Moment 152: The Top 4 Most Successful Stories From Women in Business!

This moment is a compilation of some of the most successful women to ever appear on The Diary Of A CEO, discussing the biggest hurdles that women have to overcome on the road to success. Karen Brady CBE, former managing director of Birmingham City F. C tells how on her first away game, it wasn’t believed that she could have a place in the boardroom and was mistaken for a player's wife or partner. Ever since, she has been driven to show the importance of true equality of treatment for people. Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of Bumble, says that one of the key reasons for Bumble’s success in a crowded dating app market was that it aimed at women and what they wanted, compared to all the other apps which ignored women to focus on male customers. Trinny Woodall, CEO of Trinny London, says that by starting a successful business in mid life, it proves that age is just a number and that energy alongside trusting yourself and your ideas is everything. Finally, Reshma Saujani, CEO of Girls Who Code, believes women have been sold the propaganda that they aren’t good or smart enough, and are left doubting their own abilities. Instead, she says that women have to say no and believe that they are deserving of success now. Listen to the full episodes here- Karen- https://g2ul0.app.link/qtWXktE5LHb Whitney- https://g2ul0.app.link/r3nkxZv5LHb Trinny- https://g2ul0.app.link/irHxG1y5LHb Reshma- https://g2ul0.app.link/8EC3scH5LHb Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Karen- https://www.instagram.com/karren_brady_official/ Whitney- https://www.instagram.com/whitney/ Trinny- https://www.instagram.com/trinnywoodall/ Reshma- https://www.instagram.com/reshmasaujani/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  The thing that brings me on to a wider point about, and as you say, the reason why you're in Saudi is this battle that I know you've had through your career with men kind of underestimating you or sexism, which I guess started when you first got the job at Birmingham.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I remember my first away game, I think it was Watford, and I turned up and I said, "Hi, could you tell me where the boardroom is?" And this little old boy, little steward on the desk, he went, "Oh, director's wives over there." And I said, "That's interesting, but where is the boardroom?" And he said, "Dear, you don't understand. The director's wives go in the ladies' room." And I said, "No, I don't think it's you understands. I am the managing director, so I want to know where the boardroom is." And this little old boy put his little glasses on, he went, "Oh, yes." He said, "Yes, you're that woman. Stay here and I'll find out what to do with you." Because there were no other women in football. So there was never a woman in the boardroom. And women weren't, you know, weren't welcome in boardrooms because it was meant to be the place where the directors

• 1:00Speaker 01

  all met. And of course, they were all men. And I remember thinking that it was the very first door I'd kicked down. And I was determined that I would keep that door open as wide and as long as possible to get as many other women through as possible. And that is something I've spent my last 30 years doing. It's really important to me. It's really important that there is a sense of equality and equal pay and equal respect for everything that you do, regardless of where you're from, what sex you are, what your beliefs are, how you look, where you're educated. Equality is very important to me.

• 1:39Steven Bartlett?

  Why do you think it's so important to you in particular?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  I think because, look, at 23, I was given the challenge and chance of a lifetime, and I took that. And I knew that that started with someone having trust in me. And I knew that there were so many talented people out there that didn't have someone that had that trust in them. And I wanted to be that person.

• 2:04Steven Bartlett?

  Going back to the question which I kind of took us off on a tangent away from, about why you think Bumble won?

• 2:11Steven Bartlett?

  Or was successful, was able to break through into that very small category of dating apps or dating sites, where there's really only like a handful of real players. Why? Why? Because I know, you know, I have to say something. I know that the other dating apps, because I was sometimes in the room, tried to launch dating apps for themselves. So they took their existing network, they tried to launch a new dating app into it, and it didn't work.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:37Steven Bartlett?

  I've seen it happen over and over again. I know Michelle.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's great.

• 2:41Steven Bartlett?

  From Peanut. She's one of the people I used to work with when we were doing the marketing at Purdue.

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's, I think what she's done is awesome.

• 2:48Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I love Peanut. It's great. But I, but I know it's not easy, and I know it's not chance. And I know it's not luck, because I've seen, I can't tell you at Social Chain, how many times we had dating apps come to us and say, can you do our marketing? Maybe 200 times?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  There's 5,000 dating apps in the App Store?

• 3:06Steven Bartlett?

  It's impossible. It's impossible. It's almost impossible to start a new one because of the network effects and all of those things.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  It's impossible.

• 3:13Steven Bartlett?

  Impossible. So why you? How you? How?

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Every other dating product until Bumble had been solving for the wrong side of the coin. They've been thinking about men. That's all. They woke up in the morning and thought about how to make a dating app good for guys. And they had it backwards. Why are you solving for men when this is all about what women need and what women want? No one was asking women. You think women want to get abused on the internet? Think again. Like, find me a woman that enjoys being harassed on a dating app. Not one. But for some reason, that problem didn't strike anyone as a problem. So.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  It's not that hard to say, wait a second. This is a double sided marketplace. This product can't survive without women, yet we're exploiting and degrading women on a lot of these products, not naming any names. What? And so for me, it was all about taking that original concept of Mercy, a kind space for women, a safe space for women. And to Andre's push, gotta give him, gotta give him some credit for being so interested in dating, right? I was so turned off of dating. I wanted nothing to do with dating. When Andre was like, oh, let's do a dating, you know, come be my CMO. I was like, first of all, I'm not for hire. I'm starting my own company. I must be founder and CEO of whatever I do next. I cannot work for someone.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I just, I have to be my own boss. And, um, you know, I gotta give him a lot of credit because he trusted that. And he said, okay, do whatever you want to do. But it just, my one stipulation is it has to be in dating because I know dating and I want to get behind a dating product. So when I was sitting there, you know, we were, we had kind of agreed to, okay, we're going to do this dating app. What's it gonna be? Well, what about Mercy? I want it to be Mercy. I want it to be about women and I want to be women only. I want it safety and kindness and accountability. There's no internet spaces for women. Nothing's been built for women. We have to do this for women. And then it kind of just all clicked. And I sat there and within literally minutes,

• 5:31Speaker 02

  it all just wrote itself. I said, wait a second. I know the problem. Women don't go first. Men do. Men message as many women as they can. Women are getting inundated. They never respond. The lack of response is causing a rejection and the rejection is triggering an aggression. And that aggression is now translating into.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Harassment. And this is why women are being abused on the dating apps. Because if only they would go first, the man wouldn't feel rejected. They'd feel empowered. It would totally calibrate this whole experience. And I said, okay, great. I know what we're gonna do. Women have to talk first on this product and they only have 24 hours to do it. I knew nobody else could conceptualize the way I would explain it. So I was like, think Cinderella, the pumpkin and the carriage. And men can send one extent on time of day to capture their attention if they want to. Now, we have to also call out something. This was back in 2014 in a very heterosexual oriented dating app experience. The landscape has evolved. We have to be inclusive to all.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  And so of course we are, and of course we are currently, as we speak, spending countless time and putting all of our heart and soul into how to make the experience better for non-binary, for the trans community, for anybody that identifies as a woman as well. Right. And so that's a big portion of the future. But that was really how I would say we became successful because of two things. Woman, making sure that we were solving for women's real problems on the internet. Marketing to women. So when I went back to those sororities and fraternities, instead of going in with, you know, whatever we had gone in at Tinder, I went in with things for women.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  I went in with items women wanted, cute yellow cookies. Like, I understood that we are going to build a cute brand, not a sexy brand. And that's what set us apart. I wanted it to feel warm and cozy and inviting and soft and feminine and safe. And that's the beginning. And still, the current through line of Bumble.

• 7:49Steven Bartlett?

  You know, starting a business like that at 53, a lot of people have a like a stigma or a stereotype that you can't start a business in midlife. You know, you shouldn't be doing that at that point or that, you know, you won't be able to raise, you know, all of those kind of stigmas around starting a business in midlife.

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Crap.

• 8:06Steven Bartlett?

  Crap, yeah.

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Total crap.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  I started a business at sixteen called, what was my first business? Boz Unlimited when I was at school, I sold hair bows.

• 8:14Steven Bartlett?

  I know.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  And then I started a business at fifty three. So it's like, there's no other way to put it, that that age is is a number. It is just a fucking number. And you can either mention that number endlessly, or you can look at what energy do you have at that moment in time to execute on your dream? That's all it's, that's all you need.

• 8:39Steven Bartlett?

  Energy.

• 8:40Speaker 03

  All you need, well, you need a lot, but you know, you need to feel that. You need energy, passion, drive, relentlessness, perseverance, resilience. Pick yourself up and just get fucking on with it. You need all of those things, but you need the energy so that you jump out of bed in the morning and you are on it.

• 9:01Steven Bartlett?

  Did it take time for you to cultivate that in the in the passing, after Johnny had passed? Was there like a, do you know what I mean?

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Because I did, I did already too before, and for that I was, you know, I did eighteen hour days for two and a half years. It's like, you know, it's it's in me that I've I've been a grafter for quite a long time, so.

• 9:19Steven Bartlett?

  You'd been mulling this idea for many, many, many years. And then, and then you finally put it into action. I heard you say I started pitching in two thousand and fourteen and it took me three years to launch.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'd started pitching in two thousand and thirteen, I think.

• 9:34Steven Bartlett?

  And what were you pitching?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  I was pitching.

• 9:36Steven Bartlett?

  What was the elevator pitch?

• 9:37Speaker 03

  The elevator pitch was to create portable,

• 9:44Speaker 03

  cream-based, personalized makeup for women thirty five plus.

• 9:51Steven Bartlett?

  And how was that pitch received?

• 9:54Speaker 03

  I did forty eight pitches before one person fit. I must have sent three hundred emails.

• 9:59Steven Bartlett?

  What kind of negative feedback did you get?

• 10:02Speaker 03

  Oh, I had lots. I had, I had, you don't have enough followers.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  Fine, I had like, I think fifty thousand followers then. Um, I had your two old start a business. I had who's going to really run the business? Classic.

• 10:18Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, that's a nice look.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  I love, I love that one. You live in this Neverland, it's not like it's never gonna happen, but it's never gonna happen. But you don't put words to either, you sit like this place. And I had that feeling, I thought, are people ever gonna get it? But I thought, I'm never gonna give up. So they both sat side by side, really strongly.

• 10:35Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't you give up?

• 10:37Speaker 03

  Because I knew it was a fucking good idea and I knew it would work. I just had to find the right people who would get it.

• 10:42Steven Bartlett?

  But everyone's telling you no, everyone's telling you to.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  I don't care if everyone's telling me no, I know. And I know enough and I believe in myself enough to know, I know it's a good idea. I just know it. I just gotta find somebody who has the vision to understand it.

• 10:54Steven Bartlett?

  How do you know it though?

• 10:56Speaker 03

  Because I know women.

• 10:59Steven Bartlett?

  As you look forward at your, your mission and your future, and what you hope to achieve in the next chapter of your life, what is that tangibly? If, if I had to measure success, if I was to say that you're, you're, you're, you know, all the things you write about, the change you write about in this book, if I was to measure it and say it was successful, what, what, what, what would the world look like?

• 11:24Speaker 04

  That we have true equality. You know, that, that, that little girls can be everything and anything, honestly. You know, that they can be president or, or prime minister, that they can launch a company, you know, and get seed funding, that they can be a scientist, that they can literally, or they can be a stay at home mom, that they can be whoever and whatever that they want. And I think my hope for mothers is that they too don't see their, their, their biggest dreams die on the vine, that they don't live a life of regret and envy and should have been, would have been, because they let, they let things happen to them, rather than change things. That we live in a world where we, we respect and we dignify women and girls. We're not there yet.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  You know, we're so, we're so far from being there in many ways. And I think part of it, again, is because of the things that we've sold women, that we've, we've basically told women that the problem is you. Think about all the books that women read. Confidence Code, ah, I gotta learn how to do a power pose. I gotta, I gotta lean in. All of it is about women thinking that you're wrong. The amount of times that women come to me and say, I have imposter syndrome. I'm like, no, no, no, no, they didn't let you in. You're in there because you are the best. But now you're made to feel like you snuck through the back door. And so it, you know, what I am saying in many ways is really radical. And it's, you know, very deeply seated in us.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  And it's not just, it's women, it's people of color, it's poor people, anybody who is not, you know, who, who has really, you know, had to, had to do grit, perseverance, you know, found themselves in rooms that people don't look like them. We're still asking ourselves, do I belong here? Should I be here? And we're constantly being fed information, book, podcasts, movies, that tell ourselves that we just have to change one more thing about ourselves, that we have to fix one more thing. And, you know, it's just simply not true. I, I always say that I feel so lucky that, you know, through the work that I've done, I've been able to be in almost every single powerful room.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  I've probably met every single powerful person in the world. And, you know, I used to be that girl at Yale Law School in my constitutional law class going like this. And, you know, a few years ago, I got asked to give a speech at Bill Gates's summit. And the slot that they had given me was between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. And it was the only speech that anyone was giving. It was a summit of Fortune 100 CEOs. You can imagine who was in the room. And I remember them saying, you know, this is a really hard speaking slot, Rashma, because most people are really intimidated because Bill and Warren are sitting in the front row. And it can be a little scary. And I remember as I, as I was sitting there in the backstage,

• 14:20Speaker 04

  they had given me 10 minutes to speak. And I remember thinking, man, I wish they gave me 12 because I really had some more stuff to say. And then I remember thinking, how did I become, how did I become this woman when I used to be that girl? And I remember thinking, yeah, it's because I've been in every single powerful room. I've met every single CEO, every president, every prime minister. And when I meet them, I'm like, you? You're running what? Me and my girls, we can run circles around you. And I realized that it's never been about whether we're qualified, whether we're prepared, whether we're ready,

• 15:02Speaker 04

  that we've really never really dissected all of the undeserved, unearned privilege that so many people have. And that we have literally bought and been fed, you know, basically this propaganda that we're not good enough, that we're not smart enough, that we don't belong. And the real resistance in this moment is saying, no more. I'm not reading those books. I'm not taking those courses. I'm not taking that class. I'm not buying into that bullshit. I'm here. And I can lead too.