Gen X Women Founders: How Can WE of All Women on the Planet, Be Afraid of Change? | E140
8 Dec 2025 · 9 min
Kris Plachy argues Gen X women founders who fought for their own progress are now resisting change around trans inclusion and book bans. She says the pandemic exposed how Gen X leaders obstruct younger workers instead of listening to them, and urges established female founders to adapt rather than block progress.
Chapters
Foreign.
Talk about how we were a huge part of change. Right? We've been the implementers of a lot of the change that the generation before us pushed for. And now we have a new generation pushing for change on us. We have a generation that is. All of us went through Covid. That's not unique to anybody. But how we went through Covid was different if you were younger versus being you. And there's a lot of studies and they're going to keep doing them. And I know we all know this. And listen, if you're somebody who doesn't think Covid was real, I don't know what to tell you, because the impact is real. So if that's who you are, you probably don't even listen to this podcast. Respectfully. But regardless, I mean, we're just unearthing right now that the pandemic effect is going to be a long impact on a generation of people. And if we're going to be leading these people, then we better get with the program. Gen Xers have been in the forefront, to my dismay, of the invalidation, the cruelty, the exceptionism and the privilege that I am shocked by, given what we experienced. What am I talking about? So, remember I talked about the pendulum, right? We. We kind of gone both back and forth, right? And we go one way too far and we go another way, this way. Right? And so I do think we're in a little bit of that scenario. But what we have is, as I've mentioned, we're the ones who raised the kids who now are the ones who are struggling in mass with mental illness, suicide, drug use, buffering with phones, social media, pornography. We are, are part of this problem. But what do we want to do is we want to blame all the things that happen outside of us for the problem. But the truth is, we're in here. We have to look at that. So what have we now done? And I'm not saying all of us, so please listen. I'm. I don't fall in this category. I'm. I'm watching it, but I'm watching how people are so afraid of change that they're insulating, they're othering. They're othering trans youth, they're othering lg, T, P, Q, men, women, boys and girls. They're demanding we prevent children from reading books. There's a real effort from the Generation X population to prevent change. And the irony of that is we've benefited. The fact that we can even stand up and have a voice to be heard is because we benefited from others who couldn't and did. And yet now, given the opportunity to embrace a younger population of people who are also now pushing, who are stretching. What we want to define being human is in terms of relationships and compassion and love and acceptance. I'm watching my sisters, my Gen X sisters, try and smush it down, just like men did to them when they showed up at work and wanted to be as good as they were or demanded the same salary as they did. And I'm worried about that. Is that just the rules of generational growth? Is that just what happens? Is this part of being a human? I don't know. But I really am disappointed because we as a generation have fueled so much opportunity for so many of our sisters and our children that I don't understand the absolute, outright, audacious advocacy to now stunt it for others for what? You can't stop it, and you look like a fool trying. But you know what you can do? If you're a real, true, deeply meaninged leader, you can listen to it. You can understand what's happening. You can get familiar with the needs of a younger work population. You can decide if you want to be a part of that anymore or not. But I see a huge opportunity when we listen, because I know, listen. I get on my calls with my clients, and I'm right there with you, right? Some of the things I hear that people do at work now, it is, I find initially frustrating, right? Like somebody. This was just this week we talked about. Somebody came to an interview, and her first question is, you know, what emotional support do you provide your employees? Right? Like, we're all like, excuse me, you could get that somewhere else. Like, you just need to come to.
Work and do your job. I don't know what to tell you, right? That's our innate response. But why is that happening so prevalently? Why are so many people so disinterested in. They don't care if you fire them. Have you noticed? They're like, it's fine. They've reinstituted a work life balance conversation that we. We actually had one, but we sort.
Of lied about it.
They're like, dead serious. They're like, it's fine. I'm gonna live out of vans. I'm gonna live in a van.
I'm gonna travel. It's such a different experience right now.
We have an opportunity to either harness that because, you know, what isn't gone.
You know, it's not gone from any of this, is the creativity, is the brilliance, is the intellectualism, is the knowledge, is the Passion is the determination is the curiosity. None of that's gone. Why? Because they're humans just like we were and they are innovating.
I just heard somebody the other day.
Who created a cream.
He's like 16.
He created some sort of cream people.
Could put on their skin to prevent skin cancer. This is a generation that's going to.
Save your life when you're 80 and.
You care what books they read and.
You care who they're married to.
Get over it. Like what are we doing? And if we have to redesign the.
Way that we have our businesses set up.
Let's go.
You can't be afraid of progress and you have to be a leader who is willing to embrace it all. If you can't, you won't find the people because you know what they're really good at? Sniffing out leaders who don't support them. So I feel incredibly passionate about this and I obviously you heard me and I have fought myself on ways to communicate this in different ways, but this was the proper artery for me and here's why. I have a lot of clients that we all sit on all sorts of spectrums of philosophy and belief systems and religion. No religion, culture, whatever, all of it. I love that everybody that's in my intimate circle of clients, what we share is open mindedness and a collective aspiration to explore and understand ourselves first before we place judgment on others. To ask and seek and pursue curiosity instead of get immediately into judgment and fear. And I think this generation of women is so well suited for that because we are already in terrain nobody was in before. So the need that you have, if that's you at this point in your Life, if you're 555 and you're feeling like the world's falling apart, let me tell you something. Every generation before you said that, so now you just sound like your grandpa. But that progress that he thought was destroying the world and the family and the, the family unit and his religion and all the other things that he thought was.
He thought that was going to women working. You think that's he? They thought that. And now we have people who say the same thing. Don't we learn? No. Progress pushes us forward.
Forward. There's always problems with humanity. Good to know.
But what we know for sure is.
Women working and making more money has not been the demise of society, despite people wanting you to believe that. But that's going to lead us to.
Our very last session, which is why.
Women, Gen X women carry such a heavy emotional load. I'll see you in the next one.
Hey, if you are a female founder, business owner running a company and you are, you know you've achieved some success, right? You're running over seven figures, you grow a little bit every year. Your team is growing. I know a lot about you. And one of the things I know about you for sure is that you don't have a lot of time.
And you also might be a little.
Tired of everybody who wants to talk at you and not listen to you. So I want to encourage you to join the visionary CEO lead. We're going to be putting together a pretty powerful opportunity for you to work with me exclusively in some part private coaching, while also getting all of the tools and resources that you need to.
Be better at leading your team so.
Your business can continue to grow.
But you don't have to continue to.
Literally expand how much you're doing all the time. So I hope you'll check it out, add your name. More information will be available soon.
