From our conversations and research with women social entrepreneurs, most of them point at questions they wished someone had asked them when they started their venture. Here’s a sample:
1. “What are your top priorities and what’s your plan to achieving them?” In hindsight, if I had been more focused and strategic about how I allocated my time, I would have achieved much more…
2. “I once read that the perfect social business is the intersection of what you are passionate about, where your skill set lies, and what makes you angry about the world. I think this is a great filter to test any new ideas and when I was struggling at the beginning to find my voice, this would have been helpful.
3. "What makes you cross and what are you going to do about it?”
4. “If you drew a map of your life, how much would the career component cover?”
Sometimes ambitions don’t align with a harmonious balance in life. I’m a lot happier now that I’m more honest about how I want to share out my life between my work and my family and everything else.
5.“What is your favorite quote and what does it say about what you want to do?”
6. “Are you ready to lead? "In order to lead, you’ll have to step out of your comfort zone. And that whilst some people will admire you for that, others will project their own fears onto you and give you a hard time for daring to be audacious.”
7. “How passionate do you think you are going to need to be?” "The answer is… “very”. But you need to align it with discipline. A lot of it.
8. “What question would you like to ask your 16 year old self?”
Read about other essential questions women social entrepreneurs ask themselves here.