Me, Inc. (19 page)

Make of this what you will.

Perhaps as a woman who wants to immerse herself in the business world, you may consider turning your TV set to Bloomberg and listening to the captains of industry talk instead. Read
Entrepreneur
and
Forbes
and other business journals. Visit websites devoted to female entrepreneurship. Check out entrepreneur.com and go from there. Educate yourself. Hang with friends who are already in the fields in which you want to succeed. Unfortunately, that usually means: hang out with men. It's up to you to change this over time.

Steve Harvey is right: Act like a woman.
Think
like a man. Specifically, think like the men who are accomplishing what you want to accomplish. That way, once you start doing it, it won't be the province of men anymore.

I'll never forget the film
A League of Their Own
. It's about a female baseball team during World War II. Tom Hanks is their coach. One of the players on the team starts crying when she strikes out.

Hanks yells at her: “There's no crying in baseball.”

As a woman, do you want to be respected in the workforce?

Want to be taken seriously?

Want to be treated as an equal among men?

Then don't ask for a handicap, and don't accept one. Don't accept coddling; don't succumb to female stereotypes.

The men around you may come over and try to console you as you're sniffling, and ask you what's wrong, but secretly they really don't want to do that, and quite frankly, they don't care. They're probably sharks gunning for the job you want.

Just like in the suppressed fifties, men at work can't cry.

And neither can you.

Not in the business world.

Want to cry? Go outside.

“There's no crying at work.”

And
don't gossip
. Whatever the stereotype is—and yes, I'm aware these are stereotypes—don't embody them. Don't embrace them. Reject them with all your might. Convince old-fashioned guys like me that we really were wrong when we labeled you with this stuff.

Don't gossip about work or at work.

Wanna gossip? Go to the newsstand, buy your favorite gossip magazine, and gossip about Jennifer Aniston. Not about your coworkers or your job.

You already have enough working against you in this male chauvinistic world, so you don't need to add fuel to the fire by gossiping and giving anyone else a reason to dismissively point out, “Yeah, well—she's a girl.”

Don't do that.

Become enormously successful, and then make all those simplistic, Cro-Magnon cavemen work for YOU.

Living well is the best revenge.

You want that, right?

And dress for success
.

Go into business meetings and act like the men whose jobs you want.

Don't dress or act too sexy. Men don't understand nuance and subtlety. Really. The men will pay attention to your sexiness, not your brain or what you have to say. And that's not what you want.

This is not to decide what you should and shouldn't look like—if I see a man at the office wearing bicycle shorts, you better believe I'm going to tell him how to dress, too. He should be wearing the uniform of the position he wants. And so should you.

This is not a book about being happy in life, or about personal liberty—this is a book about being successful in BUSINESS. Specifically. You should be able to dress however you want, whenever you want, for whatever reason you want, in life. In the office, dress for the job you want, and dress to deliver a message: You are not here to be a sexual object, or to express yourself. You are here for a job, and you are here to defeat your competitors. Dress for that.

I'm being blunt. Because other books won't.

Come into that meeting dressed like your boss.

That's right,
dress like your boss.

Women like Hillary Clinton understood that long ago. She has been wearing business suits for a long time. And she may have a chance of becoming president of the United States, if she decides to run. I'm not saying I would or wouldn't vote for her. I'm simply saying she understands she must play by MALE RULES, until she can make them HER RULES. Beat us at our own game. Take the misogyny of our culture, make it yours, and after you've seized power, turn it against us. You can rewrite traditional gender stereotypes after you've conquered the system. Not before.

Women are nearly absent in Silicon Valley, and in mathematics, and the sciences, and in architecture and construction.

That's not bad news.

That's good news.

That means by entering into these areas, as a woman, you have nowhere to go but up.

Yes, you will find sexism, prejudice, and chauvinistic male attitudes. Many men will still not take you seriously. They've been in these workplaces forever. Women haven't, either because society didn't allow them or because they were not attracted to these areas. In either case, the result is the same: women have been largely absent from these fields.

As a woman, you need to wrap your head around career opportunities that you wouldn't normally consider.

It also bears noting that it's never too late to start on your journey to become a successful entrepreneur. Even after your children have grown up, and they're off on their own path. If your children have left the nest, you will have lots of time to devote to YOU. And that's exactly what you'll need. Time. Lots of it.

For African-American and Hispanic women in low-income brackets, believe it or not, the news is actually good. Despite being in lower-income areas, despite not having access to funding (banks will often not take the risk of lending to lower-end economic groups), despite not being ingrained in the social circles of the white-male-dominated business world, African-American and Hispanic women are three to four times more likely to start a business for themselves than their white counterparts.

The above is worthy of high praise, because the pressures of being an African-American or Hispanic woman are compounded by the fact that 70 to 80 percent of black and Hispanic households don't have a father at home. Let's not romanticize any of this. It's simply fact. African-American and Hispanic women need to work harder than their white female counterparts—to defeat the facts, and to defeat the stereotypes that enforce the facts.

Additionally, African-American women marry at a rate of about 40 percent—much lower than their white counterparts. Even if married, divorce rates are very high.

And I'm not even broaching the
cost
of having a family and children. With a family, you're spending for three or four people, not just for yourself.

All of which places enormous burdens on the minority female who wants to be a lady entrepreneur. Family and children are supposed to come first, but—and it's difficult to say this—a lot of the time, it can't!

I'll say it again: I raise my glass in toasting the extraordinary obstacles that African-American and Hispanic women are overcoming to go after their goals. With or without men.

You, the female entrepreneur, must mingle and be socially active in men's groups, business conventions, and often (unfortunately) in predominantly white male business groups. That's where the money and power are.

Go down to Wall Street and walk through the corridors of power. You will see an overwhelming white face.

Network.

Schmooze.

Put YOUR FACE up there.

Anywhere and everywhere there is a chance to mingle with other businesspeople. Daytime. Nighttime. Weekends.

There's some more good news and some more bad news.

First, we are told that women consume more than men do. I mean much more.

And that means companies and advertisers and broadcasters and print media and Internet companies are constantly trying to figure out how to sell stuff to women.

That is good news for women, if they can take advantage of this power.

Now the bad news.

The manufacturing world, the industrial world, and the tech world are run mostly by men, with few exceptions. Even in stereotypically traditional roles—women cook, but the big chefs are men. Women care about fashion, but the big fashion houses are predominantly run by men. Men also run big hair salons—for women!

For a potential lady entrepreneur, this is a huge opportunity. The bad news is good news for you. There is nowhere to go but up.

You should be aware that most of the stuff that's sold online is bought by women. And that's good for you, lady entrepreneurs, because you know what women want. You
are
women. In social circles, and with your gut, you can tap into a marketplace that men struggle to understand, and yet somehow command. There is a feminist revolution waiting to be had here.

Companies and advertisers spend a lot of time and money on online magazines and sites that appeal to women. And because companies and ad agencies are run by men, they need to find out what women want and how to sell to women. And that's an opportunity for you.

So if the above is true, why aren't women creating, designing, and owning these areas?

You can try this at home for little or no money.

Learn programming.

Educate yourself. You have an advantage, if you can pinpoint it. You are the buyer. Sell to yourself.

This female-dominated marketplace should be teeming with female programmers.

And yet the vast majority of programmers are men.

Try this.

Your name is Victoria Fitzgerald. You're divorced, but your maiden (last) name is too Eastern European for most people to pronounce easily, so you decide to keep your ex-husband's name. Smart move. Less of a hurdle for someone to remember or try to pronounce your maiden name: Wyrzykowski.

Victoria Fitzgerald Apps. There. You just started a new company.

Employees? One. You.

Overhead? None.

Use your name in the title of your company. It's a free ride for YOU.

Get the dot-com domain.

Create a logo.

Trademark it, if you can.

Have a few hats and T-shirts made, and send them via FedEx to your Aunt Wyrzykowski in Vermont. Have Aunt Wyrzykowski send you five dollars for the T-shirt bearing your name and logo, so that it qualifies for the interstate commerce laws that will help you to shore up your trademark claim.

You should consult an attorney to make sure that all of your legal bases are covered.

And presto—you're in business.

You have nothing to lose. You have everything to gain.

Now, it's up to you to create, market, and sell to a marketplace dominated by your own kind: women.

Oh, you don't know much about programming?

Educate yourself online. Find out where they teach courses in programming. Or you can enroll in programming classes (try Dev Bootcamp, or Girls Who Code). And there are books that will teach you how to create apps, and even how to create an app business.

Shannon even got into the lady entrepreneur game herself. She took me to the E3 Expo in Los Angeles. There the biggest names in gaming held their annual get-together to show off their latest wares. She intended for me to immerse myself in gaming. But she wound up going over to the head of Gogii Games, made a contact, and created an electronic game for herself: Shannon Tweed's Attack of the Groupies. You can download it and play it. How to get rid of groupies in one thousand ways. Oh boy.

My point is, there are many ways to make something from nothing. Cottage industries, or garage industries, start with nothing. Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Facebook, and KISS all started in garages. And if you do it right, you will reap the benefits. That means money, and lots of it.

You can do it.

There is a door of opportunity right in front of you.

It's got your name on it.

Now, go out there and rule the world.

22

Kid Entrepreneurs

“I started the site when I was nineteen. I didn't know much about business back then.”

MARK ZUCKERBERG

founder, chairman, and CEO of Facebook

I
f you have kids, get them started on being entrepreneurs.

The old cliché—the lemonade stand—is a good place to start.

Your kids have to figure out how much lemons cost. How much sugar costs. They have to put in their own sweat equity, that is, work. They have to figure out how much to charge for their product so they will have a profit in the end. Also, where do they sell the lemonade to get in front of as many people as possible, and at what time?

Turn your kids' hobbies into an entrepreneurial project.

I did.

I bought and sold comic books, and made a few thousand dollars. That amount helped to pay for my college education.

A hobby, like stamp collecting, can quickly turn into a business.

Buying and selling people's unwanted attic clutter can turn into a business.

Steven Spielberg, whom I've had the pleasure of visiting at his home to recommend a good school for my children, began pursuing his hobby as a very young man. He grew up in Arizona, a good ways from the movie industry.

In his early teenage years, Spielberg began making his own 8 mm films. He taught himself to operate the camera and create special effects, and learned all about lighting, editing, and directing. He filmed train wrecks at home, using his Lionel train set. He also charged his friends twenty-five cents to view his home-filmed masterpieces. So, in addition to being the filmmaker, he became the distributor and the exhibitor.