Success and Freedom

6 things that I learned about being a female entrepreneur

by Gabrielle Peliccini

I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania called Scranton. Remember that TV show called “The Office”? They used Scranton as the town for that show. And the real-life version is even more mundane than the TV version – it’s not a place that you’d want to grow up, trust me.

I was obsessed with getting the heck out of Scranton as soon as I could. I was going to be an artist. I was going to be an actress. I was going to be a supermodel. I was going to live a glamorous life no matter what – and never look back on Scranton.

And then, the day after high school graduation, I set out on my journey. I moved to New York City. Got a modeling contract and tried that for a while. It was a real-life disaster – the agency always telling me to lose weight, my body withering away to skin and bones.   I left modeling, fumbled through about 6 different colleges until I finally stumbled onto my calling in life: holistic health.

So I was making about $50 bucks an hour doing massages. (My dad called it “rubbing people for a living”) I got a few teaching gigs for yoga classes, college health courses– but in the spring of each year, when tax time rolled around, I’d be devastated to find that I managed –again – to make about $40K — if I was lucky.

What the heck was I doing wrong?! I had gone to college. I had followed my passion. I had found my life purpose. Why on earth was I not as rich as Oprah Winfrey? Where was the mansion at the end of my rainbow?

Now, you probably think that this is the part of the story where I tell you how I stumbled onto some secret mantra or I went to a Tony Robbins seminar and I got myself all sorted out and started instantly making 6 figures a month. Nope. That didn’t happened.

What happened instead is that I was giving free massages at a networking event in NYC and I met the founder of a health and wellness start-up. We hit it off and he asked me to come to do some consulting for him.  It didn’t take long for me to realize something radical: this entrepreneurship stuff that he was doing – I had been doing that for 12 years and I didn’t even realize that I was doing it!” I was creating, innovating, hustling, networking, trying to sell something to people (that they sometimes didn’t even believe in) for my entire career. But I didn’t call myself an entrepreneur – I just thought I was an impulsive and free-spirited human who didn’t have the right-mind to get a normal job like everyone else.

See, in my world – remember I told you I came from Scranton, Pennsylvania – I didn’t even hear the word entrepreneurship until I was in my 30s. Even then, I never would have thought that it applied to me. Entrepreneurs were Bill Gates and Mark Zukerberg or other nerdy guys who wore jeans and tennis shoes – honestly, how many of us still have this prejudice?   I was a model/hippie/PhD professor – how could I possibly be an entrepreneur? But I was, and I am and owning that title has changed everything.

So, I dove into the start-up scene. I got involved in Lean In groups, incubators, accelerator programs, etc. I learned the lingo like ecosystem, MVP (minimum viable product), angel investing and agile leadership. I read all the books like Lean Start-up and Delivering Happiness and Zero to One.

And so, what I found was that, even though I could understand the culture and the concepts, I felt like barely any of it “spoke” to me. If I had not accidently found myself working for a start-up, I would never have “accidently” identified as an entrepreneur.   The books and blogs were all about businesses much bigger than me – and other than Lean In and Nasty Gal, almost none of the stories were about women – and I couldn’t find a single story about the female wellness practitioner as an entrepreneur.

And so I started having conversations, lots of them, with women in wellness who were operating like entrepreneurs but not necessarily identifying as such. And the conversations were remarkable – I had never had conversations like that in my life. We talked about money, we talked about business, we talked about sales and marketing and what it means to be successful. And what I found was that women – especially women in wellness- have a very different perspective about entrepreneurship than the mainstream perceptions. Here’s what I learned:

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about business. It’s about self-actualization. One of the women that I spoke to, who has made millions selling online spirituality courses, shared her belief that women cannot fully actualize unless they become entrepreneurs. That in order to reach our full-potential, to find the highest and deepest meaning in life, we have to be leaders. We have to leave our comfort zones, and our corporate jobs, and follow our soul’s calling wherever it may lead.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about making money. It’s about creating the ‘self.’ The act of self-creation is an ongoing creative process that we engage in from birth to death. Entrepreneurship is both a catalyst and a vehicle for us to create our identity, our character, our confidence, our autonomy. Entrepreneurship gives us the opportunity to say: “You don’t define me. I define myself.” Which is an act of revolution for many women who engage in this radical life-path. It’s empowering and life-changing.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about the products. It’s about the relationships.   For the longest time, I thought business was built on ‘stuff.’ Stuff you buy. Stuff you throw away. It’s so much more than that. People make stuff and people buy stuff. Women create things to solve problems for other women – especially in the wellness industry. The most prosperity comes when we solve the biggest problems– even if it’s something as silly as a pair of panties that make our tummy look flatter. Spanx is no joke – it’s a billion dollar company.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about being clever. It’s about being authentic.    I know that it is only when I am in touch with the real me that I am able to truly be my creative best and expand my thinking and views of the world. This is the birth-place of innovation. All the women that I spoke to said that their best work, their most successful ideas – all of it came when they “got real” about who they were, and what they wanted – and their branding and their products reflect that.   Our “Unique value contribution” comes from authenticity – and women are on the leading edge of this movement.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about work, work, work. It’s about life.  Work-life balance isn’t about getting a 15-min chair massage at the office or getting drunk at happy hour. It’s about the freedom to have self-care time, family time, creativity time, etc. when we need it. It’s about having non-toxic products to care for our children. It’s about having gardens in urban communities. It’s about the blurry lines between doing what we love for work and working for what we love. I don’t’ even know how I would survive at this point if I had a boss who told me I couldn’t go on a 10-day silent meditation retreat because I had to be in my cubicle doing my “work.”   Women entrepreneurs are re-defining what it means to make a living from living your passion – and the world is changing direction because of it.

Entrepreneurship isn’t just about solopreneurs or the lone genius. It’s about sisterhood.   Above all, what I heard more than anything else, was: the importance of support. Which is ironic, because this is also the thing that I stood out most from my dissertation research 10 years ago. We are not in this alone – not in business, not in life, not in entrepreneurship. We are all in it together. Our decisions effect people – they effect the environment – they affect the future – and it’s naïve and irresponsible to pretend that they don’t. Women form communities. They form sisterhood.   They uplift and empower each other to do the impossible.   I believe that this is going to be one of the defining of themes of business in the next century.

Now, I am no longer obsessed with getting the heck out of Scranton – I left there a long time ago. And I don’t want to be a model, and actress or live a glamorous life anymore. But I do want to live a conscious life. I do want to be the best possible version of myself. And I do see entrepreneurship as the path that is going to get me there. And while I am self-actualizing, I’d like to make a lot of money – I used to be afraid to say that but I’m not afraid anymore – because I don’t see money as contrary to wellness; I see it as essential to well-being – I see it as see it as a tool that uplifts people, empowers people, funds life-changing projects, re-builds communities, and transforms our world.

And who knows, if all goes well, someday I may just be as successful as CLASSPASS or SOUL-CYCLE with their female-led start-ups – if only all of us lady entrepreneurs could be so lucky!