How Important is Resilience in Business?

What is resilience?

The dictionary defines it as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

Running a business, building your reputation, and working on your personal and professional development is fraught with difficulties and challenges. As a woman in business, it is essential that you build resilience to allow yourself the chance to manage these challenges and maintain a healthy balance of mental and physical health and wellbeing.

I recently announced the finalists for the Woman Who Achieves and Solopreneur Awards and would like to take a moment to congratulate everyone who was selected. It’s also important to recognise those ladies who applied but didn’t get chosen. They are just as much a winner in my eyes.

To push yourself out of your comfort zone, and nominate yourself and your business for any award takes courage, confidence, and resilience. Not everyone can win. That’s not how this works, unfortunately. However, there is so much you can learn from the entire process, and skills you can discover through any challenges or knockbacks.

How can you become more resilient?

Mindset plays a vital role in becoming more resilient in business and life. Your brain is a wonderful tool and research shows it works much better when flowing with positivity.

If faced with a challenge, a setback, or a rejection it can be far too easy to live in a negative frame of mind. You might begin to hold anger or resentment in your body, or berate yourself for not knowing/doing/having enough. STOP!

Positive people outsell pessimists by up to 30%. Having a positive focus is incredibly important, and that includes positive relationships, experiences, and ideas.

Leave the resentment and anger behind and learn from your experiences. Focus on the lesson.

What can I change to prevent XYZ happening in the future?
Who can I turn to for advice and support?
What do I need to do to boost my profile?
How can I create better opportunities for myself and my business?

The pull to run and hide can be overwhelming when faced with a challenge, but learning how to handle issues, anxiety, and knock backs will make you a stronger and a more confident business person.

Don’t isolate yourself from your community. Instead, use the power of your network to remind yourself how amazing you are. Read your testimonials and the feedback you’ve received to see how much your clients or customers love your products or services.

Gratitude is a powerful way to switch your thoughts from a negative space to a positive one.

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you’ll see how often I share gratitude-style posts. I remind myself often why I love running the Woman Who community, I’m thankful for my family, the experiences I’ve had over the years, Coventry City Football Club, and so much more!

When you’re struggling, it helps to think about what you are grateful for in your life and business. Remind yourself why you started your business and be grateful for the growth and development you have achieved already.

If you weren’t chosen as a finalist in the awards, think about the amazing connections (your friends and colleagues) who were, and become their cheerleaders. Watch how they conduct themselves, and learn from them for next time. Build your network and be an advocate for all of them. Surrounding yourself with mentors, supporters, like-minded women in business, and positive people can make all the difference to your outlook.

If you lose a client don’t let this feel like the world is ending. Be grateful that you had the opportunity to work with them and promote yourself to a wider circle using this client as a case study or testimonial.

Resilience is needed in all of these scenarios, and using these tools to build that resilience will help you deal with any challenge or knockback that comes your way in the future.

“The ones who make it are the people who take obstacles and turn them into opportunities.” Sarah Blakely, founder of Spanx.

Be You! If you want to become resilient you need to understand who you are and be confident in yourself and your business.

Rejection usually causes us to turn away from our support network or community and internalise our thoughts and feelings. While it is okay to withdraw for a short period of time to review or reflect, it is imperative that you bounce back to being your usual self as quickly as you can.

Be authentically you, no matter the setbacks. Share your worries or vulnerability as this helps other people recognise themselves in your content. Resilience comes from being your best self in every circumstance.

What next?

Join me for a fabulous morning of personal development and business growth at Woman Who Live followed by the Woman Who Achieves and Solopreneur Awards Lunch on Friday 1st October 2021.

A full day ticket includes:

Registration, networking, and refreshments followed by a warm welcome from me.
Between 9.45am–10.30am we have keynote speakers, Andrea de Gabriel, Ali Fleming, and Angie Simmons.
After a quick break, we will hear from three more keynote speakers, Rebecca Mander, Lisa Newport, and Amy Hobson.
The afternoon session includes a welcome from myself and Dave Sharpe, followed by a keynote speech by Abbi Head.
Dave will then be interviewing Sharon Luca-Chatha and Maria Hanson MBE.
After lunch, we will be celebrating women in business and enjoying two final keynote speakers, Dawn Owen and Andrea Rainsford.
The Awards will be presented throughout the afternoon.

The Woman Who Achieves Awards and Solopreneur Awards recognise and celebrate the achievements of Women in Business. The awards encourage women to recognise, celebrate, and inspire others by becoming role models and take place every year, with attendees enjoying an afternoon of inspiration, celebration, and entertainment.