The double bind of female founders.

Look perfect and strong.

Positive and happy.

Confident.

Present successfully.

This is how a brand gets money, builds followers, stays afloat in business.

Business is simple, in a way.

Provide value and trade that for money.

But the world is not simple.

Customers are not simple. Collaborators are not simple. People are not simple.

Capitalism raises that bar every millisecond of every day.

It’s something that many consumers benefit immensely from. And so many business owners do, too.

The world is not simple.

Entrepreneurship might be called that because it’s like being on a ship. Being the captain of a ship.

The ocean is like the world of business–customers and restrictions and taxes and employees and everything that reverberates through the ship

You see that being on a boat is simple at times, but you are never unaware of the sea. You respect it and study it and love it and attempt to remain friends with it.

The sea is not there to cause a ship harm.

But it is powerful enough to capsize that ship in one minute.

The best option is that you know the sea well. That you care for your boat and your crew and stay in tip-top shape.

But that will also many times take resources that might be beyond your reach as a young captain. You will have to be out on the ocean catching fish in less-than-optimal vessel to make money to slowly upgrade to a place where you have a ship that can sail the sea in a much more safe way.

And entrepreneurship is much like that.

It’s wildly risky until you’ve gotten to a place that your ship is strong enough and efficient enough and big enough to weather storms.

And many people never get there.

But the double bind is that we’re uncomfortable seeing women struggle. It’s somehow sexy for a man to struggle–covered in sweat and dirt. But put a woman in that position and most people either decide she needs to be saved or that she is doing something wrong to look like that.

The women that will get to the better, more safe, ship sooner will be the ones who will go out on a dingy into the great blue sea and stay out all day fishing for a catch that will put them in danger but prove to the world that they’re deserving and capable of that new ship.

In other words, the bigger the risk the more the payoff.

That’s not relegated to women, necessarily.

But in my experience, when women return to shore they’ve can’t look like they’ve spent all day on a fucking boat catching fish. People feel weird about that. They have to be wearing a bikini and have perfectly coiffed hair and their outfit needs to match their boat.

In other words, there’s another who set of work to be done (the presentation and the showering and removal of all the signs of struggle) to be able to seen as a hero and trusted.

Some women are fortunate enough to fit this mold. And I’m not mad at them. I sometimes fit this mold. I’m sort of on the edge of it. Most times I do not fit it. I look like I struggle personally. But my brand doesn’t. Because that’s what is good for everyone-except me.

A strong brand helps you build your ship so that you can weather storms.

But is also, in my case, requires that I not share what it really feels like. What it really takes. I need to present an image of strength and happiness and perfection. Of ease.

But that’s not true.

And I’m still working on that balance.

Some women are allowed to be ‘humble’ when they talk about how hard stuff is. Usually, that doesn’t apply to me. In my case, people have taken that as weakness and manipulation. And no doubt you will also feel the urge to tell me what to do instead of understand the actually issue that I’m brining up–there are different rules for different types of women. The thing we DON’T need is YOU telling us what we should do. So zip it. That the first rule of support many times–stop trying to fix people. Just see them. And love them. Accept their stories. Believe women.

If we did already “believe women” do you think there would actually have to be a hashtag and movement for it?

So, see where you might be contributing to the problem before you offer solutions. Maybe you just believe women’s stories. And allow them to be imperfect and also be inspiring at the same time.

This experience of having to perfectly perform is a valid part of the landscape for many women who seek to enter the world of entrepreneurship. It’s the part that I am studying in depth right now as the watcher–looking from the outside in. Instead of from a place of just living it.

My experience was that I was always doing it ‘wrong.’ That I was sharing too much or telling too much.

But there is something inside of me that wants to be truly known. The pressure is high in the type of business that I run. And I don’t think that either I or my customers are aware of that all the time. And, for me, I know I won’t enter back into that business without the ability to care about myself.

That will either mean that I have a really robust ship or an audience who accepts me fully for who I am, without needing me to be someone different. Someone better.

And I’m unsure that this is truly a possibility–but I will try.