Culture hacker and 'social alchemist' Seb Paquet noted this phenomenon: in an explosion of connection, too few of us have found any belonging.
Fast Company On Creative Career Reinvention For GenY & Boomers Through Social Media Savvy & Storytelling, Sounds Like The GlobalNiche Recipe
Loved to see this "Second-Act-Career Success Stories" article in Fast Company today by Lydia Dishman, focusing on non-digital-natives who have been using digital tools and social techniques to dynamically reinvent themselves.
They're not at a disadvantage because they're non-native digital beings. In fact, as these examples show -- we digital immigrants have more to work with for our online transformation.
The second-act career successes Dishman writes about sound very much like GlobalNiche recipes. It's what we've been pioneering in our own lives, creating training and showing others how to enact. For instance:
Reframing your experiences for value
- using your previously produced content/material to reach goals you set today
Embracing the power of the social web to grow
- to find communities of mentors, peers, employers, clients, and customers, as well as to rapidly educate yourself in leading edge business techniques
Dishman also notes that 94% of recruiters are using or plan to use social media to find candidates and 78% of them already have placed people they found online. That only underscores my point here about the need for career counseling and training personnel to meet rising expectations....wonder what the percentage of trainers for mid career counseling are embracing these new realities.
Want To Land A High Paying Job? The Go-To People In Your Network May Be Lowering Your Chances
Do you have more women than men friends at work? How about in the communities where you spend your free time?
All that women power could be hurting your chances when you’re looking for a job.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman -- if you’re relying on your social network to help you find work and your contacts are mostly female, research from Stanford University shows your odds are weaker.
Why?
It’s not because your girlfriends won’t help you.
They will, to the best of their ability. If you’re a woman, they’ll try even more than they’d assist a man. In fact, if you’re a woman, you probably consider the sisterhood your go-to team.
“Women are four times more likely to ask for help from a female contact,” says sociologist Lindsey Trimble, in this post by post-doc Christin Munsch at The Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
Yet, if you want to expand your career opportunities, there’s a reason to start networking with more men.
It has to do with access and resources.
Your women friends can’t help you find a job they don’t know about, and they can’t hook you up with resources they don’t have.
For instance, how many of your female contacts are in high-paying positions of authority and power? It’s no secret women have been shut out of the sweeter employment situations due to gender and wage discrimination. Add to that a tendency women have to get corralled into particular occupations.
Women also may not be able to draw on same kind of the influential networks men have.
It gets worse. A woman’s referral seems to convert less often.
When you act on a job lead from a woman, Trimble’s recent study shows your chances of actually landing the position are lower.
Of 600 people Trimble surveyed in Washington State, all the job seekers -- men AND women -- were most likely to receive an offer when they networked with a man.
Trimble is a member of The Clayman Institute’s working group on Redesigning and Redefining Work.
Mapping My LinkedIn Network
My network has a new branch since I last did this network map in March 2013. That maroon group on the lower lefthand side is from PJ Van Hulle's 90-day list-building challenge, Listapalooza.
The blue are Turkey and Expat Harem-related. The green are Turkish diaspora. The pink is Bryn Mawr College, the orange is social media and online marketing pros, and professional coaches. The bronze is NYC, SF, writing and travel peers. The yellow at center is Silicon Valley, startups and the VC world, while the light blue is the TED community.
Click on the image to see a larger version. Here's where to get your own.
Online Self-Loathing & Surveillance
Personal branding online sure gets a bad rap, like this New Yorker post by Tony Tulathimutte, which warns us "You Are What You Tweet".
He's talking about the self-loathing variety of personal branding online -- heavy on the self-censorship with no mention of integrating what matters to you with the vulnerability that actually connects us as people, both concepts we emphasize at GlobalNiche.
Tulathimutte concludes, "The more immediate threat may be the surrender of private identity: to perfect the total image of an impressive life, we prune off the parts of ourselves that can’t, won’t, or shouldn’t be seen."
Meanwhile, The Guardian writes about the psychological effects of surveillance. Research shows being surveilled fosters distrust, conformity and mediocrity.
I can't help noticing that the most deleterious effects of being watched seem to track with the defensive, inauthentic personal branding approach Tulathimutte writes about. As if when we reveal ourselves voluntarily we're avoiding actually being seen.
"Science can lay claim to a wealth of empirical evidence on the psychological effects of surveillance...indiscriminate intelligence-gathering presents a grave risk to our mental health, productivity, social cohesion, and ultimately our future."
That's serious business not to be taken lightly.
But do we have to approach the online presence we build as if we are being watched against our will? As if all we aim to communicate is 'successful' conformity (which is of course mediocre and gives the rest of us nothing to connect to).
Can we make being seen (when we choose it, that is) a path to our own resilience?
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Sarah Kendzior makes a related point in Al Jazeera September 9, "The danger of data: Not the information, but the interpretation".
She writes: "Our online self-expression - selective and self-censored, complicated and contrived - is being mistaken for the summation of our being. The great existential fear is no longer not knowing who we are. It is not getting the chance to find out."
The Bellyflops of Social Media Mismanagement
On the precipice of war, overreaching false cosmopolitanism continues. Plus, parents plan for unsustainable digital abstinence.
The overreaching false cosmopolitanism continues. Read my sadly-still-fresh take here.
Today the Kenneth Cole Twitter account tweeted something thoughtless about "Boots on the ground" or not, don't forget about sandals and loafers.
Nope.
Boots on the ground are soldiers going to war possibly to be maimed or killed, and to wreak havoc on the lives of others. The precipice of war is not an opportunity to remind people you make loafers.
Feels like deja vu for Cole. Because it is. The brand flopped just like this in 2011.
At that time I made the connection between global mishaps of high profile brands and the false cosmopolitanism we’re all suffering
There was Groupon’s SuperBowl ad fiasco, when the company attempted to mix consumerism with sensitive political, environmental, cultural, economic and social issues, and the Kenneth Cole Twitter debacle which appeared to make light of unrest in Cairo.
In 2010, I wrote about earlier instances of the phenomenon of false cosmopolitanism, inspired by Ethan Zuckerman and Jen Stefanotti's work on the topic.
We've got a culture problem on our hands. Access to the worldwide web makes us imagine we’re global thinkers. But we’re not. Not even close.
In order to truly be global thinkers, we’d have to be xenophiles, actively and constantly bridging cultures, immersed and knowledgeable about multiple worlds.
Most people hang out in “like-minded microcosms” and when we cross a boundary online the new light shed on everyone’s prejudices and assumptions can take us by surprise.
This “xeno-confusion” is happening more often in the virtual realm, with higher and higher stakes.
Today’s other big story of social media mismanagement has been swiftly answered by Alexandra Samuel of Love Your Life Online. It falls into the category of unsustainable digital abstinence to solve problems that may crop up in the future.
"Don't be scared to Facebook your kids," she responds to Amy Webb's piece at Slate "We Post Nothing About Our Daughter Online."
Samuel writes: "Parenthood is such a central experience that there’s no way to cut it out of your online life without profoundly compromising your own ability to have authentic, meaningful connections online."
That’s exactly right. Plus, digital abstinence doesn’t prepare you for the world your child will grow up in.
How are you preparing yourself for a wider world?
If No One In Your Industry Thinks Online Presence Is Important, Could That Be Your Competitive Advantage?
If people in your particular career field or industry don't 'do' meaningful/extensive/basic social media do you think you might make it your competitive advantage?
If no, why not?
I ask because I've been adding to the GlobalNiche homepage the reasons people don't invest in their online presence, and that's one I hear from a lot of people. The people around them aren't doing it.
Something to consider: you might be mistaken about this perception that no one else in your life is doing it. If you're not online in expansive ways you probably aren't in a position to gauge if other people are.
Do any of these reasons sound familiar to you?
- DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START
- NOTHING OF INTEREST OUT THERE FOR ME
- I'M HESITANT TO BECOME VISIBLE
- DON'T WANT TO BE EGOTISTICAL & TALK ABOUT MYSELF
- NO CONNECTION BETWEEN WHAT I DO ONLINE & EFFECTS OFFLINE
- MY OPPORTUNITIES COME FROM CONNECTIONS I ALREADY HAVE
- I'M CONFUSED ABOUT OWNING MY ONLINE PRESENCE
- CAN'T AFFORD TO MAKE MISTAKES ONLINE
- I'M NOT A CREATIVE/TECHY/SOCIAL PERSON
- DON'T WANT TO BLOG OR JOIN A BUNCH OF SITES
- JUST USE SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ENTERTAINMENT
- MY CONTACTS ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT ME
- TOO EARLY OR LATE IN MY CAREER OR LIFE TO GET STARTED
- FEEL THE NEED TO BE ONLINE *LESS* NOT *MORE*
- IT'S JUST ONE MORE THING TO DO
- I'M NOT ACCOMPLISHED ENOUGH TO GO PUBLIC
- WAITING TO BE PUBLISHED/DISCOVERED/HIRED/INVITED
- PLAN TO DO IT RIGHT WHEN I NEED IT
- CAN'T RISK HAVING MY WORK STOLEN
- TAKES AWAY TIME FROM MY WORK/FAMILY/RELAXATION
- MY CUSTOMERS/FRIENDS/COLLEAGUES AREN'T ON WEB
- DON'T KNOW IF I HAVE ASSETS NOR HOW TO USE THEM ONLINE
- UNCLEAR ABOUT MY SERIOUS PURPOSE ONLINE
- DON'T WANT TO MIX MY WORK & PRIVATE LIFE
- DON'T WANT TO ANNOY MY CONTACTS BY POSTING A LOT
- NO ONE AROUND ME IS DOING IT
- ADVISED TO WAIT UNTIL VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IS FIGURED OUT
- NO ONE IN MY INDUSTRY THINKS IT'S IMPORTANT
- CAN'T MANAGE IT ALL BY MYSELF
Consider getting started anyway.
Takeaway from PJ Van Hulle's 90-Day List Building Challenge
The take aways from PJ Van Hulle's 90-day Listapalooza list-building challenge amount to: Be the Leader of Your Own Movement with clear brand marketing, your signature system and people who are already in motion
1. We are moving from the Information Age into the Transformation Age.
2. Some people are immovable and aren't going to budge, no matter what. Some can make a change with lots of encouragement. And some are all ready to go. When you bring people who are moving through your signature system, you have a movement!
3. Brand marketing focus. "You can help everyone with your work, but you can't market to everyone."
Media Empire Building For Women, What We Can Use Our Platform For & Why We Need To
Regarding an on-going kerfuffle in an area I follow pretty closely (media & journalism plus gender disparities in those fields), this post by magazine editor and journalist Ann Friedman on media empire building has a lot of lessons in it for those of us building platforms and what we can use them for, and why we need to.
We need them for leverage, if we're thinking bigger or one day will. We need them as evidence. If we're women, many of whom are relegated to supporting roles in our fields, we need our own platforms to grow strong as marquee figures.
"I’m doing pretty well at building a following for my work that’s mine alone, not reliant on the individual outlets I write for. But I’ve never approached a publisher or editor-in-chief to ask for my own vertical, or the funding to create my own mini-empire."
When she decides to pitch a funder to finance her own media empire, Friedman writes, "There will be footnotes about my own Twitter following and the number of newsletter subscribers I have and my proven ability to cultivate a strong editorial voice."
Your Network Is Your Net Worth By Porter Gale
Fun morning at the Social Media Breakfast East Bay Meetup.
My GlobalNiche team member Tanya Monsef Bunger and I were at the headquarters of Lithium to meet former Virgin America marketing head Porter Gale talk about her new book Your Network is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness.
Porter gave us all free copies of her book because she knows influencers when she sees them.
Takeaways:
Smaller degrees of separation with social tech users (only 2 or 3 degrees separate us from each other now) + larger spheres of influence = accelerated networks.
That's only going to increase with upgrades in the technology, said Porter.
And, I would add --> upgrades in how we're using the existing and coming technology. We the users are going to make the most difference in how accelerated our networks become. It's about that whole connected divide conundrum.
And, basically, since all good things come through our network (in a tough economy more jobs are landed through internal referrals) and we're now relating to people based on online personas, it's imperative to take online network building seriously -- and our online personal brand as the valuable evolving key that it is.
That's pretty much my mantra too, as you may have guessed. Porter's speaking my language.
I came to it very differently than she did in corporate marketing. I was using online presence, personal branding and global community building as a survival skill during my 14 years as an expatriate, and tapped my entertainment industry & media background to arrive at content marketing as a method. But here we are, on the same page.
GlobalNiche's Winning Strategy For Building A Global Platform For 5 Million Women
My global community building-tech-women-leadership work of the past four years with GlobalNiche and my partner Tara Agacayak has been recognized as helpful to 5 million women worldwide.
GlobalNiche wins the Global Women's Leadership Alliance InnoCentive Brainstorm Challenge sponsored by Global Fund for Women, Global Leadership Advancement Center at San Jose State University, Mills College, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Public Health Institute, World Pulse, and Salzburg Global Seminar at San Jose State University.
What we've learned about building and managing global community with social web technology:
"Global Niche partners Tara and Anastasia have learned several important lessons in their work to build a global community over the last four years. In their opinion, 'people need both synchronous and asynchronous ways to gather, they need prompting and encouragement to do so and they need a common purpose for gathering. An active community doesn’t just need a place to gather, it also needs community leadership and active moderation to stay relevant and vital.' Tara and Anastasia recommend using Google Plus Communities as the primary platform for establishing the virtual community space and provided many specific examples of how to leverage this platform."
Read the full proposal for GlobalNiche's winning strategy for building a global platform for 5 million women change agents in the next five years.
Being Global Requires Understanding, Not Just Presence
This week I was pleased to be a member of the San Francisco audience in a private equity roadshow for entrepreneurs. I was there as an entrepreneur grooming myself to become investment-ready. The event was produced by a global investing network that stressed we must exercise due diligence before getting involved with a venture.
Warming up the crowd, the founder of the entire network announced the opening of its new Israeli branch.
He asked us, "Does anyone here speak Israeli?"
That's not global.
Local, regional, geographic, ethnic culture should be an aspect of your own due diligence when you’re a global operator, if for no other reason than to be personally aware.
I take from this experience the lesson that even investors who are planning to make equity commitments in the wider world need a lot of help understanding it.
Ex-Wired Editor Arikia Millikan Launches LadyBits Media Group For Tech-Savvy Women
Glad to attend the San Francisco launch by Arikia Millikan, who's on a global trajectory since leaving Wired magazine.
The evening cosponsored by Michael Gold at TechDrinkUp and Christian Perry of SFBeta at Monarch (yes, that's a trapeze above the bar) introduced a new media group founded by Millikan where tech-savvy women create the content they want to consume.
As Millikan describes it, LadyBits is a collective of tech journalists and a media experiment to source, commission and edit writing of interest to tech-savvy women -- a new layer between the writers and the publishing venues (which mostly serve the interests of tech-savvy men).
You can expect a curated collection of "literary musings about technology, science, business, culture, sex, and politics by writers who actively engage in intelligent discourse about how technology is shaping the future of our civilization".
I'll be contributing to LadyBits, which you can see here at Medium: LadyBits On Medium. They'll also be expanding all over the web, including at Refinery 29 and Popular Science.
Repurpose (Poorly Performing!) Content To Refresh The Conversation
"I recommend recycling poor-performing posts," suggests social media trainer for entrepreneurs Karen Clark. "Give a post at least a month or more, but by then it is OK to re-post the content, but in another way." I love Karen's advice here. It's in line with what I am trying to practice with my own content: conserving, reconstructing, evolving, syndicating, and refreshing the conversation. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. Try working with what you've already created. And, just because it didn't catch fire the first time doesn't mean it has no value and no one is interested.
The more you slice and dice the material, and incorporate insights from traffic data, repurposing your content can be a way to split-test headlines, post times, social media services, images and all sorts of other factors that make a difference between engagement and obscurity.
Being An Advanced Oddity: Between A Rock & A Hard Place
Here's a conundrum I've been discussing with potential business mentors as we try to find ground where we might meet.
Being the advanced oddity that I am -- that is, an independent scholar and entrepreneur on my own evolving path -- when I seek out specific help from established/establishment entities, I meet resistance to my very own realities.
I told the regional head of a national businesswomen's organization recently that my combination of being way out ahead in my thinking and operations yet a fledgling in business seems not to compute for most organizations with resources.
I may be a startup but I've got 25 years of professional and personal experience. I'm the age of people with established businesses but I don't particularly want to backtrack to become resonant with them, or adopt dying practices or conventions in the process of being disrupted.
So, receiving training on how to be professional or being moved by perks like "can bring your dog to the office" or recognizing myself in the accelerator organization's language of f-bombs or "join the movement, dude" (which is what international digital agency Unison.net's career page used to say), are not really in alignment with the kind of support I need.
On the other hand, more mature cultures of support I gravitate toward often ask for benchmarks I am nowhere near, like "$2M in revenue" and don't yet value (to judge from their own operations) many operational strengths I bring, nor necessarily grasp my outsider, international perspective.
And I note other rock and hard place factors I'm dealing with. I'll go into them more deeply another day but here are big ones: working around and with tech but not offering a "tech solution"; and being global in focus but not considering "global = somewhere outside America".
Still looking for the mature, forward-operating, early-stage business resources out there best suited for global women entrepreneurs.
Turkish Unrest Makes My Facebook Timeline A True Interest Graph
My Facebook timeline has in past 8 months become full of irrelevant sponsored posts and ads but before that was not an activated global neighborhood posting on interrelated topics.
What's happening in Istanbul and Turkey and the Turkish diaspora around the world this week has made my Facebook timeline suddenly a relevant, activated global neighborhood.
- I am seeing posts this week from contacts whose posts I have never seen in my TL. (Turks were early and enthusiastic adopters of FB so many connected with me back in 2007 as I told Intel Free Press here.)
- I am seeing posts from people who are saying they never have posted on this topic before.
- I am seeing groups of people I know from different locations, settings and times actively share and comment on a related set of posts.
- I am seeing people from my high school trying to parse a topic that other people in my feed (people I've met over more than 10 years, some I worked with, others I spoke to their class, others I know socially, etc) know about intimately and are reporting first hand.
This week has been what Facebook should and could be to make it a place I want to go in the age of Twitter, but so far never has been.
This phenomenon is due to the severity of the news, and the fact that my network is seeded with a majority of people who care about that type of news.
If Facebook has been making the shift from social graph to the more valuable (commercially, and for readers) interest graph, this week my TL made that shift on its own.
Blueprint For Building Global Community With Free Web Tech
When the Global Women's Leadership Alliance announced a brainstorming challenge* to gather ideas about how to create a platform for five million women change agents, my partner Tara Agacayak & I were excited to share what we’ve learned about using technology to build global community over the past four years. We've experienced that the way to impact change is with an activated global community connected through social web technology.
Our biggest lessons for creating an activated global community are that people need
- synchronous and asynchronous ways to gather
- prompting and encouragement to do so
- a way to get to know one another
- a common purpose for gathering
See GlobalNiche's blueprint for building global community using free web-based technology (G+! YouTube! Linqto!).
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*This challenge was also sponsored by Global Fund for Women, Global Leadership Advancement Center at San Jose State University, Mills College, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Public Health Institute, World Pulse, and Salzburg Global Seminar at San Jose State University.
My 40-Over-40 App
The 40-over-40 Women To Watch celebrates women over 40 who are disruptors, role models and makers...creating momentum and changing the world. It's an initiative by Dare, Dream, Do author Whitney Johnson and 40:20 Vision founder Christina Vuleta. Excerpt from my application.
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How are you disrupting professionally, whether in business, tech, media, entrepreneurship, social good, science, academics, creative arts, or politics?
Are you creating growth, jobs or new products, ideas or services?
My startup GlobalNiche works to train women to use the social web and mobile technology (what we call digital literacy) in alignment with their vision for the world they want to live in order to make that vision a reality both through their own work and through the connections and collaborations they make with others through their web platform. We show them how to do this.
In showing people how to build an effective online presence to connect with broader networks and opportunities, and build social capital, I help people appreciate and tap their own assets and the potential of online spaces to find or make their own jobs.
Along with my cofounder Tara Agacayak, I created a 6-step multimedia program and training system that shows women how to lay a foundation on the web for the work they want to do and the life they want to live.
In our experience, even with the availability of technology, extremely capable women stumble when it comes to sharing their expertise, knowledge, ideas, cause, or voice on the web because they feel uncomfortable using the technology or they feel vulnerable calling attention to themselves or joining a public conversation or taking credit for their ideas. We address these issues by bringing them together in a virtual environment that allows them to interact with one another, learn digital literacy skills and test them out in a supportive community, and encourage them to take the steps toward realizing their vision.
When offered to individuals, our program works to empower their vision for their own life. When offered in community, our program supports the community’s shared goals.
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What are some of the outcomes of your work?
What would suggest your greatest achievements are ahead of, not behind, you?
The world is just waking up to the future I’ve been living in. The future I’ve been solving for, and have now created distributable, teachable, learnable, actionable steps for.
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How are you a positive role model to younger women: innovating around work/life issues; promoting women for leadership?
Are you innovating around work/life issues; promoting women in leadership, or simply willing to make tough choices?
As a longtime expat and pro in culture, media, I’ve been forced to create my OWN GLOBAL LIFE/WORK SOLUTION …because it didn’t exist yet.
Younger women share that I have validated their instincts, helped them contemplate their own possibilities, and provided them much needed support & structure to operate.
- A young work-at-home mother says “I am getting organized both in the real world and in my mind. For the first time I am making visual representations of my work and my ideas.”
- A 30-something author and educator says my support community “became my think-tank, support group, go-to team, and more.”
- A 30-something global curator tells me “When I hear you talk about identity and multiple cultural personalities and finding your creative outlets no matter where you are, I feel understood.”
I wouldn’t say I’m a positive role model to just younger women. I work with women older than I am and they tell me
- I “Love the personal & pro growth spurt it’s providing!” in the words of a 60 year old women’s life-transition coach.
- A university instrucutor also my senior says “I felt smarter and more empowered to make decisions” after receiving my training.
- While a 50-something global mobility expert and real estate agent says training “generates introspection. It will open your eyes to the potential of online spaces.”
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How have you disrupted yourself personally?
How are you personally reinventing or creating a new path? Are you applying your prior experiences in new ways?
My current town of San Francisco may be a tech-forward location but that’s not why I’ve increasingly been turning to technology to help me be where and who I am today. Since living in 30 homes in 4 countries -- talk about personal disruption, try serial personal disruption as a lifestyle -- I’m a globally mobile individual and rely on social & mobile tech for my total, global operation.
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Why do you think you are about to 'take off'?
Because after a lifetime of existing in the wilderness, I am finally on-trend.
My custom life-work solution seems torn from today’s headlines and bestseller lists on the topics of future work skills and work-life fit solutions.
- “Leaning in” to your own life, your own preferred way of living and working.
- Optimizing your online presence in the age of the personal platform & personal branding, the global microbrand of you, content marketing, the social era.
- Being recruitable (quotable, invited to speak, hired, you name it) based on the appeal and impact of your web activities in the beyond-the-resume Google age.
- Your digital footprint IS your resume.
- Building global community through expression of your interests in the age of resonance and new world order of the interest graph — people who share your interests.
- Taking charge of your life’s trajectory in the age of the Start-up of You & disrupt-yourself and the ‘everyone’s an entrepreneur of their own lives’ times we all now live in.
Why am I about to 'take off'? Because I have turned to entrepreneurialism, education, and online spaces in order to share what I know more widely.
Switching From Hosting Conversation To Bringing Your Own Tools To Market
I get this. It's what I am experimenting with moving from Expat Harem book and blog to GlobalNiche's methodology for being a global citizen.
Brainstorming With Darlene Crane To Advance Careers & Lifetime Earnings For Women
Own your value and take it to market.
That's the message Darlene Crane wants to bring to women in business. She wants us to pursue our greatest ambitions with clear purpose. Seek power, and use it to generate benefits for the broader population. Crane urges us to "embrace ownership, and entrepreneurship."
All messages that resonate with me, a newcomer to the business scene but already feeling like an old hand at embracing ownership of my ideas and content, and very familiar with the entrepreneurial spirit.
What also resonated was what Darlene says too many smart, educated women are missing. The opportunity to drive the future economy, and win their own healthy financial life in the bargain.
I met Darlene Crane, the business growth and sustainable finance consultant at the second meeting of her new discussion and action group -- named, for now, "The $700K Club" -- which aims to gather women to create a supportive new business culture. Thanks to Cynthia Mackey, the founder of the web strategy company Winning Strategies, who invited me, and to Tiffany Roesler's Women Inspire Tech group which brought me and Cynthia together.
The first meeting in February teased out this statement from Darlene:
The recent media blitz on the stalling of gender equality and leadership pushed me to challenge the focus on behavioral issues. Could the challenge be valuing our inherent talents, education, experience and ambitions to move markets and create the opportunities we seek? Imagine if the lifetime earnings of women with college and graduate degrees actually earned as much as a man with a B.A. Each woman could on average increase lifetime earnings $700,000 -- which could finance a small business, start saving for the long-term and purchase real property. If all 30.1 million women with degrees in the U.S. earned an additional $700,000, we would contribute $21.5 trillion to the economy. With a thriving economy families from all communities could experience improvements.
Opening the discussion sponsored by edu-tech entrepreneur Mary Jean Koontz at SOMA Central tonight, Crane referred to Sheryl Sandberg's LEAN IN advice. "We're still asking permission or trying to fix ourselves. We need to reframe the discussion. "
"Women are stalling in this economy and there's a huge economic cost to tolerating this situation. This is a positive response to that."
"Product is what makes money in the future. It gives you IP and control."
Takeaways:
- Product is what makes money in the future. It gives you IP and control.
- Ask how can you make money so you can have freedom of choice.
- Economic freedom through ownership ensures meaning is a part of your work.
- If women pursue their ambitions know that it can effect the marriage relationship.
- If you're married, get a line of credit ASAP and pay it back to show you have a track record of repayment. Get a bank credit card in your name only.
- Find your public voice. Honor who you are, on a spectrum. Practice in safe spaces. Call on your trusted network to help find your authentic voice.
- Ask for what you want.
- Build on your strengths AND get comfortable doing the uncomfortable.
- Don't knock bank debt, which is long term. Get to know a banker now.
- Women need to learn the venture capital model. Investors are pattern matchers. You need to develop a network to groom you to get private investors attracted to your idea and do an offering.
- Young women are at risk. If you don't define your career by 35 you're cut off at 50.
Resources for women business owners mentioned in the meeting: Women's Initiative. Working Solutions. Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center which helps you bank borrow. Score Small Business Development Centers. Catalytic Women. Astia.
Darlene's initiative aims to have quarterly meetings which are invitation only. If you're interested to join the $700K Club, please contact her directly.
"POWER OF MONEY" was scrawled on the white board in the SOMA Central recreation room when we arrived. It fit Darlene's notes for the evening. To be continued.
