Stacey Abrams and Lara Hodgson on Starting and Scaling a Small Business

Women at Work

Harvard Business Review

Equality, Human, Resources, Business/management, Workplace, Careers, Management, Hbr, Entrepreneurship, Harvard, Business/entrepreneurship, Business, Gender, Women, Progress, Business/careers

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Entrepreneurs Stacey Abrams and Lara Hodgson share hard-won lessons from starting and running three companies together. They reflect on what makes their long-term partnership work and how they manage self-doubt and guilt. They also give tips for networking, hiring and retaining employees, learning the ins and outs of finance, and developing an exit strategy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Once your business gets to a certain size, the cracks start to emerge.
0:05.0	Things you used to do in a day take a week.
0:08.0	You deserve a customized solution, and that's NetSuite.
0:12.0	Learn more when you download NetSuite's popular KPI checklist,
0:17.0	absolutely free at NetSuite.com slash women at work.
0:21.0	That's NetSuite.com slash women at work.
0:27.0	Self-doubt is often driven by fear, and I believe in the legitimacy of fear.
0:34.0	We are exorded, especially for women in business, that you're supposed to be fearless.
0:40.0	That is the dumbest advice, because fears are real, and they are salient, and they come from something.
0:47.0	One thing I think Lauren and I do so effectively is we confront the fear.
0:51.0	We don't ignore it, we don't pretend it doesn't exist,
0:54.0	but we try to investigate the roots of it, and figure out how we can befriend it.
0:59.0	How do you navigate it? How do you leverage it?
1:04.0	You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
1:07.0	I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Gala, and I'm Amy Bernstein.
1:14.0	Stacey Abrams, whose voice you just heard, and her business partner, Laura Hodson,
1:19.0	met in a lunch line at a conference.
1:22.0	They struck up a conversation, became friends, and went on to start three companies together.
1:28.0	They learned a lot along the way.
1:31.0	In their new book, Level Up, they share plenty of hard-won lessons.
1:36.0	By describing their successes and failures, they helped to smooth the path for other entrepreneurs,
1:42.0	especially women and women of color.
	...

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