She’s the Business

Women excel in one of two habits of successful entrepreneurs. But they’ll need guts for the other.

“As one of my mentors says, ‘“When you come to the edge of mystery and you don’t quite know what to do, there’s like a little thing in you that can jump.’”

Michaela O’Donnell Long graduated from college in the middle of a recession. No jobs were available, so she and her husband founded Long Winter Media, a branding and video production company, six months into their marriage.

Today, the company counts Google, YouTube, and NBC Universal among its roster of clients. But in its early years, Michaela and Daniel just kept taking the next step to grow their business, even though they didn’t fully know what they were doing. 

That process led Michaela to embrace risk as a mark of the entrepreneurial life - and it’s a key finding of her doctoral research into the habits of successful entrepreneurs. Today, she also is a Senior Director at the Max De Pree Center for Leadership where she leads initiatives for entrepreneurs and women in leadership.

In this episode of Life & Faith, we talk about the barriers women face on their way to becoming entrepreneurs, as well as the way people long for spiritually satisfying work - desires that Michaela says tap into Christian ideas of vocation and calling.

“Everybody I've met is hungry to have a purpose, is hungry for the ways they spend their days to matter - whether that’s, ‘I hunger to matter to the people in my family’ or ‘I hunger for my work or my job to have meaning’. It takes different shapes for different people. But I certainly think that humans are hardwired to long for meaning.”

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Explore:

Long Winter Media

Max De Pree Center for Leadership

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