The Power of Being Yourself in Business

For many women, power is a touchy phrase.

It’s a phrase we aren’t comfortable with. It feels foreign and weird to say that you want power. It’s not something that really carries a positive connotation. As business owners, we want to be likable and we want our businesses to succeed. What thing do we need to do more than anything to achieve those things?

Be ourselves.

The Touchy Phrase of Power

I was reading The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates one night before bed one night when I came across this quote. I immediately jumped out of bed, and wrote it down.

“That’s how I turned things around for myself at Microsoft–being myself and finding my voice with the help of peers, mentors, and role models. Being yourself sounds like a saccharine prescription for how to make it in an aggressive culture. But it’s not as sweet as it sounds. It means not acting in a way that’s false just to fit in. It’s expressing your talents, values, and opinions in your style, defending your rights, and never sacrificing your self respect. That is power.”

— Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift

When you start your business you’ll take anyone. Any client, any job, you just want the money and you want to prove that this business, this thing you are doing is going to work. You would rather sit than stand at a networking function. You will NOT put your face on your website. You would rather crawl into a hole than to speak up about things that matter to you on Instagram or Facebook because you just hate confrontation and your cousin is one of those troll commenters who can dish it out but can’t take it.

But.

Once you start being yourself, once you start really identifying what you’re GREAT at and you only do that one thing, once you start putting yourself out there–your face and all–that’s when you really hit your stride. Melinda is right. That’s when you really find your power.

Finding Your Voice and Being Yourself

To me, power in business isn’t about holding others down. It’s not about how much money you make or a made up status you’ve reached or your follower number. It’s about showing the world who you are, what you care about and having people seek you out for those exact reasons.

Like Melinda says, it’s not easy. But with the help of others, she found her voice and she stood up and never sat back down again. It’s something that I just learned how to do in the last few years after all my years in business and I’ve watched it happen over and over again for others. It’s damn exciting to watch.

Success through Embracing Your Strengths

If you want your business to succeed, look at what you’ve got to work with. Look at YOU and all of your strengths and even weaknesses, and look at how you can take those things and package them up into something that the world needs. Into something that makes the world better. Into something that only you can create.

So here’s to power, authenticity and never sitting back down when you were meant to walk with your head high.