Resilience, adaptable leadership and goal-driven are skills three women veterans in this Forbes article by Geri Stengel translated from military duty to entrepreneurship.  These are skills you too can bring to your business and evoke in those you work with.

I love how each of these women took their existing strengths in the military and found how well they translated into the business world — even though thet seem miles apart.  Unfortunately, most women neglect to recognize their own strengths, let alone capitalize on them.

I remember hearing a humorous story about a husband and wife bantering over dinner about who had the harder job.  The husband thought his wife, who stayed at home, was not “working” — as so many people do.  (I even caught myself saying the other day when I stopped working, referring to when I stayed home to raise my children!)  To settle the matter, they decided to trade jobs for a week.

As you might guess,  the story ends with the wife competently managing the family business and the husband exhausted, overwhelmed, and begging to trade back before the time was over.  It is a funny story about women being able to juggle schedules, manage ten things at once, deal with daily crisis, manage a tight budget, make quick decisions, and still have a delicious dinner on the table at the end of the day.

The real message behind the humor though is not being heard by most women.  What are all the skills you already possess?  What talents have you demonstrated mastery of in your personal, volunteer and work life?  You have a well of untapped potential.  Stop sitting on it and start using it.  Believe in your skills, even if they were not performed at the head of a Fortune 500 company.  List them, know them, be willing to brag about them.

One of the most poignant parts of this Forbes article was the end.  Geri points out that each of the three women veterans she interviewed ALL got outside funding for the businesses they started.  This is dramatically different from the norm, where women tend to avoid asking for money and perhaps do not feel qualified to get it.

You are qualified for so much more than you give yourself credit.  What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?  What would you consider doing if you did not have to ask someone else for money to get started?  Consider the possibility of doing it anyway!  The people who backed these three women entrepreneurs got their money back and a whole lot more.  Maybe you not asking for money is not only holding you back, perhaps it is actually preventing others from getting rich because of the value you will provide when you learn to believe in YOU!