21

Women Entrepreneurs

“The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try.”

DEBBI FIELDS

founder and spokesperson for Mrs. Fields bakeries

This chapter is specifically designed for you, women entrepreneurs.

I won’t get into how humiliating and arduous a climb you’ve had to make in order to gain respect and win control of your own lives in this country, and others. I also understand that your struggle is not over yet. In many African, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries, women are still being treated like property or worse. And we’ve still got a ways to go in the United States, though the misogyny we experience here is slightly less obvious, and slightly more insidious.

But here in Western society, and particularly in America, women have the opportunity, perhaps more than at any time in history and perhaps more than anywhere else on earth. So there’s really no excuse for not becoming an entrepreneur.

If you’ve got the guts.

For role models, men can look up to many successful male entrepreneurs who started with nothing and created business empires for themselves. The list is long. Bill Gates/Microsoft. Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook. Steve Jobs/Apple. Sir Richard Branson/Virgin. All of these men started with no funds, had no prior experience, and forged ahead nonetheless.

Women should take note that there are role models for them to look up to as well.

The following women play to win in a man’s world. Because it is a man’s world, unfortunately. And men will not soften the rules to suit you, just as they won’t soften the rules to suit other men who don’t make the grade.

Please note, as well, that none of these women I’m about to name married into their position, or were born with a crown on their heads. They had to fight hard to get where they are. Perhaps harder than their male counterparts. And they deserve the respect and admiration of all of us for being able to overcome any obstacles that society and culture put in front of them.

They won, regardless.

And, you can, too.

German chancellor Angela Merkel oversees Europe’s most thriving economy. The German gross domestic product (GDP) is almost $12 trillion. Merkel became chancellor the old-fashioned way. She worked for it. She didn’t marry into it. She didn’t inherit it. She clawed her way to the top, went toe to toe with men, and won.

Marillyn Hewson is the CEO of Lockheed Martin, the global aerospace, defense, security, and tech company. Hardly a position one would associate with a woman. But there she is atop an entity populated with mostly men.

Ellen Sirleaf Johnson is the head of state of Liberia. She is one of two recent female heads of state in all of Africa. The other was Joyce Banda of Malawi. Both ladies routinely met to improve the lives of women living in Africa.

Ginni Rometty is the CEO of IBM. Computers. IBM is led by a woman—the old stereotype of technology not being “feminine” is crumbling.

Meg Whitman is CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Before that, she ran for governor of California and lost by a small margin. She was also president and CEO of eBay.

Marissa Mayer heads Yahoo. When she came on as CEO, the company was in tatters. Under her leadership, Yahoo has made a complete turnaround.

It bears noting that during the five years that Mayer worked at Google, she did 250 all-nighters. Think about that: 250 nights with no sleep to get the job done.

So why not you? Do you have that kind of dedication to succeeding? Can you do it?

It was clear, even in the beginning, that Marissa Mayer was willing to outwork her coworkers.

Although Mayer is married, when she comes home from work, she doesn’t stop working. She will work late into the evening, even though she is with her husband. She doesn’t stop working just because she’s at home.

And that’s the sign of a champion.

Breathe it. Feel it. Dream it. Be it. All the time.

YOU are the engine that makes it all happen.

You are a car battery: you must recharge by turning on and running, every day.

Ladies, first and foremost: you’re on your own. No more rules neatly laid out for you to follow. You have to make up YOUR OWN rules.

And quite honestly, that’s tougher for women, because you don’t have to do this for yourself. As a woman, there is a social contract, and a social stereotype, that teaches you from an early age that you always have a security blanket, called a man. You have the option of getting married, having children, and spending all your time caring for the home, while he is working and trying to pay for it all. This persistent stereotype is still here, and though it’s not enforced as rigorously as it was in the fifties, it is still prevalent. Some people, sometimes, will wonder why you’re “bothering” to work so hard, instead of just settling down.

And you can certainly do that. It’s your life.

But if you decide to be a homemaker or a stay-at-home mom, you may as well leave your entrepreneurial aspirations at the door of the home that you didn’t get to buy.

The biological clock that keeps tugging at women to have children before their middle years, and the male culture that keeps shoving this message down their throats, is probably the biggest obstacle to them devoting all of their waking moments to their careers. If you’re a woman, your early twenties to your forties is the most important time to work at your aspirations. Without any diversions.

So your biggest decision to make is this: do you want to devote all of your energies in your twenties, thirties, and forties to your career goals, or do you want to conform to a biological imperative, a traditional social stereotype, and be a stay-at-home wife and mother? Again—there’s nothing wrong with this. At all. But at this point in history, perhaps for the first time, you truly don’t have to. The vistas of possibility are becoming wider, and grander, all the time, because of trailblazing women like the ones mentioned above.

Sometimes you do have to make that hard, fork-in-the-road choice. Sometimes there simply isn’t enough time to be a mother and wife and also have career aspirations. I certainly recognize that millions of strong women are single mothers. And I recognize that those women raise their own children, as well as going out and working for a living. But a lot of them are just working to pay the bills.

If you want to increase your chances of becoming a successful entrepreneur, if you want to climb the ladder of success, you cannot let anyone or anything get in your way. That includes your biological urges, and the social stigmas that enforce them.

Not until you’ve hit the big time!

You can’t pay enough attention to matters at home and at your career at the same time. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Statistics tell us that if you decide to have offspring, it’s best to have one. Just one. At least when you’re in your twenties. Because one may be manageable in terms of time, cost, love, and effort. To use a corny analogy, if you’re a “plate spinner”—you know, those people who keep multiple plates spinning on top of a stick—it’s best to have only one plate to spin, instead of ten. If you have more than one plate spinning at the same time, you will constantly be running back and forth trying to keep every plate spinning. It is inevitable that no matter how hard you work, the longer you spin, the greater are the chances of dropping them all.

What I am about to say is politically incorrect, and may hurt the feelings of people of faith or offend your racial or cultural considerations. Too bad. Here goes.

Don’t have a big family—especially if you can’t afford to have one.

Statistics also tell us that lower-income Hispanic, Italian, white, and African-American families tend to have kids at an early age, sometimes with a parent in their teens. This is lunacy, and it must stop.

For your children’s sake.

And for yours.

If you must have children at a young age, have one. Maybe two. That’s it.

Sorry, the rich are different. They can have as many kids as they like, because they’re rich. They can afford the extra cost of feeding, clothing, educating, and nurturing multiple people. A child is like anything else—you have to determine if you can afford to have one. If you can’t, then don’t have one.

There’s more.

According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, raising just one child through its eighteenth year will cost you anywhere from $241,080 to $500,000. That’s after-tax money, which means that, depending on your tax bracket, you can add between 30 and 50 percent to that figure, meaning that, at the highest tax rate, you will have to earn anywhere from $500,000 to $1,000,000 to raise one child until the age of eighteen!

Now, multiply that by the number of children people have, and you have a financial model that simply cannot bear a quality of life your child needs.

Again. STOP HAVING SO MANY CHILDREN.

NOW.

Generally speaking, women often have two choices in life, as a matter of sheer economic pragmatism: devote all of your time to your career, or have a family and children. There are scores of books debating whether it is feasible to do both, but personally, whether it is or not, I don’t think it’s worth the risk, most of the time. Better to play to win, and have a family after you’ve already accomplished something.

Men don’t have that option and don’t have that choice. They have to go to work. They can’t give birth and traditionally (as part of a social stigma that enforces a stereotype) don’t have the inclination to stay at home and raise the kids. This is changing all the time. Soon this may be irrelevant. However, I’m talking about the here and now—and these old fifties models still seem to apply to millions of people.

That goes all the way back to Australopithecus africanus, one of our early ancestors, who lived on the plains of Africa a few million years ago. He hunted and gathered. The female wasn’t as strong or as fast, and generally had to depend on the kill that he brought back. Things have certainly changed since then. But these traditional roles still seem to carry weight in our cultural memory. The bigger the piece of meat he brings back, the more attractive he is to the females (please address your hate mail to my post office box).

So, yes, you can choose to be a housewife, and forsake your career aspirations. But if you do, YOU will be the last in line. Your children will come before you. Your husband is also more important. When everyone else is happy, then you get to be happy.

Wanna be the most important one?

Then you have to make some real choices in your life.

You often can’t have it both ways (more on that later).

Pick one: CAREER or FAMILY.

It can’t be fifty-fifty.

It all comes back to YOU.

Men who thrive in the workplace, they live it. They breathe it. They eat it. In sports, in military combat, in the workforce, there are men who compete and thrive. They want to win.

Every day.

And, there are women who do these things. There are women who want to win.

I hope you are one of them.

There are some huge hurdles that you’ll need to overcome. Culture, misogyny—hell, guys like me. Old-world guys who enforce misogynistic stereotypes almost unconsciously. You’ll need to beat us at our own game. But, mostly, you need to overcome YOURSELF.

There are statistics in business journals, in medical journals, in social scientific journals that tell us that the biggest challenge to becoming a successful lady entrepreneur is the lady herself, YOU.

And of course, men still won’t accept you as the powerful woman you will become. Men still have preconceived notions about you. Men still look at you physically, and if you’re very attractive, they find it hard to look past all that.

Too bad.

I didn’t invent any of this.

Fight it.

Or ignore it.

But make it work for you.

So let’s take a look at what the facts are about women in the workforce.

And let’s then take a look at why none of that should matter to you on your way to the top.

First, some bad news. Studies tell us that many women are dropping out of the workforce by the end of their twenties.

Coincidentally, these years tend to be important ones for family and child-bearing. And because you’re reading this book, this will not stop you, right?

Now, some good news: at entry-level positions in corporations, women account for about half of the jobs.

Bad news: over time, men are twice as likely as women to advance up the corporate ladder. Why is this? Is it a result of a zero-sum situation: “Do I want to have someone else raise my children while I put my full focus on my career?” Is that a result of nature or nurture? Who cares? It simply is. And that means that you’ll have to work harder than he will.

More bad news: we are told only 3 percent of technology companies are started by women. That means that 97 percent of technology companies are started by men.

Research also tells us that 98 percent of all companies owned by women never make more than $1 million a year.

Why? If you’re a social activist trying to effect positive change in the world, this question bears weight. If you’re an entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter why—this is simply the monster you have to defeat, regardless of the reason it was born.

Also, consider this:

Men are the predominant readership of news and financial journals like Bloomberg Businessweek and the Economist. Female readership of these publications is only 27 percent.

Men also are the predominant readers of sports publications, which I contend reinforce issues of competition and teamwork.

Women account for about 75 percent of the viewing audience of TV shows like Ellen and The View. I contend that none of these female-skewed shows help women to advance in business.

Make of this what you will.

Perhaps as a woman who wants to immerse herself in the business world, you may consider turning your TV set to Bloomberg and listening to the captains of industry talk instead. Read Entrepreneur and Forbes and other business journals. Visit websites devoted to female entrepreneurship. Check out entrepreneur.com and go from there. Educate yourself. Hang with friends who are already in the fields in which you want to succeed. Unfortunately, that usually means: hang out with men. It’s up to you to change this over time.

Steve Harvey is right: Act like a woman. Think like a man. Specifically, think like the men who are accomplishing what you want to accomplish. That way, once you start doing it, it won’t be the province of men anymore.

I’ll never forget the film A League of Their Own. It’s about a female baseball team during World War II. Tom Hanks is their coach. One of the players on the team starts crying when she strikes out.

Hanks yells at her: “There’s no crying in baseball.”

As a woman, do you want to be respected in the workforce?

Want to be taken seriously?

Want to be treated as an equal among men?

Then don’t ask for a handicap, and don’t accept one. Don’t accept coddling; don’t succumb to female stereotypes.

The men around you may come over and try to console you as you’re sniffling, and ask you what’s wrong, but secretly they really don’t want to do that, and quite frankly, they don’t care. They’re probably sharks gunning for the job you want.

Just like in the suppressed fifties, men at work can’t cry.

And neither can you.

Not in the business world.

Want to cry? Go outside.

“There’s no crying at work.”

And don’t gossip. Whatever the stereotype is—and yes, I’m aware these are stereotypes—don’t embody them. Don’t embrace them. Reject them with all your might. Convince old-fashioned guys like me that we really were wrong when we labeled you with this stuff.

Don’t gossip about work or at work.

Wanna gossip? Go to the newsstand, buy your favorite gossip magazine, and gossip about Jennifer Aniston. Not about your coworkers or your job.

You already have enough working against you in this male chauvinistic world, so you don’t need to add fuel to the fire by gossiping and giving anyone else a reason to dismissively point out, “Yeah, well—she’s a girl.”

Don’t do that.

Become enormously successful, and then make all those simplistic, Cro-Magnon cavemen work for YOU.

Living well is the best revenge.

You want that, right?

And dress for success.

Go into business meetings and act like the men whose jobs you want.

Don’t dress or act too sexy. Men don’t understand nuance and subtlety. Really. The men will pay attention to your sexiness, not your brain or what you have to say. And that’s not what you want.

This is not to decide what you should and shouldn’t look like—if I see a man at the office wearing bicycle shorts, you better believe I’m going to tell him how to dress, too. He should be wearing the uniform of the position he wants. And so should you.

This is not a book about being happy in life, or about personal liberty—this is a book about being successful in BUSINESS. Specifically. You should be able to dress however you want, whenever you want, for whatever reason you want, in life. In the office, dress for the job you want, and dress to deliver a message: You are not here to be a sexual object, or to express yourself. You are here for a job, and you are here to defeat your competitors. Dress for that.

I’m being blunt. Because other books won’t.

Come into that meeting dressed like your boss.

That’s right, dress like your boss.

Women like Hillary Clinton understood that long ago. She has been wearing business suits for a long time. And she may have a chance of becoming president of the United States, if she decides to run. I’m not saying I would or wouldn’t vote for her. I’m simply saying she understands she must play by MALE RULES, until she can make them HER RULES. Beat us at our own game. Take the misogyny of our culture, make it yours, and after you’ve seized power, turn it against us. You can rewrite traditional gender stereotypes after you’ve conquered the system. Not before.

Women are nearly absent in Silicon Valley, and in mathematics, and the sciences, and in architecture and construction.

That’s not bad news.

That’s good news.

That means by entering into these areas, as a woman, you have nowhere to go but up.

Yes, you will find sexism, prejudice, and chauvinistic male attitudes. Many men will still not take you seriously. They’ve been in these workplaces forever. Women haven’t, either because society didn’t allow them or because they were not attracted to these areas. In either case, the result is the same: women have been largely absent from these fields.

As a woman, you need to wrap your head around career opportunities that you wouldn’t normally consider.

It also bears noting that it’s never too late to start on your journey to become a successful entrepreneur. Even after your children have grown up, and they’re off on their own path. If your children have left the nest, you will have lots of time to devote to YOU. And that’s exactly what you’ll need. Time. Lots of it.

For African-American and Hispanic women in low-income brackets, believe it or not, the news is actually good. Despite being in lower-income areas, despite not having access to funding (banks will often not take the risk of lending to lower-end economic groups), despite not being ingrained in the social circles of the white-male-dominated business world, African-American and Hispanic women are three to four times more likely to start a business for themselves than their white counterparts.

The above is worthy of high praise, because the pressures of being an African-American or Hispanic woman are compounded by the fact that 70 to 80 percent of black and Hispanic households don’t have a father at home. Let’s not romanticize any of this. It’s simply fact. African-American and Hispanic women need to work harder than their white female counterparts—to defeat the facts, and to defeat the stereotypes that enforce the facts.

Additionally, African-American women marry at a rate of about 40 percent—much lower than their white counterparts. Even if married, divorce rates are very high.

And I’m not even broaching the cost of having a family and children. With a family, you’re spending for three or four people, not just for yourself.

All of which places enormous burdens on the minority female who wants to be a lady entrepreneur. Family and children are supposed to come first, but—and it’s difficult to say this—a lot of the time, it can’t!

I’ll say it again: I raise my glass in toasting the extraordinary obstacles that African-American and Hispanic women are overcoming to go after their goals. With or without men.

You, the female entrepreneur, must mingle and be socially active in men’s groups, business conventions, and often (unfortunately) in predominantly white male business groups. That’s where the money and power are.

Go down to Wall Street and walk through the corridors of power. You will see an overwhelming white face.

Network.

Schmooze.

Put YOUR FACE up there.

Anywhere and everywhere there is a chance to mingle with other businesspeople. Daytime. Nighttime. Weekends.

There’s some more good news and some more bad news.

First, we are told that women consume more than men do. I mean much more.

And that means companies and advertisers and broadcasters and print media and Internet companies are constantly trying to figure out how to sell stuff to women.

That is good news for women, if they can take advantage of this power.

Now the bad news.

The manufacturing world, the industrial world, and the tech world are run mostly by men, with few exceptions. Even in stereotypically traditional roles—women cook, but the big chefs are men. Women care about fashion, but the big fashion houses are predominantly run by men. Men also run big hair salons—for women!

For a potential lady entrepreneur, this is a huge opportunity. The bad news is good news for you. There is nowhere to go but up.

You should be aware that most of the stuff that’s sold online is bought by women. And that’s good for you, lady entrepreneurs, because you know what women want. You are women. In social circles, and with your gut, you can tap into a marketplace that men struggle to understand, and yet somehow command. There is a feminist revolution waiting to be had here.

Companies and advertisers spend a lot of time and money on online magazines and sites that appeal to women. And because companies and ad agencies are run by men, they need to find out what women want and how to sell to women. And that’s an opportunity for you.

So if the above is true, why aren’t women creating, designing, and owning these areas?

You can try this at home for little or no money.

Learn programming.

Educate yourself. You have an advantage, if you can pinpoint it. You are the buyer. Sell to yourself.

This female-dominated marketplace should be teeming with female programmers.

And yet the vast majority of programmers are men.

Try this.

Your name is Victoria Fitzgerald. You’re divorced, but your maiden (last) name is too Eastern European for most people to pronounce easily, so you decide to keep your ex-husband’s name. Smart move. Less of a hurdle for someone to remember or try to pronounce your maiden name: Wyrzykowski.

Victoria Fitzgerald Apps. There. You just started a new company.

Employees? One. You.

Overhead? None.

Use your name in the title of your company. It’s a free ride for YOU.

Get the dot-com domain.

Create a logo.

Trademark it, if you can.

Have a few hats and T-shirts made, and send them via FedEx to your Aunt Wyrzykowski in Vermont. Have Aunt Wyrzykowski send you five dollars for the T-shirt bearing your name and logo, so that it qualifies for the interstate commerce laws that will help you to shore up your trademark claim.

You should consult an attorney to make sure that all of your legal bases are covered.

And presto—you’re in business.

You have nothing to lose. You have everything to gain.

Now, it’s up to you to create, market, and sell to a marketplace dominated by your own kind: women.

Oh, you don’t know much about programming?

Educate yourself online. Find out where they teach courses in programming. Or you can enroll in programming classes (try Dev Bootcamp, or Girls Who Code). And there are books that will teach you how to create apps, and even how to create an app business.

Shannon even got into the lady entrepreneur game herself. She took me to the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. There the biggest names in gaming held their annual get-together to show off their latest wares. She intended for me to immerse myself in gaming. But she wound up going over to the head of Gogii Games, made a contact, and created an electronic game for herself: Shannon Tweed’s Attack of the Groupies. You can download it and play it. How to get rid of groupies in one thousand ways. Oh boy.

My point is, there are many ways to make something from nothing. Cottage industries, or garage industries, start with nothing. Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Facebook, and KISS all started in garages. And if you do it right, you will reap the benefits. That means money, and lots of it.

You can do it.

There is a door of opportunity right in front of you.

It’s got your name on it.

Now, go out there and rule the world.