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An Alternative Approach to #GirlBoss Entrepreneurship: Dedication, Slow Growth, and Intention
Slow growth. A concept that Africa Brooke taught me that I am really trying to sink into. The landscape of entrepreneurial pursuits is full of toxic messages about hustling hard, over-working, taking up every free hour to squeeze in as much as you can, and if you don’t hustle to the brink of exhaustion then you’re not working hard enough and you don’t want it bad enough. GaryVee (Gary Vaynerchuk) anyone? Some of the things he professes are spot on. You do have to take risks. You do have to embrace failure. You shouldn’t do things for the approval of others. But he’s missing some key considerations like privilege, money, resources, time. The positions we are in have a huge impact on how we approach entrepreneurship, and how and when we can show up.
It’s not always possible to go, go, go. And it’s really not the way I want to live my life or have a relationship with business, the people I help, or the outer world. I want to have meaningful, considerate, reciprocal, and nourishing exchanges. This toxic masculine, patriarchal, white-centric approach to business has never worked for me. Though I have absorbed a lot of tips from podcasts like the Gimlet Media’s Start-Up, and Sophia Amorosu’s Girlboss, these platforms are still incredibly exclusive and only speak to a certain kind of audience…
