EMBiz: Shit Men Tell Women Entrepreneurs

Laurel Mintz, CEO & Founder

Hi guys Laurel Mintz here with Elevate My Brand. Today’s EMBiz is about shit men say to female entrepreneurs and why they’re wrong. As a female entrepreneur, I’ve been in this world a really long time and I’ve had some very interesting, very offensive conversations with men. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that this is all but I just wanted to bring this conversation to light since it is pretty relevant in today’s day and age.

Most of the things that I’ve heard that are really offensive have to do with my physical makeup. I’ve had men tell me that I need to smile more. I’ve had a lot of men tell me that I don’t need to dress so sexy or be as sexy when I’m out there taking meetings. And my response to that is always, “Well how do you show up in the world? Do you show up as your authentic self? Is your authentic self all these navy and black boring ass suits? Well then that’s who you’d like to be. That’s not who I am. And you know what, the truth is I’m going to show up and use every single asset I have to get where I want to go in life. Now do I abuse that privilege? Of course not. But for someone to stand up and tell me that that’s not how I can show up in the world, to me, is really offensive.

The other piece that I get a lot is on the finance and fundraising side. Now we’ve bootstrapped since the beginning so this isn’t really something that we've personally got out after, but we have built probably 100 decks for female clients that are going out to fundraise. And a lot of times we’ll hear is “You’re never going to get that fundraise, you’re never going to get that funding” - not because you’re a woman, but because they don’t like the concept, because it’s fashion related or because it’s not tech enough, any number of different reasons. And we all know that there is certainly bias as it relates to women being funded by VC’s in the startup world. But I just wanted to bring to light this conversation because it’s not just females that are out there fundraising, it’s really as issue across the board and the only way for us to fix it is to bring it to light and have these kind of really difficult conversations.

So those are some of the things and shitty conversations that I’ve actually personally had with men in the world and that I know other female entrepreneurs have had. I hope that this brings something to light for you and that if you’re watching and you’ve done this or been victim to it, you can take a breath, think about how you can better your conversations moving forward and be more conscious of how you show up in the world. That’s all for now, stay tuned for more from Elevate My Brand.