129: Julia Pimsleur — Creating a Million Dollar Woman

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Today's show is all about the unique challenges women face in getting their businesses off the ground. How do we get beyond startup and into the scale up zone? And what are the unique challenges that women face? So whether you're a woman or whether you have a woman in your life who is trying to grow as an entrepreneur, as a leader, this show is for you. Listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and growth coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is a fellow coach who specialized in working in a specific area, helping women get over the first hurdle, the million dollar mark. It's Julia Pimsleur. Julia, welcome to the show.

Hey Bill, great to be with you.

Today we're on like two extremes. Are you in New York today?

I am. We're getting ready for the holidays and it's cold and I think you're somewhere that's quite the opposite.

I'm looking out my window here at the beach, the surf line up in Honolulu. So I love it. Yes, it's a different environment. So we're going to talk about how to help women get over your work. Annette, you have an audacious goal of getting a million women over the million dollar mark, right?

That's my BHAG. Yes, we are helping women get to 1 million in revenues.

So Julia's another coach in the world of scaling up as well. And we like to have other coaches on to talk about what they're up to and the unique segments of industry and places they work and so on. So tell us about how you became a coach, a little bit of your background in business and like that.

Sure. Well, I was in the trenches for years as an entrepreneur. I built a business called Little Pim, which is pim, that's language teaching for Young children. And that was my first big entrepreneurial endeavor. And I had to learn everything on the job. I didn't go to business school. I don't have a finance background. I just really wanted to help other parents teach their kids a foreign language. I was teaching my son French and decided to create a multimedia language teaching program to help kids learn Spanish, French, Chinese. It's a little bit like Rosetta Stone for little kids, if you can imagine that. So that was my first endeavor. And along the way was fortunate to find amazing coaches and mentors and the entrepreneurs organization that you and I are both involved in. And that is what made the difference in my being able to get little PIM up into the multi millions and build the kind of business I dreamed of building.

Yeah. We both met when you were running the accelerator program in the New York area, and I was the director for that eastern regions accelerator programs. And I learned so much from you.

It was a blast being in your program.

Yeah. A huge program there in New York and really well run. I love how you've spun this off. So your work now is specifically.

One sec. Let's just back up a sec. Which is part of why I decided to start an online program is I loved the program you and I were in, Bill. But that program met in person. And a lot of women who start their businesses are in their 30s. And what's something some women are doing in their 30s, Bill? Just name a couple things women are doing in their 30s.

Having kids.

There you go.

Starting families.

That's exactly it. That was my case. I had two little kids at home under the age of 6 when I was building my business. And it's really hard to get away from your business at that time of life. So I wanted to bring all the amazing benefits of these types of accelerator programs to women where I could meet them, where they were at, which is running their business, juggling kids, dealing with aging parents, being the connectors in their communities. And so we created a program where they could do it from their desk without leaving their business. That was really important to me as a woman.

Yeah, yeah. To not give them one more thing to do and handle. Right.

One more reason to have to find childcare and be away. Women are moms, but all our women are facing hurdles that are specific to women. We're both scaling coaches. So of, you know, it's not easy for anyone to scale a business. And, you know, 85% of what we teach in million dollar women would work for any entrepreneur, but it's that 15% that's women specific that I really craved when I was building my business and never found. Like I had no female role models, I had no women coaches. So I wanted to make that easier for the next generation to get really specific help with the things that women sometimes get stuck on.

Yeah.

Let me underscore something a little bit for our listeners. So the vast majority, I think of the people that we work with and our coaches overall in the scaling up world are quite a bit. Maybe 10 million and above is a more common thing. We have people over 100 million reaching for a billion dollars in sales. We have a big range of them and although we apply the ideas and concepts differently, they're all still relevant. So the work that they do in that entrepreneurs organization, accelerator program, the work that you do at online learning are all related. They're pieces of the stuff. We just apply them a little. But the notion of having some well defined and yet simple strategy that's growing is the same for a startup as it is for a larger scale up. Right. And the other thing I think that's interesting for our listeners to think about is that very often we can learn interesting ideas of innovation in approach, not just the business itself or some technology, but in the approach to business from our smaller companies. I think of so many things that I hear as I go around and talk with accelerators around the world. That earlier stage company is what we're thinking of there. That because they have to are approaching things differently than we do when we have over 100 people and a lot more budget.

Yeah. And so much innovation is going on there. It certainly keeps you cutting edge working with entrepreneurs who are trying to get to a million because they're scrappy, they're using all the latest technology, they're solving problems in really innovative ways. I love it. I've got the best job in the world.

Yeah. Now you shared some stats with me. I'll have you share it again. But women start an extraordinary number of the new business starts, right?

That's right.

But they don't all necessarily grow them. Talk to us about that.

Sure. Well, I started my movement. It really grew out of my book Million Dollar Women, which I wrote after building my business into a multimillion dollar business and then looking around and realizing there are very few women at this level. And that's when I found out this disturbing statistic that there are fewer than 3% of women entrepreneurs who ever make it to 1 million in revenues. And you and I both know, Bill, 1 million in revenues isn't like put your Feet up and the money is just flowing in. Right. That's just getting off.

That is not a big business. A tiny, tiny business. Right. The other thing though is that.

But women aren't even there. So that just needed fixing.

Yeah, but women start more businesses than men. So not that many people ever starting a business get over a million dollars in revenue. They start, they create small personal practices and things like that. But. But the number of women who actually begin the business is much greater than that. Right.

Thanks for pointing that out. And that's really the gap that we are addressing in Million Dollar Women is that over the last two decades, women have actually started twice as many businesses as men have. We're on this very rapid catch up scale trying to create more businesses because traditionally men have been more represented in entrepreneurship. So we're starting these businesses, but very few of us are scaling them. And that's why we need to create a women specific program. Because I had a hunch that there are some specific hurdles that women face that men may not face. I experienced them myself, but I didn't know if it was just me. And then writing the book, it confirmed that, yes, there's a set of issues that women face that they need help with and that's why we created this specific program.

Well, before we talk about the specific hurdles and the challenges of the program and that kind of thing, let's have you share some examples of some of the folks that you've worked with and what it looks like in reality. I think stories help to bring it to life. So maybe about the woman trying to get funding or the woman who changed her business model. Talk to us about some, share some of that.

We have over 150 graduates now of our online business program, Million Dollar Women Masterclass. It's a four month coaching program. So let me just share a couple of stories that come to mind. One is a woman who has a textile company where she supplies drapes and flooring for large hotels across America. And she's been in business over 10 years. She was doing about 150,000 in revenues. But when she came into Million Dollar Women Masterclass, she really couldn't figure out how to get to the next revenue level. And she also was struggling with something on the personal side, which is it was very hard for her to ask for help even when she joined the program. You know, we needed to work out a payment plan for her. And it was very hard for her to even say, hey, can you help me make this work? Women tend to invest a lot less in their own professional development than men do. And so I'm seeing that with a lot of the women that it's not part of what they were planning to spend money on their own professional development, even though that's what they need to do. In any case, we got her through the door. She signed up for the program. And we start in our four month program with mindset. And we start with mindset because, well, one, I'm a trained mindset coach and I'm a big believer that that's where everything starts. You know, you can't build a mansion on quicksand. Got to get that mindset foundation solid before you start building on top of it. And once we did the mindset work, and then quickly we move into strategy and distribution and finances and the things that are considered, you know, the harder business skills. She had this real shift where she realized, what am I waiting for? I need financing to grow my business. I have all these potential customers, but I need to invest in new salespeople, in buying new inventory. And she went to her bank and asked for a loan. So that in itself would be a win because very few women go after financing. But when she went to ask for the loan, they promptly said no. And women do receive a lot fewer loans than men do. I don't have the stats right here at my fingertips, but it's something like 20% of less. Fewer women get funded by bank loans than men do. So what was so amazing, Bill, is that she said, well, actually, I think you're wrong to the bank. She said, I don't think you really understand my business well enough. So I'm going to take you to my office, which happened to be in her home. And she brought these two bank officers to her home office, and they spent six months, something like three hours with her in her office. She showed them all her books, the material, she was working with her potential clients. And Bill, she got that $150,000 loan.

Wow. Because she stopped and said, wait a minute, I don't accept a note.

Exactly. That's what we're doing. We're creating relentless success machines. I mean, I'm teasing, but, you know, you and I both know that so much of succeeding is just believing you can. Right. And if one door closes, finding another door around the back to go through, that's so much of being an entrepreneur. And our women have those skills, but at the same time, you know, they sometimes need that extra boost.

Yeah. And not giving up right in the face of a delay, a setback, a no, or whatever. But I think you're right about that. That asking help thing, we all have different versions of it, but I can hear that as a really common thing. Like, you know, look, I've got a mission, I'm up to something, and I need some help here.

Especially after you've had some success. Right. There can be a pride issue. I mean, I only deal with women who are making between 75,000 and 750,000. So arguably they're already successful in the sense that we know that half of all businesses shut down. Right. Within five years. So not only their business not shutting down, it's growing. But then they have to have humility to say, hey, I don't know how to get to the next place.

Yeah. And then talk about the business model shift that you saw with the other story you were sharing with me.

Sure. So I'd say two of the big areas we help our women in are. Well, three really are finances, mindset, and strategy. That's where I see women needing the most help. I just told that finances story and many own. That same woman, by the way, is now out raising her first round of friends and family funding. So she took that success and kept going. And we're really excited for her to raise that first round. So another woman in our program is based in Florida and she and her partner run a dance studio. They have two locations and she has a kind of proprietary dance method that she teaches, which involves some pole dancing, some modern dance. It's like really, really popular in her two locations. So she's doing, you know, 200,000 a year and really happy with the growth of the business. But at the same time, she was getting older and not wanting to teach every day, all day like she's been doing and said, surely there's got to be another way to make this business make some passive income and where it doesn't all count on me showing up every day. I think a lot of people can relate to that. Right. You make good money, but it all is dollars for time, which is never.

Yeah, yeah. How do we scale?

We looked at her strategy and, you know, they do a one page strategic plan as part of the program. And then we put them in touch with our ment. We have 20 business mentors who built multimillion dollar businesses or our Angel VCs who help them kick the tires on their business strategy. And thanks to those sessions and really coming up with a strategy for the first time, most of the women in our program have never even done that exercise. She realized that she could start an online Teaching program to teach other teachers, her proprietary method. And that would create a whole new stream of income. She joined the $107 billion online learning industry, which is exploding. And also get out of this dollar for time model that she's been in. So she's building that program right now. And we're really excited to see her create this passive revenue stream.

You know, I see this same, like we see this at a whole variety of levels. A business that grew, I mean even well Beyond. I've seen $10 million private practices or small practices in some professional field. It could be medical, it could be law, could be accounting or some other kind of thing. And they've built. It's no longer. It's well beyond a million dollars and yet it plateaus at some point because the business model is. And then there are a variety of ways. So, you know, you've got this one that's a teach the teacher kind of thing, franchise building satellite offices, hiring more managers. But ultimately you've got to start to figure out a shift in the approach that lets the business scale and gets you out of the doing of this business. But that's really a challenge for people, especially if you get very fixated on it being done a particular way. Yeah, yeah.

And it's also scary to pick which new direction to go. I think that's part of what's great about programs like the one you and I were in, or your coaching or my coaching and bringing new thought to the table around what could work. And we love like the Angels and VCs in our community because they look at thousands of companies every year, so they're very quickly able to help the women in our program parse through various ideas and say, oh, that one. I've seen work. That one. Yeah, that one. You know, two of my companies tried that and it failed. That's invaluable, you know, having that external kick the tires, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So asking for help, finance strategy, what are some of the other things that you see people struggling?

The big one. You know, I mentioned that 85% of what we teach is non gender specific. It would just help any entrepreneur. But I think in that 15%, a big part of it is the mindset in the sense that, you know, if you read any of the books on the differences in genders approaching business, you often read that men will put themselves out there to do things that they're, you know, maybe only 60 to 70% sure they know how to do. Right. They'll just raise their hand and if they get Picked, they'll figure it out when they get there. But women tend to be a lot more perfectionist and type A. And if we raise our hand to do something, it's usually because we think we're 85 to 90% confident that we can do it. And that get in your way when you're scaling. Right. Because so much is about, you know, going out on a limb and then figuring, okay, I'll figure it out on my way there, or I'll take on the huge client and then figure out how I can meet those needs.

Well, you know, like, so for my entire life, I've been a straight white male.

Go ahead. Are you out in yourself, Bill, as a straight white male?

Right. And so when I'm in a business conversation from North America, America to boot. Right. So when I am in a business environment, business setting, when I read and look about business, I'm surrounded by very similar images, right. Like, I see myself and others, and yet I know that when I. Well, I think of, like when I've traveled, I. I was one immediately comes to mind. I was in an airport in Pakistan waiting for a flight, and I looked around. I was the only one who looked like me in hundreds of people waiting for this flight. And people had very kind of stern faces. And I suddenly got nervous and uncomfortable, right.

And then.

Somebody did something. Oh, there was a group of people trying to crowd around, charge their mobile phones. And I smiled at, like, wanting to get my plug in there too.

And.

And then the person broke out and smiled. Suddenly we all smiled and we were united by something common. But until that moment, I felt very uncomfortable and very out of place. And I imagine sometimes when I look around a sea of other folks who look like me and I see a woman sitting in the corner who doesn't seem to be connected to anyone, that the number of women in larger entrepreneurial settings is reduced now. It's changing, it's growing. But. But that feeling comfortable and confident about what you're attempting to do has got to be a significant issue that, you know, I just. I will never experience in that same way.

Thanks for sharing that. Yeah, that's a great, humbling moment, right. To realize, oh, I'm usually the majority and this must be what it feels like to be in the minority. And you're absolutely right that, you know, for women in business, I know that when I was pitching for venture capital, I raised 2.1 million for my company. I was constantly walking into rooms of all men and it was extra intimidating. Now it's hard for Anyone to raise capital. But when you walk in and no one looks like you, it certainly makes it that much harder. And I think that's why, you know, our community is growing so quickly. We've graduated 150 women. We have five women for every spot who apply. And that's because women see the value of learning in a community with, first of all, a female role model. You know, me, I've built a multimillion dollar business. I've been in the trenches. And then having a community of women where no topic is off, off limits and they can share, hey, I'm afraid to go ask for a loan at the bank. I'm not good at the finance part of my business or, you know, how do I get a mentor? How do I build an advisory council? And to do that in an environment where they feel fully supported by other women, going big, as we like to call it, right.

The kindred spirits, they feel like, hey, this person gets me. I get them. I know where they're coming from. They are dealing with the world in some similar way to the way that I'm dealing with the world.

Absolutely. And, you know, it's probably worth mentioning, Bill, because this year there's been so much in the press about MeToo and Time's up and all of the things that divide us, you know, men and women, that we have a number of men who are very active in our community as mentors, as supporters. We have a nonprofit, and many men have donated to the nonprofit. We have two awesome men on our board. I think, you know, both of them. Verne Harnish and John Tota. So this is not just women, you know, saying, okay, here we are, the sisters, lock arms and make it happen. There's a real shift happening in the entrepreneurial world where everyone wants to see more diversity. At least that's what I'm seeing, except for the few bad apples who get all the press. But I'm seeing a really good, you.

Know, there's definitely right and there's, you know, thousands of years of. Of a different story. So you talked about, in getting ready for the show, you talked about people trying to do everything and get everything right and all that, and that being a particular struggle for women in growing their business. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Well, sure. From having hundreds of conversations with women entrepreneurs across the country because we're national and our 150 graduates, I've seen these trends that there's really three big things that hold women back. Would you like to hear what those are?

Yeah, yeah.

Super. So the first one is what I call being the octopreneur, which is an entrepreneur with eight arms like an octopus. An octopreneur doing everything herself. And so many of the women who come to our program are in that phase of business where they're fixing the broken links on the website and they're sending out the invoices and they're making the sales and they're creating the product, and this just can't go on. It does not create a scalable business, and it's exhausting. So that's one big trend I'm seeing. Part of why they're not delegating and outsourcing, which is part of what gets them to scale, is a kind of perfectionism. And I do see that hand in hand with the entrepreneur, where the very thing that allowed them to start a business, which is they're really darn good at what they do. I mean, the women who come to our program are brilliant and amazing, but being so good at what they do can also become their Achilles heel, because then they can't find anyone who does as well as they do, and they don't want to hand off. And that perfectionism can really keep them from hiring and delegating and outsourcing. So that's the first thing, being an entrepreneur. The second hurdle, I think, to women scaling their businesses is not having access to the same kinds of mentors and networks that men sometimes naturally have access to, whether it's through having gone to business school or they just have communities of businessmen who are mentoring them. I know that when I went out to find mentors when I was at Little Pym, I found amazing mentors, and I'm so grateful to them. And they were all men. So there just haven't been that many women yet who've made it into the ranks of the multimillion dollar businesses. We can all name the big five, right, Like Sarah Blakely and Tory Burch and Arianna Huffington. But one level down from that, there are these millions of women who are making between 2 and 20 million in revenues very hard to get a hold of. And those are the women we've brought into our community as mentors to help the next generation.

Well, and at that stage, they're busy, and they don't necessarily think of themselves as being able and ready to mentor until you invite them.

Right, that's right. That's right. And yet when you give them the opportunity to mentor, they're all eager to do so because they know how hard it was to get to where they are. So we're lucky to have their generous input. So that's the first two things. We see women being octrepreneurs and kind of providing perfectionist, not handing off. The second thing is not having access to mentors and networks of people to help them get to the next level. And the third thing is a well documented lack of access to capital. So less than 2% of venture capital goes to women entrepreneurs. Women start their businesses with six times less funding than men do. Even when it's just, you know, funding through friends and family or online fundraising through a Kickstarter or something, women tend to start with a lot less. And that definitely holds them back because then they can't make those big bets or take risks on a big marketing campaign and do the kind of things that will help them scale up.

Right, right, right. Yeah. And so if those are the key challenges, then you're focused in on giving, having them shift the mindset, developing the skill set and expanding that network.

Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Yes. And they become part of our network, which already brings them into contact with angels and VCs and other ambitious women. We hear a lot from the women who come to us that, you know, they're women entrepreneurs, they have friends who are entrepreneurs, who are mainly guys, and then they have friends who are women entrepreneurs. But those few women tend to be doing lifestyle businesses. Because back to the stats, right? If 97% of women are making under a million, there are way more lifestyle businesses than women trying to go big. So if you're a woman trying to build a national or international company, raise capital, you know, get up to a million in revenues, you may not know any other woman doing that. I mean, we have women who are from, you know, South Dakota and North Carolina and Washington state, where they can't just go into New York City where I live and, you know, within the space of five blocks, have 10 different meetups and accelerators and programs that they could join. So that's part of what we're seeing getting in the way of women getting to those next levels.

Yeah, having access to an awareness of. Well, you know, it's funny because I had grown a number of companies as a CEO, founder, partner in a range of different industries. So I had pretty good business background. But when I shifted into being a full time coach, like making that work as a business, doing the work of coaching, I had some understanding for, but making that work presented new challenges to me. And right away another coach and friend, actually several, told me a variety of things. That were, that were not surprising. And I think probably it sounds like the same kind of thing. So the first thing they were like was use the existing network that you have and grow it. Like, go tell that group, find out how that group can help you with what you're up to and then figure out or hone in on the skills that you already have. So what is it that you already know how to do? You already know how to, to coach. You already know how to. So use that to then build the business, teach out, expand out from that and start to think like, how do I apply that business background to my work as a coach? And work on yourself at the same time that you are helping others. And it helped me to grow incredibly quickly as a coach and build that practice.

But when you started, did you feel 100% every day like you knew what you were doing?

No, I'm like, what should my engagement model look like? How should I price? Where does it begin and end? What shouldn't I do? What should I do? How many it started. Who's like, yeah.

When I started Million Dollar Women Masterclass, this online business program which now has its own portal and 150 graduates and you know, women from all over the country, it was like 12 of us, you know, and I like to say I held it together with bubble gum and dental floss. You know, it was like we were running it out of Gmail and Dropbox. But I'm all about the beta testing, you know, like just put it out there, see what works and what doesn't. I surveyed the heck out of my first members to find out what resonated and just kept building and changing it. You know, that's what's great about online businesses is you can keep adding things and tweaking and improving.

So we don't have a whole lot left before we've got. Tell us a little bit about what does that program look like, what does it include, how does it work? Work? Give a feel for that.

Sure. So we have a four month program, Million Dollar Women Masterclass. And when women join, first of all, we do put them through, you know, a bit of vetting to find out if they're the right fit. We're looking for women with scalable businesses who are coachable and also who aren't, who are ready really to make the changes. You know, I'm a big fan of the quote, if you want something you haven't had, you'll need to do something you've never done. Right. The answers to scaling up your business is Usually not doing a whole lot more of what you're doing now. Yeah, right. So that's our first step, is seeing if they're a good fit and then they join our four month program. There's a fee, but it's a fraction of what you'd pay for going to business school or getting any kind of, you know, coaching traditional terms. I remember spending over $60,000 on my own professional development over the course of about five years and I wanted to that way more affordable for the millions of women who need help. So then we get access really to three things through our program. The first is eight business modules that covers all the things they need to get right to have a more scalable, fundable and profitable business. So we talked about mindset, we talked about strategy, finance. We also have marketing, execution and efficiency, building powerful networks, all the things you need to make shifts in in your business so that it's more scalable. The second thing is they have a monthly meeting with a coach, million dollar women coach and a few other women in the program and they get an accountability partner so that they have someone to check in with all the way through as they're making these changes. And the third element is the mentors, these business and financial mentors we've gathered who want to see 1 million women get to 1 million revenues and make themselves available for one on one calls with our women to make sure that they're making the right decisions and get access to the right networks to scale up.

Well, I love that. So your mentor and the accountability partner are two distinct roles. Not the same.

Correct. Yeah. The accountability partners is another woman in the program and they're all rock stars. They're all building businesses that have already made it to 100,000, 500,000. You know, they're just rounding out their business skills and getting access to networks that they wouldn't have access to before.

Absolutely, yeah. Thanks so much for getting on the show with me today and telling your story, Julia.

Well, I'm so glad I got to have this time with you, Bill. It was really fun to reconnect and talk about scaling. Thanks for having me on, Bill. What a great time. Catching up with you.

Well, so Julia's program is MDW Masterclass. You'll find mdwmasterclass.com you can read more about it there. And of course you'll find me with a new show, new guest every week@scalingcoach.com you can also find our tools and worksheets and agendas and things like that, all downloadable there. Hundreds of blog posts and articles about all the challenges of scaling up and developing your leadership along the way. Scalingcoach.com all right, I want to give special thanks to our original growth guru, Vern Harnish. Our show is produced by Crystal Carson, an audio production by Podfly Productions. Our audio editing is done by Albert Burge and our show notes are compiled by Ein Codena with proofreading by Tim McGowan. If you got something good out of today's show, please share it, pass it along, share it with somebody else and send us a note. Let us know the parts you loved. You can email us info scalingcoach.com thanks again for listening and keep scaling up.

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