You know that any achievement requires commitment and if you are one of the many female CEOs who are committed to starting-up new companies or like many other experienced female CEOs who are running established companies, having the right business strategy is one of the keys to your success. Once you have come up with a good business strategy, and have tested and executed it to success, you may think that your hard work is over. Female CEOs would be wise to think again, as your success will undoubtedly begin to be noticed by some of your competitors.

You may have even been a trailblazer who spent many years creating the market opportunity and developing the product. But now that it has proven its effectiveness, people will begin to follow and maybe even mimic you. In effect, you are no longer the only player in the market. Don't make the mistake that others often do; it isn't time to rest but to exercise leadership to maintain your market share and business growth. Companies ran by female CEOs can be loosely broken down into three categories: the innovators, the imitators, and the vegitators.

Innovators are those who display forward-thinking, continually creating new ideas and markets. These are often female CEOs and other businesspeople who have become household names in society and who do not accept failure as a result.

The imitators are those who see something they like and realize that there is enough room for them in that field as well. These female CEOs essentially capitalize on the success of the trailblazer innovator.

Vegitators are companies that get to a certain level and then get sleepy. They reach a point where they are pleased with their results, feel content, and believe their leadership position will be sustained. They generally find, however, that this is not the case. There is too much competition for female CEOs to rest on their laurels and maintain the status quo. If you do not regularly reevaluate your strategies and practices, you open the door for someone else to come in and take over a big piece of your business when you least expect it.

To make sure that your business does not end up being vegetative, remember to go back and rebuild the dream (or thereason for being) on a regular basis and reflect on how far you have come over the years.

While female CEOs should not spend too much time looking backward, everyone needs to realize what they have accomplished to continue doing so in the future. Use your experiences as a springboard to grow and innovate.

While battling cancer, co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple, Steve Jobs explained that every life experience is like a dot. Who we become and the success we achieve is the accumulation of these connected dots. As an incredibly successful innovator himself, Jobs realized the importance of every experience and how their interconnectedness plays out in many aspects of life.

It is imperative that as female CEOs, you recognize the importance of your own experiences (or dots) and keep analyzing where you are, why you got here and where you need to go next. This will allow you to maintain leadership and find yourself in a position to be an innovator. Since vegitators will likely fail and imitators will rarely achieve the level of success that innovators have, being the innovator gives you the maximum potential for success.

We all have schedules and lives and other responsibilities that need to get done. Those of us who have accomplished something or become a leader as we grow older will often find it easier to invest in nurturing, encouraging and raising a family.