Business leaders get trapped in survival mode all the time. They’re constantly putting out fires instead of building something bigger. Jo Rawald knows this cycle well – not just from watching her clients, but from living it herself. Her childhood taught her what real survival looks like, and now she helps women entrepreneurs break free from that reactive mindset to think like profitable CEOs.
Turning Childhood Survival Into Business Strategy
Jo’s early life was all about getting by. Her mother, who immigrated from Taiwan, couldn’t read or write English. Her father came back from three tours in Vietnam with PTSD and couldn’t hold down work. “I saw my mom work from 6 in the morning until 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night every day,” she says. Her mother assembled eyeglasses during the day, then waited tables at a Chinese restaurant until late at night. The stress eventually became too much. Rawald’s mother committed suicide in 2006. “Everything that I do, I do as a testament to my mom,” she explains. That loss shaped everything about how she now approaches business – particularly the danger of letting overwhelm take over your life.
Shifting From Employee Habits to CEO Mindset
These days, She works with women entrepreneurs who are stuck in the same survival patterns she grew up watching. The problem? They’re running their companies as if they’re still employees. “A lot of times I’ll see solopreneurs or even women with teams of 15 who are still acting as the employee in their company. They’re not truly the leader,” she points out. The difference comes down to how you handle problems. When something goes wrong, an employee jumps in and starts doing tasks. A CEO steps back and figures out who should handle it. “They’re going to plan it out, reach out to their team to see who can pick this up, and then delegate it,” Jo explains. She sees women trying to do everything – running their business while managing kids, homework, meals, and household tasks. “They’re trying to be the leader of it all,” she says. But that’s survival thinking, not strategic thinking.
Jo doesn’t sugarcoat things for her clients. “If you’re working day in and day out and you’re not making any profits in your company, you don’t have a company. You’ve got a very time-consuming and expensive hobby.” It’s harsh, but true. The statistics back up why her work matters. Women own 39% of businesses in America, but those businesses only generate 6% of the nation’s revenue. “If you had a room with 39 women and 61 men, that would represent how many businesses are owned by women. But if all those people left and only the people representing sales came back, there would only be six women in the room.”
Confronting Fear With Practical Roadmaps
Most people who want to start businesses get paralyzed by not knowing where to begin. Jo recently talked to a young woman with degrees in education and international business who had big dreams but hadn’t started anything. “I asked her, ‘Well, you have all these goals and dreams, and they’re beautiful. Why haven’t you gotten started?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know how or where to get started.'” The solution was simple but powerful. “Do you have your goals written down? She said yes. Do you have a timeline with those goals? No. Okay, well you don’t have a timeline, so they’re really just dreams right now.” Fear comes from not having a roadmap. “If I asked you to get in a car and drive across the country and you didn’t have a map, and you didn’t have Siri or MapQuest or Google Maps, it would be frightening,” she explains. “But if you had a map, a step-by-step guide showing where to turn, how to go, what direction to move in, and how long it’s going to take you, that’s going to be a whole lot easier.”
Jo isn’t worried about AI replacing everything, but she’s paying attention. Her husband is a commercial airline pilot, and they’re already working on technology to have robots fly planes. “My kids tease my husband about being just a button pusher,” she laughs. “So that joke has turned into a reality—they’re now developing robots and technology where they won’t need pilots.” But some things can’t be automated. She recently had a client who registered her business online and then got three official-looking letters asking for more money. “She couldn’t have gone through AI and figured that out. That’s experience,” Jo says.
Her advice for staying relevant? Build real relationships. “There are human experiences that will never be able to be replaced by technology. If we want to stay ahead of automation, we need to make sure that human connection is there and remains intact.” Jo’s approach combines the determination she learned from watching her mother with the strategic thinking that separates successful business owners from those just trying to survive.
Connect with Jo Rawald on LinkedIn to learn how she helps women entrepreneurs step into true leadership.
