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Business Strategy and Execution – Women Founders’ Advice - Part 21

Writer: Women Story
Women Story
Sep 21
7 min read

Updated: Sep 22


In the Business Strategy and Execution Series, we feature the insights of 10 women founders who share their lessons on trusting their vision, taking action before feeling fully ready, building strong foundations, and staying focused on meaningful goals. Their advice highlights the importance of clarity, expertise, financial awareness, resilient execution, authenticity, and building systems that support sustainable growth.

Featured Women Founders

  • Michelle Miakos  If I could share one thing, it would be this: trust your vision sooner.

  • Alexis Hughes  Stop waiting to feel fully ready.

  • Lindsay Errico  Stop waiting to feel ready and stop waiting for permission.

  • Jessica Velez  To succeed as an entrepreneur, it’s essential to balance vision with execution; great ideas need a strong foundation to thrive, so focus on both creativity and the systems that bring your vision to life.

  • Reetika Arora  Build with clarity before scale.

  • Kavita Agarwal  Yes.

  • Vinni Sharma  My advice to aspiring women entrepreneurs is to start with clarity of purpose and trust your own voice.

  • Divya Palat  If you are building something - build it with spine.

  • Priyanka Edupuganti  As an early founder, I’ve learned that clarity of vision matters more than speed.

  • Maria Leal  As CEO of Plennio, there are two ideas I consistently share with women founders who are just starting out: radical persistence and an obsession with the problem you solve.


Michelle Miakos – If I could share one thing, it would be this: trust your vision sooner.

Company – 8 Waves Creative

Advice

If I could share one thing, it would be this: trust your vision sooner. I spent too much time over-preparing instead of moving. Focus on building real revenue, learn your numbers, put yourself in rooms that stretch you, and stay resilient. Growth comes from momentum — not perfection.


Alexis Hughes – Stop waiting to feel fully ready.

Company – Without Fear Stratgic Life Coaching

Advice

Stop waiting to feel fully ready.

Competence grows through action, not permission. Many women are overqualified and under visible because they are waiting for certainty before they move. Certainty rarely comes first. Clarity comes from engagement.


Build revenue early. Impact matters, but sustainability protects your mission. Charge appropriately for your expertise. Emotional labor, intellectual labor, and strategic leadership are all valuable. If you do not value your work financially, the market will not either.


Develop emotional regulation as a business skill. Entrepreneurship will surface your insecurities, your avoidance patterns, and your need for approval. Learn to manage your nervous system so you can make decisions from alignment rather than fear. Leadership is not the absence of doubt. It is the ability to move while doubt is present.


Choose courage over likability. There will be moments when growth requires you to outgrow rooms, relationships, or roles. Not everyone will understand your evolution. That is not evidence you are wrong.


Finally, think in terms of legacy, not optics. Build something you can stand behind. Make decisions you would respect at the end of your life. When you use mortality as a lens, small fears shrink and important decisions become clearer.

You only live once. Build accordingly.


Lindsay Errico – Stop waiting to feel ready and stop waiting for permission.

Company – Fly Fearless Unlimited

Advice

Stop waiting to feel ready and stop waiting for permission. The doubt doesn't go away before you start; it dissolves as you move. But more than perseverance, the thing that changes everything is how you see yourself. Not your strategy, not your network, not your funding.

You. When a woman shifts how she relates to herself, every decision she makes, every room she walks into, every business she builds reflects that. Start there. Everything else follows.


Jessica Velez – To succeed as an entrepreneur, it’s essential to balance vision with execution; great ideas need a strong foundation to thrive, so focus on both creativity and the systems that bring your vision to life.

Company – Advance Marketing

Advice

To succeed as an entrepreneur, it’s essential to balance vision with execution; great ideas need a strong foundation to thrive, so focus on both creativity and the systems that bring your vision to life. Always put the customer first by keeping your audience and clients at the heart of your decisions, as their success is ultimately your success.


Embrace challenges as opportunities, viewing every obstacle as a chance to innovate and grow while staying resilient and adaptable. Build a strong team of individuals who share your values and complement your strengths, as collaboration is key to achieving success.

Finally, stay curious and never stop learning, continuously exploring new ways to improve both your business and yourself.


Reetika Arora – Build with clarity before scale.

Company– Dastur Bharat

Advice

Build with clarity before scale.

Know why your brand exists beyond revenue. When purpose is clear, strategy becomes sharper and resilience becomes natural.


Do not rush growth at the cost of identity. Sustainable success comes from discipline, differentiation, and belief in your vision, especially when the market pressures you otherwise.


Kavita Agarwal – Yes.

Company– MAKEMYBIZ ENTERPRISE

Advice

Yes. Be honest and transparent with customer what going to providing the services.


Vinni Sharma – My advice to aspiring women entrepreneurs is to start with clarity of purpose and trust your own voice.

Company– Tedhi Medhi Family

Advice

My advice to aspiring women entrepreneurs is to start with clarity of purpose and trust your own voice. Build something that feels authentic to you rather than chasing trends or trying to imitate what already exists. I strongly believe in trusting our own roots and not getting overly influenced by Western culture, especially when India itself is such a rich source of stories, art, and traditions. India is one of the biggest marketplaces in the world, and as creators within this country, we have an incredible opportunity to build brands that reflect our own identity and cultural strength.


Don’t wait for perfection... start small, learn continuously, and grow with real customer feedback. As women, we often balance many roles, so it’s important to stay resilient, ask for support when needed, and keep showing up consistently. When you build with authenticity and purpose, your work naturally connects with people and creates lasting impact.


Divya Palat – If you are building something - build it with spine.

Company– Balancing Act

Advice

If you are building something - build it with spine.

Early on, you will be underestimated. Sometimes subtly. Sometimes openly. Do not waste energy resenting it. Use it as fuel. Competence is the most elegant rebuttal.


First, master your numbers. Creativity, passion, and vision are powerful - but cash flow, margins, and negotiation skills will protect you. Financial literacy is not optional. It is freedom.

Second, don’t confuse busyness with growth. Scale is not about doing more; it’s about designing systems that do not depend entirely on you. If everything flows through you, you are not leading - you are surviving. Build processes. Build second-line leadership. Build clarity.


Third, choose courage over likability.

Women are often conditioned to soften decisions to preserve harmony. You can be empathetic and decisive at the same time. Boundaries are not arrogance. They are architecture.


Fourth, invest in learning continuously. The market evolves faster than ego can tolerate. Whether it is technology, AI, digital strategy, or financial modeling — stay curious. Reinvention is not a failure of your original idea; it is proof of evolution.


Fifth, protect your energy. Entrepreneurship is a marathon of pressure. There will be seasons of doubt, cash crunches, reputational risks, and sleepless nights. Build a support system. Take care of your health. Burnout is not a badge of honor.

And finally, think long term.


Do not build only for revenue. Build for relevance. Build for respect. Build for legacy.

The world does not need more noise. It needs more women who are clear, capable, and unafraid to occupy space at decision-making tables.


You do not need permission to lead.

You need preparation, persistence, and the courage to stay in the arena long enough for your work to speak.


Priyanka Edupuganti – As an early founder, I’ve learned that clarity of vision matters more than speed.

Company– BRIVOX

Website: www.brivox.in

Advice

As an early founder, I’ve learned that clarity of vision matters more than speed. My advice to aspiring women entrepreneurs is to focus on building systems, not just ideas. Ideas evolve, but systems sustain growth. Start before you feel fully ready, but make sure your foundation — financial understanding, execution discipline, and long-term strategy — is strong.


Don’t seek validation; seek traction. Numbers, outcomes, and measurable impact speak louder than opinions. Build credibility through consistency. Also, surround yourself with mentors and ecosystems that challenge you to think bigger.


Most importantly, don’t underestimate your ambition. Women are often encouraged to “balance” life — but it’s okay to build boldly, scale aggressively, and think institutionally. Entrepreneurship is not just about starting something; it’s about creating structures that outlast you.


Maria Leal – As CEO of Plennio, there are two ideas I consistently share with women founders who are just starting out: radical persistence and an obsession with the problem you solve.

Company– Plennio

Advice

As CEO of Plennio, there are two ideas I consistently share with women founders who are just starting out: radical persistence and an obsession with the problem you solve.

Building a company — and especially creating a new category as we have done at Plennio — is not a brilliant sprint; it is an endurance journey. There will be moments when the market does not understand your proposal, when the “no’s” pile up, and when progress feels painfully slow.


Persistence is not optional; it is the invisible infrastructure of the business. The difference between those who make it and those who fall away is rarely talent — it is the ability to stay standing when the initial excitement fades.

The second key is having almost surgical clarity about the problem you solve. Not your product. The problem. At Plennio, we learned early that the better we could articulate the real pain companies face — employees overwhelmed by invisible caregiving responsibilities — the easier it was for the market to understand our value. If you need ten slides to explain why you exist, your proposition is not sharp enough yet.


I would also add something that can feel uncomfortable: do not seek constant validation. Seek evidence. Speak with real customers, measure real impact, and make decisions based on data, not applause. The market does not reward good intentions; it rewards solutions that work.


Finally, choose your circle carefully and think bigger before you feel “ready.” Many women wait until everything is perfect before taking the next step. Entrepreneurship rarely offers that moment of absolute certainty. Move forward with sufficient information, not perfection.


If I had to summarise it in one line: persistence to cut through the noise and absolute focus on a problem worth solving. Everything else — product, narrative, even the model — can and should be refined along the way.


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