Lisa Wang discusses founding SheWorks, a platform for women entrepreneurs, and shares advice on building strong support networks and mastering foundational health and nutrition. She addresses gender dynamics in entrepreneurship and the importance of male allies in the space.
Chapters
Do you guys have any questions? I don't know how this works.
Yeah.
Could you talk about how you started SheWorks and what was the idea and your first steps in doing something so powerful? Yeah. So I obviously had my own experiences as a founder realizing how much more difficult it was as a woman to be fundraising. And when I was going to a lot of women's events to try and meet other female entrepreneurs like me, I noticed that women's events tend to be inspirational and kind of fluffy. Sometimes disorganized happy hours. And I was like, I don't have any time to waste right now. I'm trying to build my company. And if that's gonna happen, all I need to do is learn the right skills, meet the right investors, meet the right mentors so that I can get the capital to build my company. And I want to be around other ambitious women on the same growth trajectory. And so I couldn't find that and decided to create that space. And it started as a passion project that really built up momentum because we focused on the quality and caliber of the mentors, the quality and caliber of the content, and were able to grow. And I ended up moving into that full-time. Do you have any locations Is it mostly just living online, or do you have offices? Yeah, our office is in New York. So I actually am from New York, and I'm just here for a couple weeks. And I'm actually here because I'm launching something called Master Your Being Workshop. So it's a master workshop about learning how to conquer your fears, how to conquer your emotions, because your fears obviously affect your actions, your emotions affect your decisions, and Until you can figure that out and how to master those, you can't really focus on the external things like building your brand or building your business because everything starts internally. So I'm here to build that workshop. And we have a SheWorks roundtable that's at Runway Incubator on Wednesday with the co-founder of Match.com who's now built a couple other companies after that. And she's talking about how she's built and scaled her company and how she was able to get the right investors. Yeah. What can we do to help us then? Yeah. I love that question because I think, well, one of the things that I noticed was, like, on the news feeds, if you guys see your news feeds where you see everyone doing #MeToo, a lot of your female friends, and I saw a really powerful hashtag that a couple guys started, and I think more and more, but #IHave. I don't know if you guys have seen that, but it was something that was like, I have talked about my conquests of women, and I have actually been in the locker room and called a girl a whore. I have done all these things. So, I think we, One of the things that I talk about is what you don't know. So when we talk about opposing sides, black versus white, men versus women, old versus young, it's really hard to have those conversations because it's— people feel very defensive. And I think if we come in with, one, the notion that there are just things that I don't know and I don't understand, like, can you tell me, and I'm open to hearing what it is that you don't know. Or what it is that I don't know. So I had a friend who told me, he's like, 2 months ago, he's like, I didn't know what mansplaining was. And so, do you guys know what mansplaining is? Okay. So mansplaining is just this phenomenon of often being talked over and— Oh, let me explain. I've had a couple of women basically repeat the same thing she said, but I'm a man.
Yeah. That's true. Yeah.
Exactly. That's why I said you did that. Yeah, so that was a great illustration. And it's one thing to be aware of it yourself, but it's another thing to have the courage to be like, hey man, Like, she was just talking. And I think that's the biggest thing, because a lot of times the psychology of it is people listen to people who are like them. And this is often the challenge with women's groups, with minority groups, where you can talk all day about the challenges that we're facing, but until the guy talking Talks to his friend or talks to his peer or his colleague, it still sounds like, okay, we're in a corner complaining. And so the first thing is just asking, hey, what is it that you experience? And I'm totally open to it because I know that there are a lot of things that I don't know. And I think even just providing that space It's like it starts with awareness, and the second thing is it continues with advocating for and supporting. Because I think it's really easy for— it's easier for guys to talk to women sometimes about like, hey, what are you feeling? But it's even harder when you're in a room full of guys to seem like you're weak or you're defending. I think that's the point in the moment where you feel like you can speak up that is the most powerful. Is that helpful?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
I have a question.
Oh yeah.
In your talk, you did a comparison with a tree.
With what?
With a tree.
Yes.
Yes. You say that you have to focus on yourself to grow.
Yeah.
You have to see your roots.
Yep.
In a human being, what can be those roots?
I mean, the first thing is when I was— it fits because it's like water, nutrients, love, and connection. So one of the things that I started noticing for myself is that when I get really deep into building my company and I'm just super stressed out all the time, I forget sometimes to eat or sometimes to work out. sometimes. And this is just like very basic water, nutrients, and health. That's often, I think, the number one thing that founders let go of as they're just so busy.
So it's about having the balance?
I'm not very good at balance. But in an ideal world, it is about being balanced. But I think it's the very basics are Having connection. So it's easy when you're in kind of your tunnel vision building your company. You're like, it's just me. It's just me and my company. But making sure that you continue that connection and have that support group and have those diverse opinions outside of what you're doing. So that's connection. And then 2 is just, honestly, it's water, nutrients, and health. Because as my mom likes to remind me a lot, if you don't have your health, you literally can't do anything. What advice would you give to a young woman who wants to be an entrepreneur?
