How She Does It: How Women Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business Success by Margaret Heffernan

Author:Margaret Heffernan [Heffernan, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Social Science, Business & Economics, Women's Studies, Entrepreneurship, Women-owned business enterprises, Businesswomen
ISBN: 9780670038237
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2007-01-23T15:02:37.931000+00:00

9.

Help!

Carmen Castillo comes from a big family. “I have so many brothers and sisters,” she said, “that really I’ve been on my own since I was five years old. We were a poor family, as poor as they come. And so I came to the United States in 1992 because I wanted to learn English and because I thought this was still the land of opportunity. I’d never have a chance in any other country, so I came to America all by myself.”

Carmen was known as the “blond sheep” of the family. Being Spanish, her blond hair was unusual, and so was she. While her siblings stayed in Spain, she always knew she’d do something completely different. Arriving in the United States, she was not entirely without resources. She spoke a couple of languages (although not yet English, which today she speaks with a strong Spanish accent), she was a qualified chef, and she had a few friends. One of them was in Buffalo, New York, dying of cancer.

“She was one of my best girlfriends, so I went to visit and to help with her three kids for a couple of months. In the meantime, to make ends meet, I got a job working as a chef, and one day Richard Stenclik and his son came in for dinner. They liked the food so much that they asked for me. I came out, and we started talking. We had a nice conversation. We just had real chemistry.”

When you meet Carmen, this isn’t surprising. She’s an ebullient conversationalist, full of warmth, intensity, and tremendous vigor. Carmen may not have had many resources in 1992, but she did have an idea—and better than that, she had nerve. So she asked Richard to help her get her idea off the ground. It was the single smartest thing she ever did.

Women aren’t usually very good at asking. The fact that we don’t like to ask for more money is one reason we remain underpaid and underpromoted. The fact that we don’t like negotiating is one reason we tend to lose out in divorce settlements. Much of our socializing militates against asking: We are supposed to sit quietly and wait—to be asked to dance, to be asked to marry. Traditional definitions of femininity emphasize passivity and patience.

In business this could be fatal. But it all seems to change when women become entrepreneurs. Suddenly, we are emboldened to ask for help, information, insight, advice. It is a tremendously important and even lifesaving transformation. In fact, research shows that women are more likely than men to turn to outsiders for insight and advice.1 I believe that we grow bolder because we don’t feel that we are asking for ourselves but for “the idea” or “the company.” We are acting on behalf of others, and in that spirit we’re relentless. Asking for help is one way of gaining collective wisdom.

Stanley Milgram, the psychologist famous for his experiments exploring the psychology of obedience, did some less well known work in the 1970s on the phenomenon of asking.

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