Shedding the Bitch Radio - 10 Things Your Competition Can Tell You About Women in Business

Hello and welcome to Shedding the Bitch Radio, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of angst, attitude, and negative mindsets so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches you want in life. Join us here live every Tuesday at noon Eastern and dialogue with us at 818-572-2910. You can also chat with us at blogtalkradio.com/sheddingthebitch or share your stories on our website sheddingthebitch.com. Whatever the bitch is that's holding you back from living your life to your fullest, it's not worth giving up the riches in life that you deserve. So call in now and let Bernadette Boas know what's holding you back. 818-572-2910.

Hello, hello, hello, hello everyone. Yes, this is Bernadette Boas and you're listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio. I am so So excited that you are here today, and I'm so excited that it's beautiful here in Atlanta, Georgia, because last couple days we've had torrential rain. Now, as much as I'm not a big fan for rain, although, you know, it does make for a nice long morning in, it does make for a nice lazy day every once in a while, um, I was very appreciative of it being torrential this week because we've also had the explosion of pollen over the last week, week and a half. So my silver car looked very much like a green gecko of a car. And so I was thrilled. Actually, I typically park under a carport, and I was actually thrilled to be, you know, park on the street so it would just get absolutely trashed. By the rain and get it nice and clean and squeaky. So now that doesn't have anything to do with the inside of the car, but we'll work on that sometime soon. Anyway, welcome to Shading the Bitch Radio. I'm in just a great mood because it is beautiful. It's gorgeous. The sun is out. I hope it is, or the moon, or I just hope it's beautiful wherever you are. And we have a Interesting program today, I'll call it that. Uh, it was just one of those topics, as many of you know who listen to the program. I'll leave, um, several topics kind of open, um, throughout the month prior to getting on the program with you because things just come up and I just don't want to be stuck to the same old same old. I'd rather be able to respond to something that might have just come up and is impacting women, impacting what you're trying to do in your life, impacting business, that kind of thing. So that's what our subject turned out to be this, this week, is a subject around kind of women in business and yet competition, meaning whether or not businesses are paying attention to what the competition is doing around women in business. So I provide I will talk about 10 tips, 10 things that I have kind of observed and I've learned from my customers, my prospects, uh, just overall peers and colleagues that I work with, as well as you who bring them to me— these stories, challenges, and, and questions about what businesses are doing for women in leadership and what they're not doing. So we'll talk all about that, but before we do, just a few Quick announcements: Rich Tip Friday right around the corner, and I will look forward to your questions, stories, and challenges that you put out on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. I get them through directly through email. Even when I meet with you out in public, whether it's at a speaking engagement or one of the training workshops I do, I take all your questions and I address them openly for other people within the community to learn from them. On our Shedding the Bitch page on Facebook. And then, as you know, once a month at the end of the month, last Tuesday of the month, this Shedding the Bitch program turns into a Rich Tip Tuesday because I take your questions from the month and we dive into them even deeper right here on Shedding the Bitch Radio. But the real advantage to that is that I also videotape them, as I'm even doing today's program, because I figured a lot of business people could benefit from this discussion regarding what they can learn from the competition regarding women in business. So Rich Tip Tuesday, I turn into little bite-size videos for you. So if you were to go to YouTube and go to our Shedding the Bits YouTube channel, you'd be able to pull down specific rich tips that relate to you, that you might be dealing with. So take a look for those. But Rich Tip Friday is right around the corner, so give me your questions, stories, and challenges, comments, feedbacks, I don't care. And I'll talk about them throughout the day on Friday so I can provide you some tips, advice, and in some cases some tough love about any life or business issues that you might be dealing with. All right, that's what we do here at Shedding the Bitch. We kind of, we're straight. I got a nice compliment from a lovely lady on on LinkedIn, and I'm gonna botch her name, and I so apologize. Her first name is Ivanka, and she sent a note regarding the leader tips that I provide out on Facebook, and you can translate those to the rich tips. And she said that she absolutely loves them, she looks forward to them, and she just loves how pretty upfront and transparent but blunt that I am in regards to the advice and tips and tough love that I provide, and I hope you see that as well. It's meant to be anything and everything to enrich your life, nothing more, or I should say nothing less than that. So hopefully you're enjoying those rich tips as well. Next week, very excited, woohoo! Shout out to Cheryl Axelrod. Cheryl Axelrod is a lawyer. She has her own law firm called the Axelrod Firm, and she and I got into this dialogue and debate on LinkedIn regarding the campaign Ban Bossy. If you haven't seen it, just look it up, Ban Bossy. And basically they're trying to ban the use of the word bossy, not much different than what I'm trying to do with shedding the bitch. Not only would I like you to shed the angst attitudes, negative mindsets, fears that you have, what we call bitches, but I'd love to ban the way the use of that term is used. As opposed to using it to hurt someone and call them and judge them a bitch, I'd rather you— and what I'm trying to do is change that terminology to where bitch is really used to look inward, to look at the fears, insecurities, doubts, negativities, and ugly belief systems that you possess that is causing you to lash out in the world. All right? And we all have them, so there's nothing to be ashamed of, there's nothing to be angry about, there's nothing to be defensive about. We all have those things, so it's just a matter of how do we shed them. Now, back to Cheryl. So she and I started talking, and I said, you know, I'd love to get into this more, you know, even challenging the Shedding the Bitch campaign. Are these things productive? Are they effective? Will they even, you know, to the slightest, um, shift the attitudes and mindsets and behaviors of both men and women when it comes to kind of putting ourselves out there and pursuing our goals and the dreams in the way that we want to? So I'm really looking forward to that conversation, and I have a feeling that we're going to have a great debate and dialogue about it just because she's just as fiery as I am. So any of you other women and men who might want to participate, lend your own comments, your own stories, tune in right here at Shedding the Bitch Radio. And then I also decided too, I'm gonna be reaching out, and if you have any suggestions for me or recommendations, I'm gonna be shooting a note out and it's gonna go to corporate professional women. Now when I say corporate, even if you're in a small business, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna kind of caveat that with around 100 employees around whatever that might translate in revenue. And I'm gonna look for professional women to get into conversations with me in the coming weeks on Shedding the Bitch Radio. Now, why I'm putting a caveat on that, because I really want to talk to the women that are dealing with the dynamics of a team, not dealing with the dynamics of working with a customer that's large or small. But really, you know, working in the business with a team, with other women, with other men. Maybe they're in a male-dominated industry, and I want to just have this very blunt, open, collaborative dialogue, debate, and delight, as I call it, with those type of women. So if you have any suggestions for me, feel free to send them to me at BernadetteBoas@SheddingTheBitch.com. Put them on Facebook, put them on Twitter, LinkedIn, put them anywhere, and just say I really recommend that you speak to this particular individual. And again, male or female, because I'm gonna look for both sides of the discussion. And again though, Shedding the Bitch is not about getting on and using the airtime to bitch about and complain about whatever issue or situation or gender disparity or bias you feel exists out there. It's to bring an issue up and and then to dialogue and debate it in a constructive way in order for us to come up with solutions and next steps and actions that we could be taking. Okay, so if you had any, you know, desire to want to kind of get on a microphone and start venting, this is not the show. What we want to do here is we want to use our time to, you know, really collaborate and interact with one another and come up with solutions and ideas and actions and next steps. That we could be taking to shift attitudes, mindsets, and behaviors from bitch to rich. Alright, so that's that. Alright, shout out to our sponsors. I just absolutely love the people that support me and the community, uh, whether it's on this program or in all the other work that we do. Uh, Total Communications Coach, go to totalcommunicationscoach.com, check her out. Um, actually she also is an author, and I'm going to be talking a lot about this going forward. She is also an author of both fiction and nonfiction, but her first fiction book, it got picked up by a publisher. It's called The Clock Strikes Midnight, and it'll be out this fall. And I'm kind of helping her and working with her to get that book launch out. So you'll be hearing a lot more of that. And Joan C. Curtis is her name, so check her out on Amazon. She has an author profile out there, or go to LinkedIn or somewhere else. TSR Tax— it's tax time. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. My accountant happened to call me over the weekend saying, hey, hey, hey, what are we doing? It's almost the 15th. So Debbie Snelling, TSR Tax, both a tax house, so to speak, but also strategic consulting and other services. So TSR Tax, thank you so much for being part of our community. And Resource Options International, ROI. And I love that term. Return on investment is the way I see it. But Resource Options International, and that's what you get from him too, Brian Handley. You get a lot of return on investment in your people. And so what he does is he helps and works with CEOs of organizations to find the best talent, male or female. I, you know, he knows better when we work together, but, and he does anyway. But an unbelievable organization just opened up in New York just a few months ago. Check out, um, oh shoot, um, oh, um, oh, go, go for ROI.com. I'm so sorry, go for ROI, go for the number, ROI.com is his website. Um, okay, now that I fumbled through that, all right, our discussion. You're listening to Shedding the Bitch Radio. This is Bernadette Boas. Our discussion for today is The 10 things that you can learn from your competitors about women in business. Now, why did I decide to kind of have that kind of conversation even on Shedding the Bitch? Because people kind of listen to Shedding the Bitch and say, hmm, you know, isn't this about women empowerment? Well, women in business as a whole is a subject matter within empowerment. Within growth, within pursuit of dreams and goals, within leadership, within change. And that's what we talk about here on the program. So 10 things that your competition can tell you about women in business came from a conversation that I had with a CEO of a billion-plus dollar company. And I was asked to have a conversation with them, and I wanted to see what opportunities there were there for me to help them as far as their women leadership program. So I got on the phone with him, and respecting also his limited time, being that he has a massive, you know, size organization to run, I wanted to get down to the nitty-gritty. So very much in my wheelhouse, just get down to business, so to speak. And we started having a conversation, and I started telling him about who I was and my background and what kind of observations I see out there. And it became apparent through what he was not saying, more so than what he was saying, that his organization really didn't have, um, a women leadership program. And I say, kind of waffling it sounds, But I say that because, and this happens quite often, so pay attention to the language you or others use and listen for it because it might, you know, provide you some underlying realities, I'll call it. But what he was not saying was that he absolutely had a Women in Leadership program, or he wasn't even saying, "I don't understand it. I don't get it. Don't know why I would do it." So at least he would have some sort of firm position one way or the other. In this case, he was kind of waffling, almost as if he was wanting to tell me what I wanted to hear, yet at the same time he was recognizing that wasn't helping him in any way, shape, or form. And a CEO of a billion-plus, you know, dollar company, you know, certainly should not want to close their ears to it. So anyway, long story short, I said, well, what is your situation, or what is your position with women in leadership, with women on your leadership team? Now, I've done my homework. I knew the lack of representation, actually no representation, yet I really wanted to kind of have him bring it up, and then if he did not, then I would obviously kind of have him acknowledge my research. He really didn't get it. And when I said to him, I said, well, what is your, you know, what is your struggle? What's the challenge that you're having with getting women in leadership? And he, bottom line, said, they don't ask. We have tons of women in our organization at various levels, but when they get to a certain level, they don't ask. And I thought, okay, that's total BS. I did not quite say it like that, but I did challenge him on it. And I said, sincerely, you have thousands of women in your organization now, and that's because they have an entry-level kind of sales force that's huge. And based, you know, in the particular industry that they're in, it's heavy, heavy you know, sales. And that's where most of the women, predominantly the women are, you know, few layers up in management, but when it starts getting to kind of the middle management level, they all fall off. So he said they just don't ask. And I wasn't gonna fight him on it. That's his perception. His perception is his reality. I, though, as a consultant, can't just kind of walk away from that without providing them input, providing them feedback, providing them statistics, data, and facts. And it just so happened at the end of that week I was going to be speaking to a large room full of women in his industry, just coincidentally or by fate, however you want to look at it. And I— so I mentioned that to him. I said, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go to this event. I'm the keynote speaker. And I will get some information for you, and maybe I might even get some candidates for you. Now, he was looking for a very senior, senior, senior level. Not to say that they weren't going to be there, and I was expecting that they would, but at the same time, I wasn't expecting the majority of the room to be full at that senior, senior, senior level. But that's— that was okay. That's okay. I'll just go and get him some information, statistics, feedback, and and maybe a candidate or two. So, um, so I did, and I went, and of course the feedback that I received is what triggered this program because it became very apparent. And although I knew it, but I needed to hear it from them so I could kind of document it, write it up, and present it to him. Um, you know, they were like, what are you talking about? Of course we ask. And yet we're just not provided those opportunities. Or it's a boys' club, is pretty much— and this industry pretty much is at the management level. If you look at all, you know, and I did, if you look at their competition across the board, kind of all the majors that play in that space, um, there's a couple of exceptions, but predominantly it is heavy. So They, you know, they didn't hesitate to provide me tons of information, tons of positive and yet not so positive, which I then just turned into constructive feedback for him, which basically says they do step up, they do ask not only for the big jobs but even new initiatives, new projects, new, more responsibility, more leadership. They want training and workshops and they do want development and coaching. And yet at the same time, I won't say all of them of course, but at the same time a number of them said, "But we just aren't supported in that way." And it's kind of almost an industry understanding, which is very sad, don't you think? It's very sad. So then I did find and I kind of said, "Okay, so let's turn the tables. Who, you know, who in this room have programs within your organizations that support and advocate and raise up women. And there was a handful, but at the same time, I'm not sure that that's just because there wasn't more from those organizations. But there was two companies predominantly that said, oh no, no, no, our company, billion-dollar-plus, it was founded by a woman. It was founded by a husband and wife. Founded by a woman, we certainly understand the power of women in our industry, in our company, in our business. We understand the value it puts to the bottom line. We understand the value that they have on the collaboration and the teaming and everything, you know, that we hear. And then another said, well, and I'm going to pull up my reference document because I hate misquoting people. And then there was other, you know, the others that said, our primary customer is women. So, of course, it makes sense for women to sell to other women because they get it. They understand their issues. They understand their pains. They understand their value. They understand the benefit of whatever product or service they're selling for that woman to have it because they're a woman, which I thought was a really key thing that I wanted to get back to him. And quite honestly, I'll be, you know, as long as I've been consulting with businesses and and responsible for developing their business plans and their strategies and their competitive analysis and building out their business model and even their business itself. We certainly have always looked at women— I'm sorry, we've all, you know, certainly always looked at competition as a major factor to look at. If you aren't familiar with the Blue Ocean Strategy, great, great book, and that basically talks about, you know, find the things that are going to differentiate you from from everybody else in your pool, so to speak, or in your ocean, and find that one or two things that you can completely differentiate yourself. And I basically came out of that conversation with these women saying that is a competitive advantage for companies within male-dominating industries, is those companies that are looking at not just women but just looking at what the competition is not doing. And it just so happened that in this industry, the bulk of the industry was not addressing how women contribute to business. Now, many of you know me, I don't get on a high horse about, oh, there has to be women in your