52 Minutes of HONEST Advice for Women in Business

Summary

• I started as a personal trainer and grew my net worth to $100 million in 10 years.
• Businesses led by women outperform male-led ones by 20%.
• To gain respect in business, demonstrate your capability, don't just talk about it.
• Women can bridge the gap in business, especially with the increase in remote work opportunities.
• Don’t blame being a woman for a lack of respect; focus on improving your skills and value.
• Take complete ownership of your career and impact, rather than blaming gender biases.
• Underperformance or lack of delegation can be misinterpreted as gender bias.
• Balancing personal and professional life will always be challenging; accept it and strive for integration.
• Learn to engineer your business in a way that benefits your family and vice versa.
• Being treated differently isn’t always unfair; it can sometimes be an advantage.
• The perception that we are at a disadvantage can be countered with our unique strengths.
• Expect to be discredited by insecure individuals but let your work speak for itself.
• Success often comes with being willing to be misunderstood; maintain poise and grace under criticism.
• Expect some men to be uncomfortable with women in positions of power, but don’t let it affect you.
• Never respond to hate with hate; it doesn't benefit your long-term goals.
• Condition yourself to handle your emotions effectively, even during hormonal changes.
• Learning to say no and delegate empowers others and strengthens your team.
• Being underestimated can be a powerful motivator and often works to your advantage.
• Developing resilience and emotional management is crucial for business leadership.
• Address societal conditioning to maximize your potential without using gender as an excuse.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with the basics: demonstrate your capability openly and consistently. Whatever your field, consistently produce high-quality work, and let your results speak for you. This builds respect without needing to vocalize your capabilities.

A good way of doing this is by leveraging the power of remote work. Whether you're running a business or working towards personal growth, taking advantage of remote work opportunities can allow you to balance personal and professional responsibilities more effectively. For instance, you can integrate work tasks with family time, making sure both areas benefit from each other.

To gain respect, take complete ownership of your career. Avoid blaming gender biases for setbacks. Instead, focus on honing your skills and improving your value. Look at any criticism or disrespect as an opportunity to identify and fix skill deficits. For example, if someone isn’t listening to you, examine if it’s due to your delegation skills and improve on that.

Balancing personal and professional life will always be challenging. Accept that there will be conflicts but strive for integration. Use strategies that benefit both business and family. Involve your family in your business tasks to foster mutual growth. For instance, if you own a business, teach your children about the business world through practical activities.

Remember, being underestimated can be a powerful motivator. Use it to fuel your determination and prove your worth through actions, not words. Build resilience and emotional management skills to maintain your steadiness and reliability as a leader.

Lastly, learn to delegate effectively. This empowers those around you and builds a stronger, more resilient team. Practice saying no in a way that empowers others, framing your refusals as opportunities for them to grow and learn.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi#### "In business, to earn respect from both women and men, we don't talk about doing business; we just demonstrate it"

– Leila Hormozi

"Sometimes it's not that you're a woman as to why people don't respect you; it's because you're not good enough yet"

– Leila Hormozi

"Being treated differently doesn't necessarily mean you're being treated unfairly"

– Leila Hormozi

"If we're going to say people don't respect me because I'm a woman, what do you do with this thought? The answer is that it's not useful"

– Leila Hormozi

"Responding to hate with hate or to immaturity with immaturity does no good"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

in 10 years I went from being a personal trainer at a gym to Crossing a100 million net worth and I did it as a woman my name is Leo heroi I'm the founder and CEO of acquisition. comom where I have a portfolio of businesses valued at about 500 million and before that I built and sold three businesses of my own before the age of 28 did you know that women-led businesses outperform male Le businesses by 20% and yet we rarely hear about this and somehow there are barely any legitimate business women speaking up nowadays in a way that empowers women rather than victimizes them and so today what I want to do for you is I want to bridge that Gap and I'm going to do that by telling you the brutal truth that will help you get what you want here's the thing talking about being a woman in business rarely gets respect from men so this video will get me zero respect from men and I rarely make videos like this but I'm frustrated with what I see out there and I'm tired of hearing the same excuses from women and I'm tired of getting the same questions and so I thought I would do is I would call out women directly and deliver this message and I say that because what I've learned is that in business to earn respect from both women and men we don't talk about doing business we just demonstrate it right now we're at a very interesting point in our culture where like I said 42% of businesses are owned by women there's a huge opportunity especially with the amount of remote work that we can do the fact that people can build hundred million doll businesses from their basement and that is actually what I did my first business had no element of in person I built it all online and so what that does it opens up an opportunity for women who want to be a mother they want to be a wife they want to take care of the home and they also want to run a business but the hard thing for me is that throughout the entire time that I've been in business which has been about eight years now I have never spoken up about being a woman in business because I have not liked anything that I've seen out there and I haven't agreed with most of the generalized opinions and the reason for that is because I refuse to blame anybody for my success for my lack of success for where I am where I possibly could be and maybe am not and so today what I want to do is one time only I want to share my thoughts on being a woman in business in the brutal truth that I've learned in the last eight years the first thing that I've learned being a woman in business is that sometimes it's not that you a woman as to why people don't respect you it's because you're not good enough yet when I was first starting off in business I was 23 I had never managed anybody before I'd never built a business before I didn't have a track record and so when I hired people who had experience in the workplace or didn't have experience in the workplace there were a lot of times where I could have pointed to me being a woman as the reason that maybe they weren't listening to me they weren't respecting me they weren't doing what I asked them to do and what I see is this pattern of when women are not getting respect in the workplace the default is that it must be because I'm a woman and as humans we love to point to something that's outside of our control and the reason that I am not a fan of this belief right that like because I'm a woman people don't respect me is because of two things one is it useful even if people don't respect you because you're a woman what can you do about that nothing the second piece of that is which belief serves you more which belief will lead you down a path where you learn more about yourself and so for me what I realized is that I learn Nothing by thinking that people don't respect me because I'm a woman I only learn when I take complete ownership over the fact that somebody doesn't respect me and I look at the things that are within my control because the only thing I can actually do is what's within my control I can't control the fact if somebody doesn't respect me because I'm a woman but I can control that if they don't respect me because I'm inexperienced because I lack management skills because I lack ability to communicate to articulate myself well to stand up for myself to advocate for myself to say no to set boundaries and so there are a lot of things that I realized when I was young and I was leading a company for the first time that I had been conditioned by Society to behave in a certain way that was not advantageous for being a boss of multi- hundred person company and those things though probably were conditioned in me because I was a woman are still under my control to change the unfortunate truth is that I just see so many people blaming the fact that they're a woman and saying I'm getting disrespected because of this but there's nowhere to go from there back when I was running a software company that we had called Allen I had a female in the workplace and she was a female leader and she was truly an exceptional human I mean so fantastic at her job um always on time always overd delivering like cared so much for the customers cared so much for the team she was amazing and she was like to me she was like one of my right hands and I remember um she came to me one day and she said you know what Jimmy over here isn't listening to me he never does what I say he never helps you on these things he never finishes the tasks he never completes any of these things and honestly Leila I think it's because I'm a woman and I took a step back because obviously anytime you hear that in the workplace it's like oh wow okay so we're we're thinking that there's gender bias here but then I looked at Jimmy and I looked at her and I asked her I said when have you ever conditioned people that if they don't do something for you there would be any sort of consequence in fact you've actually just conditioned people and trained people to acknowledge that when you ask them to do something and they don't do it you just do it for them and that's not just with Jimmy that's with the people that report to you that's with me that's with anybody that you work with and so what if it's not that Jimmy disrespects you because you're a woman what if it's that you've trained Jimmy by the fact that the first time that he ever didn't do what you asked you just did it for him instead and so it's not that you're a woman it's that you're somebody who when you give someone else something to do you just end up doing it for them so in that moment we identified the skill deficit she had which was she lacked the ability to truly delegate tasks because she would just end up jumping in rescuing people now am I saying that's because she's a woman maybe maybe not she's been conditioned to do that and so she had to uncondition herself out of that behavior and you know what happened Jimmy ended up doing the tasks there was another time this happened in the workplace which I had an executive a female who's an executive and we had a company that we were working with they were a vendor and we got all of our supplies through them and this is like you know millions of dollars a month in supplies that we're getting from the spender so we have a very close relationship and I remember my female executive she took over the relationship from Alex because Alex had been the one that through his connections had found the supplier and then when I brought in this female exec I said you know what you should take it on because that was kind of her new role to be that person and I remember she came to me after about two weeks and she was like this [ __ ] guy doesn't [ __ ] respect women and the reason that I can't get [ __ ] done is because he won't respond to me and I bet you his ass will respond to Alex and lo and behold what happened Alex reached out to him and he responded and then she brought it to me and she was like prove my point he's [ __ ] sexist and I was like interesting that would suck and she can't really do her job unless she talks to him you know what [ __ ] it I'm going to call him and so I called this guy and I was like let me just ask him I like can you tell me why you answer Alex but you won't answer Sammy he was like yeah Lea he's like Sammy's really mean to me he's like Sammy threatened me to get on the phone with me and said if you don't get on the phone with me I'm going to find a new supplier and so I just don't do business that way so is it that he doesn't respect you because you're a woman or is that he doesn't respect you because you're an [ __ ] guys this happens all the time where if we say I'm not being respected because I'm a woman we literally Rob ourselves of the opportunity to learn and often times we find if we really dig deeper that it might not be that at all I had a woman come up to me at an event and she asked me this question she said what do I do about the fact that people don't respect me because I'm a woman and I paused for a second and I said I'm going to give you two frames to think with one is I want you to ask yourself how do you know that's true how do you know it's 100% true have you considered that there's a chance that because you assume that people don't respect you because you're a woman that you change your behavior before they do think about it and if you're watching this video in your woman in business like you tell me that this does not happen to you that you have gone into a conversation expecting the other person to act a certain way and you have changed how you showed up because of it the second piece of that is how do you know it's because you're a woman will you ever know that 100% the reason they don't respect you is because you're a woman probably not unless you can read people's minds and document it which we can't then you don't and then if we're going to go just completely to the other side maybe they don't respect you because you're a woman even if they don't how is this useful for you what do you do with this thought what do you do with this information the answer is that it's not useful instead it robs you of your power to do something to make yourself better and so when you're presented with these situations where you feel like you might be disrespected because you're a woman you have to ask yourself which belief serves My Future Self thinking that people don't respect me because I'm a woman which I can do nothing about is not useful and probably just make me angry or thinking that there's a million other reasons that people could disrespect me or not have respect for me and I can do something about it because there SK deficits the second truth about being a woman in business is that your values can and will conflict there will be a lot of times where you feel like you're at a disadvantage because you have too many things on your plate because you've got your kids you've got your husband you've got the house you've got the job you've got the business right and so you're looking at the people that you're competing with AK men and you're like how can I do this like I don't know how to compete in this business when I also have these other things that are taking my energy and I want you to understand that one that is absolutely true women are valued in society for doing more than just having a business and just having a career and so because of that we often put those things onto ourselves you know on top of that there's probably feeling like you need to look a certain way right so there's a lot of things that pressure that you feel and there's also a lot of things that you value because it's important to you you know say you're a mom but you also have your own business but you also want to show up and look pretty because you want to feel good about yourself those are all things that you value and those things will conflict and you are not perfect and you will never be perfect and where I see so many women fail is when they give up one thing because they think gosh it's going to conflict with these other things but the conflict is where you learn it's where you learn how to integrate things together and I think that there's this illusion that you're going to somehow get to this point in your life where you're not going to have the conflict and then that is the opportunity for you to take the leap and start a family or start a bus or get married whatever it may be but the reality is is that is that it's okay if things conflict I was at an event about two years ago and I'll never forget there was a woman in the audience and I said they can ask me any question possible and so she raised her hand and she looked so fragile and the moment she raised her hand before she could even get words out she started crying and she said to me she was like I feel so terrible because I have this business and I'm doing really well but at the same time I feel like I'm really failing as a mother and like I need to end my business because my children aren't getting the mom they need and it literally just like broke my heart because I could see that this woman is trying so hard to have a business that she really truly loved like she really loved her business and she also really wanted to be this mom for these kids and she felt like she was failing both of them and what I told her was this I said in the micro you will never evenly distribute your attention you will always make tradeoffs so tomorrow you might completely focus on your business because you're here at this event and your kids are not going to see you and you're not going to say good night to them and they're going to miss you and they're going to feel sad but then when you get home for the weekend you might spend the whole weekend with them and then you might get behind on business and then you might feel guilty on Monday and the reality is is that if you take all of those micro moments and then you extrapolate them out over 10 years and you look at the macro you probably evenly distributed your attention to the things that you love and so the first thing I would say is like it's okay to not win every day and not accurately and evenly distribute your resources there is no possible way to do it I've never met somebody who can do it I think it takes time to learn what works for you but it's okay not to be perfect it's okay to feel in a moment like you're a bad business owner it's okay to feel in a moment like you're a bad wife it's okay to feel in a moment like you're a bad mother it doesn't mean you are it just means that in the moment you had to make a trade-off now what can we do about that what can we do about the fact that we have these values that conflict is that I think more than ever what women can learn to do is to find a way to engineer your business and engineer your family so the two things make each other better how can you create a business that also benefits your family not just financially but actually involves them how could you create a family that also benefits your business I'll give you a couple examples I have friends that do this so well I have a friend and he sold his business for like a billion dollar and then after that uh he actually became the founder of a new business and he wanted to spend a lot more time with his kids and that was something that was very important to him because after he sold his business he really wanted to make sure that he integrated his family because he felt like in the first one he hadn't done that and I thought the coolest freaking thing that I ever saw was that he didn't try to suppress the fact that he loved business he tried to teach his son business so they could work on things together and so his son he was in real estate he taught his son how to buy land and his son every every night when he would get home from work they would work for like two or three sometimes they'd stay up till midnight working on understanding how to buy land looking at different spots in the United States identifying the land and then he helped his son get his first land deal like that is a way where he learned how to use his skills in business to benefit his son another example is I have a friend and he hosts really large events and when he hosts those events he has to go away for weeks at a time and he has a wife and they have kids and so so the coolest thing I ever saw is um what he ended up doing is that when he hosts this business event right when this is his whole business this these events is he has his wife host an event happening at the same time for the wives and families of the people that are attending his event and so they literally found a way to not just create an environment where his business made his family better and his family made his business better but where they could do that for other people as well and so I think that what has happened is that we look at these things as separate systems but if we look at how could I use my business to make my family better are there things that I'm learning in business are the things I'm doing in business I could involve my children in that could involve my spouse and that could involve friends in and the vice versa as well then I think it helps with the fact that your values will always conflict and that is okay because we hold multiple values and those things do conflict but I think what's even better to do with with that is over time to look at how could I make how could I use these two or three or four amazing things to all make each other better the third Truth for women in business is that being treated differently doesn't necessarily mean you're being treated unfairly you will be treated differently many times because you're a woman just the fact that you look the way you look and you present the way you present people will act differently that is a fact but what if if being treated differently was an advantage what if you get into rooms that you wouldn't if you were a male what if men don't see you as a threat and so they're more likely to help you every position has an advantage and we've been conditioned over the last decade with all of the things that have been happening in culture to think that we are at a disadvantage and I'm here to say there are just as many advantages to being a woman in business as there are disadvantages you have different assets and you have different resources you get to play the game differently for example I can tell you the first time I realized this was the first Mastermind I ever joined it was a business group and it was 320 members and there were three women myself as one of them and I was like oh wow and I was actually a member and Alex wasn't so he wasn't even there with me and I was like well that's stark contrast um like I was very nervous about being in this group and so you know I went to the first event expecting that I was going to feel excluded and I was going to feel very weird being you know one of the only women there and what happened was so different than what I expected every man that I met and every guy that introduced himself to me all they wanted to do was help me they all were offering how can I help you like I can do this I can teach you this I can teach you that and I was like it's so weird because I don't see them doing that for each other and then what I realized is that they didn't see me as competition and they didn't see me as a threat what have men been conditioned to do for women in society help them so what advantage do I have men want to help me another example of this is when Alex iart acquisition. comom there was a lot of people that we knew that had large funds and large private Equity companies and literally two introductions I got the person who introduced me said you should talk to them not Alex because I don't they'll tell him as much I was like interesting and I got on the phone with both of these guys and they just told me absolutely everything they gave me their whole strategy they offered to introduce me to people they offered to follow up and take calls with me on a monthly basis to help and I was like wow I would never have guessed this and you know the funny part to it is I actually noticed that even Alex does this with women I pointed out to him because one day I walked in it was a Saturday morning and he was in his office and he was on Zoom with some woman and you know I was friends with her and we'd met in an event and you know we're all kind of friends but he's like you know he'd spent two hours helping her on her business and after he got off I remember I looked at him and I was like you would never do that if that was a male he was like well you don't you don't know that you don't I was like no I really don't think you would because her business is almost competing with ours he was like hm I said the thing is is that when a woman asks a man for help he seldom says no and so I think there's so much energy spent on thinking about how we have a disadvantage in the workplace but you have to understand you have just as many advantages as you do disadvantages you just don't look at them the fourth truth I have about being a woman in business is that even when the evidence is overwhelming people will still discredit you what I recognized very early on in my career and I do not talk about this often because again is it useful it's not what I am sharing here because I get enough questions is that you will make some people insecure specifically men and because of that they will try to discredit you and instead of speaking back to them and responding to that you just need to let your work speak for itself you need to demonstrate Excellence rather than falling to that level and I think that something that always resonated with me is this phrase which is success is on the other side of being willing to be misunderstood and something that I have noticed since day one of being in business is that I have been misunderstood I continue to be misunderstood and I now realize that that's okay but in the beginning it was something that I felt angry about or I felt like wasn't fair or it would be very it would be a very top of mind for me because it was so obvious for example I remember Alex and I got on a call with a guy and we were looking at doing a deal with him it was when we owned our first company and it was a multi-million dollar deal and so you would think this guy would be very nice and you know great to talk to and we get on the phone and he's like you know this is my wife Leila he he didn't say this is my partner Lea he said this is my wife I didn't think that he needed to because it was public knowledge that we were Partners in the business Etc and as we're talking this guy was on honestly just a complete dick and so I asked him a question that was pretty pointed because I felt like he was bullshitting me about some of the numbers that they were presenting and I just remember he stopped and he said I'm sorry sweetie who are you the [ __ ] secretary and I was like Wow and in that moment I remember I was like I get to decide right here what type of woman I am am I just going to rail this guy which I would like to do because that was really mean or am I just going to hold myself with poise and be graceful and you know what I said I said no I'm not the secretary I'm the co-founder I own 50% and I'm the CEO he got very quiet and then I said I think we should just end the phone call I didn't get angry I didn't yell at him I didn't tell him he's a sexist piece of [ __ ] I just left I just was like this isn't for me and if you want discredit me even though there's all this overwhelming evidence then you can go ahead and do that you have the right to do that I also have the right to never do business with you I would say the second time that I realized that no matter how hard I worked in relation to Alex I would still be discredited was we were at an award ceremony and this award ceremony was in regards to a I'll just say Foundation that I wanted to associate with and so I had put in a lot of work with my team to help put this giant event together for this foundation and I was very excited about it because it was a cause I was very um behind and when it got to the part of the ceremony you know we FL we flew in we flew our team in we' done all this work ahead of time and it comes down the award ceremony and they were going to grant us an award and when it came time for the award ceremony they called up multiple people and for different Awards and I'm watching them go up these pairs of business partners there's these two guys they walk up another two guys walk up and then when it came time for me and Alex they call us and they only called Alex and I was sitting with a group of women when it happened and I remember they all looked at me and they were like [ __ ] seriously are you [ __ ] joking these sexist [ __ ] what are you going to get up there right now and tell them what the [ __ ] is up they were so mad on my behalf and I'm sitting there I'm 26 I've never even been to a an event like this and I remember I looked at them and I was just like no this is just part of it and it's not my job to convince people of what I am credible for it's not my job to shove down people's throats what I'm actually capable of doing like what good does that do me if anything it just makes me look like a crazy [ __ ] go up on stage take the trophy and say it was me all along you forgot me it doesn't do me any good and so I think a lot of women what happens is they feel like people are trying to discredit them right maybe it's because of what you look like maybe it's because you work with your husband maybe it's because of your age it could be anything right you don't need to respond it does no good just like there's thousands of people on social media who are going to comment and give you hate what does responding to them do it does nothing the same with responding to people who try to discredit you if anything rise above them you know show Poise show Grace and there's no need to respond to hate with hate or to respond to immaturity with immaturity and that is just the biggest lesson I've learned has been how I respond to those situations is How I build my reputation with self and I feel like I'm a better businesswoman I'm a better person and I'm a better leader because I know how I respond to those situations where people truly discredit me in situations that are honestly humiliating and I just know that I'm a better person for the fact that I don't prolong it I don't make it worse I just allow it to end and recognize that even if it's not fair it's part of life the fifth truth is that lots of men will hate you for winning what they deem as their game this is probably the most controversial truth but men have been in business and probably will be longer than women that has been historical in the entire world right that if men have ruled businesses and the times that women have ruled and this is when they were like Empires then they got taken over by men and so historically speaking more men have been in positions of power than women and so when people see a woman in a position of power doing better than them how do you think it makes them feel now I'm not saying that men who are doing better than those women feel insecure but think about the fact that you just as a woman succeeding think about how many women you make feel insecure now take a man who feels like you still got to your hair and makeup be a mom be a wife and you're still beating him here's the thing if you're getting hate from other male entrepreneurs you're probably doing something right hate is the price of success and listen I've never gotten hated on by somebody doing better than me and what I always tell myself and I've said this to Alex I'm like listen those men they will never buy from me they will never work for me and they will never sleep with me so I don't give a [ __ ] about them and you shouldn't give a [ __ ] about them either I first realized that this was the case when I first started making content and I assumed that I was going to get a lot of hate for I don't even know what just like discrediting me of like oh you don't know anything about business this lady doesn't know what she's talking about and I assumed a lot of it would come from females because I'm a female and what was wild to me was that the hate did not come from other women in fact to this day I rarely get hate from women um like it's very seldom I'll probably get more on this video than any other video the first thing I noticed was that the people that were hating on me were all men mostly men that were much younger than me men that were less successful than me and they were trying to discredit me in any way possible you know you didn't build this business you hitched your cart to Alex's uh you know you look like a [ __ ] because your your voice is deep and you're probably not even a woman uh you sound like a smoker you wear too much makeup you look like a drag queen I mean I can go on and on and it took me a really long time to realize that there is absolutely no point in me acknowledging these people or responding to these people and so what you'll find when you get into business is that there will be a lot of noise especially if you do well and there's no benefit to you to respond to it because what do those people want they want a reaction people don't comment on a video and say something mean just because they want it the comment to stand there they comment on a video and say something mean because they want you to feel bad they want you to respond they want you to fight with them and so how you escalate a fight is you retaliate and what I realized is that all that would do is lose me respect from my team from people who will work for me from people who would buy from me from people who I could partner with what does it look like if you get hate on by some guy who's insecure living in his [ __ ] mom's basement jerking off and you respond to him and then somebody's looking to do a business deal with you and they see that you're like fighting with trolls online line you know like how does that benefit you you don't win you actually by trying to win this micro fight you lose in the macro and so you have to just take the hits and just understand that's part of the game and it's okay and the the cool part about it is is that what I've learned is that by having to deal with so much more hate than like for example my husband in business I get to develop more resilience I get to develop more emotional management more stress management and now the coolest part is you know 3 years later I truly am unfazed by anything people say about me online I see it all I mean to the point where it's dehumanizing and it truly doesn't affect me and the reason it doesn't affect me is because I don't respond to it and so I've taught myself that those things that they say can't hurt me they can't derail my day they can't change my mood they can't change what I'm going to do next and they can't affect my business so why why what what do they affect if they affect nothing they're meaningless the sixth Truth for women in business is that we have to learn how to say no but we don't want to be an [ __ ] so most women and I would say this is like Society like conditioning right Society conditions men to do certain things Society conditions women to do certain things most women have been conditioned to say yes to help to take on more to overload themselves to people please and what I realized very early on is that my natural inclinations to take care of people and to overly extend myself for people actually stifled my ability as a leader because what it did was it made me very strong and everyone around me very weak codling your team robs them of the opportunity to develop those skills themselves and it robs everybody else around you as well not to mention making a business that relies on you there's no value in that type of business but the thing that a lot of women struggle with and I definitely struggled with back in the day was how do I say no how do I set boundaries because for me and what I see a lot is that there's one of two extremes we've got women that are like absolute people Pleasers they say yes to everything and because of it they're very competent but people around them are not right most of their people in their business are just like barely doing anything because they're just doing everything right and the other side you've got people who have been there and then they swing all the way to the other end and then they're just completely mean to everybody and they're like no no no my [ __ ] boundaries right it's like oh how the [ __ ] was I supposed to know you had a boundary there right and so it's like either you're this overly nice really fluffy person or this like very mean cutting person and what I have found is that allowing the pendulum to swing does nobody any favors what we want to be able to do is to say they know in a way that empowers other people rather than offends people and that is saying no because you saying no to an opportunity means that that person can say yes to an opportunity they can say yes to a learning opportunity they can say yes to acquiring a new skill they can say yes to being a better leader and so you have to learn how to position your nose as yeses for somebody else and as wins for them you know I remember after I figured this out for myself I had a head of customer success and she was so good at what she did she was very similar personality to mine like very much cared about people deeply very generous um just very giving and she started to grow a team and as she started to grow the team what I noticed was she continued to feel more and more burnt out and I was like gosh this sucks why do she keep feeling burnt out we've hired more people and I sat in on a couple of the meetings and observed and I was like ah and I watched and anytime something needed to happen anytime something needed to get done anytime somebody had a problem she automatically volunteered herself to be the one to fill that Gap and I saw in her the patterns that I had had in myself when I was younger and it's because she has such a big heart and she is such a great person right that she wants to help people but I pulled her side and I said I think I figured out why you're feeling so burnt out she was like well why is that I was like well you're basically doing a third of everybody's job she was like well what does that mean like anytime there's additional work anytime there's a mistake anytime you're so afraid of putting difficulty onto others that you take it all for yourself and you have to learn how to say no and saying no doesn't always mean saying no it might just mean asking somebody else to do something asking somebody else to help not offering yourself up every time somebody has a problem and I explained to her if she continues to do this I said your team will have no value because they will be these mindless doers that know how to do everything and have no idea how to decide anything because you have decided everything for them you have given them no ability to think through anything critically and you have assumed that for some reason you are a superior human to them you have the ability that they don't have to do these things right to take on this email campaign cuz they don't have the capability to build out this project management system because they must not have the capability right and when I started positioning it to her like that which is you act as though you are better and more skilled and capable as a human it clicked for her and she realized that that generous impulse that desire to please people and to help people was hurting her team and I remember she came to the next meeting and she had a list for each person and what she did is she just started the meeting and assigned everything out and every meeting thereafter that's what she did and by the end of six months from then I can confidently say that her entire team was at the same level she was they were all able to produce at that level because she had learned that she cannot take it on all herself she has to distribute it and here's the thing most women that are watching this you're probably going to feel this which is it feels like you're either too nice or you're a [ __ ] if you're too nice people say oh I think she's kind of weak and then if you're saying no all the time people like oh she's a [ __ ] right here's the thing what I've learned in my time in business this is not unique to women all people in positions of leadership go through these things and all people that are trying to achieve something in life go through these phases and this pendulum swing right it's just that women tend to have more of a predisposition to it and women are judged more for it because it is less common to see a woman in society who can say no who can ask other people to do things and who doesn't serve everybody around them but what I realized over time is that I'm grateful that I had the natural disposition to being so generous and doing so much for people because it allowed me to meet more in the middle and not swing so far where I became like this dictator of a leader the seventh truth about being a woman in business is that being underestimated is always better than being properly estimated Sun Su said there is no greater danger than underestimating your opponent and so I see women all the time talking about how people are underestimating them and I was like and I think to myself like yes do you really want to be accurately estimated you can use the fact that people underestimate you to your advantage Alex and I when we were building gym launch together we had this inside joke which every time that we showed up to a call with in the beginning of gym launch basically you know we kind of came out of nowhere and the company went from you know 0 to 27 million in like two and a half years and so all of these people that were in the space would be reaching out and they were trying to figure out a way to like partner with us or have them like become part of their company which we had no interest in but it was like every person that was like ahead of us or had owned the space they tried to do that and every time we wouldd get on these calls with them it was so obvious that they thought oh that's just Alex's girlfriend secretary whatever notetaker whatever it may be and we used to always make this joke and Alex used to say it he was like you know what's crazy he's like they don't even see what's right in front of them I was like what's that he's like that there's two of us he like and they don't even know so they're never going to see us coming and lo and behold we absolutely crushed all of them why is that because just as badly as he wants to win so do I I do it differently but it doesn't mean that I'm less determined that I work any less hard what it does mean is that people don't see that and they don't expect it so because of that they underestimated it they thought they were competing against just Alex but they were competing against both of us and so for me the fact that people compete against me who don't even know that they're competing against me I consider that a win and I think a lot of women there's this desire I've had a lot of women say they're like I just want people to know like how capable I am and I'm like why you know for your ego like do you need people to think accurately of you because all that matters is how you feel about yourself at the end of the day and all that matters is what you know that you're truly capable of you actually gain nothing in business by being properly estimated or overestimated trying to appear strong when you are strong is not a good strategy if you're weak yes appear strong but if you're strong you gain Nothing by appearing that way I think a lot of women go in this direction where they have to get loud and they have to you know make it known how good they are and you know puff up their chest it's because they feel like they have something to prove but the question is what happens next how does this benefit me how does this make my life better by people knowing how great I am or me talking about how great and capable I am you'd benefit more if you just went and took that energy and just put it into being even better I remember when I was I want to say I was like 17 I watched an interview of Oprah and she was talking about um when she had one of her first jobs I want to say she was like her teenage years or 20s and she at that point she had a male colleague and that male colleague worked less than her he didn't do as much as her and he ended up getting a raise and that raise was significantly higher than what she was being paid and so she went to the boss and she said I you gave this guy a raise I work more than him I do these things I do all this like I I should get a raise and he was like No And she was like oh it's because I'm a black woman but the coolest part is what happened next which is Oprah did not boycott that place she didn't [ __ ] talk that place she didn't try to get to escalate it to HR Oprah left started her own business and became [ __ ] Oprah worth $3 billion and what she did was and she talks about this is she used that motivation from being so underestimated by so many people and buy that boss and she used that energy to create something amazing now she's like the wealthiest one of the wealthiest if not I think she's the wealthiest black woman in the world and it's all because she was underestimated and so being properly estimated does not help you in business and the second to that is being underestimated is a fantastic motivator to go do good in the world it's just that most people take that being underestimated and turn it into something something that makes their life worse not better the last brutal truth about being a woman in business is that just because you are prone to having more emotions does not mean that you have an excuse to let them affect your behavior I get this question all the time which is Leila I'm in business I'm a woman but how do I manage my emotions you manage your emotions the same way anybody does the difference is this women have condition themselves they've been conditioned and conditioned themselves and reinforced it to believe that because we are more prone to emotions due to hormones that we have a reason to be more emotional and then we condition ourselves in certain situations like when you have your period to allow ourselves to act like a silly goose right we act crazy and it's not because we are less skilled it's not because we have more emotion it's because we have not m mastered the skill of managing our emotions and do men have as much emotional fluctuation as women no biologically speaking they do not does that mean that we should act crazier than men I don't think so I do not think and I'm just sharing what I have learned if you allow your emotions to dictate how you show up in business you will lose because what do people want in a leader people want someone who's steady they want someone who's Rock Solid they want someone who's reliable what do emotions do what do people who respond to their emotions and are led by their emotions do they fluctuate they aren't reliable you don't know how they're going to show up they're unpredictable and so if you want to win in business and you want to get what you want you want to make the impact you want to you cannot be controlled by your emotions it is absolutely possible to learn how to manage your emotions is absolutely possible to be on your period and show up the same as as if you were not it is and I'll even tell you this for the first few years of business I thought that I was amazing like I thought no I thought that I was good like most of the time when I showed up I was fantastic for my team but time and time again when that time of the month came it was like for 2 days I was just a [ __ ] Terror and it was really hard for me to show up on calls and I was really down and I was really emotional and I was really sad and I would like always cry literally every time I had my period I cried the first two days and not only that but it just felt very punishing because obviously my husband wasn't stoked because I'm crying the first two days of my period and then when I'm showing up for my team it's probably clear that something's going on and I'm you know the fact that it happens every four weeks maybe they've guessed what it was right and it wasn't until about 3 and 1 half years ago when I was speaking to one of my friends and he said you have conditioned yourself to allow that behavior when you're on your period you can control it and I was like huh okay I want to try and figure this out because I don't like this it doesn't make my marriage better it doesn't make my quality of life better it doesn't make me as a leader better and so I challenged myself to act the same when I was on my period as when I am not on my period I would not make any excuses when I showed up to work I would not make excuses for working out I would not make excuses for how I behaved or how I treated my husband and you know what I decided that wasn't even going to tell Alex when I was on my period because I was like I don't even want him to know because I want to know if this actually works and so what I found was that I went from crying multiple times for two days every month to now I don't even know when I get my period because I have no emotional fluctuation I did that because I changed my behavior and my behavior trained my emotions and my thoughts just like if you change your thought it can influence your behavior if you change your behavior it can influence your feelings and thoughts and so now I don't have to worry about getting my period an emotional fluctuation right I can show up the same no matter what I don't have the urge to cry I don't get in fights with my husband and I don't show up differently for my team do I feel a little more tired sometimes yes do I get cramps yes do I sometimes feel more emotional yes but to the degree before no and so I say this because I wish I had had this when I was freaking 14 like I believed that we had to be these emotional messes and what you don't understand is that half of it is Placebo and the other half is that we've trained we've reinforced the emotions and the Pain by acting in a way that makes them worse if you cry you probably don't feel great about yourself if you cry so you feel even worse after that which then makes you more likely to cry again if you feel a little bad and then show up terribly to a meeting and then yell at your husband you're probably going to end up crying because then you feel bad about the thing you just did and so it's this reinforcing cycle where we perpetuate the behavior rather than stop it and the only way to stop it is to change your behavior and accept the fact that you can feel bad you can feel sad you can feel anxious you can be in pain you can be upset and you can still show up like a [ __ ] Rockstar because if we take a step back if we say that we have no control over this what do we lose the ability to develop resilience the ability to develop emotional management the ability to manage stress and the confidence that we could have and that we would gain if we knew that we could show up even when we felt awful and I've seen this I've seen this ruin businesses for people there was a company that we ended up partnering with and that company had a husband and wife running it we have a decent amount who do and that wife I didn't understand what was going on in the beginning because she was amazing and then three weeks go by and she was like a completely different person it was like Jacqueline Hyde I was like what is going on she went from being like my best friend to actually yelling at me on a call like to the point where I was like I'm not I'm going to hang up because you not allowed to talk to me this way I won't I won't take it and I didn't know what was going on and so I reached out to the husband and I was like okay couple questions one is there something going on and he was like no why and then I was like your wife is acting very inappropriate just going to use that word what like what did I do something what's going on he was like oh yeah you know it's not just you she does it to the team too you know it happens like once a month haha you know what I mean like it's around that time and she just like she's got a week where she's just like a complete mess and I was like and she's the one running the team he was like yeah and I was like oh my God and so you know I look back at all these people who had started had been quitting the company and then I asked the current employees I did private interviews and I was like do you know why these people have left and they were like yes because because Britney is crazy one week of the month imagine how much respect that lost her imagine how much that affected her business she was not seen as a leader she was seen as a at somebody people were scared of and that they never knew what was going to happen next and so when women ask me about how do you manage your emotions as a woman is it harder yes it's harder because you have more of them truly like you have more hormones but is it doable yes and do you want the skills like if you want to be a woman who can show up no matter what she's feeling there are all these skills that are available for you to just go and take that most women don't accept this reality and just say like it's because of my period it's because of my hormones and then they never get the chance to acquire those skills and so the biggest thing that I have learned is that by accepting what is normal to most people you actually reject all of the learning that you could have if you just said what if it was possible not to here's the thing we are literally surrounded by statistics talking about how the workplace is unfair to us this does not help us this does not help more women get into business this does not help more women Succeed in Business the media wants your attention just like anybody else I have no objective here I gain nothing from this video all I hope to do is to reach somebody who was me 10 years ago who believed those lies and believed and listened to them and let them influence me because how many women if we talk about how unfair business is to women how many how more women are going to start businesses probably less how many women are going to be happy having a business when they hear how unfair it is to them probably less so why do we talk about this why is this useful we should be talking about how women have an advantage in business and how women can Succeed in Business and all the good things that you have because you're a woman and in business and all the advantages there are of being a woman in business and so in my opinion the only way to write the ship is to take total responsibility for ourselves for how we show up to blame nobody and create a reality that serves you rather than robs you of your potential