In 2020, record numbers of successful career women left the corporate world to start their own businesses. 

Sure, the Coronavirus pandemic fueled this trend to some degree. 2020 has been a transformative year for all of us, inspiring us to make new choices about how we want to live and work. But there’s more to it.

Women entrepreneurs want greater time freedom, because they are done making personal sacrifices to get ahead. 

Women entrepreneurs want to be their own boss, because they are done taking direction from other people.

Women entrepreneurs want to pursue their passion, because they are done doing work that leaves them personally unfulfilled.

Women entrepreneurs want to steer their own ship, because they are done leaving their futures in anyone else’s hands but their own.

This entrepreneurship bug is contagious. 

Plus, the #MeToo movement has further exposed glaring discrimination across industries that women will no longer tolerate for themselves or other women.

It’s no surprise that woman entrepreneurship is one of the hottest business trends in the last five years. I predict this trend will only grow over the next five.

The timing is certainly good to make the entrepreneurial leap. A renewed interest in supporting small businesses in the wake of economic turmoil. A reimagining of work and life as a result of the biggest work-from-home shift in the history of business. And the advent of digital transformation that means more and more people are buying and selling products and services online.

For many corporate career women, the timing is more personal. Their families are grown and they have a greater appetite for risk-taking for the sake of unapologetically pursuing their passion and making an impact.

Many of my newer clients are corporate career women, and they are killing it. They have some clear advantages over brand new business babes that allow them to launch quickly and build strong business models.

Track Record of Intrapreneurship

It’s a myth that corporate executives are less creative than entrepreneurs. Innovation can happen within a structured business environment (intrapreneurship) or in a brand new business environment (entrepreneurship). Corporate career women have often spent decades inventing and re-inventing themselves, launching new products and services, transforming their communication styles to connect with different audiences. In short, they are business innovators that have tons of experiences adapting on the fly. Exactly what you need to start your own business.

Relationships and Networks

Successful corporate career women are successful because they have built strong relationships. Any business is after all a people business. This includes entrepreneurship. The corporate career women I coach bring strong relationship skills to their new ventures, along with large networks of people they can sell to right out of the gate. Plus, the career women I coach have a serious set of skills when it comes to building community once they have started their business. The shift isn’t in letting go of the fear of connecting with others. The shift is in transferring their relationship building skills from an in-office environment to a digital environment. For most, this is an easy shift to make.

Experience Managing Teams

Scaling a brand new business requires effective team building. Nobody wants to leave corporate in pursuit of time freedom and end up having no time because they are doing everything themselves. Corporate career women recognize resource needs quickly and they know how to hire for attitude and train for skill. They tend to be excellent leaders who are dedicated to bringing team members along and together for the benefit of all. They also have experience having hard conversations and making hard decisions when the situation calls for a change in resources. This is an essential requirement for entrepreneurs that need a finely-tuned business machine in order to achieve scaling targets.

Systems Mindset

What can I do to make my team more efficient? What can I do to have more time to focus on strategy? These are questions that corporate career women bring to the entrepreneurship table right from the start. Because they have significant experience using systems that automate time-consuming processes, like human resources activities, expense reports, sales forecasting, customer relationship management and so much more. They may need to learn new technology platforms like Slack, Asana or Airtable, but chances are they already have experience with similar solutions.

And the same is true for communication skills. If you are coming from the corporate world, you may need to learn how to connect with ideal clients through social media instead of in-person meetings, phone calls and email, but the foundation for what, how and when to say it is already an innate skill that is easily transferable.

Financial Acumen

As entrepreneurs we may want to change the world, but we want to make some serious bank doing it. Scaling your business is as much about how much you keep as it is how much you make. Corporate career women typically have strong experience managing budgets, setting revenue targets, and driving efficiencies toward the bottom line. It may not sound sexy, but business math is what puts the sizzle in your business so you really can work fewer hours while making more money, swap hustle with flow, and go to work every single day with the satisfaction of knowing that you are right where you belong.

I’m personally excited to see corporate career women stepping into entrepreneurship with such strong impact. They have skills and experience that are determinative for entrepreneurial success. They have a willingness to lead by example and mentor others into their own greatness.

As women, we learn from each other, we rise by lifting others up, and Because every woman-owned business lights a candle for a new one to start.