It’s time to redefine #girlboss. Thanks to Sophia Amoruso and her spectacular rise to fame for quirky fashion and a quick run on Netflix, #girlboss is synonymous with fashionable/thin/childless/white/young/ambitious women. My claim to #girlboss has nothing to do with any of that, except the woman part.
And the ambition part.
Like the ambition I have to out-earn my husband. I used to feel it was taboo to say out that loud, even to him.
Have you experienced some kind of business shaming or judgment, whether it’s the voice in your head or people in your life who want you to tow the line as they have? I’ve felt the shaming so many times in the past three years while running my own business. And it is exhausting. It’s the reason I’ve built the business I have. I needed to find my people. The women who want to unapologetically chase success. #Girlbosses. Women like us know we’re good at what we do and the unique way we do it.
But knowing we’re good at what we do isn’t enough.
Do you know what a makes million-dollar #girlboss different from everyone else who’s jealous of them? It’s not vision. Or revenue, although that helps. Or even having enough time.
You’re a #girlboss when you start treating your business like you run it, and stop treating it like just another job where you’re the hardest-working employee. I want to reclaim #girlboss, so that’s it’s not just a synonym #Girlboss isn’t just a word for ultra-feminine women who happen to run businesses. #Girlboss is a movement for ambitious women.
So that means understanding our financials beyond revenue, profit, and expenses.
Running a team. Setting goals and knowing how to hit them.
If we can’t do the things that make our businesses stable, then they won’t grow. Why do we expect that burning ourselves out on client work will ever get us to the level and platform we want to get to?
This is the conversation we need to be having.
So let’s start it right now. How DO you become a #girlboss?
This is the Reclaiming #girlboss Framework
Set bold goals.
Embrace the numbers.
Love marketing + sales.
Protect your time by building systems and processes.
Don’t let the inner mean girl keep you small.
Over the next five weeks I’ll be diving deeper into these five elements that help you transform from the number one employee to the girlboss, and I’ll be bringing on a few experts to help. Setting bold goalsis more than writing goals in your favorite notebook. (Although, that’s fun!) It’s about knowing where we’re driving our businesses and being able to map out the steps to get there. It’s about the guts and the vision and following the path that YOU set for this business. Embracing the numbersis yes, knowing your profit/loss and revenue. But it’s also ripping off the bandaid to look at them consistently. To know what metrics we should look at and what story those numbers are telling us about our businesses.
Loving marketing + sales is about how you talk about and sell your business, and understanding you can’t have one without the other. Marketing doesn’t do you any good if you don’t sell and you can’t sell if you don’t know how to talk about what your products and services do for your customer. And if you don’t know how to talk about your products and services, you’re not doing marketing.
Protecting your time is about building businesses that can grow beyond the one-woman team. It’s about treating your business like you’re the boss. Stepping into leadership, hiring for the things you shouldn’t and can’t do, and one day -- building something that could run without you. And finally, silencing that inner mean girl. Focusing on your mindset, manifesting, and the “woo woo,” is too often sold to us entrepreneurial women as a cure for what ails our businesses.
I think it’s over-emphasized, or at least, emphasized with no...
