THE POWER OF WOMEN'S ENTREPRENEURSHIP

At the invitation of Yves BROCHARD, President of Initiative Vendée Bocage, Miruna Radu-Lefebvre spoke at the round table organized in La Roche-sur-Yon in collaboration with Initiative Vendée Terres et Littoral, on March 10, as an expert in women's entrepreneurship. Miruna brought an analysis and an academic vision of what make the values of an entrepreneur today.

"Live my life as an entrepreneur" is a national initiative France open to women who develop an entrepreneurial project. The objective of the device is to allow them to discover the realities and the daily life of the "job" of business leader in an immersive way at their side over a day.

At the first round table, we attended the exchanges of two pairs who shared their experience in front of a packed room of a hundred guests:

Pairs:

• Cécile Cossard (Director of the brewery La Louette) and Isabelle Lucas (Director of the soap factory Namitiis)
• Patricia Poiroux (Director of the company Les filles d'Olonne) and Sophie Hammid (Director of the children's spa De mémoire d'eau)

Based on these different testimonies, Miruna shed light on the "Live my life as an entrepreneur" system, explaining how and why this system of mentoring and coaching between peers brings benefits to both "accompanying" and "accompanied". The testimonies of the entrepreneurs show that this device goes beyond the framework of the only day of immersion because they are still today regularly in contact. These are real human encounters as women, not just as entrepreneurs. The exchanges were authentic and based on giving.

It is an entrepreneurial mentorship that includes a strong human dimension. There is of course the sharing of good practices and concerns between the two entrepreneurs of the pair to reassure each other. If the mentee learns during the device not to underestimate herself, this is made possible by the approach of her mentor buddy who instills confidence in her by being in a benevolent listening posture. In a mentoring system, the neutrality and benevolence of the mentor are essential, because the mentee needs a person to confide in, share her moments of doubts or difficulties because very often "the spouse can not hear everything". The mentor is seen as a "role model" and when the mentee becomes a mentor, it is only by simple generous feedback to others: "what I have received is normal to give it back".

Nevertheless, to succeed in perpetuating your business, you must be accompanied in a network, a formal support as is the case for these entrepreneurs with Initiative Vendée because it also allows you to cross sources of information and inspiration, and to open your professional network.

This accompaniment and the device "Live my life as an entrepreneur" is also a way to get out of your loneliness :

• We are looking for an alter-ego
• We are looking for an experienced interlocutor
• We need "pipes" in the form of exchanges:
  • Not formalized
  • A space of trust and security

For the mentor, it will be necessary to avoid above all:

• To impose one's point of view
• Force the mentee to go where she doesn't want to go

The network must thus avoid toxic relationships between mentee and mentor, by setting up the "matching" of pairs and ensuring that there is no power effect in the mentoring relationship.

The very richness of a pair that works is freedom, independence and the desire to undertake. Miruna Radu-Lefebvre
 

During the second round table, two new witnesses accompanied Miruna:

• Alimata Sawadogo, Manager of Kali's Service, Poultry Production and Distribution, Burkina Faso
• François Lesuisse, Director of the Grand Palace in Les Sables d'Olonne, Sculteur artist

Their enriching testimonies highlighted the notion of effectuation.

20 years ago, a young researcher, herself a former entrepreneur, decided to understand how entrepreneurs really reason and act. It highlights five principles that these entrepreneurs apply, without necessarily being aware of them, which it groups under the name of effectuation :

• Start with what you have
• Acting as an acceptable loss
• Getting commitments
• Taking advantage of surprises
• Create the context

Effectuation is therefore a causal approach that is articulated according to the context, the specificities of the entrepreneur, a permanent adaptation, a certain joy in entrepreneurship but it is also a real combat and endurance sport.

It is in adversity that we succeed the most. François Lesuisse

The entrepreneur finds in entrepreneurship the way to build and control the future to look at his personal history. The company is like a being in its own right.

For these two witnesses, creating a link with one's territory is fundamental to:

• Developing employment
• Connecting with and for the community
• Accept some form of responsibility
• Playing a political, economic and financial role

Today, young people want to express themselves and are in a quest for meaning, they want to undertake with others and no longer in a solitary way. They do this by creating their own company with a responsibility that extends to all stakeholders. They no longer want to undertake at any price and already take into account, for example, the principles of sustainable development.