In Her Own Words Book Club: Getting to a Million with Julia Pimsleur
In Her Own Words Book Club | June 13, 2017
In Million Dollar Women: The Essential Guide for Female Entrepreneurs Who Want to Go Big, Julia Pimsleur is that friend who pushes you to be the very best you can be. The book follows Pimsleur’s own entrepreneurial story. It heavily focuses on Little Pim’s conception, mistakes, and milestones – including reaching the million dollar mark. Pimsleur extracts solid advice from her entrepreneurial story, and combines it with the advice of numerous other women and business professionals. Her intention is easy: helping more women owned businesses hit the million dollar mark. Why? Because once your company reaches this milestone, you will have reached what Pimsleur calls the “The Triple Win”: Money, Meaning, and Mobility. Key tenets of success in the world of entrepreneurship.
Pimsleur’s passion for helping women step up their game is clear throughout the book. She combines storytelling with ample advice and resources for women. On her website, she features numerous worksheets and templates dedicated to helping women reach their entrepreneurial goals faster than ever. In her army of tools, she also sprinkles multiple motivational mantras to help along the way. Positive thinking is one of the strongest tools you can master.
“I believe in one thing we can all do to help women get farther faster is to share our stories so that we can help our entrepreneurial sisters think big.” page 5
Today, Little Pim is a multimillion dollar company, yet, Pimsleur’s attention is now on helping one million women entrepreneurs reach one million in revenues by the year 2020. She leads a Masterclass for women entrepreneurs ready to “go big,” in addition to being a public speaker and coach. Aside from building a successful business and helping other women do the same, Pimsleur has been a entrepreneurship blogger for Forbes, served on the board of the New York chapter of Entrepreneurs Organization, and collected various accolades for her accomplishments.
The best part about Million Dollar Women is that it acts as an entrepreneurship bible made directly for women. From the beginning, Pimsleur acknowledges that the obstacles any entrepreneur faces are often amplified for women, especially women of colour. She cites that less than 7 percent of high-dollar venture capital is invested in women-run businesses. The dismal number may not be shocking, but it’s still disappointing to see. On the same stroke, she laments the lack of solid business advice hailing from other successful women entrepreneurs. With this book, she sets out to document advice not just from her own experiences, but from those of several other successful women entrepreneurs.
“Entrepreneurs are not smarter, more ambitious, or more talented than anyone else. What we have is the ability to take knocks and get back up again quickly – and then find another way forward.” page 46
Throughout the book, Pimsleur provides women with practical advice about pitching, raising capital, and building strong networks, but perhaps her best advice focuses on how to work on those internal limitations that keep women from getting farther. My favourite takeaway is learning to transform self-limiting beliefs into positive self-affirmations. Pimsleur calls on us to write out those beliefs that continue to hold us back to face them openly, and then to find the positive opposite belief. Focusing on the positive is important when going outside your comfort zone. Once you are able to focus on the positive, you can begin to achieve your goals faster as you focus more on what you can do, rather than what you think you can’t do.
Pimsleur places heavy emphasis on the self when aiming to go big. In the process of growing, you’ll need to tackle internal roadblocks, you’ll need to prioritize how time and energy is spent, and you’ll need to make time to just be a regular person every once in awhile. It’s a difficult balance, and it calls for dedication and determination, but luckily these are characteristics many entrepreneurs share. Outside of the world of entrepreneurship, Pimsleur’s book acts as an inspiration to taking bigger risks and developing meaningful business relationships. Million Dollar Women is packed with tools for success for those looking to boost their business or career and reach The Triple Win. It’s a must read for entrepreneurial women looking to get farther faster.
