Getting called out is a rite of passage

Greetings from mid-strategic planning week for us here at Business Class. I’m currently drowning in post-it notes, sharpies, and BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals). 

I usually write my newsletters a day or so before they send, since a) I’m still a delinquent and b) it feels weird to read my own email a week later and not relate to who I was, which is usually the case. So, I’m writing this just hours before it sends. 

However, instead of writing whatever’s on my mind, I’ve decided to respond to an email from a reader sent in response to last week’s newsletter. I’ve had a lot of women DM and email me with the same question, and while it’s uncomfortable to bring up, I figured I’d take a crack at it since there are few others who can answer a question like it. 

There are two questions here. 

1. Do you ever get hateful comments when you set ambitious goals like this for yourself publicly? 
2. I’m not sure if I can handle the anxiety of putting myself out there and dealing with the consequences if I become successful. Is it even worth it? 

I’ll start at the top. No, I don’t. Or haven’t, at least lately. I’m sure that when we announced a collaboration with Courtney Love at Nasty Gal, there were haters, and when we announced that we were building the “LinkedIn for women” at Girlboss, there were probably grumbles––but in all my years I can’t seem to remember any major instances of being criticized for announcing my goals publicly. 

I still encounter the occasional snide comment (usually from a rando on a Facebook ad) about my past mistakes, but overall my community has been incredibly supportive and forgiving. 

Your second question, however, is a bit more complex, and while I can speak from personal experience, I do know there are some much more informed experts in workplace dynamics and women’s issues out there who could provide a more well-researched perspective. 

In the past few years, I’ve watched nearly every one of my female founder friends be called out––and in some instances, fully canceled. Sometimes it starts with an exposé in Vulture or The New York Times, other times it starts on social media, eventually making its way to outlets like those. 

I’ve been asked whether I think this phenomenon is fair or not. The answer, truthfully, is I don’t know. I think that we can all agree on something we’ve learned over the years: life isn’t fair, and even if it was, I’d love to meet the arbiter of something as subjective as fairness. 

What I do know, however, as the proud female entrepreneur who paved the way for a generation of female entrepreneurs to fail, is that there’s always something to learn from it.

Feedback is something that successful founders often don’t get; we live in our own world of yes-men and women, praised for our achievements and surrounded mostly by people we pay to stick around. It’s an odd dynamic. Oftentimes, it’s when we stop paying people that they decide to speak up about what they believe are (and often are) the injustices they were subjected to while working for our company. 

Founders are put in the unique position of having all eyes on us. Every microexpression is scrutinized. Who you say hello to in the office is an indication of who among the team is most important. No one tells you this, but people are reading into their future with every move you make. 

Grind around the clock? When things are going well, you’re perceived as a committed founder. When things are bad, you’re promoting burnout. 

Take a vacation? When things are good, you’re setting an example of work/life balance. When things go south, you’re perceived as being distracted and giving zero fucks about your company or your team. 

Stand for something? When things are good, you’re a hero who’s changing the world. When things are bad, you’re a performative shill who’s woke-washing millennials. And hey, maybe you were. It’s been done. 

And get this––even when it’s someone on your team who reports to someone who reports to someone who reports to you that fucks things up, you will be held accountable for it. It will be assumed that you were privy to it before someone brought it to your attention, and that you personally signed off on it. 

Ultimately, what I hear when I receive criticism is that people care. They cared when they joined your company and they cared when you let them down. And they care enough to give you feedback––and when they don’t feel they can do that safely in a private manner, they find public forums to do it. (BTW––Human Resource departments are where grievances go to die, eventually causing issues to metastasize and become systemic within a company culture. That’s probably a whole nother email though.)

I was shocked when 500 women showed up to the first Girlboss Rally just months after Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy. I was shocked when my friends and colleagues stuck around, when my publicist and agents stood by me as humiliating headlines were hitting blaming everything on me (not to make excuses, but I wasn’t even the CEO anymore!). I was certain I’d be a pariah and that my career was over. But, as I like to say, it all comes out in the wash (with plenty of lessons to go along with it). 

I guess in a rambly way I’m saying that founding a company is worth the grief you might get. There’s the .0001% chance you fuck up big enough and get canceled. Everything short of being canceled, you get to learn and take it to your next endeavor. And believe me, there will be a next endeavor.

After building a company, there is no such thing as starting from zero even if it means starting over. By the time someone cares enough to call you out, you’ve built and learned so many things that you can take to your next venture. Even with zero business assets to your name, you’ve amassed an arsenal of something that makes having done it more valuable than not having done it at all. 

So...suck it up and go big, because you’ll regret not doing it far more than you will regret doing it. Play it safe, and your brain turns to mush. Take risks, and you learn––no matter how it ends. Because, in the end, everything ends anyway.  

Wheels up,

Sophia