Solo entrepreneurship and micro ventures are becoming increasingly popular among women. Despite contextual differences, we observe this trend in both developed and emerging economies. However, many women choose entrepreneurship as a career in emerging contexts for different purposes. Let’s take the example of Northern Sri Lanka.

The specified context underwent a long-lasting civil war, which increased the number of women-headed families. This led many women to start self-employment as the only option, and the local NGOs also contributed to this trend. The difference in why women choose entrepreneurship as a career in an emerging context is that there are unique factors as opposed to why women choose to become entrepreneurs in well-developed nations. However, an optimistic trend in the Northern Province is that many young women also prefer to become entrepreneurs, not because they don’t have other options but because of their passions.

While the topic we discuss in this post is about how subconscious belief systems affect overall branding and pricing strategies that entrepreneurs choose, it is also equally essential to dig deeper into women’s startup intentions and their overall stance towards scaling their businesses. The biggest problem that prevents business scaling among northern entrepreneurs is the improper pricing strategies. Many products of women entrepreneurs need to be better-priced, and many thrive through limited marketing networks.

Even though prices remain lower due to market saturation of certain products, the subconscious beliefs mainly cause lack of product innovations and women to play their roles small. This is also true because women tend to limit their businesses to home-based and micro ventures with a narrowed network of customers. This comfort zone puts them into a dangerous mode of surviving and not thriving. If we probe where the comfort zone comes from, this is mainly from subconscious programming.

Let’s now see certain examples of how poor pricing, lack of branding, and undifferentiated business ventures limit the potential to generate a solid competitive advantage. Such a limitation also creates weak marketing practices and reduces these entrepreneurs’ potential to move forward in scaling their businesses.

The ‘I am not good enough mentality translates to many women in the region not to brand their products in a positive light. The subconscious fear of failure and public humiliation pushes them to play small and stick to a self-imposed comfort zone. This further prevents them from reaching out to new audiences and trying to innovate their products to meet customer demands. Hence, small businesses’ lack of agility mainly derives from subconscious belief systems. This leads to pricing products very low and earning very low-profit margins with the few networks of customers they have.

Another common belief system that prevents entrepreneurs from staying small is that ‘proving successful to the community and families leads them to constantly expect the same, and thus potential failures might blow up in their faces’. This common perception among entrepreneurs also leads them to stay small.

Women struggle to enhance their self-worth through self-grooming and fail to put themselves first. Many women perceive self-care and self-love as sins and are so busy pleasing society. It is the self-imposed limitations and perceptions that hinder their success and even their intentions to grow bigger. Indeed, many women fear facing success on a large scale as this might put them in the light of society’s criticisms.

The above articulations and examples apply to women who survive through solo and micro-home-based ventures and don’t start their businesses out of a genuine passion. However, there is a positive emerging trend of women entrepreneurship in the region, where women tend to support each other and create role models in their communities. The more the support system grows, the more women will get motivated to do big things and earn big!

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You might also be interested in reading our Ebook- Empathetic Ecosystem and Sisterhood as justice to eradicate challenges of women entrepreneurs.