For me as a female business owner and investor, I have three main pillars to worry about: to work on and develop resilience, long-term sustainability and profitability, and an exit or succession plan. It’s my duty to my stakeholders to constantly update and maintain these pillars.
Angela Vithoulkas
As I was growing up, the parents of almost every other child seemed obsessed with asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up”?
Except mine.
I never gave it much thought at the time, or even throughout life, until the last year or so. I’ve started to pay attention to how people speak to young children and what my generation of adults think is important as we endeavour, just like our parents, to imprint ourselves onto them.
I realised quickly that when I was a child, it was the male children that people were asking the question of, and commenting, “He likes Lego, he might be a builder”, or “He’s smart, he could be a doctor.”
Perhaps it was cultural, but the only expectation placed on me was to learn how to be a capable housekeeper and marry early and well. Spoiler alert! I failed miserably in all categories.
I’m not writing this from a position of how bad things were for me or that I was discriminated against, or even that I was held back by old-fashioned cultural traditions.
I wasn’t. My migrant father, who had no education and came from a tiny Greek village, was probably the biggest feminist I have ever met. If I had said I wanted to be an astronaut, he would have taken me to NASA himself and stayed until I sorted lift-off.
My mother was different. Her migrant life experiences made it less possible for her to feel free enough to encourage me, her fears about how tough it was for women influenced her outward behaviour, and they would be a source of antagonism between us for many years to come.
I have been privileged to be a business owner my whole adult life. I followed in my parent’s footsteps and industry. Hospitality. I started out small and then let ambition into the business plan. Attitudes change when the stakes get higher, and I was obsessed. Or focussed. It depends on who’s describing me.
When you manage large teams of people in an industry that strangely, on the surface appears to be sexist, but is in fact a very level playing field, you are faced with issues of conscious and unconscious bias all the time. Ironically this new diagnosis didn’t have an illness two decades ago, but I guess like most viruses, it has mutated.
My brother has 3 beautiful children that I not only adore, but they think I am the extra big sister and worlds best Aunty all rolled into one. He has 2 girls, 8 and 6 years old, and a 4-year-old son. They are the reason why I have begun to question my outlook on life and the attitude – conscious or unconscious of others around us.
Are we asking them about what they want for their future based on gender, even in this day and age? The short answer YES, but that’s not the whole story. I think we want so much for them, but we also want them to be whatever they want to be. Yet why do we still think we can predict what they will be when they grow up, even though it didn’t work that way for us?
For me as a female business owner and investor, I have three main pillars to worry about: to work on and develop resilience, long-term sustainability and profitability, and an exit or succession plan. It’s my duty to my stakeholders to constantly update and maintain these pillars.
My responsibilities are clear and there are direct consequences to me if I fail or shirk them. My success will be measured by the results, and the result will be inevitable – if I’m successful, the business won’t need or want me anymore.
That’s the goal…..but not yet!
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