Ep. 47: Strategies for Success as a Woman in Business

00:00:02

Deepa Purushothaman: How are corporate cultures changing? How do we actually advance women? Because I was finding a lot of the women that were approaching me were in senior levels, but when they took the seat, they weren't in full voice or in full power.

00:00:12

Andrea Marquez: Getting into entrepreneurship as a woman comes with its own set of challenges. You might feel the need to try twice as hard to prove that you're qualified. And even though women are increasingly making their mark in the business world, gender biases still exist. I'm Andrea Marquez and This Is Small Business, a podcast brought to you by Amazon. Today we'll be talking about being a woman in business.

00:00:40

Deepa Purushothaman: We conform, we couture, we edit ourselves to fit into spaces, and part of what I want us to realize is if we wait till later, till we show up in the big seats to actually show up as ourselves, it gets harder. We need to show up as ourselves along the way. That's actually how we find power.

00:00:57

Andrea Marquez: That's Deepa Purushothaman, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School and the founder of Rewrite.

00:01:03

Deepa Purushothaman: The Rewrite is about advancing that conversation in corporates. It's starting to really think about culture change and ideas of sacrifice and getting ahead very differently, and it's also doing research that is much needed on how we actually make the workplace healthier and happier for people to thrive.

00:01:19

Andrea Marquez: Deepa has done a lot in business, among which she was a senior executive and wrote a book about how women of color can redefine power in corporate America called, The First, The Few, The Only. I can't wait for you to hear her helpful advice throughout the episode. But first, let's hear from Katy Luxem, the founder and CEO of Big Dill Pickleball. Big Dill Pickleball is a pickleball, paddle and gear company that focuses on the fun and inclusive elements of the sport. Before starting Big Dill Pickleball, Katy spent 15 years working in e-commerce.

00:01:52

Katy Luxem: So my business really came about after seeing repeated mistakes and similar issues that a lot of brands had. I wanted to do a better job, so I started having an interest in making my own brand so I could really control it from start to finish.

00:02:06

Andrea Marquez: Katy knew she wanted to start a business, but first she had to come up with an idea.

00:02:11

Katy Luxem: I was injured playing roller derby in 2019 and I couldn't do that anymore, and I started playing a lot of pickleball, which was a great case study and how accessible it was because I was recovering from broken ankle and broken bones.

00:02:24

Andrea Marquez: And you might have noticed this, but pickleball really started to gain popularity during the pandemic. I feel like it was everywhere.

00:02:32

Katy Luxem: It was now or never. E-commerce was really picking up, and when I went online to buy pickleball gear, I didn't really see anything that was fun and different, and so I felt like I was the perfect person to start the business at that time. And then the last piece really was I always thought if I was to start an e-commerce business, it would need to be something that checked a lot of boxes. So I didn't want anything breakable or liquid or anything super regulated like baby products. I didn't want batteries or expiration dates and I just wanted to keep it simple. And pickleball checked all those boxes. So I founded the brand at the end of 2020 and I sold our first paddle on Amazon in around February 2021.

00:03:12

Andrea Marquez: Katy let her experience in e-commerce guide her as she built her business. She says that if you want to succeed in e-commerce, you need to focus on two things, branding and differentiation.

00:03:26

Katy Luxem: So Big Dill Pickleball Company is really specific in that we sell pickleball paddles and sets to a specific segment of the market, which happens to be a beginners, which is a really big growing market. And then we do that on a platform where a lot of shoppers naturally come for their initial purchase. So we're targeting really specific group, and it's not a super high price point to pro-level players in a specific specialty shop. We're keeping it clear and direct about who we are and who we serve, and our brand reflects that.  

Alongside that, I think when I created the product, I wanted to have a pickle on it, which was really smart decision because it's funny and it makes people laugh and it's obviously pickleball, but it's also really eye-catching. So that's been really great for PR and such because if someone's writing an article on pickleball, they'll often just use our paddle as the image because it's a literal face of pickleball

00:04:11

Andrea Marquez: And to figure out what gaps you could fill and how her branding could stand out, Katy did a lot of research.

00:04:17

Katy Luxem: I read a lot of reviews and looked at custom questions and product rankings to see what was actually selling and who the competition was, and I tried to check that no one else was really doing what I was doing. There's definitely a lot of pickleball brands springing up and I wanted to make sure we were the only ones doing that specific thing.

00:04:35

Andrea Marquez: Katy's business has been pretty successful ever since, so she clearly knows what she's doing, but as most women in business do, she still faced a few challenges.

00:04:44

Katy Luxem: I know factually, women face a lot more barriers statistically just with access to funding or networks or even just being taken seriously. I've had issues with male-owned businesses stealing intellectual property or copying our paddles, and of course they're always backed by more funding or they're larger businesses that have more resources, so that's been frustrating.

00:05:06

Andrea Marquez: Unfortunately, this can be the reality for a lot of female founders and even though most of the time these problems can be out of our control, there are ways to navigate them. Deepa says that community building is one of them.

00:05:20

Deepa Purushothaman: I just hold space every month and we have different kinds of conversations and a lot of what I find, to be honest with you, yes, there's articles and there's a lot of, for example, great HBR articles out there for advice and tips and tricks, but I think there's a lot of need to just have these conversations in community. So I just hold space. We just did one earlier this week about how do we start to talk about visioning differently?  

And we just did a session on let's talk about what you want for the year. I had someone come in who actually has a background that's very different than traditional corporate and we walked through a very different process. And so I think part of what we need to realize is the way to solve for some of this is to talk about it, but to talk about it in safe spaces. And I think there aren't a lot of safe spaces to have these conversations and share, and I was lucky enough to have some of that, and so part of what I try to do is share that forward.

00:06:06

Andrea Marquez: And having a supportive network is something that helped Katy overcome some of the challenges she faced.

00:06:11

Katy Luxem: I think the more the business grew, the more I started to realize the importance of having that network and collaborating with good people, so I really started saying yes to just a lot of opportunities that I felt like might help me. For example, the governor's office reached out to me about promoting women-owned businesses, and next thing I know I got on this little billboard thing on the freeway, so things like that were a great boost.

00:06:32

Andrea Marquez: Katy also ended up getting a master's degree.

00:06:36

Katy Luxem: And that was really invaluable too, because I ended up having advisors and access to a number of resources in the business community and with the university. It was on full scholarship, so that really came from a place I think in my state of the business community putting his money where its mouth is and saying, “Hey, we're going to focus on supporting entrepreneurs and especially those who are underrepresented in the space.” So I think as I grew my business, those sorts of things had a snowball effect and gave me more confidence to tackle some of those barriers and how to pitch to investors or work with lawyers to combat IP infringement, stuff like that. So there are barriers, but I think the longer I've been in the business, it helps to have those connections and those long-term relationships.

00:07:16

Andrea Marquez: So having a supportive community and network is key, but Deepa also says that we have a lot to unlearn about what it means to be a woman in business.

00:07:26

Deepa Purushothaman: I call it shedding and caring. We need to shed all these messages that just don't serve us. Most women feel like they're not enough. They're not enough at work, they're not enough at home, they're not enough as moms because we're balancing so many plates, so the sense of not enoughness is so universal. I cannot tell universal it is, and I get to see patterns because I've interviewed women.

00:07:47

Andrea Marquez: And sometimes this feeling of not being enough can interfere with your goals. For Deepa, it almost interfered with her making partner at Deloitte.

00:07:56

Deepa Purushothaman: When I made partner, I, by the way, don't have an MBA and I still have not taken a finance class, and I ran billion dollar projects. I'm an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. I don't have my MBA. Had I really thought about it, I wouldn't be in the places and the spaces I am either, and my husband had to actually encourage me. He was like, “Why don't you put your name in the hat?” And I remember thinking, well, I'm not an MBA. That's not made for me. And it all happened. I think we self-select. I think we're not enough. Even when you get to the seats, you think that.  

And so we just have to get comfortable realizing, yes, sometimes credentials and titles matter, but a lot of the time it's really more important how you show up, how you pivot, how you recover from failures and how you know what your strengths are. Those are the things that really matter. It's fortitude, it's attitude, and it's attention to following your dreams and having the wherewithal to follow them through. That's really what I think makes us successful. But again, back to the messages we get growing up and the messages we get early in our career, there's a big dissonance between that and what I think it really takes to be successful.

00:08:55

Andrea Marquez: So remember that you are enough. And the other thing that Deepa says we need to unlearn is thinking that we need to work harder to get to that seat, and then feeling like you need to perform to stay there.

00:09:09

Deepa Purushothaman: And I see this a little bit more with women of color, but it's true for all women. But if you are overperforming and some women are telling me I've worked twice as hard, some women saying four times as hard, you are working at a level that we're not fully understanding when you're sitting in leadership seats. And you are burnt out before you even get halfway through your career because of that need to overperform and you've been socialized and conditioned that way growing up, we tell people to look like me. You have to work harder just to get there. And so it's partly unlearning and making work for you what makes sense. And so I have learned that productivity is important, but it can't be my only mantra anymore. That used to really guide a lot of my decisions and how I felt good about my day, and that's not really the only thing that guides me, but I had to do the work to unlearn that, coming from immigrant parents especially.

00:09:54

Andrea Marquez: I relate to that because I come from immigrant parents too, and it's very applauded to overwork yourself. And if you're tired because of it, then you're doing something right, so it's taken me a while to unlearn that. So far we've talked about a few things to unlearn and that building a community is important, but how do you deal with the things that are out of your control, like not being taken seriously?

00:10:20

Deepa Purushothaman: I want to say I think that that's universal. I made partner in my early thirties. I am Indian by descent. I look younger than my age. And so I cannot tell you how many times I would be dismissed when I walked in a room because I couldn't possibly be in charge, or my last name is 13 letters long. And people would ask me when I came to this country or how I learned to speak English. And those things used to really bother me and make me feel like, what am I doing that is maybe suggesting I don't have your qualifications or I don't belong? And as I've gotten older, this has taken some time and I realized and meeting so many women who are struggling with the same sorts of things. I'm now in a place where I realize some of that is about them, it has nothing to do with how I'm showing up or what I'm doing or what I'm wearing or how educated I am.

That's about their issues. And all I can do is find a place where I practice my responses now. So when someone says to me, “Oh, your name is so hard to pronounce,” I will now very flatly, without a lot of emotion, say, “But you've learned how to say Arnold Schwarzenegger's name. You can learn how to say mine.” And it doesn't have to be offensive, but I think sometimes we've been taught to be nice. We haven't been taught to stand our ground, and we've also been taught we're doing something to elicit that sort of feedback or that sort of feeling. And honestly, I'm not. That is really about them and I've gotten to that place, but it's taken a long time.

00:11:32

Andrea Marquez: So make sure you stand your ground. That's a very important message. Growing up, I remember I always felt uncomfortable correcting people when they mispronounced my name. I'm still working on it, but hearing Deepa talk about her own experiences makes me feel better about correcting people in the future. Okay, so we've talked about a lot of the challenges that women might face in entrepreneurship and in business. Here are some of the benefits to being a woman in business too.

00:11:59

Deepa Purushothaman: I think a lot of women who are entrepreneurs, some of them start in entrepreneurship, but a lot of them leave corporate. And I will tell you a lot of the women that I work with in the last few years left corporate to go found their own companies to create the cultures and do the work that meant something to them, and they couldn't find ways to do it in corporate. I'm not suggesting that's the only way, but I think a lot of people pivot because they feel like I can create my own dreams and work in a different way, so I think it's really important to understand that.

00:12:23

Andrea Marquez: Hopefully you're feeling inspired. Katy reminded us that the barrier to entry for entrepreneurship, especially e-commerce, can be pretty low. So...

00:12:32

Katy Luxem: Go for it. There's a lot of people doing it that are probably not as intelligent or not as experienced as yourself, and you might as well just take a stab at it. Especially to e-commerce, it's pretty accessible if you want to try something. I started with I think two boxes of 50 paddles each, so it wasn't a huge initial investment or leap. I was just like, I'll try it and see what happens. And obviously it grew really quickly from there, but you can always do that and have an attempt at it.

00:12:58

Andrea Marquez: You don't have to have everything set in place before you start a business. And as we've heard on many episodes of This is Small Business, it's okay to learn as you go and make mistakes.

00:13:07

Katy Luxem: I'm a risk-averse person, so that was definitely hard for me when I first started, but there's obviously no way of knowing what those mistakes are going to be at the outset, and I think that's why they call it a journey or whatever.

00:13:19

Andrea Marquez: And you'll learn everything you need to succeed as you work on your business. That's what Katy did.

00:13:26

Katy Luxem: Suddenly we have this influx of inventory or we need storage for this. That's when I started researching that particular issue or asking other people, “Hey, what are you using for this problem?” Or, “Do you have a specific solution you recommend?” The problems you have on day 30 are not the problems you have on day 600, so you can't plan for those things, but you can think about if this is what our numbers were this year, what is it going to look like one year, two years from now? And you can project that out in all aspects of the business. And even if it's not right on, it's really helpful just to prepare you for some of the challenges you might end up facing.

00:13:59

Andrea Marquez: And here's one last piece of advice from Deepa.

00:14:02

Deepa Purushothaman: I think a lot of women wrongly incorporate, and even in entrepreneurship, think that power comes from outside accolades. And so my final thought would be is to remember that power comes from inside you and that people can only take it if you let them take it from you, and that we need to remind ourselves every day that we're powerful and that you get to decide how you show up in spaces. You can't decide or define how people react to you, but you get to decide how you show up, and that's where real power comes from. The women who really are powerful are comfortable with who they are, and they show up in that way at all times in all spaces. So that would be in my advice. It's not easy to get to, but that's what I want to aspire to, and that's what I try and practice in every day.

00:14:41

Andrea Marquez: I love that we're ending with that. Deepa and Katy both made the journey of being a woman in business seem a little less daunting, and I'll definitely be using the advice I learned in my everyday life as well. We covered a lot in this episode. If you missed anything, don't worry. We've taken notes for you. You can find them at smallbusiness. amazon/ podcasts. That's it for this episode of This is Small Business, brought to you by Amazon. We love hearing from our listeners. One of the best ways to do this is to leave a review in Apple Podcasts, like this one from Janine who said, “Really loved the show. It's simple and to the point. Andrea asks great questions to get to the answers we need. Add it to your must listen to list.” Thank you, Janine.

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