697 Lesley Michaels:

No doubt you’ve heard of the Queen Bee syndrome, you know, the one that has women competing only with each other for what is perceived as a scarce prize. Or the Tall Poppy Syndrome, where the woman who has the temerity and nerve to dream big and go confidently to realize her dreams, is cut down by other women. We’ve all experienced that in one way or another, and today my guest today – Lesley Michaels – shares what it will take to lift women out of these destructive attitudes so deeply embedded in our subconscious minds.

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 and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where 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 was one of the earliest women to climb the ranks of the male-dominated oil and gas industry. Lesley Michaels says what disheartened her most about the corporate world was the lack of support from other women. So, she did what increasing numbers of women are now doing and reinvented herself as an entrepreneur and public speaker – on a mission to help women understand their own value and lift each other up.

Now Lesley hosts the podcast, Women We Should Know, where walks her talk by she features audacious and committed women from around the world who are changing the narratives in arenas from climate change to corporate, so women can learn to help each other in breaking glass ceilings across industries from film to conservation. Lesley’s new book The Shoulders of Mighty Women is due out July 12, accompanied by a new TED Talk.

What prevents women from being their boldest selves? What is the root of the fears that prevent us from dreaming big – and encouraging other women to dream just as big, even bigger?

Lesley Michaels, on the same mission as me to encourage women to lift as we climb, says as women we still struggle to know our own value – a belief that often stands in the way of asking for our worth in pay, applying for top jobs, or starting and scaling truly game-changing businesses. If we don’t value ourselves, it’s all the harder to value and appreciate another woman’s success. A long time ago a female entrepreneur friend of mine likened it to a crab pot: The crabs at the bottom always stop the other crabs from climbing out.

So today with my guest Lesley Michaels we talk about what’s holding us back in business, how to let go of perfectionism, plus other practical steps to change the game for women in business.

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. I am so delighted to be here, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, me too. I’m only imagining your experiences climbing the ranks of a very male dominated oil and gas industry. And at some point came the aha that you really wanted to focus on women. What was the impetus for that?

Lesley Michaels:

When I was in oil and gas, this was in the end of the 70s, the early 80s. So this was a minute ago. And what I found shocked me, of course, the men were not warm and inviting, but for the most part, they left me alone. What I experienced as shocking and incredibly difficult was the woman to woman instability that I experienced, the undermining, the constant minimizing, the memos I didn’t receive that were said to have been put on my desk and things like this, the vicious competition between women is what caused me to leave corporate oil.

And over the years, I had already been studying feminist principles. I was raised by a grandmother who was a suffragette. And so it was a natural evolution that came after that. And I wanted to speak to women about a different way, because as I went through my days and my weeks and spoke with different women, I met woman after woman, woman who had been kicked through the fences so many times and they were incredibly gunshot. And so I realized that we are actually the majority, the women who aren’t being abusive are the majority. And it’s time for us to start coming together in alliance and being supportive of each other, because we can make great strides being the majority.

Melinda Wittstock:

A 100%. Well, you mentioned something that very similar to my experience in the media industry, back around the same time, really more into the 90s, that there was a scarcity mentality among women, this idea that only one could kind of succeed. So it felt like women were competing with each other for the women’s spot, if you will. Right? Not just competing with everybody. And it was really off putting, I think things have changed though, quite a lot. Don’t you?

Lesley Michaels:

Well, I’m sorry, Melinda, to tell you, but I did believe they had changed. And as I started, what ended up becoming over 300 interviews with women, I found out that it has not changed at all, which led me to do some research. Forbes has been writing about it, Harvard Business Review, apparently it’s at an all-time high.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness. So why is that? Is it, as I suspect this scarcity idea?

Lesley Michaels:

Oh gosh, there are so many layers I could go into. Part of it is genetic based on competition throughout ages, all the way back to tribal times. Part of it is the structure of patriarchy we’ve been raised in, where the woman has to get that particular position or that particular man. And part of it is just deep seated fear, on the part of the women who are being abusive. Fear that they will lose their status, fear that they will not measure up to the junior associate who is running up the ranks.

Melinda Wittstock:

Lesley, it’s just so sad, I think it’s one of the reasons I started this podcast way, way back, God knows five years ago, because I really wanted to inspire women you lift each other up, hence Wings, right?

Lesley Michaels:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

This whole idea that when we’re actually in more abundance mindset and we help each other, we buy from each other, mentor each other, promote each other, invest in each other. We all do better, but what is it going to take to change that attitude? I see more and more women who are like me, swing for the fences entrepreneurs, women who want to build billion dollar companies or whatever, in that more abundance mindset. But it’s a very, very tiny minority, it feels like. It feels quite lonely.

Lesley Michaels:

Yes, it does feel lonely. Doesn’t it? The upside of that is in the last three years, we’ve seen a higher percentage of women in top positions, taking their professional real estate that they have established, their network of alliances as it were and leaving and building their own company. And the women founded, women run companies that have been out there long enough to get some footing are showing higher returns and more consistent returns than the traditional male companies.

Melinda Wittstock:

A 100%. This is so interesting. And we can and dig into this a lot as well. It’s like the corporate glass ceiling, if there’s all that scarcity and back biting, and I’ll just call it bitchiness, call it for what it is. If all that stuff is going on in corporate, why would you stay there if you have the talent to go and create your own business and your own dreams. So I see record numbers of women going into business, starting businesses. But I also see at the same time, sometimes playing a little too small, creating small businesses, or solopreneur kind of thing, rather than these big things like you think of, Rent the Runway or Drybar or Canva, which is a multi-billion dollar company or Hint Water, Kara Goldin’s company is $2 billion company. There’s still not that many who are really doing those really big disruptive things, although more.

Lesley Michaels:

At least they’re getting started.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes.

Lesley Michaels:

And now there are women out there at least establishing a model for it. [crosstalk 00:06:51].

Melinda Wittstock:

A 100%, a 100%. So even within startups, say you get a whole bunch of entrepreneurial women together at a mastermind, it feels to me like there’s still a little bit of an undercurrent of this. Queen Bee Syndrome. There’s only the best female entrepreneur in that context or whatever, because there’s all these layers of competition around how we look or our relationships of status or just all these things.

Lesley Michaels:

[crosstalk 00:07:22]. It’s unbelievable that here we are in 2022 and that we are still acting like school girls. And that’s how I think of it, is still acting like school girls in a professional arena.

Melinda Wittstock:

So is this just because it’s deeply ingrained, as you were suggesting kind of in our subconscious minds, right? It’s just all we ever know, how we’ve been acculturated, society all around us, Instagram stuff, all of it, is it just that, are we conscious and enough of this?

Lesley Michaels:

It is deeply ingrained. It’s deeply ingrained from that very first moment when we are supposed to be daddy’s perfect little girl, oh, that word has crippled women forever. That quest for perfection. And then we go into schools and the boys are supposed to be one way and the girls are supposed to another way. There are no points of connectivity. And so it is deeply ingrained. But also there’s enough consciousness information out there. There’s enough information about goo business practices and good business partnerships that I believe women need to take some responsibility as well, for the fact that they are just not choosing to behave differently.

Melinda Wittstock:

I wonder if it’s a bit of an age related thing because I see a lot of women coming into their forties and into their fifties, succeeding at business as entrepreneurs in much greater number, in that age range than say in the twenties or thirties, right? Once you get at, you’ve had your kids, you’ve done all the thing. And there was a really funny TikTok, not so long ago, this woman in her fifties just saying, “I have no more Fs to give, I’ve given them all. And so now there’s nothing to lose. I’m just going to go for it. I’m not bound by all of those things anymore.”

And it’s interesting because you see the kind of pattern for male entrepreneurship is the ideal time is in twenties and like early thirties. But for women, it seems to be much more in forties and fifties, even sixties.

Lesley Michaels:

Much more so. And I’m seeing a lot of women who are also reaching a place where they have been successful. They have been a equity partner in this firm or that firm. And COVID of all things made a huge difference, that almost two years of living differently, I’m speaking with women on a regular basis, it’s almost as if they’re reading from the same memo, Melinda, I didn’t get it, but they’re all reading from the same memo. It’s exactly the same words. And I’ll say, “Well, what are you up to?” “I’m in transition. I don’t know what that means. And I’m really okay with it.”

Lesley Michaels:

So I’m really looking forward to what we see in two years in our future, when these powerful, successful women who realized that it was time to make a change, they’re not in a rush, they know they still have a whole lot to bring to themselves and to the marketplace, I’m really looking forward to seeing what changes we see in the greater marketplaces as they choose their position and their direction.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I think women bring a lot to business that men don’t, and one of the things that I’ve found and this is true of myself, but so many other really successful female entrepreneurs is we see markets a little bit differently. We see business structures differently. The very business model that we tend to come up with, connects the dots in a different way. It’s less linear. And sometimes in the context of where women, especially women who have created really highly scalable technology businesses, for instance, run up against all kinds of challenges, trying to get the capital they need into their business because we don’t fit the pattern recognition guidelines, if you will, of traditional venture capital. And to a male brain, it looks like these very innovative business models are unfocused. When an actual fact they’re very focused just in a more female way. So it seems like a lot of stuff gets lost in translation, right there.

Lesley Michaels:

A lot of stuff gets lost in translation and it’s costing us. We get, as you said, less venture capital 2% goes to-

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that number hasn’t changed in more than two decades.

Lesley Michaels:

I know.

Melinda Wittstock:

Isn’t that crazy?

Lesley Michaels:

It’s harmful. It’s harmful to our society. I truly believe that. But part of the difference that has been used against women for a very long time and that it’s time for us to really come together and use as an accelerant, is that men are fundamentally and biologically transactional, when women are fundamentally biologically relational. And it’s been used against us, how women are so emotional, women are this, that or the other, we’ve heard all the ugly stories. But as women can start seeing this as a strength and using it in the same way that men use their natural ability to be transactional, I believe we can start to turn a corner.

Melinda Wittstock:

You see a lot of men increasingly in the startup world, trying to develop that relational muscle, but you also see a lot of women who have this natural relationship talent, not fully leveraging it. And instead heads down focused on the competency or completing the task or, oh my God, like you mentioned it before, making it perfect. Doing so much of the doing, that they’re not actually leveraging that relationship advantage.

That is a real issue with women. And I don’t know what it is other than I suspect they just don’t know how. Because one of the things that has really held women back is their absence of self-trust, their absence of the ability to just walk in that office and make their claim, state their case, whatever it is, offer their presentation with absolute full confidence and [crosstalk 00:14:54].

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. Deep down, not really trusting our own value.

Lesley Michaels:

That’s right.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so it’s very difficult to build a valuable business if you don’t even value yourself. Right there, it’s the first thing to overcome. And it manifests in so many different ways. Many times I’ve been a judge in a pitch competition for investors or that kind of thing. Right? And it manifests in asking for the sum that you’re raising with a question mark on the end of your voice. There’s a big difference from saying, “I’m raising $10 million, this is an opportunity for you I’m raising $10 million?”

Lesley Michaels:

Yes. We must get to a point where we can and claim our value. I have a very good friend who is one of the top head hunters in New York for senior positions. And she repeatedly bemoans the fact that women consistently ask for less than their value. And even when she has a conversation with them, and explains to them that the company in question is highly motivated to balance the male/female equation in their senior offices, the women still will not raise their income request.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, it’s so heartbreaking.

Lesley Michaels:

It is heartbreaking. And I’ve read several studies recently that say that… And this is a big part of it. And I believe it’s cultural, women will not drive for a position or a raise or a contract until they believe they have 85 to 95% of the skills and knowledge that they will need to fulfill this role. Men on the other hand will go for a role with absolute full confidence if they know 55 to 65% [crosstalk 00:17:19].

Melinda Wittstock:

And men also within a company will demand promotions more aggressively. Right? And just assume that they can do it. And maybe this speaks to, part of the caution of women… One of the things I’ve noticed too, in the context of fundraising, venture capitalists, angel investors, all of them, they all assume that your numbers are wildly aggressive because most men will paint an aggressive projection model of what their startup or scale up is going to be able to do. The women will be a lot more realistic, but whatever the case is, it gets discounted down regardless. So if a woman says these numbers are the ones I’m confident, we know we can hit, they’re still going to be discounted. And then it’s not going to look like a good opportunity.

Lesley Michaels:

Exactly, exactly. And I think one of the skills or mindsets that would help women is to understand that this is how much you project you can earn, you can generate based on who you are today, and start to incorporate the fact that as they move toward that goal, they are going to be learning more every day. And so the goal can be extended out further in front of them.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so how do we fix all of these things? Every podcast interview, the perfectionism thing comes up, I’m almost at the point where we should start like an AA group for perfectionist women, right? How to overcome that. Because at the root of it, I think is that at lack of value or lack of confidence where you think it has to be perfect. And this holds companies back from growth. I’m always telling all our team, we’ve got a team of 26 now and it’s like, “Look, done is better than perfect. It’s okay if not everything is working, you got to build the plane as you fly it.” Right?

Lesley Michaels:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

But that’s something that women have such a hard time with. So what are some of the things that we can actually do practically? I know that this is a really big part of your mission with your book, coming up soon in July and your podcast and all the things that you’re doing. What’s the roadmap here? What are the answers?

Lesley Michaels:

Well, I wish I had a whole manual of answers, but I don’t. But one answer I do see as potentially potent is for women to start building strategic alliances among women. It is known that women, because they are relational instead of transactional, are not as good at networking, but they are superior at building very strong, supportive relationships. If they will come together and do that with each other, be each other’s support mechanism, be each other’s referral mechanism, be each other’s atta boy, if you will system, because that is how men have gotten here. They’ve had the secret handshake. They’ve had the old boys club and they may have been smoking cigars or playing golf or whatever they were doing. Women need to find their model of that, so that they can have that collective power. And when they have that collective power, they’re going to feel more empowered individually. That’s my firm belief.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. And so is that coaching? Masterminds? What’s the thing?

Lesley Michaels:

It is both. It is mentoring, it is mastermind, it is developing strategic alliance groups. I’m getting ready to launch a program in August where I am going to help women understand how to build strategic alliance groups that serve them, whether they want them within the same industry, whether they want it cross-industry, but how to get an infrastructure under them so that they can start building this power stage.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s really, really important. So tell me about your book, your book’s coming out soon.

Lesley Michaels:

Shoulders of Mighty Women, yes. It is in one part, my story, because I am a third generational feminist. It is one part what I have seen in the business world that can work and what doesn’t work and actionable practices for making shifts. And it is another part, third part called action for women to stop saying, “Well, this is how it is and what do we do about it?” And then the conversation never continues. There is never any action taken or very rarely any action taken. And so to move to the point where they are ready and they’re willing to take action for their own best interest.

And so it is a combination of all of this. Certainly I am candid about my own imposter syndrome and my own perfectionism and all of the ways in which I learned not to do business. And I put that in there intentionally as a unifier. I’m going to say that again. And I put that in the book intentionally as a unifier, because I tend to see women look at someone who’s written a book or someone who has a podcast or someone who has a company and say, “Oh, but I’m not them.” And so I put my trips and my falls in there so that it can be a unifier, so everyone can say, “Okay, okay. If she can fall down that badly and make that big of mistakes, maybe I can at least try something else. Maybe I can at least take one more step forward.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. This is so, so true. I often think that the best thing that we can do is be the change we want to see in the world. Right? Just start doing by example. And that can be very fear inducing for women because I think getting back to some of the fears that we have, I think, because we’re so relationship oriented, we are very afraid of being cast out of the tribe. If you know what I mean? Like the [crosstalk 00:25:35].

Lesley Michaels:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

Cut down. We’re the tall poppy and A, other women won’t like us. Right? We won’t have any friends. And B, no man will want to be with us anymore. Right? We’re afraid of outshining men. And so those are such deep seated fears that it’s almost like you’re signing up potentially for a life of loneliness in a way, and it’s really, really tricky to figure out how to deal with those deep seated fears. And so one of the best ways is always being there for women. Actually taking it on. And then you have the other issue that all the women who really do want to help, genuinely want to help, they’re so damn busy on their own thing, because we’re all human doings, especially women, that there’s no time.

Lesley Michaels:

Right. Yeah. That’s a big issue. But to what you were saying about being there for each other, one of the things that I have seen happen that is just creates… I’m going to start over. To your point on women being there for each other. One of the things that I have repeatedly seen that creates such a beautiful metamorphosis is when there are a group of women together and they may be masterminding or whatever they’re doing, and one woman will speak out, and in a confession type of manner, about the fact that she is suffering imposter syndrome, or she has been plagued by perfectionism that month and she can feel it holding her back. And then two or three women in the circle will say, “I know that feeling.” That sense of not being the only one, that sense of not being alone in that grueling place of imposter syndrome or feeling less than, just not being alone is a radical change, produces a radical change for the person who’s willing to speak up.

Melinda Wittstock:

So that means that we need to be able to show our vulnerability to other women. What’s the blocker on that?

Lesley Michaels:

Well, we’ll get kicked out of the tribe. We don’t want to be the only giraffe in a herd of zebras. That’s scary.

Melinda Wittstock:

You see, it’s so funny with me, because I’ve just come to terms with that. It’s like, if that’s what it is. Well, so be it, you know what I mean?

Lesley Michaels:

Well, I’m the same way.

Melinda Wittstock:

So found acceptance with that.

Lesley Michaels:

Yes. And there’s something to be said for that Melinda. I’m really okay with it. I am completely okay with it. If I get kicked out of that tribe, it wasn’t my tribe.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s how I feel too.

Lesley Michaels:

[crosstalk 00:28:49].

Melinda Wittstock:

But easier said than done, right? I think there’s just some women with this pioneering entrepreneurial DNA that are just going to go for it and it’s just that you’re doing it because you can’t not do it. That’s that my entrepreneurial journey through five successful companies and building this one, which is a potential billion dollar plus company. And so it’s just, all kinds of stuff is going to happen. Oh, well-

Lesley Michaels:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

… I’m on my mission

Lesley Michaels:

And that’s another thing, stuff is going to happen. You’re going to have bad days, you’re going to really mess up and you have to be okay with knowing that.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So that requires just self-acceptance. I think women are very afraid to fail and failure is part of the program of entrepreneurship, because it’s like a scientist in a lab, you keep failing until you figure it out. And all the most important lessons come from those failures, large, small micro, whatever they are because they’re learning experiences.

Melinda Wittstock:

Just being able and willing to learn, it’s impossible to be right all the time when you’re creating something new that hasn’t been done before, or even if it has been done before, your circumstances will be different, the market timing, all kinds of things that you can’t necessarily control. But it’s constantly a personal growth exercise as well as a business growth exercise.

Lesley Michaels:

I just had one of those little lights that come on. And you were talking about you can’t be right all the time. There is not one of us who has not at one or several times in our life known that person who knows everything there is to know about everything there is to know. That is the most boring human being on the planet. And if women could contextualize their need to be right, just hold that as a glimmer of vision of who they don’t want to be. And let that be one of the flags that gives them permission to make a mistake, to trip, to fall over.

And to your point of some of us are just, we can’t do this, we just cannot not do this. That in and of itself is a sign of promise to me because as long as there are some of us that will go out and carve those paths, because we cannot avoid doing it, that something inside of us won’t stop. We are going to carve broader paths for more are women to come along.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Lynn, I’d love to keep this conversation going over on Podopolo where your podcast is featured with 5 million others. But in the Wings podcast there, there’s a comment section where we can all gather, people can share their perspectives and ask advice. So I invite you to hop on over and download that app. And then I can add you as a contributor, a guest on the podcast, and we can keep the conversation going over there. I want to make sure though that everybody knows how to find you and work with you, be involved in all the amazing initiative and also how, and when they can pre-order your book.

Lesley Michaels:

It’s really easy because it’s all self-contained on my website and that is lesleymichaels.com. Now I’m going to spell this for you because it’s not the American Leslie, my mother’s a [inaudible 00:33:25]. So it’s L-E-S-L-E-Ymichaels.com. And the book will go into prerelease, May 12th. The book is on the website. It’ll take you directly to Amazon. Everything that I’m about, everything that I am bringing out into the world, all of the things that I am and working to create with other women, you will be able to find on the website.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Lesley Michaels:

Thank you so much for inviting me, Melinda. It was great to have a conversation with you.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, us strong women got to stick together and support each other. So let’s walk our talk on that. Thank you, Lesley.

Lesley Michaels:

Absolutely. You’re welcome.