As a former small business owner and now Chief Customer Officer at BILL, I’m constantly inspired by the entrepreneurs I meet. Their creativity, resilience and drive to innovate never cease to amaze me.
I know firsthand the excitement of building something from scratch, and also the challenges of scaling operations while staying true to your vision. It’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about my role today — I get to work with and learn from incredible entrepreneurs who are transforming their industries and their communities.
I consider myself particularly lucky that I have the opportunity to connect with so many women entrepreneurs. Ours is a growing cohort, and our experiences take on a new depth of meaning when viewed through this shared lens.
Here are some of the most powerful lessons I’ve learned from women business leaders who exemplify what it means to build with purpose and resilience.
Related: 5 Lessons Learned From a Female Entrepreneur
1. Stay grounded in your mission and values
Bee Nance exemplifies what it means to align professional excellence with personal passions. With her experience in accounting and financial management, she chose to combine her financial expertise with her passion for education and community impact and focus on a career in nonprofit accounting.
During Bee’s time as Chief Operating Officer at Generation Teach, the organization achieved six consecutive years of clean financial audits and significantly grew its budget — all while focusing on its mission of creating educational opportunities.
But what truly sets Bee apart is how she’s created multiple channels to deliver on her passion. While still serving Generation Teach as a consulting CFO, she is now the Chief Financial and Administrative Officer for The Better Angels Society, an organization that supports the completion, broadcast and promotion of documentary films. She’s even authored a children’s book on financial literacy called “Sunny Gets Money.”
The lesson for other business leaders is powerful: success comes from aligning your expertise with a clear sense of purpose. When you know your “why” and let it guide your decisions, you can create a lasting impact that extends far beyond the bottom line.
2. Use your disadvantages to your advantage
When I connected with Courtney Spritzer and Stephanie Cartin, co-founders of Socialfly and Entreprenista, I was inspired by how they transformed challenges into opportunities.
Courtney and Stephanie encountered the unique obstacles that women entrepreneurs often face — from accessing capital to building the right networks — while they focused on building their businesses.
The statistics for women entrepreneurs can be sobering. While women-owned businesses represent 39% of all U.S. businesses and generate $2.7 trillion in revenue, 31% of surveyed women entrepreneurs said they had experienced challenges accessing capital, and only 45% were fully approved for their loan requests in 2023 (compared to 55% of male entrepreneurs).
Instead of accepting these disadvantages, Courtney and Stephanie identified a gap in the market and turned it into an opportunity by founding Entreprenista. What began as a podcast in 2018 has evolved into a thriving community of over 2,000 female founders where women entrepreneurs can share advice, build connections and amplify each other’s successes.
This approach is applicable to any business leader. When faced with barriers, ask yourself how this perspective can be used to identify market gaps and what solutions would have been most helpful in the moment.
Entreprenista’s extraordinary growth shows the potential power of turning obstacles into innovation.
Related: 3 Lessons I’ve Learned as a Successful Woman In a Male-Dominated Industry
3. Be resilient — but don’t be afraid to pivot
Brittany Malidore exemplifies what it means to transform adversity into purpose. Her professional mission at Ledgerly Consulting was already impactful: providing high-end accounting services to nonprofits and small businesses that desperately needed them but couldn’t afford them at traditional costs.
Then, one year ago, she nearly lost her life in a devastating car accident that caused her to have to regain and rebuild her memory, voice and ability to walk. During her road to recovery from a traumatic brain injury, Brittany didn’t just rebuild herself — she refined her vision.
Brittany developed an even deeper commitment to helping organizations that, like her, faced obstacles that seemed insurmountable. Her experience and her determination offer a valuable lesson: Resilience isn’t merely about enduring difficulty but being open to changing your perspective on what truly matters most.
When faced with obstacles in your professional or personal life, remember that pivoting isn’t a sign of weakness – it can often be the pathway to your most meaningful impact.
4. Value community and harness the power of your network
If you’re looking for an example of how powerful community connections can be when building a business, just ask Claire Coder. At age 19, Claire dropped out of college to launch Aunt Flow, a company that supplies businesses and schools with menstrual products to businesses and schools so they can offer them for free, just like toilet paper and soap.
Claire faced the dual challenges of (1) marketing menstruation — a topic still considered taboo to an audience of mostly male decision-makers, many of whom had never experienced it and rarely discussed it; and (2) securing funding in a landscape where women entrepreneurs receive less capital. To help overcome these challenges, she built bridges with other entrepreneurs who shared growth strategies and experiences that could only truly be understood by other women.
With this guidance and through the valuable relationships she fostered, Claire grew Aunt Flow from a one-woman startup into a company with more than 1,000 customers, including 21 of the Fortune 500. The company is stocked in over 60,000 commercial bathrooms across the USA, UK and Canada and has donated over 7 million menstrual products to nonprofits, helping fight period poverty.
Claire’s story reminds us of a valuable lesson: business success is rarely a solo achievement. Instead, it’s built on a foundation of meaningful connections and being open and willing to ask for help when needed.
These lessons from women business leaders demonstrate how resilience and purpose can drive exceptional results. As we celebrate Women’s History Month, let’s draw inspiration from these remarkable leaders who remind us of the power of purpose-driven entrepreneurship.
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