been working with leaders in a fast-paced startup kind of environment for.

The majority of my career. So I recognize what it's like to be trying to make adjustments to the plane while the plane's still in the air, right? We're not gonna land this plane that you've now taken off into the sky and now is soaring. We can't land the plane to figure out, oh, what kind of team do we need?

Now? We're not gonna do that. We've gotta keep flying the plane, but we also have to grow the team, right? So that's what you're gonna find that we're gonna do here. So when I think about this inaugural kickoff episode, I really wanted to think about what are the key challenges that I see most of my clients really wrangling with?

And I wanna offer those to you and offer you the solutions because if you're like most of my clients, these are gonna resonate. And the other thing is, That most of my clients are usually around the seven figure mark. Now, that doesn't mean if you're not making seven figures, you should immediately turn this podcast off.

But the reason that I say that is it's right around that seven figure mark in terms of revenue that we start to realize we have to scale. You can hustle pretty hard and make 500, 600 grand. I think at that point you start to need more help. And if you haven't gotten help at even like the 300 grand mark, you're probably really exhausted.

Um, and we're gonna talk about that on future episodes. But once we hit that seven figure mark, woo, that's when you have to get help. And if you haven't done some of the thinking that we're gonna do through the series of podcasts that I produce here, then that's where, that's where it starts to become overwhelming.

And that's where a lot of my clients meet me, and they, I, I meet them frustrated, overwhelmed. They sort of start to hate their business. They resent their business. They, the, the reason that they started their business no longer really feels valid. And so I wanna make sure that you have what you need to help you, because the worst thing I think on this, on this planet would be for a brilliant woman like you to have an incredible idea, product service that you have now found clients for that they, they want what you have, but you give up because the people part is hard.

I don't, don't do that. Your idea, your work, it's vital. Right, and this, there's never been a more important time for women to be pursuing their entrepreneurial goals, to be doing the work of an entrepreneur because it's changing the planet. And in fact, I think I just read recently, there was a study done by the National Association of Women Business Owners, and they found that there's 11, a little over 11 million firms out there that are run by women.

11 million, which is translating into 9 million people having a job. So because you are doing your work in the world, right? You're now creating opportunity for other people and it's also, it's also translating into almost 2 trillion in the, in the marketplace. That is a lot of money that exists now because you are doing your thing in the world.

So our work, and it's never been a better time, right? To be a female entrepreneur. You anyone can do this. We have such availability. To creating what we want. Right. If you have internet access and a and a microphone of whatever that microphone is, you can get in touch with your client, with your customer.

This is an incredible time. So we don't, I, the last thing I ever wanna see is somebody who is so talented like you give up because it's hard to manage people and figure out how to get the most outta people and figure out how to bring people. I get it. It is hard. But once you master that, It's like it just helps you take off, right?

But let's get that part dialed. So I really wanna talk about what are the key things that I see my clients struggle with, and hope that through this conversation on this first episode, We'll, we'll create, um, some, maybe a little bit of validation for you that you're not alone and also some ways to think differently so that these challenges don't present themselves so difficult for you.

Okay, so the first one is what I call failure to lead. And this is really common for my bootstrappy entrepreneurs. So you, like I said, you've got this idea. You hustle, you grind, you do everything you can to get it out there. And so even if you have people that you're working with, you're very side by side through the process, right?

Let's just like all hands on deck, let's get it done. And so your vision is carrying everybody through. You know what you're trying to achieve. And so everybody's pushing towards that vision. But then there's this gap for you because like I said, the majority of women that I coach never had any management training.

They never had any leadership training. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you need it, but But in the absence of it, right, you're really not just bootstrapping how to make money and how to sell your product or your service, but you're also bootstrapping how to corral people to get it done. And what happens is we often just have a lot of.

Um, habits, behaviors, things that we do, maybe even in our personal life, we bring into our professional life that aren't very effective. And so we don't really think about leading. And in fact, most of my clients tell themselves I'm not good at leading. I'm not good at being a manager. I don't wanna do that part.

And so because we fail to lead and we fail to learn how to lead, then a lot of my clients want to find somebody to lead their business for them. Right. You wanna insert that person, and I'll tell you what, there may be a perfectly good reason to do that, but we don't want to add a leader to your business outside of you until you are totally dialed.

On what it is that you want your business to represent, who you want to be as the leader of your business, what you want people to do in your business every day, how you want your culture to feel and vibe, right? Most of you have a, well, every business has a culture. But most people, especially small businesses and and and founder led businesses have an accidental culture.

You haven't really planned it and sometimes that works out, but sometimes you look around and you think, oh, that's so interesting. I have a few clients who look, are looking around like, I don't think our culture's very healthy, and that's not. It's not, you know, in, in, it's not a, um, intentional problem, I get that, but it, it can be an outcome of not having sort of a conscious approach to how you lead your people.

And so that's one of the things I do with my clients is we ground, like, who are you as a leader? Who are you as a manager? You do have to manage some people until you really understand the systems. That help manage people. Okay? And that's part of what I do with my clients. Everything that you want to help relieve some of the stress that comes from managing people is available in a system and a process.

But when we don't know even what the vision is or the philosophy is that we wanna use to guide that system and process, we can't create it and then we can't sustain it. So that first piece, failure to lead, very common, because again, we're just. We're technical experts driving to get something done in the world, right?

You're, you are a marketer, you are a healthcare professional. You are, um, a technical technology expert. It's, it's understandable that you've been driving with vision on your technical competence, but now you, you can't continue to be the technical expert. You have to become the leader. And there's learning to do there, and that's okay.

It's not that hard. It just requires a few things to get some insight into yourself so that you can be more conscious in how you create the people part of your business. Okay? The second thing is what I call defining the game. So here's what a lot of I, a lot of founders I experience go through. You get started and you bring a few people on to help you, and those people are really, really essential, right?

They're, you couldn't get it done with your few people. And then as you get bigger, those few people still are there. But the business has grown and the business has changed. And you've grown and you've changed, but sometimes you look around and you're not getting what you want out of these people who've been with you now for a while, and you're frustrated and you're not sure what to do.

And so then what I watch people do is they, they take the people that they have and they try and define the game that they're playing by the players that they have on the team, and. That doesn't work. What we have to do instead is we have to define the game that we're playing and then figure out what kind of players we need to win the game.

And the hard part about this is that it's, it's, I don't have actual statistics, but I'm gonna tell you it's very high that the people who got you to where you are today, Will very much likely not be the people who will get you to where you are going next. It's very, very common that you have to transition your team as long as you've clearly defined the game.

Now, why is that? It's because of skillset. It's because of mindset. It's the way people interact. It's the way people think about your business. It's the way people think about you. It's the way you think about them. But if you're starting to realize like you're kind of pulling people with you and you're re like, I what the most common refrain is?

Well, so-and-so has been my marketing person. But I just decided that, you know, well, they wanted more opportunity and they wanted more money, so I put them in my chief operating officer role, or I put them in my, you know, chief assistant role or chief administration role or whatever you made up. People make up all sorts of titles, right?

But that person was not even close to ready for that job. But you put them in it because you're defining the game. You're playing by the people that you have. If you really wanted a real COO or chief marketing officer, or chief administrative officer, you need to go out and get one right now if that person happens to be in your business.

Good news. But what we're doing most of the time is we're looking at who we have and thinking, oh, I need this, so I'm gonna pull this person over here. And they're not qualified. But because they've been with you for a long time, you, you're, you're sort of making that error and it's exhausting. There is nothing more exhausting than putting someone in a job that they are not qualified for, especially for you.

You don't have time. You do not have time to be developing people. You have to have a clearly defined game. What is the game that your business is playing metaphorically? How does your business win? And what are the players that you need to hire to make sure that the business wins the game? That's the question I wanna ask you to invite.

Not that's the question I wanna invite you to be, be thinking about. Not how do I make it work with all the people I have already. Okay. All right. Number three is an fascinating one. Okay. So you, when you get started, and it is just you, right? There's this whole relationship that you have with your business, which we'll keep talking about on podcasts, but most brand new solopreneurs have what we call a lifestyle business, right?

So your business and you, it's very, it's very, you know, um, Um, overlapping and you take money from the business and you put money in the business, right? That's just like you two are the same entity. And the relationship you have with the money that your business generates is very intimate, to say the least.

Right? Then as you start to hire people, what I see a lot of people do is they hire people based on what they need. In the business, but a lot of those new kind of initial hires we're hiring people based on what we can afford. And a lot of times we even tell people that, well, right now, all I can afford to do is pay you this much right now.

I can afford this much right now. I'll give you 10% of whatever I earn, or I'll give you the 10% of whatever that costs. And so there's a lot of transparency between you and those initial employees and money. And, um, there's the caution with that over time is that those employees start to believe that when you start to make more money, they should too.

Right? Like there's this, because they were with you at the beginning, like there's this real connection they have with your success, but they think that you, because you're being successful, they get to be successful financially. Now, if you've designed a profit sharing plan, that's good news. Execute on that.

If you've done it with intention, that's the kind of business model you wanna have. Awesome. But I'm telling you, most of you don't. Most of you like, and there's guilt in here, right? Like, oh, I'm starting to make more money. I should pay my people more money. I should give them more of the money I make.

Right? And then there's guilt. If you don't, the converse to that is you get annoyed that people want more money. You start. So there's all this weird transparency with money. So here's how I want you to think about. When you hire someone, always you define the job, you define the result that you are expecting.

From that job, you consider what the value is that that result will provide to the business, not to you. And then you associate a salary to the job. So this job is worth $40 an hour. This job is worth $80,000 a year. This job is worth $200,000 a year. And then you make people an offer. You don't make people an offer of, Hey, I think I could pay you $40 an hour, but if things don't go well, I'm gonna maybe have to lower that a little versus, and you also don't pay people, well, I'm only making this much so I can only afford to pay you this much.

We don't make those kinds of comments either. I write a job description. I go through the process of really evaluating the value this position is gonna put to back to the organization in terms of results. And then I assess the value that that would be to my, to my business. $40 an hour, 80 grand, whatever it is.

And then I make people an offer. When you have people who've been around with you for a while, this gets blurry and, and I imagine there's a few of you listening to this to know exactly what I'm talking about. And so one of the things I actually ask a lot of my clients to do when we first start working together is really just going, if you have three people that report to you, I think you need to assess like.

Would I hire this person again? And what would I hire them for? And do I need to make a new offer? Give them the opportunity to accept or reject it, because being too tied up together here in your money and their money and the business's money is not healthy. It's not healthy for your growth, for and for the business's growth.

Okay. Number four is something I call down thinking. This is very common and I think this is actually more common with women than with men. Um, but you've got a team, maybe you have three people you've worked with, maybe you have two. Um, And you, you're always just, you're always just brainstorming with each other, coming up with ideas.

But the problem is, is you're also very transparent with them. This is why coaching is so incredibly valuable to someone like you. Where do you go to work through your own thoughts, your own worry, your own concerns, your own frustrations. That isn't your employees, isn't your team. It's not constructive for you to work down into your business.

They need you to lead them. They do not need you to work out your worry through them. That is not an employee's responsibility. That is not a team member's responsibility. Your responsibility if you have things you need to think about that have nothing to do with their job. You've gotta have somewhere else you go to do that.

It will help all of you and it will help you be better. I run a group for female entrepreneurs and the thinking in there, that's the whole goal is to uplevel the way that people think, right? I coach women and challenge them to think differently, and as a result, all of them, all of their businesses are doing so well, but they're not doing the down thinking, which they were once doing with their team members.

Your team members are not entrepreneurs, you guys, they're employees. Which is fine. That's fine. We need employees. I love a, I love a great team member. I love somebody who wants to work really hard for my business, and then I pay them in exchange. I love that. But they're not entrepreneurs. They don't think like you, and that's okay.

But you've gotta really practice like up thinking, not down, thinking we don't wanna go down into the organization to solve our problems. We wanna challenge people to solve problems for the business, that's your job. But going down in there to complain or vent or worry, it's a no. You've gotta go up and out to do that.

Attachment and dragging people along. This is the other one that sort of compliments some of the other things I've been talking about. But as an example, I've, I've coached a lot of clients who've said things to me like, yeah, I've been, ha, I've had this person working with me for eight years, and they're, you know, they, they drive me crazy, but you know, they've been with me for eight years.

That I don't know. I don't understand what that means. So they've been with you for eight years, so they get to stay. This is a business. We don't drag people along, but as women, we have a tendency to think about our business as a family. Your business is not a family, right. Your business is a business. And it's like my girlfriend says to me, if it's a family, there's always somebody living in the basement and I'm, I'm pretty confident if you and I had a conversation today, we would, um, We would find out who some of those people are, and they can also be vendors, right?

We're talking about people that we pay. These can be people that are vendors of yours that you've used for a while. Maybe it's your, you know, your design person or your marketing person, or your Facebook ads person, or your word, or your website WordPress person, and you've just worked with them forever because you've worked with them forever.

Because you know why it's hard to find someone new and it's exhausting. Who wants to do that? We tolerate. Substandard performance because of the effort it will require to find someone new. But then once we find someone new, oh my gosh, we wonder why did we wait so long? Right? Don't drag people with you because you are attached.

We hire people into our business. To help the business deliver results. We don't hire people into the business to take care of them. We don't hire people to listen to their complaining. We don't hire people to deal with their drama. We don't hire people to listen to gossip. We don't hire people to have potlucks.

We hire people to deliver results for the business, and that's part of the work I do with my clients is. Do you know who your business is? Because if you really had a relationship with your business, not just you as the business owner, you would think about what your business needs instead of just what you need and what your employees need.

So we don't wanna drag people along. It doesn't suit what you are trying to achieve. And so, you know the bridge from just the five things I've talked about on this podcast to. You having a strong leadership presence and idea and, um, sense of who you are to defining what the game is that you guys are playing, to have very clear expectations as it relates to what you pay people and how you, what you hire people to do, to stop thinking down in your business, but learn how to think up and out.

And lastly, to, to cut the ties to stop dragging. Parts of your business that are no longer serving, the longer, bigger goal that you have. I know this is work. I really do respect that you're listening to this podcast and, and you're agreeing with me, and at the same time you feel this level of overwhelm my Oh my gosh.

And what I wanna assure you. Is that, all of those things that I've mentioned and more, right? Like how do I fire someone? How do I tell someone they're not doing a good job? How do I delegate to people who don't do this the right way? How do I not feel so overwhelmed every day? How do I get a break from my business?

These are all so many of the other things I know that you, you process in your brain. All of these things are very solvable. And honestly, even though the work may not be easy, it's simple and the answer lies in systems and processes that I teach my clients. So I know, I, I know with it's, it's almost like I have the cure.

I have the cure that you want, and so I just advocate as much as I can because I, every time I meet a client, it, they're exhausted. They're haggard. They don't see where they're gonna go next. They feel like they've hit the wall. And I, every time within se really not very long, we punched through that.

Right? And then just in the last couple months, I've had several people tell me I love my business again. It's not that complicated. So keep this podcast on. On your subscriptions list, make sure that you haven't, you're subscribing because every week you're gonna get something from me that's gonna help you.

And if you think we should work together, if you're ready to really take the plunge and do the work with a coach, that's gonna make. All the difference in how your business moved forward in this year. I would love, love, love to talk with you, and there'll be more information about that as we close out the podcast.

So thank you so much for tuning in today, and I will talk to you next time. Hey, don't miss a thing. Make sure you join my [email protected] slash connect. Once you join, you'll get all the information on exclusive and private ex. Experiences that I'm offering to my clients. I can't wait to see you there.