Nataliey Bitature tells women entrepreneurs they must develop assertiveness as a core business skill. No one else will fight for your interests, so you need to handle negotiations, confront underperforming staff, and have difficult conversations. Practice pitching and selling, set feelings aside, and prioritize what the company needs.
Women, we have to learn how to be assertive. You know, when you have a business, no one else is going to come and fight for you. You can't call your husband and say, Banange, the supplier is really negotiating with me badly. Call them and help me. You have to learn how to do it yourself. You have to learn how to assert yourself, to call people out when they're not doing things properly, how to discipline employees who are not performing properly. You have to be able to have difficult conversations. You have to be able to speak up for yourself, to pitch for yourself, to sell your own products, and that takes practice. A lot of times in our culture, we have not been encouraged to speak up in that way or to be forceful about things. So it's hard and it can be scary. So it's something you have to practice as a woman and practice as an entrepreneur because it's what's best for your company. You have to think of your company and put your own feelings aside in the moment if you know this is what's right for your company. So there are different things you have to start to do to think about now that you're an entrepreneur that is different from who you were before you were an entrepreneur.
