Women vs Men In The Business World: Are They Really Different?

The battle of the sexes continues to wage in numerous areas, including the world of entrepreneurship. While the concept of equality always makes for a compelling story, the fact of the matter is that when it comes to women vs men in business, the differences are like night and day. The distinctions are not only obvious to a degree, but backed up by research that compares the attitudes and tendencies of the two sexes. Without further ado, let’s take a look at how female entrepreneurs stack up against their male counterparts.
The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality (NCPE) funded a study that identifies the key differences between male and female business professionals in leadership positions. In addition to the challenges they face, the study looked at factors such as motivation, education and training. This research shines a bright light on the issues women especially, have to deal with in the business world.
If it’s one challenge male and female entrepreneurs share, it’s the struggle of gathering the funds needed to get their business ventures off the ground. 22% of women found that securing financial resources was the biggest hurdle standing in the way of starting a business compared to 33% of men. So do women have access to backers with deeper pockets? Not necessarily. According to the study, it likely has to do with the fact that the business endeavors they indulge in are seen as less complex, and thus require less funding. Females were generally linked to fields such as childcare, fashion, and beauty, while men were strongly linked to real estate, construction, and communications.
Caring for loved ones was also cited as a major challenge for female entrepreneurs. 66% of women found that these responsibilities influence their decision to start a business, versus only 27% of men. The caring component is supported by women who reported starting a business as a way to cope with the demands of family of life as well as those who said they held off on starting their operation until their kids were older.
One of the most interesting elements of the study focuses on the skill and educational background of genders in the business realm. Roughly 15% of all respondents graduated with a degree in the subject related to their business speciality. Women, however, appear to be more willing further their education as 20% said  they were open to continuing their training compared to only 10% of men.
The general perception is that women and men take a considerably different approach to run their business. When questioned about these differences, 54% of respondents initially said there were none. But when prying deeper, researchers found that 46% led on that women are thought to take a more cerebral approach to management, being more careful and taking the time to evaluate things before making crucial business decisions. Men, on the other hand, are perceived as more aggressive and make decisions considerably faster.
There are other studies that closer examine the decisions women and men make in the business arena. According to a recent study conducted by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), these decisions revolved around staffing, reinvestment, and business innovation.
The GEM study found that 112 million respondents employ at least one person, and 12 million plan to have up to six employees over the next five years. When it comes to job creation, it would appear that the SMB sector is leading the charge. In Kenya, SMBs employ roughly 80% of the country’s workforce. The SMB vertical could create nearly 10 million jobs in the U.S. By 2018 – all by women entrepreneurs, by the way.
Women business owners in emerging markets are investing a stunning 90 cents of every extra dollar they make into their human resource department. Strong focus on health, nutrition and education suggest that women are heavily focused on family and community outside of their professional responsibilities.
The GEM study defined innovation as a business delivering new products to some or all of their audience. In regions such as the U.S. and the developed areas of Europe, women were found to be outperforming their male counterparts in the way of innovation.
Males and females may have different takes on running a business, perceived and proven, but one thing is for sure – the landscape is more balanced than it has ever been. The GEM study reported that 126 million women are running or starting a business, while 98 million have been running established businesses for three years or more. What’s more astounding is that this research effort only accounted for 67 of the world’s nations, suggesting that several more women entrepreneurs are making significant contributions to the global economy.
What is your take on this?  Are you a female entrepreneur?  How have you found setting up your business?  We want to hear from you, so please get in touch below and leave a comment!

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Success….And What It Really Takes To Achieve It

So what does it really take to reach success? There are a lot of myths, the “he says”, “she says” out there but does anybody really have the answer? Success is subjective and has a different definition for each individual.

So let’s take a look through the ages at what is considered as “success”, and what is needed to reach a level of high achievement in various areas of our lives.

Geniuses Aren’t Born….. They’re Made

Books like The Da Vinci Curse by Leonardo Lospennato does a good job of summing up a problem of our time: that anyone striving to be a universal genius will inevitably fail. Because today, unlike in Da Vinci’s time, there’s so much competition out there in every field that only people who devote themselves to one subject are successful. Anyone who wants to be a professional high flyer, the “Father of the Year,” a star violinist, a globetrotter and an art connoisseur all at once should either rethink his priorities or feel satisfied about being incredibly mediocre in each of these fields. After all, it’s rare for a genius to be an all-rounder.

The secret trick: lots of practice and even more mistakes.

Alleged geniuses like Mozart, Goethe and Picasso are not famous the world over for their unique inborn gifts: they were simply lucky enough to be born with a certain amount of talent that they could then cultivate with a whole lot of hard work and dedication.
Anyone who wants to emulate a genius should take note of the fact that neither Mozart nor Einstein changed his profession every couple of years. One reason why Steve Jobs was so successful was that he put all his energy into one thing – and in the process sacrificed his chance of ever winning the “Father of the Year” award. It’s not to say that this path doesn’t have potholes, traffic and detours, but instead that only people who experiment without fear of failure and accept that they can learn from it are bound to produce great things.

Napoleon and the light bulb: getting rich by thinking?

Over 100 years ago, Napoleon Hill asked himself whether the success of outstanding personalities could be explained by a formula. Did they all use the same toothpaste? Did they all follow the same traveling priest? Hill’s answer, which he used as the basis for his book Think and Grow Rich, was far more rudimentary: for him, success and wealth were the consequence of having a clear goal and a burning desire to achieve it. And so, we can reinforce what we already knew about Mozart, Einstein and Jobs:

They all worked hard and were ready to accept mistakes and failures.

Even after more than 10,000 failed experiments, Thomas Edison was not discouraged from achieving his goal of inventing an electric light source. He was driven by the desire to make his dream a reality. After years of hard work, he finally succeeded with the invention of the light bulb. Writer Fannie Hurst’s story is similar: she had to cope with over 36 rejections before a single short story was published in a newspaper. Once that happened, her career as a successful novelist and playwright took off. Her burning desire was stronger than the frustration she felt about various rejections – and she was ultimately rewarded with success.

But all this raises a new question: if the path to success is so obvious, why are there so few people who take it?

Keeping all your options open is the road to mediocrity.

Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational talks broadly about why we human beings use our gift of rational thinking and decision-making so infrequently. Or, to give a concrete example, why we promise ourselves we’ll stop eating sweets so we can look good in a bathing suit, yet, as soon as we’ve filled our shopping carts with fruits and vegetables at the supermarket, we still break down and throw in a chocolate bar on our way to the cash register. Or why, once we’ve fulfilled our dream of having a Porsche, we want a Ferrari. Or, finally, why we put off making decisions and keep all other options open in the meantime, even if it means taking the road to mediocrity or, worse, to a state of constant dissatisfaction.

People are obsessed with keeping their options open, even when it hurts them in the long run. We humans try to keep our options open as much as possible: in our education, our careers and our choice of romantic partner. Some might say that, in an uncertain world, it makes sense to leave open as many avenues as possible, but not making a decision also carries consequences. A person indecisive between two career paths, say architecture and IT engineering, may not whole-heartedly pursue either, and hence end up a mediocre architect or programmer.

Which, in turn, raises the question of how to solve this dilemma. Although countless books have an answer to this question, at the moment we’d like to focus on one classic and one recent bestseller.

 

Efficiency vs. effectiveness: a small, but subtle difference.

Stephen R. Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleis a classic in the advice and productivity genre. Like Napoleon Hill, Covey investigated what it is that makes people who have made extraordinary achievements different from others. The book relies on mantras such as “first thing’s first” and “sharpen the saw,” i.e., it encourages readers to prioritize and keep themselves balanced. He argues that, in order to have enough time to do so, you have to understand the difference between efficiency and effectiveness:

Many people work towards meaningless goals
. They simply worry about being efficient rather than effective. Being efficient, i.e getting the maximum amount done in the shortest amount of time, is pointless if you don’t know why you’re doing it. Not knowing what’s really important to you and what you’re working towards is like climbing a ladder which is set against the wrong wall. To avoid this, it is important to first be clear about your long-term goals. To this end, it can be useful to ask yourself the Funeral-Questions:

What do I want people to say about me at my funeral? What sort of person do I want to be remembered as? What do I want to be remembered for?

Productive minimalism, or: why less is more
In just a few years, Babauta has become a guru of productive minimalism. Babauta – once an unhappy, overweight, chain-smoking “Jack of all trades, master of none” – is now a living paradigm of minimalism, practicing yoga, eating healthily, writing, and spending time with his family. His success speaks for itself, and happiness seems to literally ooze out of him. His advice sounds as simple as it does plausible:
Living without restrictions is like shopping without a credit limit. Because the only way we end up concentrating on what’s truly important is when we’re forced to budget. In short, budgeting helps us stop wasting time and energy on things that aren’t actually worth it. By consciously limiting ourselves, we create space for important things and get rid of the unimportant ones. For example, by not taking on unimportant projects, we give ourselves time to spend with our loved ones.
In summary, we recognize that people can only truly be geniuses or achieve success if they work hard and consciously choose certain options over others. Veering off the paths of mediocrity and taking drastic measures is worth it, as Ariely describes in his book Predictably Irrational:

In 210 BC, after the Chinese commander Xiang Yu had ferried his army across the Yangtze River, he set fire to his own ships. He did this to show his troops that retreat was not an option. In response, they fought so ferociously that they won nine battles consecutively.

Think about it, have you ever made such a gutsy, all-or-nothing decision or do you know someone who has?
If so, we’d love to hear about it in the comments. Your story just might inspire someone else to take action!

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The $340 Million Die Hard Entrepreneur “Gurbaksh Chahal” Shares His Advice For Success

I was fortunate enough to catch up with the $340 Million Silicon Valley Entrepreneur “Gurbaksh Chahal” this week to find out what it takes to succeed in life and in business.

Gurbaksh had sold 2 successful online advertising companies by the age of 25 for a total of $340 Million and is onto his 3rd and biggest company yet, RadiumOne. Gurbaksh will be launching RadiumOne in over 70 markets and is excited to announce that Australia is one of them.

Read on to find out what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur like Gurbaksh Chahal

Success Advice From A Die Hard Entrepreneur

Joel – The first company you created “Click Agents” was founded by you at the age of 16 and not long after that, it sold for $40 million. Nine years later you sold your second company “Blue Lithium” to Yahoo for $300 Million. Making close to half a billion dollars in the space of 9 years, can you tell us, is there some secret formula that we should know about?

Gurbaksh
– Well I think the secret formula comes down to success in general, and you’ve got to constantly keep an open mind, be creative, and don’t be afraid to re-invent yourself.
When I was 16 I didn’t really have a clue about business, so you could say “I got lucky
“, whatever that means. The second time around I learned what it was really like to be a CEO and I believe that both of these opportunities have prepared me for my current company, by every metric whether it’s revenue, size, opportunity, mission or geography, Radium One is the biggest of all of my endeavors.

Joel – Do you believe it when they say “Ignorance is bliss”? Do you feel that when you were younger that maybe you were a bit ignorant and that could be the reason why you didn’t see a lot of the obstacles ahead of you that some of the more experienced and older entrepreneurs would have been scared of?

Gurbaksh
– I wouldn’t say “Ignorant”, I think the thing that was probably my biggest virtue was that I didn’t know the meaning of failure. I think the older you get with the traditional message of schooling, or the methods of society, whether it’s family, friends or situational you end up trying to play it safe. At 16 I didn’t really know what I could lose. There is an essence of, when you are fearless, you become more creative, and the more fearless I became, the more creative I was.

Joel – What would you say has been one of the biggest fears you have ever faced and what did you do to overcome it?

Gurbaksh
– So here’s the thing, there is constant fear in business. You’ve got to have the stamina to realise that is the very path to success and you’ve got to be able to stomach it. There has been several times when I have put everything on the line and I have had to re-invent myself or I’ve had to hire a completely new leadership team and make significant product changes and all of those were betting the company on something. All of those are triumphs to success, so there’s no real path, success is never linear, it’s almost like a hockey stick. The more risk you take, the more of a U-Shape formula you should end up with.

Joel – I just came back from a holiday in “India“, I understand you were born there but grew up in San Francisco. One stand out thing that I noticed over there is that they are very committed to their traditions.

Do you still carry on any traditions from the motherland?

Joel – How do you balance your life? I find it a challenge at times to balance mine, and I only run a blog and a couple of other business ventures so I could only imagine that you would have your plates pretty full most days.

Gurbaksh
– From a cultural stand point and a family stand point I am Indian by heart, but at the same time I’m probably more spiritual at the end of the day, and that’s defined in the inner you and I think that defines who we are as people.
Living a life that has a greater purpose and living up to it is the ultimate degree that we should strive for.


Gurbaksh
– At the end of the day, you have to look at Success itself as a balance. There are a significant amount of things that you have to do to achieve happiness at the end of the day but you’ve got to have balance and there are a number of things that we need to do as Entrepreneurs to be successful but what is success at the end of the day? Is it your bank account? Or is it happiness? And I think that at the end of the day it’s happiness.

In an article I did for LinkedIn, I talked about Un-plugging yourself from the wired world. The importance of continued learning, giving back, less over thinking, being grateful for what you have, realising that relationships are everything in life, making peace with your past, being authentic and learning how to forgive.

Gurbaksh
– One of the key paths to technology is that it changes significantly and quickly. I have been blessed as I have stuck to my roots of advertising technology and I have been given the opportunity to re-shape it and create it 3 times around now and I think the key secret there is that you should stick to what you know.

I’m a very different entrepreneur than many others. I look at Elon Musk and think of him as a genius because he is that guy that can juggle many different things in many different industries, but I don’t think many of us can do that. Even when you look at the late Steve Jobs, he re-defined 8 different industries. I, on the other hand just stuck to my core which I think is kind of a testament were “If you can do everything that’s great, but if you can be really great at just one thing then that’s also not bad.
” I have looked at that as an opportunity and a blessing to continue to innovate.
Part of the key metrics to success in an enterprise is to know how far you are really willing to take it. Are you pushing the boundaries? You can’t make safe bets. Even today, 4 years into this, 300 employees worldwide, profitability, significant amount of revenue and so forth, the decisions I make as the CEO goes from choosing the color palette on the website, choosing the design of what the reporting looks like, down to what the product ends up becoming.
So you really have to:
Be someone who pays attention to detailBe creativeProblem solveAnd always be creative with the way you solve those problems.
Gurbaksh
– I think success is defined by understanding purpose. If you live a life of purpose then you’ll never be bored.
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