Dear friends,
I recently stumbled on a podcast where a guest (unsurprisingly, a man) declared with confidence that you need to give “120% of yourself” for your business to succeed. He meant it as a universal truth.
But as an African woman who has lived the simultaneous realities of salaried work, motherhood, partnership, entrepreneurship, and caretaking, I have to say: the math ain’t mathing.
A few years ago, I had a full-time job. I was raising small children. I was managing a home, navigating illness in the family, doing the school runs, writing reports, trying to stay professionally sharp… and somehow also supposed to “give it my all” to a new business. I remember working on client deliverables at 1 a.m. after everyone had gone to sleep, or using Saturday nap times to edit pitch decks. There was no 120%. There was barely 65% to go around.
And yet, that wasn’t failure. That was survival. That was building. That was real.
The data agrees with us.
According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, women in low- and middle-income countries often start their businesses later in life, typically between 35 and 55. Why? Because life has other plans first. Because we give birth, we raise babies, we care for aging parents, we clean kitchens, we lead community meetings. The OECD even estimates that if women started businesses at the same rate as men between 30 and 49, there’d be nearly 25 million more women entrepreneurs. Twenty-five million. Let that sink in.
And it’s not just about starting late, it’s about starting tired. UN Women reminds us that globally, women spend 2.8x more time than men on unpaid care work. In our lives, this isn't abstract. It looks like this:
Most of the women entrepreneurs I meet with? We don’t have strategy calls at noon. We talk at 10 p.m., sometimes 11, after the elder kids are fed and tucked in, after the house is calm, after the kitchen is clean. Half of us are nursing newborns during those Zooms. And yet we show up. Consistently. Tenderly. Cleverly.
We’re building businesses differently.
Our businesses don’t usually spring from sudden capital injections or overnight epiphanies. They begin with a moment of deep frustration or helplessness, when a system failed us or someone we love. That’s how we build: from the inside out, rooted in the personal, branching into the communal. Even when it’s tech. Even when it’s bold. It still often starts with “this thing didn’t exist when I needed it.”
We build slowly, and we build with others in mind. Our communities are woven into the blueprint. We are subconsciously designing safety nets, joy pockets, and systems of dignity. And even when growth is slower, our foundations are strong.
The advice needs to change.
When people hand out business advice without nuance, when they say “just go all in” or “wake up at 5 a.m.” without asking who’s nursing a baby at 3 a.m., they reveal more about their world than ours. That kind of advice is callous at best, dangerous at worst.
But it also shows us why we need more of our own voices in the room. We need to write more, record more, document more. Yes, even if that means adding to our already overwhelming to-do lists. I say this to myself too: your story matters. Not just for visibility, but for shaping the kind of entrepreneurial ecosystem that honors the realities of African womanhood.
So no, I will not give 120%. I will give what I can, with intention, with clarity, with truth. Some days that’s 40%. Some days that’s 103%. But I will do it with joy. I will do it with care. And I will not apologize for refusing to burn myself to make someone else’s metric.
With heart and honesty,
Arlette