Bucking The System: Unraveling From Traditional Obligations

You can’t make this up… "Two weeks into August 2021, two separate emails were fired off in tandem. One from my sister Chloe who informed her management consulting firm that she wouldn’t be starting in the fall as had been stipulated in the contract; the other from me, as I submitted a leave of absence from my college at which I’d recently declared my major. Unroping ourselves (albeit “temporarily,” to lessen the blow to our parents) from the traditional obligations that awaited, we were free to chase our dream of building a sister-fueled fashion resale empire.

We’d been selling/buying/arbitraging/drop-shipping secondhand clothes for 7 years and became internet sleuths for finding the best deals, not to mention the countless hours spent together during the early months of Covid discussing how to bring fresh excitement to this space that had not been reimagined since 2013 despite surging demand. Secondhand fashion, we believed with all our heart, was the wave of the future, the preferred way of shopping for Gen-Zers like us for whom sustainability and economics remained at the forefront of fashion choices. After months of brainstorming, we finally conceived of Selleb, an online resale platform for public figure consignment. What better way to attract more Gen Z audience than with some stardust? Copying celeb style was nothing new but actually owning it? Thus Selleb was born. And like a mother taking a leave of absence to take care of their newborn, we did too.

Since then, we incorporated, iterated, and bootstrapped our way to a beta launch in December 2021, selling out of our inaugural drop completely. This urgency to launch and accrue as loyal a following as possible with zero marketing budget was admittedly more a product of necessity than Gen Z moxie. It was do or die that led us to the next phase: fundraising.

So what’s our “golden rule”? For us, it was the absolute abandonment of our “golden” rule: Keep your day job until your dream job takes off. Because let’s face it. We can rarely achieve excellence when diluting our focus into various functions. Some things will give, and for most of us, it’ll be our budding passions because our day jobs will inevitably demand so much from us. As female founders, we stand together to unabashedly, unapologetically reject the concept of the “golden rule" and blaze our own path in the name of passion.”

What continually impresses me is how Generation Z is reshaping the employee-employer relationship. Never before has there been a generation filled with people, especially women, so ready to buck the traditions of our working economy in order to discover newfound freedom in the workplace.?

I feel so fortunate to be able to witness an entire generation of new adults ready to go to bat for the rights that people have and the way they should be treated in professional environments. This is something I have always placed great emphasis on in both my businesses.?

We’re all human. We all deserve to do work that we enjoy, are paid well for, and- most importantly- feel completely free in.?

Thank you, Gen Z.?

One of the driving forces behind Female Founders Collective was my desire to showcase women who are ready to get rid of the traditional systems that have led to inequality in the workplace. This week, we hear from Claire Lee and Shauna Armitage, who have both let go of tradition, taken up space, and discovered freedom and fulfillment like never before.?

“It was 2017 and I had just left my stable remote gig to join my mentor’s new marketing agency full time as the second in command. I was 100% sure this was “it”. My forever job. I was going to make a big impact and shape the future of this company!

At first, things were great. My mentor and I worked well together and the company was growing. But a few short months later, my mentor had hired several men from his community to take over his workload, and things began to fall apart. Deadlines were being missed. Projects weren’t getting done. The work submitted was subpar.

Needless to say, the clients weren’t happy, so I brought my concerns to the team. My mentor later told me that the men on the team thought I was a b*tch.

Wait, what? Because I want team members to do their best work and to submit that work on time? Because I want our team to be accountable for the deliverables we promised the clients? If I had been a man, I would have been considered a strong leader.

This was the first time in my career where I realized that I was being seen differently simply because I was a woman.

After only six months, my mentor called me out of the blue on a Friday morning and told me that I was no longer a “culture fit” for his company. It was terrifying. Not only was I unemployed, but my husband was about to deploy for six months and I had three young children at home. How would I get another job?

It turns out, however, that I didn’t need another job. I needed to be an entrepreneur—to build a marketing business where integrity and accountability drove action. Within 30 days, one of his clients had signed on with me, and almost five years later, I’ve built something that creates impact and something I’m truly proud of.

Being fired was the best thing that could have happened to me. It was the catalyst that made me recognize my own power and worth—and the push I needed to act on them.”

I want every single woman to hear me when I say this: be too much. Take up space. Don’t buy into the victim mentality and the lack of confidence that men have tried to push on us for centuries. Because the thing is — men feel that way, too. They have moments of self-doubt, but the difference is they pretend not to.?

Look at our history. Women have had to do so many uncomfortable things in order to obtain equality. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable, take up your space… and don’t give another second of thought to any man that thinks you’re “too much.”