From Here to Autonomy

Femalities: A breakdown of SXSW and a lot of other stuff from a woman's point of view

Don't know what it is--the fact that I've just emerged from a weekend at SXSW, it was International Women's Day on Friday, I got snubbed by a "prominent" male investor/entrepreneur that in the virtual world I respected, though in person not so much--but I am feeling my womanness of late. And no, guys, it's not because it's that time of the month. If anything, it's the world who's experiencing a hormonal shift.

A digital analyst that I bumped into at SX in the lobby of the Hilton asked me what struck me as the big story at SX. I gave him a safe answer that belied the unbelievable growth the BlogHer Network has experienced on mobile platforms </shill for my company> and realized there's a better, more encompassing answer: WOMEN.

You know, those people at SX who like to hug, code, and grab coffee. They've been at SX before (we partnered with SX in '06, developing programming for them around women and have been involved as attendees or board members </shill my business partner> since). They're not really that new in the space. Like content marketing they were around in the Web 1.0 days too, but there are new distinctions that folks seem to be making, in part because, like Facebook, some broke out and went public.

Yes, we don't need to say Sheryl SANDBERG or Marissa MAYER out here. Everyone knows who you are talking about when asked, "What'd you think about Marissa's decision?" or "Lean In, you agree with Sheryl?" It may have been International Women's Day on Friday, but it seems the celebrating here in Austin was delayed for the official launch of "Lean In" instead.

Even my ungeeky friends have reached out and asked me, "So do you think this Lean In stuff is valid?" For the record (and since I was supposed to represent BlogHer on a CNN panel to discuss this Friday, but the topic was bumped to today and we talked about DOMA and Justin Bieber instead) I want to put what I thought was a damn well-conceived opinion out there, to the two of you reading my blog:

I love what Sheryl has done with her platform as resident SV untouchable badass to highlight the issue of women and work. It seems that when women who haven't taken companies public try to do so, the media responds with a tad less enthusiasm. And while I understand the criticism of some of the fembloggers who feel that Sandberg's privileged background makes her an unreliable advocate for those of us who actually have to work, I think someone had to get this conversation started. My hope and intention is to invite others to the conversation who have lived in fear of being fired and feel they have to fake leaning in, or who don't have the resources to lean in without keeling over from the exhaustion of having a full-time career and being a caregiver.

I don't believe that women have an ambition problem. When it comes to having a family and high-powered career they have a power problem.

I attended Jessica Coen's Interview of Anne-Marie Slaughter and felt for the first time in a long time like a pig in shit at a SX session. My people! And I saw plenty of men in attendance at her panel. One even approached me after I asked Anne-Marie my question (Do you think men are equally at risk of having difficulty on-ramping back into the workforce after being at home raising the kids?) and told me how he managed the transition. Finally I can come back from SX with some takeaway for my amazing Stay-at-Home Husband.

And I attended a panel led by John Gerzema that walked us through the research done for his book The Athena Doctrine--which provides powerful examples of men and women who have manifested massive change in the world by adopting feminine qualities such as flexibility, intuition, generosity, and empathy. Gerzema argues that it is the embracing of feminine traits (defined as feminine via a global survey of thousands) that is required to be effective in today's political, economic, and societal realms (and to the "professor" who took issue with Gerzema's omission of his female research partner--who did not co-author the book--on the cover: Consider the maleness of your body language and accusatory tone and Gerzema's open, accepting, perhaps FEMININE response to your attack. Personally, I prefer that he have my back).

And I capped off a long day having dinner with some crazily inspirational women who got where they are (at the top echelons of their companies and running their own) via a killer cocktail of chutzpah, yes, but also of being tireless connectors and interpreters of what the rest of us are going to care about in the future. None of them had the asshole personal interface that I experienced on Saturday, as mentioned earlier that I experienced from an investor entrepreneur who speaks a whole lot about the need to empower women entrepreneurs, just so long as he doesn't actually have to SPEAK or LOOK at any of them at SX. I must say, I've attended countless investor meetings with all-male VCs, tech conventions with mostly male attendees, board meetings with mostly male members, and never have I felt disrespected like I did when I encountered this person and said hello. (To place in Evernote in a file I've reserved for notes on a book I one day intend to write that explores the correlation of assholeness with effectiveness as a visionary. Sadly there often is one, but I'd like to make a case that there doesn't have to be).

I hung out in pubs with men and women who talked about their kids as much as their work projects and who had thoughtful commentary on Marissa Mayer's decision to reverse Yahoo's remote work policy (for the record I'm in the "she's a CEO first" camp. In the future I hope she will address the MANAGEMENT problem that led to the degradation of morale among the remote workers and re-institute flexible work policy.)

Last night, I didn't sleep, and for the first time in a long time, something other than an infant kept me up all night. I had a realization, borne of this combination of aforementioned events, that women are on the cusp of big reckonings. I can feel it pulling me out of my 5-year blogging slump.

I remain true to my belief that being a woman doesn't keep you from getting VC funding--a shitty business plan and weak management team do--and entrepreneurism is accessible to all (Steve Blank, whom I finally got to meet in person at SX, I continue to bow to you). But there continues to be a lack of respect for things female. Note again, I didn't say WOMEN, I said for things/traits female. I think that is going to change. And pretty soon.

The Parasite Economy

Who would have thunk that Gymboree could shed light on the dilemmas of tech and media businesses?

As I do every week, I was with my daughter at a play class for 2 year olds. She has a thing for picking up balls and tossing them into a bin--something I don't discourage. She's rather obsessive about it; she likes to pick up EVERY ball, even the ones in the far corners of the room. I watched her pick up on behalf of the rest of the kids, and just as she was about to toss in the last ball, a little boy intercepted it and carried it away.

My daughter looked at the boy as if to say, "Asshole, I was nearly done here." But she didn't cry. Too many times when something like this happened I'd say to her, "Share the balls, Liv." She knew she had to share.

But the incident did give me pause. This was a harmless example of interception, but what if all the balls had not been Gymboree's but actually hers? What if the kid who had intercepted the last one had not been a member of Gymboree, but some kid whose parents snuck him in and was planning to take the balls home with him? Of course, any parent would intercept and ensure that the kid did not take the balls home, let alone sell them on eBay.

As social technologies (blogging) came into the mainstream picture seven, eight years ago, we treated the Blogosphere like one big Gymboree, and everyone was a member! Everyone could start a blog! Everyone could reference each other's content and play with each other's toys (just so long as we gave the toy owners credit). The burgeoning social networks (Facebook, Linked In) were free and asked you to invite all of your friends to join in the party. We all were encouraged to share, share, share!

But now I begin to wonder how we maintain that ethos of sharing and still get credit for bringing the toys and cleaning up. I just read an interesting article--one of many lately--explaining how, as social media behemoths are evolving business models, they are also regulating the usage of their technology and limiting the open relationships they once forged. You don't get to play with the toys unless you are paying for that Gymboree membership, and even if you are, there are limits to how long you get to play with the toys--you don't get to take them home. You can't rely on unlimited access anymore, let alone the ability to profit off of them.

Companies like Buddy Media knew this would happen and got bought. It couldn't build a business off of Facebook alone; the door to building proprietary technology off of someone else's platform was closing. Lucky for the company it was able to find an acquirer before Facebook shut the door and said, our platform, our rules.

Perhaps this is what Yammer CEO David Sacks was talking about when he said (post $1B+ acquisition of his company, Yammer, by Microsoft) that there really not any new ideas brewing in the Valley, just new exploiters of those ideas. Now the real work of tech companies is not to build amazing technology, but to figure out how to own it. (A reason why, Silicon Valley, it doesn't hurt to bring in a few media/business types who are really good at keeping things for themselves).

I see this in digital media, which continues to disaggregate. The technologies that have made it so easy to share content build in value, but even now these technologies have to own something; if not the content then the means of aggregation. We've found that, after years of watching folks walk away with our toys we can't make them free anymore.

It makes me wonder what the lessons will be for my kids in the future, when they start bringing their own toys to the party. Will they be wise to share them and trust that they will get value in return?

How Entrepreneurs Should Network, According to Moi

BlogHer has held events for seven years now, and all of them have something special about them. The Annual (we'll have our EIGHTH this year!!) in the summer is like a wedding--It's overwhelming, and yet, the show must go on. I always end up feeling like I didn't get to speak to anyone for any substantive length of time.

Our smaller events are equally important, but feel less formal. For instance, with BlogHer Food I'm more an observer who moderates a panel from time to time. I get to experience more of these events as an attendee experiences them.

BlogHer Entrepreneur is a special case. This is a relatively new event we launched last year. It's small--made for 100 attendees and 50 mentors--women and a few men who have launched successful careers as VCs, entrepreneurs, and business heads who generously donate their time to meet with aspiring female entrepreneurs. It's also the event that from a content standpoint I now relate to the most.

I moderated three panels: 1. The Ask, or the art of networking when you are growing your company and need funding and advice; 2. Selling, or more accurately, selling when you don't consider yourself a salesperson (something most entrepreneurs must do at some point in their company's trajectory, if not throughout); and 3. Partnerships, or as I jokingly refer to it, keeping the marriage alive.

All of my panels elicited thoughts about how I have handled all three topics. In particular, the networking panel made me think about how I developed a "networking mojo" without ever really thinking of it that way. For an entrepreneur, networking is breathing. We're always asking for advice or a contact. Sometimes we ask for money. But now, being on the other side of the ask, where I'm asked for things by potential business partners and entrepreneurs, I've encountered both good, bad, and mensa-mensa networking.

I have made it a point to help others like I was helped to grow my business, but some people are a lot easier to help. Some people I meet with leave me inspired to help; others leave me confused. In gathering my thoughts for my panel I forced myself to organize my thoughts more around what works and what doesn't. I believe that one of the reasons that networking attempts fail is failure of the asker to think through what she wants from a contact. Now, it's fair to say that we don't always know what we want, but if we actively approach someone, we ought to be clear about what we want, even if that contact ends up not being one who can provide it.

A structure that can help organize an "ask" is to look at types of contacts in your network. I have identified these:

1. Educators: These are often early-stage contacts who help you home in on what you want to accomplish with your business. I had the pleasure of meeting women at BlogHer Entrepreneurs who had not even worked in the industry in which they were growing a business. They needed to understand the nuts and bolts of their new industry by meeting with folks who, say, had built a piece of technology, or negotiated a seed funding deal. Educators may not be the people who ultimately advise or fund your company, but they help to make you a whole lot smarter about your business before you do go out and ask for advice or funding. They also tend to be the most under-appreciated components of a network--subject to short-sighted wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am infoseekers who buy them coffee and then never follow up. That's just asking for bad karma!

2. Connectors: These are people who simply know a lot of people--and a lot of people who want to know the people they know. The mistake that anyone could make with a connector is to take their easy-breezy e-intros for granted. Fact is, connectors will lose their ability to connect--for themselves as well as others--if they constantly put people together without much thought about the quality of their intro. I, for instance, won't intro anyone if I don't know something about her. I preface all of this with a big, fat "it depends", but I can say for certain that I won't intro people because they are sisters of cousins of friends. That person needs to share why they need to be intro'd. And even then I may still not intro them, if I'm not convinced that the connectee has something of value to the person they are seeking to be connected to.

I have a personal disdain for responding to notes from people I hardly know who are putting me together with someone they hardly know. Connectors who don't screen requests or protect their networks are not good connectors. Networkers should only seek out good connectors who require you to do some legwork before connecting them. Ask a connector if you can provide a paragraph of background on your business and bio. I will not always use every word you send me, but I appreciate your saving me time I don't have for crafting an intro.

3. Inspirers: These are folks that you may have read about or seen speak somewhere, and they infuse you with energy to pursue your company or strategy. This is someone you emulate or, perhaps, is even an example of the type of entrepreneur you want to be. This kind of person might be famous or not, realistic to grab coffee with or not, but regardless of whether or not you have an opportunity to meet this person face to face, the ask should not be a very tactical one. There may not even be an ask, other than for their story and perspective. If I ever did get my chance to sit down with Oprah Winfrey, for example, I would not ask her for the name of her accountant. I might, however, ask her if she'd known when she started her famous talk show that it would set the standard for personal development media. And how does she divine what to do next?

4. Advisors: I love to share a pithy bit of advice my business partner, Lisa Stone, received when we decided to seek a first round of venture funding: If you want advice, ask for money; if you want money, ask for advice. Be careful going to someone you don't really want advice from, but rather funding. Funders want to see what you already know, not how much you still need to know. Advisors are folks who very well may decide to fund you or refer you to a key contact, but for whom you are willing to open the kimono a bit in order to really learn something.

When we went out for our first round, we met with VCs and entrepreneurs with whom we could openly share our business plan and vulnerabilities. The point was not to get their funding, but to position ourselves to better approach the marketplace before we actively fundraised. It was hugely helpful and, I think, a key reason why we were not traumatized or fleeced by accepting a first, second, and third round of capital.

5. Sponsors: Like advisors, sponsors are not necessarily funders, but could be. Sponsors' role is to actively vouch for you in the marketplace. For a contact to be a sponsor they need to have worked with you, or been exposed to enough of your work to be willing to vouch for you. They really are your fairy godmothers and godfathers, though to be clear, their role is not to simply wave their magic wand and insist to their powerful friends that you really are the next Zuckerberg. You still need to work to be in their good graces. Think of the people for whom you've done extraordinary work, someone who really believes you deserve a shot. Not all of us can ID a true sponsor. That's why there's been such a push in women's business circles to find not just a mentor, per se, but a sponsor. Mentors mean well but can't or won't always take that next step and say to the world, "I am willing to stick my neck out for this gal."

6. Funders: These make up the other end of the networking spectrum from advisors, even if in some cases they are one of the same. You want to have your intros, business model, executive summary locked, loaded, and ready to go before you seek these contacts. I recall an aspiring entrepreneur who had asked to meet with me for advice on starting a business. Imagine my surprise when she showed me her one-page business plan and asked if I'd be interested in buying her unborn company! Where do I start? I couldn't even reasonably refer her to anyone after that. It's one thing to refer someone to a funding source who's simply not a fit with your business, it's another to send a drippy, unbaked cake over to a respected friend, and wish them luck.

But while funders want to know that you've adequately thought through your business model and actively researched, if not tested, your business premise (nothing helps more than a track record, even if a short/small one), they also don't want to be yes'ed to death with a lot of bullshit. You need to be confident and knowledgeable with funders, but if you don't know the answer to something, say I don't know. If the funder uncovers a vulnerability, acknowledge it. They aren't seeking perfection, but, as Brad Feld shared with us at BlogHer Entrepreneurs, are mostly interested in your thought process.

We have a terrific corporate board. Three of our board represent our funders. They have actively helped us to grow our business. They weren't seeking perfection when they funded us (though I'm sure they wouldn't have complained if that were the case); they sought enough of a model and track record to put reasonable faith and investment into our company. But please, folks, you have to be reasonable and have enough behind you before you engage.

What Pyromaniacs Can Teach Us About Content Strategy

(Correction: Apologies to the four people who read this post since I posted yesterday--the title was inaccurate. I never meant for the title to be "What Kleptomaniacs Can Teach Us About Content Strategy", but rather, "What PYROmaniacs Can Teach Us..." I was exhausted while eaking out the thoughts in that post and surely meant the reference to be to Pyromania, as I have no idea how Content Strategy relates to Kleptomania. Surely that's another post. Thanks to those of you who read the post and kindly said nothing, thinking I would read this post again in a more rested frame of mind and realize that I was making no sense.)

Despite my many career reinventions, there has been a thematic commonality in all of my jobs: content. Sometimes I create it, sometimes I sell it,  always I pitch it. Despite the twists and turns that interactive technology has forged in the media world, content has still come to the forefront as not only a differentiator but a media strategy.

Early in my career I could not have cared less about how to promote good content, or how to disseminate it, or how to do deals that would increase its exposure. I just wanted to create and consume interesting shit. Period. The past 18 years has been an exercise in learning the business around good content; not a wasted effort given the most recent bend in media toward self publishing, or personal empire-building. Content creators who are not good alliance builders or marketers have a tougher time monetizing their passion to create good content. Show me a purist who refuses to learn the trade of promoting her (or someone else's) content, and I'll show you someone with low traffic. The problem for me, personally, has been spending so much time on the empire building side of the equation that content creation eludes me.

I recall a seminal point in my career when I was a content manager and made the choice to cross over to the revenue generation side. It seemed that content creation wasn't such a challenge or talent, but monetizing it was. But, 13 years later, that's simply not the case. Brands need a content strategy to compete, just as content creators such as bloggers need to learn about the business of content.

A number of sources in my online reading today point to what is undeniably a renewed appreciation for content as a business builder, from Altimeter's fascinating study on the rebalancing of brand marketing toward content creation, to questions on Quora about how to become a content manager (hilarious, since bloggers and former book/magazine editors gone online were ghettoized into this bucket before it became cool), to pieces for marketers about how content can bolster their brand identity and hit KPIs.

Of course, given my background in media, I am inclined to say no duh to all of this. Even before I moved to online pastures I worked in print syndication for The New York Times and Time Inc. Custom Publishing where we developed content for brands that wanted to attract or retain customers by providing informational, even inspirational, value. Even then, the value of good content was appreciated.

But that reaction isn't really taking into account how social media has transformed content creation. Back in 1999, I was purely a content creator, not a marketer, and not a community builder. You told me what content you wanted and I created or found it. Now, content creation is so much more than that. It's applying a marketing strategy to content strategy; it's applying a working knowledge of the technology, and the principles of  trust across the social graph. The content must be good, but it must also be where the right people are, and offered in a way that will inspire them to share, and will back into business objectives.

Content creation is, in effect, firestarting. And this firestarting is no longer accomplished by lighting a match under an already-established, mainstream publisher. I'm not a true pyro, but I do know it's a sustained effort and begins in the grassroots. Mostly it's knowing everything about your materials, and how small embers can build over time, with the help of other traveling sparks. Sometimes the secret isn't brilliance; it's spotting when something is catching and then knowing which way to blow.

The Disappearance of Downtime

Before becoming an entrepreneur, I set out to write for a living. This sounds like a fantastical existence, but it was actually hard, even if joyous, work. I woke up early in the morning, walked to a coffee shop, and started reading--anything. It didn't matter what I read; the process of focusing on something unrelated to my writing task and caffeine constituted the formula required to tap my creative well. After 45 minutes or so thoughts would bubble up, and my only job was to collect them. Editing would come later in the afternoon, when my mind was tired out and drained of inspiration for the day. I knew to give myself the entire morning for the creative process, even if it yielded only 100 words. Looking back, this process was a pure luxury.

Later, when my company was new--no employees yet, just us founders--I used to plan my day around optimizing productivity, and gone were the mornings that I dedicated to creating. Since much of my work involved communication with sponsors and partners on the East Coast, I reserved the mornings for "busy work"--calls and email primarily. And creative tasks that required more uninterrupted focus time, such as writing proposals or blog posts, I reserved for the afternoon. We didn't have an office, so if I wasn't meeting with my partners in person at a cafe or one of our houses, I did my busy work primarily at home and my uninterrupted work at nearby coffee shops.

Of course, as the business grew, this separation between busy and focus time became much more difficult to maintain. People--God forbid--would occasionally call me back in the afternoon, in the middle of my focus time. Increasingly I found I always needed to speak with people when they called, and I de-prioritized my focus time to the free crevices in my afternoon, which didn't really exist. I tried to schedule in time for creativity like I did appointments--in a short and specific timeframe. I could no longer wait around for ideas to percolate in my mind. I had to force them to come during the period I'd designated to briefly focus. Creative ideas were stifled, deprived of the air they needed to be really great. This bothered me for a long time, but, I reasoned, most professionals have to deal with the pressures of meetings and deadlines. If I was going to grow my business effectively I had to be more productive. I had to back away from things like writing blog posts and reading to stimulate creative thought.

When we received venture funding and hired employees we moved into an office, taking away the change of scenery that normally signaled my uninterrupted focus time, and new activities--meetings, and normal face to face interactions with people--began to fill in. I found pockets of time to sit and think, usually during my hour-long commute to and from the office, but as our East Coast staff grew that time was increasingly used to touch base with clients and colleagues. I would get to our office parking lot not even remembering the drive to work.

As I traveled more I realized that there were built-in periods of disconnectedness when no one could reach me, and I could not reach them even if I wanted to. During these times I finished presentations, sketched out strategies, caught up on business trades, perhaps even wrote a blog post or two. Having this time was what made traveling constantly for the past five years bearable. I knew that once I got off the plane there would be no time to focus anymore; my life would consist of a brief and intense series of trains, taxis, meetings, working lunches, and periods of "downtime", in between used to catch up on email and make calls.

Every year at this time I look at my schedule while it is only marginally complicated compared to how it looked at the end of the previous year, and I ask myself the same question--how do I build in more uninterrupted focus time? And why, during the holidays when I make time to relax and reflect, do I find it so difficult to focus? The blog posts that I expected to ooze out of me have more like sputtered out incoherently. When I have periods of crucial time, like now, I think of all the small quickie tasks that I could be knocking out instead. I check email, my Facebook page, my Twitter feed, my calendar. I realize that I am out of practice.

And I realize that there is an ongoing argument occurring in my mind--the more eloquent side sharing that the multitude means of communication that exist today are not only personally convenient and enriching, but justify my work in social media. I've succeeded because of this shift in the balance of downtime and our obsession with being always on. And I've been plagued by it--the time that I used to take to allow creativity to manifest has evaporated into busyness. Will we, as a society, have a decreasing capability to create because we've erased unplugged reflection from our lives?

Pico Iyer wrote in the New York Times this week:

In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.

He shares how a premium has been placed on opportunities that allow us to unplug--fancy spas, even moves to rural areas. But ultimately we have an inability to sit still.

In the early days of my company we had the challenge of proving to sponsors and advertisers the value of social media. While we suspected that recommendations by digital influencers were valuable, there was no tangible proof for years that social media could move the needle for marketers. Now they are convinced. How, similarly, can I make the case for unplugged reflection time? How can we show that it ultimately makes us more productive?

 

Baking Meditation

I've been on vacation all week, spending time with family, doing not much. Wednesday I embarked on baking a pie.

I was proud of myself. I spent time researching recipes the week before. I prepped ingredients in advance, which I've never done in the past. I took more than a second to think about things that have gone wrong in previous attempts--I have chronically weak pie dough--and chilled my ingredients accordingly. I even bought a Kitchen Aid mixer so that I could better beat the dough.

As I was peeling apples I realized I had been spending hours working on this one pie. I don't recall having spent hours doing anything in a long time. Even with work, I do things in pieces--a few emails before jumping on a call. Or pulling together a deck while I wait to board a plane. I don't recall the last time I actually MADE something tangible--something non-digital.

I noticed, while I was rolling dough that I was actually nervous. I have a general anxiety around making things--food, crafts, anything requiring sewing. I don't know which came first, my ineptitude, or the fear of ineptitude, but I get more nervous making things than I do about, say, doing my taxes.

But on Wednesday I took the time--as much as was needed--to do the job right. I dug in as if making this pie were the only think that needed to be done, and it had to be done well.

Glass ceilings hardly matter when you've left the corporate building

Many well-intended people are compelled to ask why aren't there more women running Fortune 1000 companies, or getting VC funding, or taking our companies public? Surely, ambitious women would want to do these things, yes?

Of course women have something to offer companies. Of course we can add diversity to small businesses. Of course we can add perspective.Sally Helgesen and Julie Johnson point out that we often ask this question under the assumption that women in corporations want the same things as men do. And this isn't likely the case. In researching the reason for why women aren't well-represented in high corporate positions:

Our conversation kept returning to a phrase that each of us had heard from women who had either left high positions or were considering doing so: “I decided it just wasn’t worth it.” ... What does this mean? It means the women we spoke with did not perceive the tradeoffs their companies were asking them to make—in terms of time, stress, lifestyle, relationships—to be adequately compensated by the rewards offered in return. It does not mean that the women were unwilling to sacrifice their time or live with the adrenaline rush we all experience when we’re over-extended (or thrillingly involved). It does mean that they did not find their company’s traditional reward system sufficiently compelling."

 

I've stopped asking where are the women in these various "corporate" roles. While I'd like to hear about how any high-achieving woman broke through the glass ceiling, I've become more interested in hearing stories of women who don't have a ceiling. These women don't all run companies, or even work for themselves, though many of them do. Some of them maintain a thriving yoga practice while building their consulting business. Some work around carpool hours. Some quit their corporate jobs and are feeling their way around work that moves them. Some reserve an hour to bake cookies during business hours. Some don't have "jobs" in the traditional sense, but are creating empires of influence. They have managed to circumvent what we once thought was the only way to professional relevance.

You may think that the je ne sais quoi that impresses me is an ability within these women to multitask or take risks, but it actually goes deeper than that. These women have identified certain "must have" aspects of their lives and have built their work around them. These women are autonomous.

While there are women who reach the upper echelons of (typically) male dominated industries, far more reach the OUTER echelons of "corporate" work, finding our own unique niches for ourselves and then marketing back into these companies as consultants, suppliers, coaches, etc. What they want is not a space at the top so much as a space of their own.

Yvonne Divita recently wrote a spot-on piece about business media's obsession with addressing women in business via their proximity to the glass ceiling, and power lists like this one that focus solely on women in corporate roles.

The Women of the Fortune 500 are women of worth. There is no disputing that. They deserve our appreciation. They’ve proven that the glass ceiling is a window into tomorrow, not a limiting factor to success. Their hard work is worth congratulating, and yet… I can’t help but wonder what the average woman business owner has in common with them? I skim articles about these women and sometimes catch their TV interviews and other than the fact that they represent an ideal to work towards, I do not find their experiences or their advice helpful. They are as far removed from me and my needs as a college professor is from a kindergarten teacher. Both are educators, but in vastly different classrooms.

I would never turn away an opportunity to be recognized as a powerful woman, but I do question the value of these "Power" lists. At best, I can learn from them how women maneuvered in male-centric industries. What I'd really like to know is how women discovered their unique niche in the world and built lives that sustained their vision.

In his book Drive Daniel Pink identifies AUTONOMY as a primary motivator in the workplace. We don't all need to be starting our own businesses, or not working for others, to be happy, but we do need to be self-directed in our efforts. This is why we hate micromanagers, and why we glorify flex time (though even flex time does not guarantee autonomy if we cannot dictate how we use our flex time to complete a job). And while money is a factor in deciding to take a job or project, all things being equal, we prefer work that allows us to do a job on our terms.

Autonomy is really the key to unlocking the potential of women in business, whether they be in a board room or in their home office. Where are the women in business? Ask instead, how may we promote autonomy?

Why I don't care that low numbers of women are receiving VC funding

My first semester in college I went with some sorority sisters to a set-up (these were small parties that paired a sorority with a fraternity, and for which you were often "set up" with a date from that fraternity. The concept seems almost ludicrous to me now, given the potential room for mis-matches, but I digress). One of my pledge sisters asked me if I had a problem "being set up with a black guy."

The question threw me. I'd noticed, shall we say, homogeneity among my corn-fed, flat-accented, Midwestern sisters. But I'd gone to a racially diverse high school where I had African American friends, and interracial dating was quite common.

"Of course not," I said. I was above such foolishness. I silently prayed he was hot.

"Good," my friend said. "I mean, I would do it but my brother (who was white and even in the same fraternity as the black pledge) would kill me. You're so open to stuff like this; I knew you'd be a good sport."

I recall being offended, not for myself, but for my date. Did he know how his supposed peers felt about him? I resented the assumption that by agreeing to go out with someone of color I was somehow agreeing to take one for the team. And I questioned where I'd settled socially. Did these women accept me because they thought I saw the world like them?

I ended up having a fine, but not earth-shattering, time. My date was shy, even a bit standoffish. After my friend's comment I couldn't help but notice that he was the only black man in his pledge class. I wondered if he was aware of comments said behind his back, like the one my friend made, or if he was oblivious. He seemed restrained, even a bit false. He wore the same preppy clothes as his fraternity brothers; the same garden variety frat boy well-worn baseball cap. I also wondered if I was judging him as fake because he seemed "too white". What if he identified as being white? Was there anything inherently wrong with that?

At some point we started talking about our backgrounds, and he shared that he had been adopted as a baby by a white couple. He admitted to me that he didn't "feel" black and even referred to black people as "them." I felt sad. I felt like he was trying to say to me, "See, I really do belong here."

I wanted to tell him, "You don't really want to belong here. Believe me."

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A few weeks ago I read several pieces that evoked anger, empathy, even silliness about the lack of venture-backed women entrepreneurs. Some focused specifically on Silicon Valley, tech-related businesses. One piece indicated "hidden biases" of VCs toward younger, male entrepreneurs who presumably have fewer distractions (read: families, concerns about hygeine) than women to worry about. This later led to discussion in the comments arguing for and against women's innate suitability as primary caregivers. One commenter, Carla Thompson:

...As long as a good-sized portion of the population, both male and female, believe that women are the only gender genetically predisposed to adequately nurturing and raising children, this problem will persist.

I knew that these blog posts were, indirectly and yet directly, about me, but I didn't know how I felt about them. In the end, I felt confused--certainly not inspired by comments of women who, despite biological realities, could claim to have managed it all--there were none of that sort offered. And I couldn't say that I have felt the back hand of bias in these matters. My partners and I had a business with a revenue model that was working in a growing industry and several years of experience to back us--that's what has mattered to our investors. Story told.

Have I felt marginalized as a female entrepreneur in Silicon Valley? Made to feel less worthy of funding because I have ovaries and may put them to reproductive use? No. Can I say that because I haven't experienced bias that there isn't a problem? No.

So I backed away from writing on the topic. I didn't feel I had a strong enough opinion either way.

I asked another female entrepreneur if she had read these recent pieces, and what did she think of them?

"What's to say?" she responded. "None of these writers asked actual female entrepreneurs in the Valley how they've felt."

"What would you have told them if they had?" I asked.

"It's a non-issue. Women can have babies and run businesses. Get over it."

I found myself wanting to verbally sweep my penchant for drama under the rug,

"Exactly," I said. "What's the big deal?"

Why do people make a big deal about these inequities when clearly there are women who are making things work? Why do we feel compelled to constantly pull out the data showing the lack of women being funded when, perhaps, most women simply don't want the life of a tech entrepreneur?

Why do I keep thinking of that set-up, my Freshman year in college?

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Just this week I happened to be back in New York the day that my sister, Julie, did a signing for her new book, The Madame Curie Complex. I've browsed the book and read every review that currently exists on it, but embarrassingly have yet to read the damn thing. When people asked me what the book is about, the PR flak in me comes out:

"It reveals how some of the most acclaimed scientific discoveries made by men were actually made by women," I say, then wait for the oohs and ahhs one reserves for books that out Presidents and get you on Oprah.

Fortunately my sister is amazing at Cliff-noting herself at these events--I need to remind her to stop providing so much value at her readings, lest people think they can learn nothing more by buying her book. And she's entirely too noncontroversial. I realized that I've woefully oversimplified the premise of her book. It really has nothing to do with men taking credit for women's brilliant work, but rather women's brilliant work not being seen as brilliant, because it is women's work.

The Madame Curie Complex is a term meant to describe a standard women scientists often set for themselves (and is often perpetuated by men, to be fair). My sister writes in her book:

"No doubt, [Curie's] work helps to make the case that science is made to be manly rather than being inherently so. But Curie’s myth haunts these pages and the psyches of succeeding generations of women more completely than her real-life example, for it has both empowered and stigmatized women, liberated and constrained them, often at the same time. The historian Margaret Rossiter noted an inferiority complex in women after Curie’s tours of the United States in the 1920s, and for generations the Curie complex has continued to allow men to disqualify women -- and women to disqualify themselves -- from science. Women scientists have felt as though they cannot measure up to Curie, and of course how could they, when this mythical measure of female competence has morphed in the American mind over and over again? It’s like trying to hit a moving target."

It occurred to me: women scientists, women entrepreneurs, same freaking difference. How effing sneaky, Julie, Wrapping your latest work up in a geeky little package to get your science-averse twin sister to not think you were onto her. Isn't the Madame Curie Complex what we women in "male" industries perpetuate when we back away from asserting our femininity? When we undermine it? We look at what we do in the world and say under our breaths, "Yeah big whoop ... did I put the milk back in the fridge this morning?"

Because even when we take on "male" industries, we do it in ways that are seen as much less impressive than men, or we do it just like them--both of which approaches are equally alienating and in many cases ineffective.

There was a point in Julie's talk where she spoke about "the numbers," as in: "Why the big stink? Look at all the women MBA's and women who got into MIT." In science academia women are as well represented, if not more so, than men at top institutions. "We need to stop worrying about the numbers of women in science," Julie said, "Numbers aren't the problem."

But, she pointed out, often women scientists are relegated to "female" forms of science--think of those soft mushy behavioral sciences. After all, as Lawrence Summers would posit, those cold, hard facts are just so difficult for us ladyfolk to grasp. Or our more holistic approach to such serious subjects as science, tech, and business have often been dismissed.

For instance, Jane Goodall was relatively untrained in the traditional (read: male) technique of studying primates. Rather than measure their toenails, count their bowel movements, and call it a day, she watched them and took notes, often in narrative form, and often giving the primates' interactions a storyline. Initially this more intuitive approach was seen as amateurish and dismissible, and yet it's now much more indicative of how scientists today frame this sort of research. Goodall proved the worth of a "female" perspective in science.

I think of my own industry and of BlogHer: We didn't invent computers, or the Internet. We didn't invent blogging; but we provided a larger context for its importance, particularly to women. I guess by some definitions this is a girly-girl approach to technology, akin to Goodall's approach to her science. But is it any less valuable; any less illuminating or fundable?

Do I care if so few women are being funded in Silicon Valley? No. I care that women's approach to business is so underfunded, and hence undervalued. I care that those women who are succeeding in it are seen as doing so DESPITE who they are, rather than because of who they are.

I think of that black man I was set-up with 20 years ago, content, silent, and numb. 

A job I want someday: Chief Culture Officer

The American Corporation sucks at culture, says Grant McCracken. His agent, a professional friend, sent me his book and asked me what I thought. Immediately upon reading McCracken's take on corporations' lack of cultural common sense I was convinced that the Chief Culture Officer (his term, and the name of his book) would be a position of the future.

McCracken backs real case studies into his assertion that the CCO is the missing component of the 21st Century Executive team. Some companies have had defacto CCO's that have made a difference, but these individuals took on more than their job descriptions. They made decisions based not on financial analysis, but on something not as easy to measure (and yet obvious to those who look for it): cultural trends. What would the companies be like if we institutionalized this job?

"Quaker Oats paid $1.7 billion for Snapple. It sold 3 years later for $300 million. Best Buy paid $700 million for Musicland, a retail music store, just as kids were embracing peer-to-peer file sharing. It had to give the store away two years later. Facebook decided to take ownership of the billions of photos its users had lodged there. Millions took umbrage, and the Facebook franchise was suddenly at risk.

In a turbulent marketplace, culture feels a little like the stormy North Sea. We never know what it’s going to throw at us. Culture matters. Get it wrong, and we miss opportunities..."

Among the opportunities McCracken cites as one missed is social media. Microsoft, which was always first to the table in tech, is scrambling to catch up.

This is in the opening passage of the Change This summary presentation for McCracken's book (read the PDF, but also read the book, which is chock full of examples that make you wonder why you hadn't thought of things his way before.) Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but you have to wonder what business blunders could have been avoided with a Chief Culture Officer, someone empowered to observe the cultural marketplace thoroughly enough to think beyond what makes business sense.

I think about my own company, and how lucky we were to be so fully ensconced in a movement (blogging, and more specifically women's blogging) that we could define a pulse as it was beating. The challenge now is maintaining such a close connection with our community as well as with the trends in marketing and social media, to not lose that intuitive knowledge. But it gets harder as you get bigger.

This year we hired a creative director, but I swear he's actually McCracken's CCO. Sure, we're not as big as Microsoft, but he's helped us define what we accidentally bottled when we built our event so that we can remain true to what we created. We run decisions by this definition--business partnerships, programming and editorial direction, relationships with sponsors, and our Website redesign, which will launch in a few weeks.

Some of McCracken's examples were stretches, or not as obvious as others. The reasons for failed product launches or businesses that lose relevance are nuanced and complicated . But on the whole I was in absolute agreement that many of these missteps can be tied to a failure to align culturally with the market.