This entrepreneur shares her advice on running a business with persistence and perseverance

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This International Women’s Day, organizers are encouraging participants to #PressForProgress, noting that gender parity is 200 years away. The day is an important moment to stop and recognize the achievements of women everywhere, how far we’ve come when it comes to gender equality, and how far we have to go. The Xero community is full of amazing women doing incredible things. We talked to some of them about the challenges they’ve faced and what International Women’s Day means to them. Mimi Hanley is co-founder of Powder, a purveyor of Taiwanese-style shaved snow in San Francisco, California.

Mimi Hanley describes her journey to finding her passion as a series of realizations. She started her career at a large bank in New York after college. After a couple of years, she decided she didn’t want to work in finance long-term. She went back to school to study business and after that, joined a tech company in San Francisco. After two years, she concluded that software wasn’t her passion, plus, her mind was elsewhere.

“Like everyone you have these daydreams, you want to own coffee shop or something,” Mimi remembers. “I’d always wanted to open a neighborhood bar and I kept coming back to this at multiple points.”

She began exploring opportunities in food and beverage in a corporate capacity. It was at this time that she started talking to her friend David Chung about her dream of opening a bar. He asked her if she’d ever heard of shaved snow. A popular Taiwanese dessert, shaved snow is the intersection where ice cream and shaved ice meets. The flavors are frozen into cylindrical blocks and, upon order, shaved into paper-thin ribbons on machines shipped in from Taiwan. It is a traditional and rare delicacy, but after some research, including the all-important taste test, Mimi was sold very quickly. Not long after, Mimi and David founded Powder.

“We were super motivated to make something super great acceptable,” Mimi explains. “We take a global approach to our menu. We’re evangelizing a whole product category. We’re not using our grandma’s recipe, we’re using our own recipe as hungry, young, inspired individuals.”

International Women’s Day means something different to everyone

Mimi describes herself as a nose-to-the-grindstone type. As a female entrepreneur, International Women’s Day isn’t a huge landmark for her personally. This in itself, she says, could actually indicate progress.

“The vast majority of my staff are women, it’s probably a 50/50 split,” Mimi says. “Equality isn’t something I think about at work, and maybe that’s a great thing – gender issues are not prevalent in my workplace.”

However, since starting her business, she has noticed her personality evolve. Particularly some of her traits that most would consider feminine.

“I don’t know that this is necessarily unique universally to women, but generally speaking there can be a sentiment among people of ‘let’s make this work, let’s be trusting, let’s not be difficult’,” Mimi says. “In an entrepreneurial environment that’s not helpful.”

“I have certainly developed with regards to not taking things personally and also not feeling bad when I have to stand up for myself, and realizing the other person is not going to take it personally. I think the need to overcome this is something that more women face because generally we want to make things work, get along and not be difficult and sometimes you’re working with folks that aren’t that way. Maybe you need to do things that aren’t innate.”

Everyone needs a good support network

Mimi’s advice for women, or anyone for that matter, looking to start a business? Having a support network, be that a business partner, a spouse or family.

“Whatever your support network is, it needs to be ready,” Mimi says. “There are lots of highs and lows. It’s such an emotional and physical rollercoaster. The support network is important. Starting a business is lonely – it’s not like a corporate environment where there’s water cooler talk. You need to have those people you can talk to and keep you grounded in order to keep your own sanity. A partner of some sort will be able to support you through the ups and downs.”

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