735 Lesley Michaels:

I started this podcast because I believe we as women all soar higher when we fly together hence the name Wings. Problem is, we’ve all been acculturated to compete only with other women, and we’ve been divided from a place of fear and scarcity. Like me my guest today Lesley Michaels came up in a male dominated industry where she was often the only woman in the room, and women did not support each other. Much has changed, and Lesley shares today how we must go much further to support each other.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment download Podopolo and follow Wings of Inspired Business there to join the Wings community so we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who climbed the ranks of the oil and gas industry before reinventing herself to help lift other women. Lesley Michaels is the author of the new book The Shoulders of Mighty Women, and today she shares her vision of how women can and must help each other to succeed in business.

A good female founder friend of mine once likened women in business to crabs in a crab pot. Whenever a crab got close to climbing out of the pot to escape a certain fate on a dinner plate, the crabs at the bottom pulled the ambitious crab back down.

Much is changing as women who are succeeding in business learn to help other women up, rather than keeping them down. Women have all been socialized to compete with each other, with the scarcity-minded notion that only a few can really “have it all”. Truth is, there is plenty of room for all of us to succeed and when we help each other, we all do better.

Lesley Michaels was one of the first women to climb the ranks of corporate oil and gas. It was a world with few women, and even less support for women from women. Like many women in the corporate world, there came a moment when her heart wasn’t in it anymore, so she reinvented herself as a highly sought-after public speaker and an entrepreneur. These days she’s focused on building her new podcast, Women We Should Know. She features audacious and committed women from around the world who are changing the narratives in arenas from climate change to advocacy and breaking glass ceilings for women in industries ranging from film to conservation. She’s also got a new book out called The Shoulders of Mighty Women, and her new TED Talk will premier this year. Lesley, a third-generation feminist, has also spent decades devoting a great deal of energy, coaching and advocating for those with unacknowledged or under-valued voices.

Today we talk about why it is vital women genuinely support each other in business and in life – from a place of abundance and generosity, and letting go of the fear and scarcity that has kept us competing only with each other.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Lesley Michaels and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock :

Lesley, welcome to Wings.

Lesley Michaels :

Thank you, Melinda. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here.

Melinda Wittstock :

Oh, well, likewise. And you’ve done so many things in the world, Lesley, and your focus right now is a hundred percent on women in their advancement. Why? What made you focus there?

Lesley Michaels :

I think it’s just finally landing back where I started full circle. Because I’m a third generational feminist. So, I’ve always had women’s importance, and the way women are undervalued, and the way they undervalued themselves and each other always in my focus. And it felt like the right time. Actually, COVID threw me into what felt like the right time to go in this direction.

Melinda Wittstock :

COVID was a really interesting opportunity like so many challenges have that silver lining in the cloud where it was a pattern interrupt that allowed us, if we took it, the time to really rethink and get into alignment, and it sounds like you did that.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. I refer to COVID as the blessing I didn’t know I needed and would have never asked for.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah, we were really presented with a choice, weren’t we? I mean, how we chose to react to it,. Which I like to dwell there for a moment because this isn’t true of all entrepreneurial challenges is that we can have something really bad knock the wind out of us, and it can actually sometimes be the best thing that ever happened to us because we were going down the wrong path.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. I was just having a conversation with a friend earlier today, and we were walking down memory lane in terms of that very thing, Melinda, those times when the world seemed like it was crashing down, and yet it opened up such vast opportunity. And I really appreciate the way women in particular, many men do, too, but women in particular seem to have an ability to hone in on that.

Melinda Wittstock :

Well, when we’re in our true feminine power, as I like to call it, right?

Lesley Michaels :

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock :

Back in the day, do you remember when all the unique feminine, or at least archetypal feminine qualities of empathy and intuition and relationship, were all seen as soft skills and they were minimized. They’re actually the superpower of the new way of doing business in my mind, that women really have the wind at their backs in terms of entrepreneurship the more we actually, to borrow a phrase, lean into that.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. With women having now what is scientifically established as a significantly higher empathy quotient, when women go to work they take that with them, and they have a stronger sense of how to effectively relate to every different person in each different sphere of their environment, and it’s highly powerful and beneficial.

Melinda Wittstock :

It really is. And so, we started by talking about why women. And you mentioned you were a third generation feminist. And so much has changed. What is the message now, do you think, for women, and how has that changed over the years?

Lesley Michaels :

I don’t know that it has changed, per se, as much as it has evolved. We have taken steps and come into greater presence with ourselves and greater presence with each other, but then we have to continue doing that. Right at this point in time, I believe the greatest challenge for women is to set down all old patriarchal training of competition, all old programming that there is not enough real estate, and to come together in alliance to be supportive. The men have long had the secret handshake and the old boys network, and it has served them well. I do not disparage them having that.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah, they undeservedly help each other up. It’s like they give each other, I don’t know, whether it’s stock tips or employment tips or like deal… They just do that from a place of abundance, much more so. I mean, not to say they’re not competitive. They are. But they’re more weirdly giving. And yet women are the ones that are supposed to be the giving ones, and we’re competing for this scarcity, and it leads to all these things like queen bee syndrome and tall poppy syndrome and all these things.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. And honestly, there’s so much science. And I’ve studied a lot of brain science. And I honestly understand that what we believe, and what we constantly say, and what we constantly saturate ourselves with is what we program into our neuro pathways, and that’s what our life is going to produce. We have to get out of all belief that there is limited real estate. We just have to set that down because the longer we believe that, the longer we continue in that chant, if you will, the longer it’s going to continue to be true.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah. I mean, one of the reasons I launched this podcast and why I made Wings is all about lifting as we climb. That I believe that women will be in their true power when we really work together to lift each other up. So, in other words, buying each other’s products, actively seeking to buy from women owned businesses, actively promoting women, connecting women to each other and opportunities.

Investing, for the women that have significant wealth, investing in women businesses, creating wealth for women. That these are the things that are really going to advance us, and we all need each other. And yet that scarcity… Oh, sorry. And yet that scarcity stands in the way of that. How do you see that changing? Do you think it’s getting better, and what do we need to do to get it better, make it better?

Lesley Michaels :

I do believe it is getting somewhat better. And I believe what we need to do to make it better is to be very proactive in understanding that not only… when we lift another woman up, not only are we helping her, but we are benefiting. Now we have a female ally in the team. Now we have someone that has the same biology, that has the same natural tendencies. We have a strategy partner. We have a mastermind partner. Not exclusive to the males we’ve been working with, but in addition to, and someone that is in alignment with the natural female sensibility.

And the more we lift each other up, instead of reducing the amount of real estate, we’re going to feel stronger in ourselves when we have more of those who look like us around us.

Lesley Michaels :

We need to see those that look like us around us.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yes, we do. And I think when we see other women accomplishing things, there’s a mindset shift that has to happen, I mean, of being really genuinely grateful for her advancement. And seeing it not like, “Oh my God, she has that…” Seeing it not like, “Oh my goodness, she has that and I don’t,” but instead, “She has that, so I can, too.” And that’s a really big shift into much more conscious abundance thinking.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. To start seeing other women as our models and as the individuals who are walking through the thornier path clearing the path so that more of us can come along instead of looking at them as being more or different or something other than us, and we can’t achieve that.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah, so this comes down to how we perceive ourselves and our own value. So, if we have these deeply embedded subconscious beliefs, for instance, Lesley, that we think we’re somehow less than, it turns us into perfectionists, always striving to be better because we think somehow that we don’t have enough of whatever it is, enough competence, enough experience, enough whatever. And so, we’re in that mode all the time, and at the root of it is not understanding our own value.

Lesley Michaels :

And that starts at such a young age. And so, that’s why it makes it difficult to overcome. It is entrenched. Little boys are treated in a different way than little girls are treated. And then the same is true all the way through our years.

Melinda Wittstock :

So, how can we change that? I mean, what does it take to change that? When you’re doing all your speaking and your book and all the things that you’re doing in the world, what’s your message for how this practically can be changed? Do just more of us just need to be stepping up and telling the story and living by example, or what practically can be done?

Lesley Michaels :

What can be done is for women to create an intention. And you can’t create it on Monday and expect that it’s going to last through the rest of the week. But to create an intention to make courageous choices all day that day, and then on Tuesday to make courageous choices all day that day, and to continue forward.

And what happens when we start making courageous choices is we begin to realize how much of the time we’ve been acting from rote, and we begin to take authority in our own lives. And as we do that, we can extend it out and take authority in our workplace or our greater social or professional environment. And that is one of the key starting places I speak to women about.

Melinda Wittstock :

A hundred percent. So, what made you launch the podcast, Women We Should Know? And I disclose that I was so honored to be a guest on your amazing podcast. What was the spark that said, okay, I have to get out there and podcast?

Lesley Michaels :

I have always had amazing conversations with women and men because I’m an armchair philosopher, and I’m just nosy and interested about everything. And there was a period of time right at the onset of COVID when I was having these fascinating conversations with women I had just met who were doing powerful things in the world. And it occurred to me I want to have more of these conversations. And so, it was the natural leap. If I launched a podcast, I could have more of those conversations. And even better than that, I could share them with the listening audience.

Melinda Wittstock :

Because as you say in your description of it, features audacious and committed women from around the world. So, let’s talk about audacity. What does it take to just go out there and be fearless, be resilient, not be afraid of failure, get rid of all those feelings of shame or all the things that make us apologize for ourselves?

Lesley Michaels :

I always tell women, whether I’m speaking with them individually, on a professional mentor basis, or whether I’m speaking to a group, let go of the idea of failure completely. Don’t try to get past fear of failure, because then what you are actually doing without realizing it is placing your focus on failure.

Melinda Wittstock :

Oh gosh, isn’t that true? We always get what we fear the most. Like whatever we resist persists.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. Or I like to say, what you focus on, you fertilize. And so, first of all, stop trying to get past for a failure. Because the truth about our fears is they are portable. They’ll go with us wherever we go. So, we don’t have to worry about getting rid of them. We don’t have to worry about you hanging onto them. Just let them be what they are, and they will dilute as we move forward. And take time before you do something that feels new and maybe even dangerous, and think of the last time you stepped so far out of your comfort zone that it made you quake.

Melinda Wittstock :

Oh, those are the moments when the growth happens. I had one just yesterday where you are in a situation where you have nothing to lose, and you take that step that you have to take and it’s scary, but you do it anyway. And the more you do that, the more that that builds your confidence, and then the less frightened you are of any of these things.

And I know one of my entrepreneur groups, for a long time we would purposely do things outside of a business context that would make us fearful, like going and swimming with sharks or, I don’t know, playing polo or just silly things, or bungee jumping or whatever it is, right? Something that you were absolutely terrified of, you did it anyway.

Lesley Michaels :

That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock :

And sometimes it’s just something like doing something differently, like brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand or just something that gets the pattern interrupt.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. As soon as you can pattern interrupt. And if you are in a moment, and you are being challenged, and you are challenging yourself to take a big step, remember the last time you did, and notice one thing and one thing alone, you’re still alive, you’re still breathing, and you’re still standing, so take the leap it. If it didn’t kill you last time, it won’t kill you this time.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah. Well, failure is such an important thing to destigmatize because it is quintessential and absolutely necessary and constantly inevitable in the entrepreneurial journey. I mean, I liken it to a scientist in a lab that’s trying all kinds of different formulations until you find the one that works, and you got to keep trying. Everything’s a hypothesis until it’s not. And I think sometimes entrepreneurs, and particularly women, can take it personally. And it’s not personal. You’re just learning. You’re an experimenter, you’re an explorer, and ultimately you’re an Alchemist.

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. Absolutely. I encourage women to consider when they’re in that fear to remember that the only ones who don’t experience fear are the ones who never stray far enough from their comfort zone to accomplish anything great.

Melinda Wittstock :

Anything significant. I mean, it’s interesting because there’s a lot of women who start small businesses, and the small businesses stay small. Only 3% of women make it to a million dollars or more in recurring revenue. Only 3%. And what I find interesting about that is that you can start a billion-dollar business or a million-dollar business. It’s pretty much the same effort. It’s pretty much the same things you’ve got to do. So, how can we as a group think bigger and dream bigger and just be willing to say, “Yeah, I’m going to go create a billion-dollar business”?

Lesley Michaels :

Absolutely. Well, again, it comes to that place up being willing to notice everything you’ve already gained. I always say that women are inherently resilient just by virtue of everything that has been put on their shoulders throughout their life that they have managed to balance and even excel through. And to be able to take that strength, and use that strength, and use it as your own lifeline to go forward.

And the most important thing when we’re doing something audacious like this is to have a great team of support around us. And I encourage women to surround themselves, to reach out to other women who have created their own businesses, who have founded their own businesses, who have achieved heights that the majority of women don’t.

Because you’re going to hear a slightly different story than you will hear from a man. A man’s story may have some great nuggets for you. But when you reach out to other women, you’re going to hear a different story, one that you can emotionally and viscerally relate to at a deeper level very often, and that can help sustain you.

Melinda Wittstock :

And it’s so important to surround yourself with other strong women, women who’ve been there, built that before you. And I find that those who’ve been the most successful at that are actually the most generous with their time. One of the things that we’ve been doing at Podopolo, or I’ve been doing, because I felt this need, and really a requirement, to create a great advisory board, but it’s filled with really badass strong women. I mean, there are a couple of men on it, but it’s mostly women in their 50s who have built businesses, have been through all the ups and down, because I needed that around me.

Lesley Michaels :

That’s a room I’d like to be in sometime.

Melinda Wittstock :

It’s a pretty great room. I mean, they’re pretty amazing. I can shout out a couple of them. [inaudible 00:21:02] built Macys.com to a billion-dollar business amid a lot of corporate resistance. Right? Kind of [inaudible 00:21:12] from within and succeeding. And Karen Mangia is the senior vice president of customer insights at Salesforce.

Oh gosh, another one of our advisors, she’s amazing. I mean, she turned Conde Nast from being loss making into being profit making by innovating their mobile. So, there are women doing amazing things. And I know you were doing amazing things in the oil and gas industry way, way back. So, Lesley, you must have been the only woman in the room for a lot of that time.

Lesley Michaels :

I was the only woman in the room for a lot of that time. However, when we would interact with other companies in the industry, I started to see a few women coming into those rooms. And what was discouraging to me was the level of fear that was apparent, because there was no intent and no attempt to collaborate or to support one another. And I do believe that now going quite a few decades forward that we are seeing more supportive energy from women to other women, but I don’t feel that it’s where it can ultimately be to be able to benefit us all and bring us to a much closer position of claiming equity.

Melinda Wittstock :

It’s interesting, because going back into the shoulder padded 1980s with the little twist bow ties and shirts [inaudible 00:23:40].

Lesley Michaels :

Oh, I remember.

Melinda Wittstock :

Right? Through the ’90s, the power suits or all that, through all that period, especially in corporate America where women weren’t really each other’s friends. There were so few that it was like competing, going back to this scarcity theme we were talking about before. So, competing for this one position and not really helping or mentoring. I found through all that period of my career really that all my best mentors were men, because I couldn’t get any mentorship from women in my 20s and 30s. It’s really only quite recently that I have really great female mentors.

And I don’t know if that’s because society has changed, or because I’m older and all the other women around me are older, and so we’ve just lived stuff. I don’t really know. Maybe it’s a combination of all of those things. But I always felt so lonely as a woman. And then all my advice was coming from men, which was helpful to a point, but also inauthentic to a woman. And so, there was a lot of pressure to act like as if we were men.

Lesley Michaels :

Yes. And you speak about the wardrobe choices back in those days. When I look back at those wardrobe choices, we all had the old photos and what have you, I can see that we were struggling through our clothing to pose as what we imagined a professional woman should look like, and dressing like we thought we should to try to wiggle our way into those particular rooms. And I am greatly relieved to see that that aspect has gone by the wayside for our current day women who are moving up the ranks of the early corporate part of their lives.

Melinda Wittstock :

Well, I remember wishing back in my 20s that like, God, if only I could wear glasses, maybe I’d be taken more seriously. I was so focused on being taken seriously for my brain and my work and whatnot, and not being seen for my female attractiveness.

Lesley Michaels :

Right.

Melinda Wittstock :

[inaudible 00:25:57] see that that diminished me somehow, so I spent all this time trying to cover that up. I think younger women these days don’t have that issue at all anymore, which is good.

Lesley Michaels :

I think they have less of it.

Melinda Wittstock :

Less. So, it’s still [inaudible 00:26:12].

Lesley Michaels :

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock :

There’s this whole thing about not being a distraction, but on the other hand, you want to just be yourself. It’s an interesting line to walk.

Lesley Michaels :

It is. It’s a balancing act. And I think that that is one of the unnecessary additional stressors that is put onto women in the business world.

Melinda Wittstock :

Especially in their 20s and 30s.

Lesley Michaels :

Particularly the young ones.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah, especially in their 20s and 30s. I think partly my perspective now, oh God, it was summed up great by a woman, I forget who it was, which went on TikTok, she’s in her 50s, saying she had no more F’s left to give.

Lesley Michaels :

Yes. Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock :

And there’s something about being in your 50s, it feels so liberated because you’re not being judged in that way anymore. You can still look really amazing. Look hot. I mean, look fantastic, do all that stuff. But you’re not being judged in that way anymore because you’re older, and it’s freeing.

Lesley Michaels :

And what do they say now, that 50 is the new 40. That’s what it is. 50 is the new 40. I

Melinda Wittstock :

Physically I still feel like I’m… and mentally I still feel like I’m in my 30s in terms of energy and all that stuff. Every now and again I take a look in the mirror and think, no, actually I’m a little older. Busted.

Lesley Michaels :

I know those moments.

Melinda Wittstock :

Busted. But it’s how you feel inside though, right?

Lesley Michaels :

That’s exactly right. And to speak referencing how you feel inside, to speak to something you brought up earlier, imposter syndrome with women.

Melinda Wittstock :

Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Michaels :

Studies have shown women have 67% more cases, more instances of imposter syndrome. And when you look at the list of women who have admitted that they have it. Meryl Streep.

Melinda Wittstock :

Meryl Streep has imposter syndrome?

Lesley Michaels :

Yes. She spoke about it in an interview.

Melinda Wittstock :

Oh my goodness. I mean, that’s amazing to think. Right? Do you think if she has it, like the most accomplished actress pretty much of all time, she’s right up there, that she has it. Think about just the regular average woman. And I know that I have had that in my life where you show up somewhere and you think, oh God, I’m going to be found out. Right?

Lesley Michaels :

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And then as you develop your confidence and as you have all these achievements, then after a while, I don’t really feel that way anymore. I think if you put me in a situation, especially like one of the things that my board chairman has challenged me to do is, okay, so Melinda, who are you being on one level as the founder and CEO of a startup company?

Okay, now dial it forward. You’re the CEO and founder of a hundred-million dollar company. Who are you being and how are you feeling? Okay, now you’re the CEO of a billion-dollar company. What are you doing? How are you feeling? What’s your life like? And being able to live into that and visualize it. And it’s a really interesting challenge because what happens is you bump up against your subconscious beliefs about your value real quick.

There was a great book written by Gay Hendricks called The Big Leap, which is about those things where we start to sabotage ourselves when we get out of our comfort zone. You hear of people having great success, and then just doing something to sabotage it. Or you make a great sale one day, but have an argument with your spouse or whatever. There’s just something that keeps us from really breaking through that imposter syndrome or just not being able to visualize yourself, not even being able to see it. And you can’t get what you can’t see.

Lesley Michaels (30:21):

Exactly. And what your advisor has you doing, feeling into who you are at this point. And who you are at this point is exactly the practice that I invite women to do either in groups or individually. And I always invite them to stand up with their hands on their hips, kind of a Xena Warrior Princess pose. They are this fierce, female, ferocious, courageous, resilient female, and to feel it from that standpoint.

And it’s still challenging at first for almost all of them. But I get to witness this metamorphosis that happens with these women as they continue to move themselves into a space of understanding that that is within them. It’s not that they’re going out and buying it or developing it or earning it. It’s within them, and they’re just pulling it up to the surface.

Melinda Wittstock (31:28):

That’s so true. Well, my goodness. So, Lesley, you have a book that’s out. I want you to talk about your book, and everybody should get a copy of it.

Lesley Michaels :

Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock :

Tell me about On The Shoulders of Mighty Women.

Lesley Michaels (31:46):

When I started writing this book at the beginning of COVID, there were so many directions that I could go, and I had them scattered on papers all over the place because I’m one of those old school people who prints it out and looks at it on paper. And it suddenly occurred to me that I just didn’t want to write about one area or another area for women, areas with which I was very familiar, because women have been so segmented and compartmentalized for all time that I wanted to bring forward a book that gave more of an overview of the complexity, and the courageousness, and the fears, and the vulnerabilities of women in a less compartmentalized way.

And so, we move through many different things that women have to face on an ongoing basis, from unpaid labor to gathering the courage to ask for that salary that is equal to your value, to having permission to claim our anger and to claim our rage, for having permission to say everybody’s broken. Everybody’s broken a little bit somewhere. This does not make me bad. This is just a place where I’m still growing. And many other points.

But throughout the through line, if you will, is the potential power that we have available to ourselves collectively when we start to develop strategic alliances and we start reaching out and developing those what I call personal boardrooms of your colleagues, your advisors. And to really lean into that from both the perspective of receiving, but also from the perspective of understanding that you have something to bring to that room at the same time.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. So, Lesley, I could talk to you for a lot longer. I want to make sure that everybody knows how to listen to your podcast, everybody knows where to get your book, how to work with you. What’s the best way?

Lesley Michaels:

The best way is to go to my website because everything is there. It’s lesleymichaels.com. And I will tell your listeners that since I have a British mother, it is L-E-S-L-E-Y Michaels. It’s not the regular American spelling. Lesleymichaels.com

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. And also I invite everyone to check out your podcast on Podopolo as well. It’s one of the five million there. And also join us both in the Wings episodes comment section so we can keep the conversation going longer. I’m always eager to hear listener perspectives on what we talk about here. And I give everybody listening here a chance to interact with you directly, Lesley. So, excited to see you over there. And I just wanted to thank you for putting on your Wings today and flying with us.

Lesley Michaels:

Thank you for inviting me.