EP 183: Challenges, Advantages, and Strategies for Women in Business and Entrepreneurship with Ash Robinson

Summary

In this episode, Kimberly and Ash, one of Kimberly's business strategists, discuss all things related to women in business and entrepreneurship. Ash acknowledges the historical gaps in financial literacy and opportunities for business that women have only in recent decades begun to access. They discuss common challenges for women in business, such as over-personalization and under-selling, as well as advantages such as creating strong strategies for collaboration and equity in ways that are sustainable to us as individuals and to our families. Ash offers wise advice for creating and expanding businesses as women and for women audiences. She offers Ignite, a 9-week online program for women looking for expertise in creating and expanding their businesses.

Bio

Ash Robinson, a returning podcast guest, is a woman, daughter, and mother of two. As an entrepreneur for most of her career, she spent most of her time creating and building, not consulting. She bootstrapped two of her own startups; raised over $12M in funding; had a successful exit to a public company right before the 2008 recession and has been consulting through bon·fire since 2013. Her passion and research in neuroscience, cognition, behavior change, and culture inform both the tools and approach used in bon·fire. She believes we have to build the world we want to belong to. The Ignite program for women interested in creating and/or expanding current businesses begins at the end of March. Find out more about it through the link below.

What She Shares:

–Gaps in womens' opportunities for finance and business

–Challenges of women in business

–Handling over-giving, access, and pricing

–Collaboration, intuition, and partnership

–Ignite program for women in business starts end of March

What You'll Hear:

–Honoring the gaps women have had in financial education and business

–Under-resourcing ourselves as women entrepreneurs

–Over-personalizing business failures

–Over-complicating client needs

–Lacking clarity on business strategy and plan

–Distinguishing between needing personal or business resources

–Factoring in childcare for women in professional work

–How to know when to hire an assistant

–Focusing on business structure issues over personal

–Service and/or product market-fit

–Articulating your service in easy language

–Power of our stories as women

–Pricing issues hardest in business

–Formula for pricing

–Most women entrepreneurs are under-priced

–Creating more wealth to create more opportunities for under-serviced populations

–Inner capacities and outer structures

–Interrogating inner-world beliefs around making money

–Over-giving models in tensions with access

–Feeling depleted with over-serving is unsustainable

–Scholarships and trade as ten percent of business

–Moving to strategy instead of overwhelm

–Cost basis impacted by inflation

–Unique skills women have in business and market

–Collaboration, intuition, and partnership

–Running businesses supportive of our families not depleting

–Building capacity for women in places they haven't had it

–IGNITE: A series of frameworks to create, organize, and harness businesses

–IGNITE: 9 week program beginning end of March

Resources

Website: http://bon-fire.co/ignite