Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - Winning in the Modern Workplace as a Female Founder | Rebecca Minkoff - Fashion Icon & CEO

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Lessons - Winning in the Modern Workplace as a Female Founder | Rebecca Minkoff - Fashion Icon & CEO · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, examine the hurdles and triumphs of women-led startups.
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  Learn why a mere 3% VC rate doesn't dictate their potential.
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  Learn how bootstrap success stories like Pink Lilian Monique Rodriguez
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  defy fundraising norms and learn why choosing control and profitability
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  over aggressive fundraising paves the way for lasting success.
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  It's actually, I think when something like that happens, we forget how recent history is,
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  and we forget how shitty circumstances were, like not that long ago,
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  like with people that were still, you know, still working, it's not like these people
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  are retired, like they dealt with a lot of shit in their career.
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  And it's just, it's, it's very sad because I've actually heard this, I've heard this,
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  and it's very, it's, um, it's unfortunate. I've heard that from women, sometimes they get
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  the least career help and mentorship from other women.
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  And that seems to just be such a toxic unfortunate circumstance, but I think that you just
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  described it perfectly. We have to put ourselves in the shoes of what some of these individuals
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  went through throughout their career to really understand why they're so stressed in their work
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  environment and why they act or react a certain way. But I mean, honestly, like the, the way to
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  counteract that is to just have these conversations and to do more of what you're doing and to
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  interview more incredible women leaders and talk about how they've created this workspace and work
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  environment. It's just amazing for everybody. I think that's really how you, you win and you
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  modernize and you and you be better. And, and you know what, you're still going to make people
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  on satisfied. You know, I remember, um, this was in 20. It was definitely pre-COVID.
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  I'd let's just say it was 2018. I sat all the moms in my office down. I said, what do you need to
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  succeed? And I was a gas at some of the requests because they were, they were like, all right, I was
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  like, this is too crazy. Like it was like, I want you to pay me when I'm not working from home.
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  When I have to stay home and I want you to pay for my kids daycare, if my nanny is sick, if you
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  want me to come work. And I was like, I love all these ideas. But like, I am not the government.
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  And I can't pay your nanny or for your daycare. If you chose, if you elected a child, like,
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  I, you know, I can, well, it's tough, too, because there's a lot of expenses associated. Now,
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  then in that case, somebody could go work for like a massive, you know, billion dollar publicly
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  traded, even trillion dollar publicly traded company that maybe has those benefits. But I,
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  there also has to be a balance between what the company can afford and keep the lights on
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  and how to serve the people that work for you. And that's always like, I mean, you want to talk
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  about entrepreneurial headaches and stresses. I mean, that's one for sure. Oh my god, it's huge.
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  I mean, even with my other company female founder collective, you know, we're a really tiny team
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  and at first, we wanted to extend a very long maternity leave for our employees. And then I
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  looked at my co-op and I said, I want to do this. But we can't afford first for one of our seven
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  employees to be out for four months. Like, we just can't, you know, so we have to scale it back
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  and when we get bigger, we can look at, you know, making it longer. But I think people forget,
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  again, like you said, size of company and the reality of what a company can afford to do at its
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  size and stage. I think that that, you know, something that I've thought of and this is not just
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  for women and maternity leave in particular, but having these super candid conversations when you,
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  when you're hiring people so that you both know where you want to go and you both know if you can
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  support each other. And I think that this extends, definitely extends way beyond women because
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  now people aren't staying in careers 20 years anymore. And like my suggestion is make contracts
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  for two years and then help them figure out where they want to get two years from now and just
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  commit to each other for minimum two years. And if they want to go different job title more,
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  you know, bigger salary, whatever it is different company, you commit for the two years to each
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  other, then you help as a business. So do you help them get to where they want to go? So there's no
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  bullshit. There's no quiet quitting. There's no all this garbage that comes with these lack of
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  candor. That's really I think the thing. Anyway, not what I was going to say as a counterpoint is,
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  you know, when my first employee quit, I felt like it was the same feeling as being broken up with
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  because I was like, but we're a family. We're going to do this forever together. And even in
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  the last year, like I had been, you know, saying to my CEO, I was like, there's eight key people.
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  We have to hold on to the eight. They can never leave. This is our team. And one resigned and one
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  and got promoted and moved somewhere. And then we started, you know, getting in fresh eyes, fresh
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  talent. And now I'm like, when you resign, like, great, it's an opera. Now I look at as an
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  opportunity, like you get to go on, we get someone who's excited and enthusiastic. And it's made
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  it a lot easier to be that nimble and they're like, great, okay, good. Next, let's find an awesome
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  person. And, you know, recently we had a ton of new team members join and the energy is
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  intoxicating. And it's like, oh, that's all we needed. We just need new blood. And so it's not
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  a scary thing as it used to be. I want to talk just one more. I want to talk about all the work
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  you're doing with, with the podcast was super woman with the female founder collective. But
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  before we go into that, I just want to, I mean, you've taken a whole bunch of risks through your
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  career. This is like the last point on kind of like the origin story in the come up. If you could
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  highlight one risk or one shit, almost hit the fan moment when you were building that really
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  stood out outside of those 10,000 bags because that definitely is a, it's a, but that's not a
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  risk that went well. It would be a risk that you took that went well. I talk about it often,
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  but we were the first brand to talk to our customer. There was no other brand in 2006 talking
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  directly to their customer. Everything back then was through boutique or through a store and
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  magazines. And that was it. Social media was just beginning. Facebook was still closed to college
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  campuses. So if you go back to that landscape, the fact that I was online talking and DMing on
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  like the purse forum to her, um, taking, you know, crowd sourcing, maybe that wasn't a term.
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  You know, I'd literally be like, they'd be like, we love that purple leather you use, but can we
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  have it with the pink zipper? And I'd be like, great. I need 60 of you to come into an order and
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  I'll go uptown and I'll buy the leather and I'll, you know, run your credit cards personally and
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  do it. And they were all like, we're all in. And so I think that the amount of shit we got
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  for talking to our customer, you like, our biggest retailers at the time, sacks, Nordstrom,
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  Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, we're like, you can't talk to your customer. Like that's
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  beneath you. Like the designer needs to stay above it all in their ivory tower untouchable.
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  And you look like desperate talking to her. And I was like, I think, you know, my brother and I,
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  who's my co-founder, we think we think this is a good thing. And like go with us here. And they're
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  like, we're not going with you. You know, we're even working with influencers. Again, we were told,
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  like, why are you working with these sea list people? There's a lot of like a elitism and I guess
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  it's fashion design. It's a, I mean, listen, there's still a layer that shall not be penetrated by
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  the likes of me. There, there was a lot of elitism. There was a lot of rules. And we just didn't,
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  A, we didn't have a choice. And B, we just felt like this was, this was the future was talking to
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  your customer, engaging with content creators and really building a more democratic community, I
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  guess. I love that. I think that's such a smart. And it's so funny how you perceive that as a risk
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  because I, I, I look at that as the least risky thing you could possibly do for your business.
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  I look at that as almost like the de facto when you're a startup. Well, yeah. Yeah. That's kind
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  of like the playbook. 20 years ago, it wasn't. It's very interesting. Okay. Um, female founder
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  collective, you have over, I mean, when I did some research, 9,000 members, do you have more than
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  that now? It's obviously. We, yeah. So we, we've structured the community in two ways. We have a
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  free membership for those who can't quite afford yet to pay. So that's about 25,000 people take
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  participate in that. Okay. And then the 9,000, yes, is like our private community that we have
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  where we're going real deep on education. So my co founder, Ali and I really felt that the missing
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  link for a lot of founders is all the nitty gritty ugly shit of business. And can we get women that
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  have done it and succeeded to teach these like modules to other women. So whether it's in person
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  zooms, you know, and then the community itself where you can go ask anyone anything, you know,
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  what's the best AI to use or, you know, what's the best CRM platform? And you can really go deep
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  with other women who are probably going to give you a much better recommendation than, you know,
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  searching for yourself. What, what is the, the, the sort of the one universal problem,
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  concern repeated post that comes up again and again and again and again. And it's it's all,
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  it's all women founders. So what's happening that you, you just want to put out to any woman who's
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  building something incredible right now that you see, repeat it. I see that due to the last,
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  I'd say maybe five to 10 years of raising money, right. Now you see women are also raising money.
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  The, the, we all know the percentages, 3% of women get funding. But I'm of the mindset that
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  not every business should or needs funding. And there's too much this desire to be like,
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  I raised this and therefore I'm a success. No, you're not. You just raised money. You're now
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  beholden to investors. You sold a big chunk of your company way too early. And there's this
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  obsession with building without figuring out profitability. And trust me, we were there. We were
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  in the raise, raise, raise, build doesn't matter. And then when sentiment changes and investors
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  are like, are you profitable? Oh, we need to be profitable. Cool. That's going to take us five,
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  you know, five, 10 years to figure out like build your business to be profitable from the beginning.
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  You know, like there's nothing wrong with slower instead of your growth or build your business to have
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  a balance of like profitability and allow you lifestyle, right? Mobility. And instead,
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  I'm meeting too many women are like, I'm trying to raise, I'm trying to raise and building. And I'm
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  just like, I'm frankly, I'm just like, I think, I think they're all just looking at what they
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  saw the last five, 10 years is that's the only way to build a business. Well, I think you could
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  actually fall into a trap. So if you know the numbers of how many women actually successfully raised,
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  which are horrible, and those numbers shouldn't be the numbers that they are, but they are the numbers
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  that they are. So say it's, I was actually at this conversation with with with Julia Borstein. And
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  it was again, it's like two, three, it was like really bad. It's almost like when you hear the
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  number, you're like, no, no, that can't be right. But when if I was a woman entrepreneur and I was
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  looking at that number, and I also tied into the Silicon Valley, everybody's raising, I would give
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  up before I started because not only do I have, you know, it's not only like a 99% failure rate,
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  but I have a two or three percent chance to go raise money and everybody's raising money. So what,
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  so you have to like shift the lens, shift the paradigm of entrepreneurship. So you understand,
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  okay, it's super fucking shitty that these are the numbers. But there's other ways to build businesses
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  that I would actually say not just women should adopt, all entrepreneurs should adopt. But I think
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  that again, if you go into it and you look at those numbers, I don't want, I don't want great
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  women entrepreneurs to give up before they even start just because they're getting in their own
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  head. Yeah, I'm not saying you should give up, but I, you know, the amount of women I meet, like,
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  I'm making clothing for tall women and I'm raising money. I'm like, no one's going to invest in
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  that. That's not a, that's not a huge hockey stick of scale, you know, open a great boutique,
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  open a great e-commerce site, sell on TikTok shops, you know, small batch. And I've had the pleasure
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  and honor of meeting so many women who are on again on my podcast, but they've done, you know,
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  pink lily, over 100 million in sales, never's taken a dime, you know, I think there's some really
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  exceptional Monique Rodriguez, one of the largest women of color exits in history. Like she didn't,
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  she didn't take money or try and raise to scale. And by the time money came to her, she was so valuable
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  and profitable that her multiples are like mind-blowning. Have you had Nancy twine on? I've got to make an
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  intro. Oh, you have had. Okay, she lives in Florida now. So I know she's like, she's,
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  she's a girl crush on her. She's awesome. She's absolutely awesome. No, when, when you just started
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  talking through some of the people and you show you, you'll have to give me the third name,
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  I threw out there. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that
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  subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation,
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  check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.