How Goddess Leadership has helped purpose-driven founders succeed over the last year
Nilima Achwal
Creating regenerative, decentralized industries to unlock humanity. Coined the term "systems change venture." Media and speaking, 10m viewers.
It's the one year anniversary of our very first Pitch Lab "New Earth" Demo Day!
First of all....backing up...what is Pitch Lab (https://www.thefemalefounderslab.com/pitch-lab) ? What does The Female Founders Lab do and stand for?
I started Pitch Lab last summer 2020 when I realized that impact-driven founders were floundering between starting their ventures and raising their first round of capital.
Having been a social impact founder myself, I knew the journey super well:
After having worked with hundreds of heart-driven founders over the last decade, and scaling my own impact venture bringing gender and sexuality education to half a million kids in India in under three years, I realized this was a theme.
Why do you feel stuck and stressed when you're working on your life's biggest mission - your true purpose? Shouldn't that fuel you?
Yes and No.
To understand this, we need to go into how a vision turns into reality through your body. This is a process I like to call "Goddess Leadership" - how to steward (not force, push, or shove) a vision to be birthed through you as the sacred channel that has the exact skills, capabilities, and lived experience needed to actually pull it off in the biggest way possible (Coincidence that you have the exact skills needed to pull this off? I think not.)
Step 1: Your vision chooses you.
This may not be a lightning bolt moment. It may feel more like irritation or frustration or even rage at the status quo, or the overwhelming need to act. An understanding that if you can act on the impulse that's driving you crazy inside you, then perhaps you can transmute that emotion into something way more productive for the world. An actual product or service that solves the pain point that caused you or those you know so much suffering.
I call this step "Your vision chooses you" because I think that there's no coincidence that the venture you chose to start is a direct reflection of your strengths and gifts or lived experience. It's your birthright - your purpose - to bring it out into the world.
Next step...
Step 2: You create a container for your community to join you.
This is the part where it's still fun. You get to work building the exact product or service offering that gets to the core of the issue for your user and can be scaling for millions of people like them all over the world. This is your way of making your vision tangible and accessible and transformative for people.
Then, it's time to get the customers, users, partners, sponsors, etc.
Step 3: Be seen and heard, and magnetize values-aligned people in.
This is where most feminine-energy, and/or vision-centric founders mess up. After you build your product, you literally have the avenue to go as fast or as slow as you want.
And it's NOT dependent on funding, external people, or external situations. It's dependent on you.
And that's why it's frustrating and scary.
Because you knew that if you just channeled yourself properly, you could build this out way faster and easier. But somehow working longer hours and burning yourself out and second-guessing your decisions is taking all the life out of you.
You need to re-center in your vision. You need to re-center in your body. You need to re-center in your feminine energy - by working to let your vision be seen in its entirety (not watering it down since you think people won't get it), communicate it effectively and concisely, and then STAND in your authority instead of getting rocked every time someone says no.
This is the simplest way to switch from the "validation seeking" energy when you're pitching for funding and the "I'm a bright shining magnet, invest in me!" energy. (More about masculine validation-seeking energy v. feminine magnet energy here: https://www.thefemalefounderslab.com/goddess-leadership)
It's by crystallizing the wholeness of your vision, creating concise and compelling messaging that can be used a million times (without draining you), and then standing firm in your decision of how much money you are raising (or whatever outcome you desire.)
This is the work we do in Pitch Lab - instead of creating spreadsheets with 5,000 people to reach out....we turn on your inner magnet.
Step 4: Rest, relax, and receive in Divine Timing.
The more strategic you are about your work, the quicker the outcomes magnetize to you. If it does not feel like low effort, there's a good chance that you are blocking yourself from receiving what you want.
Think of it this way. If you want to up-level into the higher level of capital, team size, user base ... there's going to be even more to do, and manage. Your higher self knows this and won't let you get to that stage unless you can show yourself that you won't kill yourself with over-work or stress once you get there. All of your habits only compound as you grow. What sort of a foundation are you setting?
That's why the magic of "taking action" and then "resting" and "allowing" is so potent. It also keeps you in your highest CEO identity instead of dragging you down into the weeds.
In Pitch Lab, we have a few calls a week that are very calm, grounding, and nourishing. There is nothing inside the program that puts unnecessary stress on your nervous system. We trust you to do what's needed to magnetize whatever you need or desire without over-working. (In fact, I dare to say that in the rare instance that a founder over-worked inside Pitch Lab, was precisely when she fell off of the path.)
Step 5: Quantum outcomes.
This means that you achieve in less time, outcomes that look really shiny on paper, but make complete sense in your heart.
For example. Morgan comes into Pitch Lab needing capital to build the prototype of her mental health medication platform - something she can't build without a significant amount of capital. Stuck. She moves countries, raises $400,000 in 4 weeks, and gets into Techstars.
Stacy comes into Pitch Lab with a working prototype and some users for her alternative health insurance product, but needs brand visibility and a capital raise to get to where she needs to go. In a few weeks, she secures brand partnerships with Kaiser Permanente and Covered California, starts to double her user base week on week, makes significant changes to her team to reflect her higher vision, and also gets into TechStars.
And so on - for all of our founders whether during, or after the program ends.
These results happen because we don't focus on them. Rather, we focus on making your pitch deck the highest reflection of you, in service to your vision. Then, we support you with so much love day by day, week by week. Then, you see it through to completion in the most natural way, on your timeline. Goddess Leadership.
Honestly, this is way creation was supposed to happen. In community, through a rapid transformative growth journey for yourself. Then it reflects outward.
Doesn't this make so much more sense?
We've been taught that things happen in a hyper masculine-energy, linear fashion - input = output. This paradigm works for masculine founders who thrive that way, but it falls short for heart-centered visionaries who have so much more that wants to explode outward into the world. Your vision is important, and we need you reach as many people as possible - as soon as possible. I see you, and I understand the urgency, as well as the struggle.
That's why it's imperative that you invest in a community and a process that can codify your narrative very precisely (through a 10-12 slide pitch deck), in a way that will attract the sort of people that you want investing in and partnering with your venture. You will be given the opportunity to pitch at our New Earth Demo Day at the end of the program too.
Our last Pitch Lab cohort of the year starts in three weeks, and the 1:1 coaching component of it is already underway. Are you excited and intrigued? Then join me.
Learn about Pitch Lab: https://www.thefemalefounderslab.com/pitch-lab
Apply now for a 45 minute venture assessment call with me: https://www.thefemalefounderslab.com/plapplication
Speak to you soon!
And if you enjoyed this piece, what part of it spoke to you?