Post-Pandemic Work feels a lot like Female Entrepreneurship
A letter to my entrepreneur self on the eve of starting a new corporate job
Dear part of me that was once an entrepreneur,
I remember. I remember the 24/7 mentality you put into building that first company. I remember between raising an actual baby and creating this physical one, how you juggled it all. Between virtual calls, long before those were a thing, to working during naps and then only because of a nanny (when the naps stopped). With puking cats and power outages at the worst time, you got it done, every single day.
You built something that would live outside of you. Today, in the days post-pandemic but pre-going-back-to-work, I honor you.
I started my company, a blogging service for photographers, in 2013. I sold it in 2017, staying on for 6 months to transition the new team before exiting the company for new ventures.
The first new anything after the sale was to acknowledge the complete burnout state I was in. Burnout is found to be common in entrepreneurs, directly linked with the passion and obsessive focus that is often required to get a company off the ground. As I started to wonder what was next, I identified with this quote from Dr. Jimi Wollumbin:
“Your job is a journey, an art, a duty, a trap, but not the destination.”
In the next few years post selling, I would go on to take jobs at both a marketing agency and then at an in-house position. They were both great learning and growing experiences in their own right.
Then, enter 2020. As the pandemic shut us down here in the northeast US in March of that year, I scrambled like everyone else to pivot back to working from home.
“I’ve got this, I ran a company from home before!” I thought.
Oh, hubris. I underestimated the toll the pandemic would take on work, especially marketing, and by April I was back in the freelance market (:cough: unemployed :cough:). I would spend the next 14 months catching jobs where I could, but mostly supervising my son in his third-grade elearning class.
My world slowed down in ways I had never experienced before.
Redefining Busy
Slowing down was hard, I have been taught to go and succeed at all costs from a very young age. But I found, once I could settle in, I didn’t hate all of it.
I learned I loved hiking in all weather (with the right clothes!). I learned to paint. I wrote, more in the beginning as I tried to understand my reticence to not being busy. I kept an account of every dream for the first time in my life. I did Morning Pages by Julie Cameron. I read, though much less than in “normal time”. I missed seeing actual humans. A little. Then a lot.
And I missed work.
It was difficult (understatement) to watch the tragic death numbers pile up, especially as I was tasked with protecting an immunocompromised child. And I couldn’t stop thinking that each of those numbers represented a person. A family. Love.
I tried to focus instead on redefining my idea of busy during that time. I thought back on those heady days of early entrepreneurship when I had to explain my idea to everyone, everytime. My elevator pitch was fine-tuned and able to be brought out and put on display at any moment.
I loved it, and it was still work. And to grow the company meant more and more work while hiring and scaling. Selling, to me, meant relief, but also a loss of self.
“What’s next?” I remember thinking.
I say all of this because I am struck by how similar working for a corporation seems to feel to that entrepreneur mindset during and now “after” the pandemic.
Entrepreneurship vs “Regular” Work Post-Pandemic
Remote work is here to stay. In 2019, a report from Buffer stated that 99% of workers wanted to do some or all of their work remotely. Gallup recently released their ongoing COVID-19 and remote work statistics and they state: “Nearly two-thirds of U.S. workers who have been working remotely during the pandemic would like to continue to do so. In all, 35% of those who have worked remotely would simply prefer to do so while 30% would like to do so because of a concern about COVID-19. Another 35% say they would like to return to working at their office.”
Also, work has been able to be more balanced in some ways. One of the key findings from a report from Morning Consult states: “Americans who are working remotely during the pandemic have had largely positive experiences, with clear majorities saying it has given them more time during the day, improved their health, and brought them closer to family members — without significantly impacting productivity.”
But that doesn’t always apply to women. A comprehensive deck “Understanding the pandemic’s impact on working women” from Deloitte really lays out the reality of women and how the effects of this pandemic may last for years. They report that “…nearly seven out of 10 women who experienced negative shifts in their routine as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic believe their career progression will slow down.”
Families have had to have hard conversations about what working from home plus childcare in the home actually looks like. Something that entrepreneurs, especially ones who are primary caregivers (which statistically has been mostly female), have had to do for years.
So I can’t help but wonder, on the eve of this transition for me — back to a corporation, but working from home indefinitely, is this what always next?
Was my entrepreneur journey just a precursor to this kind of work? I mean other than the obvious yes because of succession. And does that mean that this will have a “What’s Next?” at the end of it someday as well? That perhaps my entrepreneur self exists in every position, in every role, ready to spot places for potential growth in existing systems?
And maybe, the space for the entrepreneurial self to emerge again to shine in a new solo venture when time (and the universe) decide?
I don’t know the answers to any of this, and all I can do is focus on the known road ahead of me, but I’m grateful for my past experiences as I lift on foot to begin this new adventure.
