Month: October 2022

I want to return to a theme we’ve talked about on this show a couple of times in the past, and that is the disparity and sel- confidence, or self-promotion or whatever you want to call it between men and women entrepreneurs.

 I was thinking about this this past week as I once again got ghosted by a female entrepreneur who was supposed to be a guest on the show.

Now, for the record, I only have anecdotal information. But in the now three-plus years that I’ve been doing this show, I have never been ghosted in a conversation about appearing on the show or been ghosted, really in any way by any male entrepreneurs.

But I have been several times by women entrepreneurs. I’ve had lots of conversation with potential women, entrepreneur guests, where it’s clear, they’re very reluctant to be on the show. We have an introductory chat, but we never managed to get the interview on the calendar. They don’t get back to me they scheduled but they cancel at the last minute, or they say they’re just too busy.

Too busy to talk to the media for a few minutes, too busy for free publicity, or the chance for free to showcase your business and your story.

Now, understand we’re talking about entrepreneurs here. And that’s a pretty unique mindset or set of personalities, however you want to look at it. But I’ve not had a single male.  Well, that’s not quite true — I had one — a venture capitalist– tell me that now was not a good time. He didn’t say no, he just said he had too much going on at the moment.

So the disparity between male and female entrepreneurs has been really striking to me.

What the heck’s going on here? Clearly, either women lack confidence, or they fear or are apprehensive about the spotlight. Or don’t think it’s important to self-promote?  I’m not sure what’s going on here.

 So I did some research and came across a pretty interesting study by the Women of Influence, out of Canada. And it suggests that at least part of the problem is the underlying fear of negative consequences.

The study documented that this really is a thing.  They’ve even given it a name:  the Tall Poppy Syndrome. The term started out in Australia, and referred to anybody who stood out too much. The idea being you want a nice uniform field of poppies.  So a  poppy that gets too tall needs to be cut down. And since then, it’s kind of been taken at least in North America to be used by women advocate, to refer to highly successful women who get cut down.

Anyway, in this Tall Poppy Syndrome study, which surveyed more than 1500 high-performing women, more than 87% of them felt that their successes had been undermined in some way in the workplace, either by their boss or by their peers.

And note: this study only looked at undermining that took place in the workplace. It did NOTlook at all the other places that women can be undermined for their success. And as someone who has personally experienced this, I believe this undercutting is even more painful and memorable because work can just be work but if you have you’re undermined by little digs, or comments or things that you hear through the grapevine, things that you’re not invited to, whether it’s your spouse, it’s your family members, neighbors, people at your church, your friends, this kind of undercutting that happens in the workplace happens everywhere. 

The undercutting really, I think you’ll start to see, is really about our society in general and women standing out.  It’s not about just the workplace.

I think it’s like putting your fingers on a hot stove and you get burned.  You do it a few times and get burned — you feel intense shame, you feel pain, and you stop trying to stand out.

And I have to tell you that I personally, on a number of occasions, have found myself downplaying a success, because I was trying not to be a tall poppy.

Interestingly, in this study —  and again, I have to say it personally jives with my own experiences — men and women were found to be equally guilty in the undercutting.

The most common reasons that high performing women were cut down? The highest ranking one was jealousy. Second, were sexual or gender stereotypes, meaning women should be seen and not heard – that kind of thing. They need to be hard-working, but put their family first. And the third reason was feelings of insecurity or inadequacy on the part of the person doing the cutting.

As you can see, most of the cutting down that happened at work is more about the person doing the cutting than about the high achiever. But, you know, that doesn’t make it any less painful. It doesn’t make the digs, the ignoring, the behind the back gossiping and negative watercooler talk any less painful.

I think this is really tough to overcome. How do you fix someone else’s jealousy or feelings of inadequacy? That’s a big one.

I guess one thing that can be done is for managers to receive more awareness training of ways that maybe they unwittingly, or even willingly permit or tolerate some of this activity, in the hopes that it will slowly change our culture over time.

As for gender or sexual stereotypes, those are slowly changing over time, as my daughter reassures me.  But this, too, has been very slow and difficult. 

Just look at the national debate in the US that’s raging about abortion. It is clear there is still a very large segment of the population in the US who believe women should have less rights and they do not have the right to control their bodies.

People can go on and on about “right to life,” but if you take that whole thing towards its logical end, I don’t see how you get anywhere except women are less, at least in some key ways.

The implication clearly is: women are intended to bear and raise children, and that it’s their sacred duty to do so. And it’s their duty to raise the next generation of women to do more child raising and to raise strong boys who can rule the world, which is the rightful order of the world, apparently for many.

So what can we high-performaing, high-aspiring women do at a personal level to combat some of that pain? That knee jerk reaction to lay low and not make waves?

Well, one thing I found helpful and really well-done is a blog on a site called Refinery29.  I love the name, but I don’t know why it’s called that.

Anyway, the female author wrote a blog about her experience trying 30 different things to boost her self-confidence. She polled all of her women friends and colleagues and asked them for their best tips for things that had helped them boost their confidence.

I can tell you that hers is kind of a wild list. I gotta say:  I need to know some of her friends! On the list were things like trying naked yoga, daily affirmations, stand up comedy and skydiving.

You can try some of the things on this list, or just for funsies, you could even do your own poll of your friends and colleagues and come up with your own list to try.

I think the key is to keep trying different things until you find things that work for you. You know, it, I thought it was interesting– but really probably not surprising — that all 30 of these things can pretty much be put into two buckets: (1) continue to do things that are out of your comfort zone; and (2) do things to better identify and control negative thought patterns.

Doing things out of your comfort zone definitely builds confidence, even if you aren’t very good at it with every activity you do. You know, you have overcome the uncertainty, the speed bump that makes you think, “Ah, no, I’m not sure I want to do that.” Well, once you do that, you know, you can do it, you did do it, you live to tell about it.

Second, there is so much research out there that shows that this the cycle of negative thoughts that we often have, and that swirl around in our brains — often without our thinking about it, really do affect our reality.

Thinking becomes reality. And it is possible to change your negative thoughts, your lack of self confidence, your self doubt, and substitute those thoughts with something more positive.

I’ve already tried a bunch of things on this lady’s list (no, I haven’t managed the naked yoga thing yet!). And the blogger found as I did the daily affirmations do really help.

Now I have all these ridiculous post it notes all over my office and my house, d my friends tease me about them. But it’s good-natured teasing — as long as I don’t feel like they’re cutting me down. And if they do, they don’t get invited back.

And the post it notes fall off from time to time, and so that’s my signal that it’s time to change it to a new mantra, and I just put a new affirmation up. So that way as I walk through the house (I work from home), I am reminded to think more positive thoughts about life and about myself.

Another one that worked for me. And this is super easy. It was surprisingly not on the Refinery 29 lady’s list, but came from another friend. And that was to simply smile more often.

A customer service rep is driving you crazy? Smile. Make yourself smile, find the humor in it. You read something in the news that upsets you? Turn it off, find a funny cartoon and smile.

Just try it. It might work for you, too!

A lot of the reasons entrepreneurs struggle, frankly, I think, are mental.

I myself have given up in the past because I stopped believing in myself and my idea.  Or maybe to be more accurate, I never really quite believed in myself to begin with.

And I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one.

Being a successful entrepreneur is largely about being a successful salesperson. People think about the sales aspect of starting a business when it comes to pitching — pitching to investors, pitch competitions. For sure selling is really important then, but selling permeates all aspects of starting and building a business.

You need to sell when you’re asking friends and fun friends and family for a money or a loan. You need to sell to your bank if you need a bank loan.

You need to sell to service providers, especially if you’re hoping to barter services early on when funds are tight or totally non-existent.

You need to sell to those first employees to take a chance on the opportunity to be part of your growing idea before it really takes off. Because for them there’s a risk they may not end up getting paid or have to look for a new job if your business craters.

Listen to my interview with Melissa Kehl, the CEO of Rieke Interiors. She talks about how she had a huge cashflow problem at one point. Her business was seriously in need of money. And she owed a lot of money to her suppliers. And instead, she sold to them a package where they would all reduce the amount owed and accept payment from her over time. Now that I think requires some serious selling!

And of course, there’s the big one: you need to convince your customers that they need your products or your services. And that your offer is definitely worth paying for when there are usually lots of alternatives, some of which might even be less expensive than yours or better known.

It said that to be a great salesperson, you need three things:  1) you need a great product or service; 2) you need a great company that sells it; and 3) you need to believe in yourself.

And as a startup entrepreneur, you may have a great product or service. Or maybe it’s just a great light bulb idea. 

But ultimately, at the very beginning, you have only one of those things: yourself. Just you. No one knows your product, yet they don’t know your company. So you have only you and your belief in yourself. And that’s doubly true, I think, for companies offering a service.

And that’s why it’s so sad that a lot of businesses fail. Ultimately, the founder /owner ends up losing faith in himself or herself.

So what do you do if you find yourself doubting yourself and your abilities?

There are lots of frameworks out there.  There’s lots of self help books, inspirational TED talks.  You’ll find plenty of them if you go looking for them.

I personally love the framework set out by an organization called SoulSalt. And I’m unabashedly lifting some things from a framework that they have out there on their website. And I would encourage any of you who struggle with self doubt to visit the site & check out some of their tools & resources.

Their framework has five steps to improve our belief in ourselves.

1. Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses.  Make a list of what your strengths are. Most of us already know what some of those are. But it helps to write them down so you can see them in black and white (or even better, in an energizing color!).

But if you’re not sure, there are tools for that, too. There’s the StrengthsFinder 2.0 quiz. It’s kind of fun to do.

Or, try making a list of things people have told us over the years that we’re good at. Make a list of your past accomplishments that have made you proudest or brought you the most satisfaction. I bet you’ll start to see patterns.

Then work on those strengths. Identify what you’re not as good at that needs doing in your business, and brainstorm about ways to help find with those. It could be a partner or a mentor, an outsourced service provider, an intern, or a virtual assistant, or a MeetUp group.

2. Be your own coach.  To do that, you have to first stop being judgmental with yourself (easier said than done for many of us, especially we women, I think).

Then write out the things about your business that you’re not very happy with at the moment, or are not satisfied with.  Try to come up with little plans to improve each of those aspects.

3. Embrace who you are. Stop trying to be someone who’s not you.  Look at whether or not you’re trying to meet other people’s expectations. Focus on your core values. Write down a list of things that are really important to you.

Then start to be more observant of your own thoughts and emotions, try journaling. Start noticing where there is a conflict or stress between how you feel and spend your time versus what’s really important to you on that list of core values.

4. Continually tell yourself you can do it. Yes, I know this sounds a bit Pollyanna-ish. Be your own cheerleader, that sort of thing. But the fact of the matter is, it’s not just wishful thinking. Because if you believe, you can do it. You tell yourself you can do it.

Doing this changes the way you see the world and yourself. A lot of us — not just we entrepreneurs — subtly sabotage ourselves by listening to and even ruminating on that downward cycle of thinking. That reinforces that self-doubt and those negative thoughts. You need to stop feeding those thoughts!  Do not feed that troll!

You can either see endless possibilities or insurmountable obstacles. And it’s up to you to choose which way you want to frame the issues.

5. Get Comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is the last step in SoulSalt’s framework, and it’s my favorite one.

I think a lot of first time entrepreneurs get stuck here as well. It’s awfully easy for us human beings who don’t like change all that much to do the same things you did yesterday or last week. You tell yourself that you’ll get to that thing, or that big, hairy goal tomorrow, or next week, or the week after. And somehow a month or more slips away.

Another my past guests said it in another way: If you’re comfortable, you are not taking enough risks. I think that’s true of entrepreneurs. I think that’s true, frankly, of all of us who want personal growth. So you need to keep experimenting and trying things.

One idea that of my own that I didn’t see this on the SoulSalt site is to list of all the things that you see other companies doing to promote their products or grow their business.

And that can be all kinds of things. Just start looking around, reading the news, watching the LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube feeds.

Maybe it’s making a video promotion, or doing live Instagram, or YouTube events, posting goofy stuff on social media, holding contests, partnering with other businesses, or doing press releases. There’s so many different things that businesses do.

So make a list of them. And ask yourself if any of these just might possibly help your business? Which ones of those are do-able for you? And if so, how would you go about doing that?

As entrepreneurs you know, we love brainstorming with others about ideas, but we often suddenly shoot down and sabotage our own thoughts. But why? Why do we do that? The world is truly full of endless possibilities.

It’s said that entrepreneurship is a journey, it’s not a destination, and I firmly believe it.

So embrace that journey. Have fun with it, try goofy things, try weird things, go out on a limb.

Give yourself permission every day to do the virtual equivalent of skydiving. You know, jump out without a safety net. As one of my guests said recently, “Unleash yourself!”

For more ideas on how to restore your faith in yourself — or maybe build it if you never truly had it in the first place — I really do recommend checking out SoulSalt – they have lots of great, practical suggestions.

What have you found helpful? I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions!