In this episode we’re joined by a very special guest: the new Director of Member Success here at Fizzle, Steph Crowder.
In Steph’s inaugural episode we explore the experience and perspectives of women in startups and lifestyle businesses.
- Is there discrimination against women in the indie business world?
- What has Steph’s experience been like?
- What steps can all of us take right now to discover where gender bias is limiting our content strategies?
- Plus a crap ton more.
I mean it, we discuss a lot more, and Steph is so awesome. Enjoy!
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“The Female Perspective on Startups and Lifestyle Businesses”
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Show Notes:
Marie Forleo will help you create a business and life you love.
Jess Lively | Designing a Life & Business with Intention
Jessica Livingston (@foundersatwork) | Twitter
Question for you:
We cover a lot in this episode about gender bias, equality and business stuff. What’s your biggest takeaway?
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The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
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One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
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You guys are amazing for covering this issue that most people just ignore. You didn’t cover your ears and yell LALALA like most people and you have my utmost respect for that!
Thanks to Barrett for bringing up bias because he’s right – we all do have them whether we realize it or not.
I really loved hearing Steph’s insight and I hope she’ll be in future episodes!
Thanks Heidi! I respect the guys for the very same thing. Pretty amazing, right? Your support means a lot to me!
Oh my gosh what a great episode. I usually try and stay away from this conversation topic, and instead just focus and do my work. Listening to this discussion without it getting heated and ugly was a great start to my day.
I didn’t realise until lately that the difference between how I want to approach my business and how I’ve been told to do it, has been that most of what I’ve learned has been from men and dudes.
As I’m building something now, I’ve found I’m looking for more women to talk to because they understand me and the conversation isn’t just about stats and numbers, but about ideas, experiences, and yes – feelings.
To be honest, I even hate admitting there is a difference.
Thanks for this show, ya’ll!
Such a good point, Andrea. I’ve also been learning from mostly men my entire life… especially business.
Andrea, I think you’re speaking to the importance of different perspectives coming together to create diversity of view. This is why I love Fizzle – some people approach from a data-driven perspective, others tend it take it on “feel”. Sometimes that’s related to gender, many times not. Either way, you end up with a full picture :) Thanks for listening, you rock.
Great Podcast guys! Always worth a listen. Sounds like you made a great choice in hiring Steph and wishing you all the best as you continue to grow Fizzle. Keep up the honesty, humor and empathy that make Fizzle and the Fizzle Show great. Cheers!
Well hey, thanks Levi! :)
This was awesome, guys.
I think it’s great that you brought up the issue of bias but also the idea of expectations and what we feel we ‘should’ be doing – that really resonated with me.
One thing I’ve noticed listening to previous Fizzle Show podcasts is a lack examples of where women are succeeding in online businesses, running successful blogs etc. The majority of examples drawn upon seem to be of guys.
This isn’t a criticism by the way, it’s just something I’ve noticed – and it would certainly be great to hear more about female entrepreneurs who are currently kicking ass!
I’m hoping to hear more from Steph on the Fizzle Show as you go on to create new episodes. This is not only because she seems really insightful and genuinely interesting – but also because she has an awesome name ;)
Keep it up! You guys really are the reason I haven’t given in to the ever-present and near-paralysing fear that comes with trying to make it as a self-employed freelance writer.
Looking forward to the next episode!
Thanks, Stephanie. We totally agree.
Great name! :) Those “should”s are killer. I still struggle with them, but try to tap into what I really value. Thanks so much for your support + enthusiasm, Stephanie.
I enjoyed hearing Steph on the podcast. Great conversation!
Thanks Wanda, so glad you liked it!
I just love the way you’re questioning the mindless growth and opening to more conscious growth. Steph so great to have you here and bring your perspective in! What I love about Fizzle is the way it creates a space where I can be and grow in my own way, combining the strategies with the more intuitive approach that works for me. Thanks!
I love her perspective too, Halina. She’s dynamite.
Thank you, Halina! Growth with intention in itself is worth the discussion. I’m so glad that you feel you can be YOU in Fizzle (that was a lot of “you”s, but you get me, right? :) )
Soooo I’m not sure how I first found Fizzle and because of that how it escaped my Unroll.me filter, but boy/girl ;) I’m so grateful for both after listening to this episode.
I first started my business, Fit Armadillo, so I could help women who weren’t into the gym environment find fitness. As I’ve grown my business and made changes to it and the audiences I work with, I’ve been blessed to witness not only amazing transformations in the lives of my clients, but also in my own life. So many of my past limiting ideas of what I could/should do as a career/with my life have been turned upside down in a good way. I’ve since become obsessed with sharing my experiences, especially with other women.
I love the comment that was made about THIS being a big time in history akin to women working in the WWII era, because that’s what I see it as, too.
Even though we as women are now told much more frequently that we can do/be whoever we want to be, I still see and hear of the pressure for us to get married and start raising families far sooner than men.
However, we are now also seeing great examples of women who are leading lives on their terms. These stories (thanks for making Fizzle a place to share them!) are what will really enable more women to dare to do work that they want to do and push past societal norms.
That’s why I’m so excited to be alive in this historic period of time. We really can do anything we put our minds to. We don’t HAVE to be wives, moms, or unhappy business owners (male or female). We can set up our businesses and lives to enjoy the best of all of these things and the ones we choose to enjoy.
This is so important (as you also mentioned!) not only for women, but for men, too and our society as a whole. In our fast paced world, it’s important for us to build businesses not just to build them and to grow them, but to enjoy life and make a difference.
I love how these points were so clearly made (it’s the first time I’ve heard many of them when this conversation comes up-kudos!) .
I definitely now know what Fizzle is and how awesome you guys/gals are and won’t miss another e-mail or podcast!
I can’t wait to see more amazing women who are rocking it in the show notes. I’d love to throw in a few who inspire me: Rebecca Tracey (she first had me thinking about bringing my biz online, Arianna Huffington, Claudia Chan, Areva Martin, Chantelle Adams, Amy Palmer, Arianna Huffington, Nikki Elledge Brown, Kimra Luna and sorry to those that I’m forgetting now – there are many!
Keep up the great work, Fizzle, on the behalf of women AND all of us! You have really inspired me today :)
Awesome to hear your take, Catherine. And great start to that list of names. Whenever I think of women I admire it normally starts with (just after my mom and wife and mom in law) Brené Brown.
Awesome feedback, Catherine. I so resonate with your personal journey through limiting beliefs, and how those actually gave way to your positive desire to share your learnings. I love to see you inspired :) Thanks for listening & contributing to the conversation.
Great episode! Steph is very impressive. She’s going to be a huge asset to the Fizzle community.
Donnie, you’re awesome :) thank you!!
Great discussion! It was very refreshing to hear a less structured opinion sharing this time.
I have started asking my clients more clarifying questions in stead of giving my ideas for a solution. I picked that up in a previous episode and I will keep doing that in the forums as well. I think it’s true what you said about men trying to fix everything at once when sometimes you need just a little sympathy.
Keep rocking!
Btw, I think it was River Trin, who suggested a separate section for female entrepreneurs inside Fizzle.
Welcome Steph! So cool to hear from you!
This was a very interesting episode. It got a little feminist-y at points for me, lol (I’ll be honest, I think us women have it pretty good!) The truth is women ARE different from men – as a woman, I don’t WANT to be treated just like a man!
Of course, I appreciate that you guys have a woman on the team – as Steph said, it definitely is comforting being able to identify people more like you when stepping into a new group.
Interesting perspectives!
Thanks Meg! I agree with you, we certainly aren’t men! In fact, I think it happens to be a REALLY exciting time to be a *female* entrepreneur specifically — because it’s possible to cultivate a business without having to be someone else, perhaps now more than ever.
This was good to hear. I’m a Venusian raised on Mars (3 brothers, two sons, husband and ex, no sisters or daughters). I joined Fizzle last September, all gung-ho in creating on-line courses (I also have a blog, a radio show, and a coaching practise). I created 3 courses and got – crickets. I felt too embarrassed to join the forums. I stopped paying for Fizzle in March because I went to Europe to distribute my mother’s ashes. Now I’m gearing up the online course thing again. *Tell me why I should resign up Fizzle rather than David S. Garland?
Steph is a great addition I didn’t really know I needed! Fizzle preSteph was like seeing great biz ideas and examples and then this postSteph podcast was like going to get my eyes checked and getting contacts and realizing how much better I can see!
I aspire to be one of those great women examples you all highlight and invite you to watch my journey with http://www.savvysandwicher.com. I haveuch to learn but feel I am realizing successes do far.
Thanks for all you do!
Great episode as usually guys and a big congratulations and welcome to Steph. As far having more examples of successful women entrepreneurs featured on the show I couldn’t agree more. Two that come to mind are Lisa Price founder of Carol’s Daughter (which was acquired by L’Oreal) and Melanie Perkins co-founder and CEO of Canva.
Keep up the great work guys :)
Lurker here, and given that I’ve recently joined Fizzle within the last couple of days, now’s my time to post, and this was the podcast that inspired me to do it! I am so excited that there’s a woman now! Welcome, Steph!
Within my realm of nutritional therapy, there actually are a lot of women role models who run their own successful nutritional therapy practices. Health and wellness professionals are often women as we are the ones who are the healers and nurterers. So, in that sense, I’ve been fortunate. But, it doesn’t make it any less scary to have just quit my day job to work full time at building up my own business. It’s reassuring to know that there’s another option besides 14 hour days and burning out just as much as a man does. Have to find the happy medium! Thanks for joining the team, Steph, and to the others for bringing her on board. Looking forward to the ride!
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Welcome Steph!
Excited to see what you bring, i’m sure its 110% awesome :D
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Great podcast, guys! And welcome, Steph! I really liked the discussion. I especially liked the talk about the “race to burn out” – that really resonated with my experience and why I chose to become self-employed rather than spend less time with my son to advance my career. I think there’s even more gold them thar hills! What are the new trends that businesses are adopting that are better than the 14 hour days? 4 day work weeks is one thing, but are there other things people could do too? I vote for paid paternity leave, for one! (yes for daddies!)
Here’s a wonderful and accomplished female VC that might be of interest: http://www.heidiroizen.com/ Some of her Stanford lectures are really great and on video.
Also, FWIW, when I joined, I immediately noticed the number of women on Fizzle and felt this weird sense of relief. I’ve been surrounded by men my whole life and in some ways I feel MORE comfortable around them because of my personal hobbies and interests, but it was so much more welcoming to easily see that women were a huge part of the community. I’m working on setting up my progress log, and the first three examples I clicked on at random were all women – two white, and one black. Completely random sample.
It’s hard to be gender-aware, but the first and most important step is TRYING to be.
Thank you for the thoughtful response, Lautrice! Great points here, but in particular love this idea that becoming the status quo poses the biggest threat to anyone trying to build an outstanding culture.
Hey guys! I finally got a chance to finish the episode and have to say this is probably one of my favorite episodes ever. That’s saying a lot because i thoroughly enjoy every single one. I loved the casual conversation and Steph sounds like an amazing addition to the team. You made such a good point Steph, when you said that women just have this thing about wanting to team up and help each other out. I see that in the online community a lot and my own blog is an example of it as well.
It’s really great to have your perspective on the online world and completely agree that we as women need to own our success more. I am very excited about the direction Fizzle is going in, great choice guys!
I’d just like to say that this was one of my all time fav podcast shows! Nice work Steph! I connected with so much of what you said. I am a software entrepreneur, and have been in many industries like this where you don’t find too many other women. I agree we need tons more successful women to speak up and be the examples when we talk about great leaders or entrepreneurs instead of hearing one man’s name after another. I feel left out of the conversation whenever any podcaster or IMer announces so many successful men one after another without acknowledging the brilliant women out there before us. I do suppose men naturally connect with men, but when your audience is filled with women, it helps to mention a few women’s names every now and then.
Thank you Chase, Barrett, and Corbett for being smart enough and aware of the need to have a woman on your team! Welcome Steph! Now bring on more women interviews or examples and lets keep the discussion going! You guys are awesome and thank you for holding my attention and making me laugh every Friday!
Thank you. I am so happy to have found your site.
You asked for leads on amazing women entrepreneurs! Here is one of my favorites! Lisa Druxman, CEO of FIT4MOM. She started FIT4MOM 14 years ago during her maternity leave and now her company has over 250 franchises in the U.S. Full disclousure: I’m one of her franchisees and everything she does is authentic. She also has a podcast and blog- truly inspiring woman and business leader. Link to her bio at http://fit4mom.com/more/our-founder
Speaking to Steph’s point about woman being good (and frankly, having to be good), at finding alternatives to venture capital, I think that women are more creative in many spheres, perhaps because they’ve had to be in order to grow and succeed. I am a drummer, and when I was gigging and touring with a successful all-female band, the sound-check was always interesting. We were almost always the only all-female outfit on the bill. And by watching the guys in the other bands play and sound-check, I realised that they tended to try and compete with each other by doing a preexisting sound better. At a sound-check, it’s your chance to show off your chops as an individual musician (provided there’s time to sound-check properly). And in strutting their stuff on-stage alone, in front of the other musicians, the guys very rarely invented any new sounds or ideas. And I began to wonder if perhaps that was down to male peer pressure (which is a strong force for men too, a factor which shouldn’t be underestimated). Women musicians on the other hand, didn’t care about doing a good job sounding like someone else, and were generally (IMHO) more creative. Sad thing is, when you got to the gigs themselves, the blokes in the audiences limited things too. To my eyes, they seemed to want to only watch blokes like them emoting on blokey themes in a blokey way, which all became part of that same limiting factor, for the guys in other bands, and for us. With our all-female band, they wanted us, literally, to be UNABLE to play our instruments and only do girly punk-pop with a wild ‘quirky-female’ twist. For example a prospective manager once told us: ‘Don’t learn to play your instruments..’. Wait, what??! We can already play our instruments thank you, we just choose to make a different kind of sound with them. Sorry if that confused you! (Needless to say, we didn’t hire him). But through reviews, feedback after gigs, and in many other ways, it was made quite clear to us that this was the only way we could succeed; by making a schtick of being bad at what we did, and working only within this highly narrow, nonthreatening definition of what women’s music (and music in general), could be. Sad. And everyone’s loss actually. Male-world seems to me, looking in, to be purposefully limiting not only to women, but men too, for sure. It seems to involve too much competition for no good reason, and it has this weird and very strong collective policing of possibilities and options, which shackles everyone. You cannot break ranks in this setup if you’re a man, because you somehow ‘let the side down’ and make every other man vulnerable. The message seems to be: ‘Don’t be too different dude, or else we’ll have to bring you down. You scare us.’ Of course, some guys do make it while being different, but IMHO it seems to be rare. So I think it’s very tough for anyone to be different AND be successful in man-world – which is of course what makes it even more difficult for women and other groups to get ahead in business too. Why? Because the policing of everyone who is ‘let in’, to make sure they fit and stick to the prescribed criteria, only perpetuates that limitation of possibility and worldview. That way the people on the inside lose the chance to grow and change, be challenged and to grow in their outlook on the world by encountering new thoughts and ideas. And the rest of us have to struggle like crazy to be heard. And that’s sad for everyone. Men too.
What a great episode and to have the female perspective be so welcomed by the rest of the leadership team was truly inspiring. From not liking what I saw at the top of the ladder I was aspiring to and the race to burnout, I can absolutely relate with so many elements of this discussion. I engage in a male-dominated industry of environmental consulting and regulatory advisement and have had some interesting and *character building* experiences through my career.
I began on fishing boats in Alaska where there are no workplace restrictions on telling someone – ie, a woman – “girls don’t belong here” or “what makes you think you can do this.” As I moved from the fieldwork phase to the office scene, I found that I was told the same things, just in different ways. I wish I could say I built a thick skin, but mostly I just weathered it knowing this was the industry I wanted to work in, where and how I could provide value, and with every roadblock simply more opportunities were opened to me. You just gotta pick yourself up off the floor and keep having faith in yourself – and know that others out there, do too. Having faith in myself and how I wanted to live and what I felt to be success to me, is how I ended up starting my own independent consulting firm with my guy. Once I managed to ‘separate intuition from ego’ I saw my corner office and responsibility for what they truly were. I wouldn’t trade my experiences for they have built me and I learned so much, but living and working on my terms is the best decision I have made, and my clients are reaping the benefits of the value I can offer without a filter sitting in front of me. A win win!
I would LOVE to see more women founder stories and Fizzle successes highlighted. In my particular industry, I struggle to think of a woman I would consider a role model. Those I do know are conventionally successful and lead chaotic stressful lives definitely on a race to burn out. So cheers to each of the wonderful ladies here and the supportive community here as a whole.
Robyn, thank you for sharing your story – I’m so inspired imagining you on that fishing boat. That intuition vs. ego piece was the key that unlocked everything for me. Kind of felt like I was waking up in The Matrix :) Like you I would not trade my experience – it’s what gives us that clarity you mention here. Cheers to you!
Ya amy porterfeild , kirma, and ladies from simple green smoothie are all crushing it and are models to reference or have founder stories on
I’m SO late to this Fizzle party, but I loved this episode! I love a balance of male and female energy. I must admit that I’ve really been enjoying the male energy of the show since I started listening just a few weeks ago. My personal world of business has been saturated with female energy and I was starving for more of a male presence. Now that I’ve listened up to episode 111, the timing is perfect for me to hear a female in the mix. I love Fizzle even more now that I can hear Steph’s insights as I race to catch up to the latest episodes. Thanks again for the genius of Fizzle; this podcast showed up on my radar at just the right time. I can’t wait to see what unfolds in my space now that Fizzle is part of it….I’m very excited!