Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon. I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a nonprofit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit SoundsTrueFoundation.org.
In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Iman Oubou. Iman Oubou is a Moroccan American entrepreneur, a former beauty queen, and a published scientist on a mission to change the women’s media landscape through her diverse experience with business, pageantry, and STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Iman Oubou noticed gender disparities in the workforce and an omnipresent bias across printed and digital media. She founded sway Swaay.com, an all-in-one publishing platform for women to champion the voices of female changemakers through the power of storytelling. With Sounds True, Iman Oubou is releasing a new book. It’s called The Glass Ledge: How to Break Through Self Sabotage, Embrace Your Power, and Create Your Success.
Iman Oubou found herself internalizing many of the limiting beliefs that women often encounter when we’re in leadership roles in business. That power is really a masculine force, that we need to be likable, and we have to please people if we want to be successful, that competition for women is just not healthy and more. Iman investigates each one of these beliefs and more in a journey both to free herself and also to free other women business leaders so that we can become unstoppable forces of leading for good. Here’s a brave, soul-searching business leader, Iman Oubou.
Iman, I know you were born and raised in Morocco and that you came to the United States when you were 15. Can you tell us a little bit about from the age of 15 coming to the U.S. the journey you’ve been on that led to the writing of The Glass Ledge?
Iman Oubou: Yes, absolutely. I was born and raised in Morocco. At the age of 15 years old, my family decided to move to Colorado in the pursuit of the American dream. At that point, I had never really visited the U.S. nor spoken English. I wasn’t at all familiar with the culture or anything for that matter. All I had known at that point was growing up in Morocco.
As you can imagine, it was a pretty tough transition for me especially as a teenager who had to make peace with leaving life as I knew it behind and moving into a country where I felt like I didn’t really belong.
It wasn’t actually long after that move that I began struggling with depression. At the time, I didn’t really know much about mental health, I didn’t understand that I was going through depression. And what made things worse is that I also didn’t have many people to talk to about it. I was lucky that my aunt went through a similar transition when she was a bit older. I think she was 20 years old at the time, so she was one of the only people that helped me a little bit go through that transition.
But it was really tough on me and that’s actually where I started falling in love with the idea of journaling and writing and I gravitated a lot towards poetry for some reason, but it felt like that’s the only outlet I had to really purge all those feelings that I was feeling inside, all that confusion that I couldn’t communicate and really put it to paper to almost drained my brain from everything I was going through.
I was forced to adapt into a new lifestyle, a new culture, I had to learn a completely new language and a new way of learning as well because going to schools in Morocco and being under the European educational system, it’s completely different from education here in the U.S. So, I had to learn how to do a lot of things differently, even how to add and subtract. It’s a different way of doing math here than it is back there. So, a lot of learning how to do things from scratch and unlearning how I used to do things before.
Along with depression in high school, I started developing insecurities around my self-image and, most importantly, shame for not speaking perfect English, which I think instilled in me what I call the immigrant mentality in my work ethic. I had to work twice as hard to stand out in a worthy and positive light.
Eventually, I finished high school, went to college to study biochemistry and molecular biology. As a child, I had always dreamt of potentially curing cancer or having some kind of impact like that in the world. So, automatically, I thought, “OK. Becoming a doctor is a good path for my career.” So, I went to school for that specifically. I went on to do medical missions around the world as well, including in South Sudan and Morocco, Ecuador, Kenya, and then went on to graduate school for bioengineering, before I got my first job as a cancer research scientist, specifically focusing on melanoma and carcinoma. And then, from there on, I moved to New York and decided to explore the other side of healthcare, which is more around communications, investor relations, public relations.
Simultaneously, I decided to follow my mom’s advice and participate in beauty pageants which she thought was a great outlet for me to not only find a new hobby, but also explore my “feminine side,” which she thought I wasn’t doing enough of, and which was a really interesting experience for me because, growing up as a tomboy, pageantry was never really in my thoughts at all. But going through that process, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it as well, it has completely changed me and my perspective and had really helped me figure out myself, who I was, what I wanted to do, what was my purpose, and that’s what started pushing me towards a different career path.
Shortly after winning the title of Miss New York, United States in 2015, I decided to leave my job and start a podcast which ultimately turned to be a publishing platform brand that I’ve called now Swaay.com. And that’s really where I’m at today. And then, of course, the book came shortly after that. But that’s basically, long story long, the path I took since my parents decided to move us from Morocco to the United States.
TS: Tell me a little bit about your discovery of The Glass Ledge. I think many of us of course have heard of the glass ceiling, this invisible upper barrier that prevents women and other people who aren’t white men from rising to the highest levels of achievement. But what’s the glass ledge and how does it relate to the glass ceiling?
IO: Yes. Well, so the glass ledge really represents the self-imposed glass ceilings we, especially as women, subconsciously set for ourselves and end up having the most impact on us.
For me, the road to shattering glass ceilings which I think I’ve been conditioned to do ever since my move here as a teenager left me teetering on the edge of my own personal glass ledge as I fell victim to internalized depression and self-sabotage.
I specifically came into discovering this concept after my company, SWAAY, in 2018 suffered a major setback due to the loss of a life-changing investment. At the time, my life was completely flipped upside down, as I was forced to basically reprioritize my strategy for recovering from this failure, as I called it back then. I had officially hit rock bottom. I was in a lot of debt, I was broke, I was unemployed, and I was battling severe anxiety disorder. And this is shortly after I thought I had made it and that I had finally found my purpose and that everything was going forward in the right way and that I’m supposed to be unlocking more of my potential as opposed to going backwards and failing again and hitting rock bottom and starting from scratch and losing my company and being lost into what I want to do.
At the time, I didn’t really know what to do and how to move forward. It’s not like losing a job where you just go and apply for another job; I had put all of my financial resources, emotional resources into building that company and then overnight, our path was completely flipped.
Diving deeper into a state of reflection, my initial instinct was to blame society and the external circumstances I had to go through as a female founder, which I was very vocal about. Everything from sexism to sexual harassment, pageant bias, lack of support and resources. This is not anything new to many female entrepreneurs.
But while reflecting on these shortcomings and also journaling my thoughts, which I’m very big on, my perspective began to shift a little bit from “Yes, things should be different, and it’s not fair, and I should be treated better. I’m as capable as my other male counterparts. Why am I not getting the right funding or the right resources, have the right support?” to “What can I do differently for myself right now to change my life, change my circumstances, and potentially pay it forward?”
I realized that in order for me to get back on my feet and fight for my business and for the life that inspires me, I would have to first turn inwardly to dismantle the limiting belief system and eliminate the self-defeating behaviors that have been holding me back.
It took a lot of, I would say, self-work and courage to admit to myself that I do have responsibility in the way things panned out and that I should be taking accountability for where I’m at and that I’m the only one who can actually turn that around. It’s not investors who invested in me or the ones who didn’t invest in me. It’s not my team. It’s not my boyfriend. It’s not my family. It’s not society that’s going to come and save me. I have to get back up and really turn things around for myself and stop adopting strategies that are holding me back.
Also, I realized that I had internalized a lot of that rejection and outside expectations that became my narrative, that became my truth. I almost started seeing myself under the light of “Yes, maybe after all, I’m just a beauty queen with a PowerPoint and a dream. Maybe they are right, maybe I am just too pretty to be a CEO,” or whatever those comments were that I was met with every time I went out there to continue growing my business. I started subconsciously adopting them as my own truth and believing it without really realizing it.
That’s where I started discovering the concept of the glass ledge being like most women, including myself, are conditioned to constantly be out there, shattering glass ceilings, and chasing outside validation and whatnot as opposed to really looking inwards and truly getting to know who we are at the core and acting from a place of alignment and self-assurance as opposed to panic and fear and really trying to do what society is expecting out of us.
TS: Now, it’s interesting throughout The Glass Ledge, you point to many of the inequities, and you offer lots of metrics way beyond the pay gap that point to how women founders and women in business are not given the same opportunity and yet, you seem to point to the place of power being the inner work we’re doing while we’re simultaneously changing the culture. And I wonder if you can talk about that, that combination of working internally and externally at the same time what that’s like for you.
IO: Yes, absolutely. And I feel like what I do in my work and what I choose to build my business in is a true testimony with that is in the sense that I am a big advocate of raising awareness around the many external barriers that women face, whether it’s a pay gap, whether it’s just maternity policies in the workplace, being able to access funding and resources and mentorship. That’s all out there now.
I think more and more women are speaking up on it, which is amazing, because I don’t think it’s been as vocal prior to probably 2016. Many women were holding back from speaking their truth and what they’re going through in real time, and I think the more we elevate those voices, the better. However, I think it’s very important to be mindful not to be stuck in that echo chamber when now being vocal about those external barriers become an adaption of the victimhood mindset because that can happen and that happened to me where I felt like I’m constantly fighting and I became angry and defensive and just blameful.
And then, slowly but surely, I was stuck in this mindset that I created for myself where this activism to raise awareness around women’s empowerment and women’s issues became more obsessed with what we can do than what we can do and then ultimately, my own self perspective was defined by those gender-related adversities and wounds. I was like this warrior from the outside, but then also from the inside, all I was thinking waking up in the morning is “I’m going to go fight, fight, fight.”
But with the book, what I really advocate for is that let’s leave behind that era where we’re constantly fighting to bring down external barriers and let’s expand our self-perspective so that we can collectively achieve that freedom for ourselves and then for our collective demographic. And then it’s important to check in with ourselves on different themes that I talked about in the book whether it’s your relationship with power or how likeability affect you how you show up every day at work or in your personal life, what does authenticity mean and how does it differ from your adapting self, what is your presentation and appearance look like, do you show up as the leader you want or are you letting the outside world dictate how you should show up and what your appearance and presentation should be.
Similarly, confidence and conflict. Are you comfortable with conflict? How do you handle emotions? Do you let them control you? Or do you have a way of approaching your triggers? Do you know what your triggers are?
All of these questions we don’t stop often to ask ourselves these because it’s easier to ignore it than actually sitting down and doing the self-work needed to really show up with that self-assurance and that unshakable conviction in your values and your mission in life.
So, yes, the book is mindful to acknowledge those statistics and research and external barriers we all are aware of, but we don’t want to get too caught up in not because that’s actually going to continue derailing us as opposed to helping us create change. The real change is created internally first before you can pay it forward externally.
TS: Now, help me understand what happened with your company, SWAAY. You start The Glass Ledge by writing about this experience of having this investor pull out in 2018 and the difficulty you were in, but here we are, with the publication of your new book and SWAAY seems to be going strong. What happened?
IO: Yes. Well, I think I made a decision at that point that I would never put myself in a situation again where the success of my company, my life, and the success of my life mission is dependent on someone else or some other factors that can overnight pull out, and then poof, everything’s gone.
That was a hard lesson in business, too, in the sense that with the startup world, a lot of especially in new founders—and this is my first company technically—so I was still a new founder really understanding and navigating the world of not only launching a brand and a business, but also raising the resources for it.
I was under the impression that I could continually raise funding and it’s going to keep coming until I don’t need it anymore. But the reality is you don’t raise funding to survive. You don’t raise funding to keep a company afloat. You raise funding to scale a proof of concept that is already, hopefully by that point, sustainable and generates enough revenue to continue surviving on its own with or without funding.
I wasn’t in that position. I was in a very vulnerable position in the sense that if we don’t raise funding, then the company shuts down because I didn’t at that point realize that I didn’t have a substantial revenue stream set in place. I had a great vision, I had a great platform, I had a great community, but I never really stopped and validated the business model behind all of that.
That was a very hard lesson to learn as a businessperson—don’t put yourself in a position where you’re vulnerable to a point where if funding doesn’t come through then you shut down overnight. Even most successful startups who have raised multimillions in funding, they continue to be in those positions; and I see those being talked about every day in the media as some company just raised 150 million, and then a few months later, they shut down because they couldn’t raise more.
Since I went through it at a much lower scale, thankfully, I was able to still continue to run the company as a one-woman show because I didn’t have the means to hire a bigger team at the time. If anything, I had to lay off my team.
Instead of me going and shutting down a company and telling investors, “Sorry, I tried, and it’s not working out,” I took a step back and focused mostly on, like I said, self-work as opposed to business work because I feel like my initial instinct was “All right, let’s go back to the drawing board and talk about business revenue,” and all that. But I just felt like I wasn’t in a good place mentally, emotionally, and psychologically to be able to focus on that unless I unlearn a lot of things I saw myself as.
So, for that summer, the three months after that happened, I really focused on taking a step back, journaling, I went through therapy, I understood what I did wrong, and why I wasn’t confident enough in those business meetings and those investor meetings to pull through the funding we needed. I explored my relationship with power because I just realized I was so uncomfortable when I could sense a power imbalance in the room.
I basically couldn’t be a successful CEO unless I went through those few months of self-work. And after that, I was able to finally focus on revenue. A few months later, the company was up and running again, we were generating revenue, we were profitable, because, of course, I cut down a lot of expenses and I was able to be scrappy, and continuously going to put strategies in place to grow in a sustainable way without focusing on funding.
Instead of chasing investors, I started pouring myself into the community I was building, understanding our users, understandings the contributors that use SWAAY as a platform to elevate their voices. “What are their pain points? How can I show up better for you? What features would you want on the platform? What would you pay for? What would you not pay for? What kind of support can we lend you?”—that kind of work I didn’t do because I was too busy chasing investors. And it’s true, when you’re fundraising, it’s a full-time job. You can’t be completely immersed in your business while also fundraising. So I had to pick one or the other. And early on in my brand launch and when I launched a business, I picked going down the investor route and that’s what my biggest focus was, and I didn’t focus enough on the value I as a CEO and what my company brought to the table.
That’s exactly what I focused on after the whole incident in 2018. And in hindsight, it was the best thing that’s ever happened to me because it forced me to reevaluate how I was showing up and what strategies I was adopting that weren’t working and how to essentially create a sustainable business that can last much longer than the startup culture.
TS: For those of us who are hearing about SWAAY—S-W-A-A-Y—.com for the first time, can you share a brief overview of what happens at Swaay.com?
IO: Yes, sure. So, Swaay.com is a self-publishing platform that helps elevate underrepresented voices by helping with content sharing, helping our contributors (or what we call members) tell their stories better, and really share their message.
Not only do we provide an outlet and a distribution channel but also we have an editorial support system that members can access when they joined the platform.We have content strategists that meet with our members on a regular basis. They have unlimited amount of time to request a meeting or one on one coaching session with content strategists, editors, even ghostwriter services for people who don’t have time to create the content that they need to continuously grow their brand.
Unlike a Medium, for example, or LinkedIn Publishing where you basically just have the outlet, we also provide the content creation and editorial support that I think many creators are struggling with. That’s the overview. Yes.
TS: Iman, for someone who in their life right now is needing a rebirth of some kind, they’re in the dark part of the cycle, they haven’t come out yet, what would you recommend to help them have the resilience that you’ve had with SWAAY?
IO: Yes. That’s a good question. I think especially following the pandemic—and I think a lot of people have gone through that phase and maybe some people are still going through it—and I will say, myself, I also went through it again during the pandemic just because I didn’t know how to deal with uncertainty, but I think the first thing to remember is just surrender to the events that are taking place. And I know our immediate instinct usually when you’re going through a rough patch is to fight it, is to right away—especially with me, I’m a Virgo; I like to be in control of my life and circumstances and I don’t like uncertainty. So, right away, we start fighting where we are and want to find immediate solutions to change things around us. That’s pretty normal.
I think the best thing you could do is take a step back and reevaluate where you are and why you are in this situation in an objective way, which I know is hard to do. But that will probably give you the most insights into what is needed to happen or what can you do to change your circumstances.
For me, for example, in 2018, and even in 2020, I took a step back and I promised to fill my days with more, I would say, spiritual and thoughtful activities as opposed to picking up calls and calling more investors or calling a business advisor. It’s not practical business activities that I took on, but I really wanted to talk more about what role that I play in those circumstances and how can I now take control over not making the same mistakes and switching and changing my path for the better.
Like I said, I think surrendering might be a counterintuitive approach to changing your circumstances when you’re going through a rough patch. But it has been the most helpful, I would say, drastic way for me to really change my situation.
TS: Just to pick up on a thread, you said, during the pandemic, when all of us and I think during this time right now in our collective human civilization, we’re faced with so much uncertainty, uncertainty about the climate crisis we’re in, political instability, so many things. How did surrendering help you, if it did, with facing uncertainty? Or how have you become more to use, Pema Chodron’s phrase, comfortable with uncertainty?
IO: I think with the uncertainty, the biggest problem with that is that we put pressure on ourselves to have it figured out and that’s really, I think, where the biggest problem with dealing with uncertainty is, that a lot of us are conditioned to always be doing something. We’re always planning, we’re always calling people, making plans. We always want to feel busy and productive, but sometimes, it’s actually unproductive to just be throwing spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.
With surrendering, I feel that it helps you be more creative and focus on the things that are going to be actually fruitful and life changing as opposed to just filling your mind and your schedule with just things to do to feel like you’re doing something about your situation.
That’s what it did for me, is that I was able to also learn how to not put the wrong pressure on myself and how to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I think the sooner we make peace with that the better we can handle failures, the better we handle things that come at us that we weren’t prepared for. When you learn that process, and again, I think that process takes time and your transformation takes time, but I think the more you put yourself in practice to know how to be uncomfortable and be OK with it, the more you will be accepting the things that come into your life that you can’t control.
Nobody could control the pandemic, right? If you also got laid off, you can control that. We learned that a lot of things were outside of our control, and we have two choices. We either dwell on it and let that affect us or we take a step back and dive into a deeper state of reflection and think productively. Also, being OK with taking your time with it. Not every change has to happen overnight. And that’s something I personally struggle with because I like things to happen almost every month. For me, I was brought up in this, especially after we moved here in the U.S.—and like I said, early on in our interview, I had this immigrant mentality where I constantly need to be doing something. I can’t just sit back and reflect. I need to be achieving more, I need to add more lines to my resume, I need to raise more money, I need to make more money, I need to write more books, I need to meet more people.
And living in New York also doesn’t help with that mentality because you’re comparing yourself to everybody else’s schedule, everybody else on social media posting about all the amazing things that they’re doing, all the features they’ve been getting in the press, all the books they’ve written. There’s a constant race you put yourself in and you subconsciously don’t realize that now you’re on this hamster wheel that’s never going to end.
It’s very important to take a step back and live your life according to who you are at the core not what people expect out of you, not by comparison to what others are doing. Make sure that what you’re filling your schedule with, the strategies you’re adopting, and the things that you want to do are because they’re aligned with who your authentic self is as opposed to what you think you should be doing to keep up with the Joneses.
[Advertisement]
TS: Hey, Insights at the Edge listeners, I have some great news for you. Season Two of the Michael Singer podcast is now available. In these free sessions, you’re invited to join the best-selling author of The Untethered Soul and the new follow up book, Living Untethered, as he shows us how to free ourselves from the limitations of what he calls the voice in our head and return to the depth and richness of our natural selves. You can learn more at michaelsingerpodcast.com. That’s michaelsingerpodcast.com.
[End of Advertisement]
I wanted to just track back for a moment, because you said this in passing, in that when you were seeking funding for SWAAY and you were talking to various investors, an investor actually said to you, “Do you think you might be too pretty to be a CEO?” Did that actually happen?
IO: Oh, yes. That definitely happened. And there were other comments too along those lines where I also met with a marketing agency. At the time, I’m like, “OK, I want maybe to hire a marketing agency to handle SWAAY social media and marketing campaigns.” The head of the agency said, “I think instead of creating a whole new social channel for SWAAY, why don’t you just use your personal brand and your personal channels to market SWAAY, because people love to see a pretty face talk.” My boyfriend was with me at the time and we both looked at each other and I was hoping that it would be like, “I’m just kidding. That was totally a joke.” But they were completely dead serious.
It was a room full of young men. Men who created the Elite Daily, men who basically were geniuses behind the biggest marketing campaigns and the biggest viral media brands. So, I thought I was in the right room being able to partner with genius minds like that to be able to take my brand to the next level. But again, I found myself in a situation where the focus of the talk was more about my physical appearance and “my pretty face” as opposed to the business I’m building, as opposed to the mission I’m on. It was very discouraging to hear both investors and businesspeople, marketing people, defer to that every time I would walk into a room to pitch a business idea or a partnership.
Again, I can’t help but wonder if it’s because I have a beauty pageant past, where automatically people associate me with a beauty business or that’s the conversation where I’m just another pretty face showing up or if it’s just really even how other women are facing these kinds of discriminatory comments. I don’t know where that all came from, but I know that it had completely affected me and my self-confidence when it comes to being a successful businesswoman one day.
Some investors said to never speak about my beauty pageant background because I will never be taken seriously, and I took that to heart, and I stopped actually talking about my beauty pageant achievements even though they meant a lot to me. I talked about this in the book a lot, that I think my background in beauty pageants have actually made me the woman I am today, which I’m very proud of, and it was very sad to not be able to speak on that and be proud of it. So, yes, it happened in so many ways.
TS: A couple of questions. If someone today made a comment like that to a prospective investor or partner, what would you say?
IO: I would take it as an opportunity to educate them on, one, that’s not an appropriate thing to say, and two, I will take back my power and say why I am not just a pretty face and “Let’s revert to why I’m here. Let’s talk about the big business opportunities I’m here to pitch you. If that’s not what you’re interested in, then I’ll just walk away,” and I get up and walk away. But I couldn’t really think about all of this back then when I just didn’t have the experience.
TS: You said you’re very proud of your beauty pageantry experience, and I think some people from the outside might look at beauty pageants and say, “God, that’s just an objectification of women. Why would a woman be proud for having participated in it?” But now I’m talking to you from the inside, from your experience. So, tell me what it was like being in the beauty pageants, and did you feel objectified?
IO: Well, I think before doing beauty pageants I was on the same wavelength when it comes to thinking about beauty pageants as shallow and something that will objectify women because all I had known up until then was what I saw on TV, and it’s just a few pretty women walking around on stage in a bikini, and that was all I knew about it.
But, for me, my perspective shifted because I personally experienced the growth and the self-improvement that I had gained from a process like that. What most people don’t often see or know about is what it actually takes to get up on that stage and walk around and let people judge you or be able to answer an onstage question in 30 seconds, be able to sell yourself to judges in under two minutes of being interviewed.
A lot of that is a very, I would say, I call it a boot camp for life. I learned so many of my strengths and skills today as a businesswoman from the pageant world, and that includes how to interview, how to sell yourself, how to even figure out what your values are, what you would do as a change agent when you win and have a title like that.
A title in the beauty pageant world is much more than just wearing a crown and waving at people and taking pretty photos. It’s really figuring out what platform are you going to fight for, what are the different events or sharing work that you can be a part of, how do you raise money as well for these charities, how do you continue raising awareness for issues that you care about, how do you show up as a change agent and a role model to the young women in your community that look up to you.
There’s all this other aspect that actually makes the bulk of what a title holder is that most media outlets don’t show or talk about, and I got to experience it myself; and really, it made me the businesswoman I am today, because it’s a lesson in branding, it’s a lesson in business, it’s a lesson in philanthropy, it’s a lesson in confidence, poise, communication. It’s all bundled up into one main experience, not to mention competition and sisterhood.
And I talk a lot about how prior to pageantry I didn’t really experience sisterhood at all in my life. I grew up with a brother, and most of my friends were actually boys. Growing up, I was a tomboy, I mentioned earlier, and I was afraid of the idea of being surrounded by beautiful smart women because I was so insecure, and I always thought that would automatically mean cattiness and competition and sabotaging each other as opposed to elevating each other.
When I entered my first beauty pageant, I was totally expecting that that’s what it would be because we’re all competing for one title. Only one woman is going to walk out from that competition with that crown on her head so automatically that means everyone else is competing against each other and wants that crown, so we’re not necessarily collaborating or helping each other. But it was completely the opposite.
I think that that’s not talked about enough and now that I have experienced it, it’s a completely different experience from what I had initially thought about beauty pageants. It’s not as shallow as they make it look.
TS: One of the statistics I’ve read in The Glass Ledge—and I had no idea about this, but it relates directly what we’re talking to when it comes to raising money—is that women founders only receive something like two and a half percent, somewhere between two and three percent of the investment dollars that are distributed in any given year. Two to three percent, that’s it, for women founders. I was totally shocked by that. I had no idea. And partially, I thought, “Oh, I’m glad I never knew that.” I’m glad I never calculated that because it might have made me a lot more nervous in talking to investors, but I wasn’t even aware of it.
What I realized, Iman, and I just want to talk to you about this, is I think—this is just me being confessional here for a moment, as someone who’s been an out lesbian since I was 20 years old—I’ve never really identified with the male gaze like, “It’s on me.” “It’s not on me.” “I have to play to it.” “I have to not play to it.” “I have to care about what they’re thinking, but I don’t care what about their thinking.” It’s just never been on my radar. It’s not part of my world.
In hearing your story, I realized in a way I’ve been insulated from a lot of the challenges that you’ve had to face, and I wonder if you can just talk about that some and perhaps if lesbian business founders in a way are saved some of this pain and struggle.
IO: Yes. I think that number that you mentioned, two percent, I think it’s a lot lower for also I would say women in the LGBTQ community and even just the LGBTQ community as a whole.
That’s another issue, again, is that there’s such a big underrepresentation in the startup world of all these amazing potential founders that are not getting the right resources to potentially become the next unicorn founder. I think there was probably one or two women who have ever created a unicorn at this point, which is very sad. But again, I think you can’t be a multibillion-dollar founder unless you’re able to raise multimillions of dollars and that’s, again, the cycle that we’re stuck in.
You’re right. I think those numbers, when you look at them, they’re so discouraging, and that’s exactly what happened to me, is that not only was I personally struggling with the issue of fundraising as a young woman, but also, I saw that that number wasn’t—there’s no hope. Why even try? It’s not like other women are doing it. I’m like, “OK, I could see, I could see inspiration and I have a lot more chances to do it.” But I think when you look at that number, you’re like, “Why even try?” Right? And instead of continuing to fight for it, you just want to retract and take a different route, which again is going to keep you as a small business or mid-level business that’s never going to scale up to a point of being a multimillion-dollar startup.
I’m hoping that it’s changing. But I don’t know how fast, and I don’t know if it is really changing as fast as we need it to, especially when you look at the numbers in terms of how many women are starting businesses these days—it’s at a faster rate than men. Somehow, we’re still getting less funding even though we’re starting more businesses than ever so.
TS: When you were talking about your own inner investigation, your own process of self-awareness about the glass ledge and your own unconscious self-sabotaging beliefs, you started, and you also start the book, The Glass Ledge, in this place by talking about your relationship to power. I wonder if you can share some about that. What was your unconscious relationship to power? And how has that changed?
IO: Up until I started fundraising, I’d never really sat down to explore what was my relationship with power. And when we fail to define and claim our power, we unknowingly place our worth in the wrong hands.
I was letting other people define it for me, especially people I was meeting with—I would say, men in power at the time. To me, I’m powerless in this situation. They could say whatever they want to me, and I’d have no power over it.
That was really my thought process, is that this power imbalance here I’m dealing with is not ever going to—the tables are never going to turn to benefit me; I’m always going to be in that position where here I am with a PowerPoint begging men in power to really take me seriously as opposed to me putting myself in a position where, “No, I am a competent, intelligent, successful entrepreneur with a great opportunity, and I’m here to present you with it.”
I didn’t think of myself that way. I thought of myself as, “Oh, I’m desperate for money and I need money. I need these men in power to side with me in order for me to create a business that actually helps women.”
That’s the irony, is that I was pitching a business that was fighting for women’s voices and instead, the meetings I was walking to, what they continually did was prove the reason why I’m doing what I do is because of those situations, because more women need that kind of support to really raise their voices and feel credible in these kinds of meetings.
Up until then, again, like I said, I didn’t have much notion of what power is or wasn’t to me. I also saw it as more of a negative thing. I don’t want to be seen as a power-hungry woman. I also don’t want to show up and act like a man in order for me to feel powerful. I have all these mixed signals in my head about how to show up as a powerful woman and also how to embrace inner power from me and how to embrace my self-worth in order for me to be able to manifest that power I was seeking.
The power I was seeking was mostly for really being able to accomplish something that can benefit all of the women. It wasn’t for me to feel on top of the world, or it wasn’t for me to make more money. I wasn’t pursuing that type of power. The power I was pursuing is more of a collective power that can help all women rise together.
TS: Would you say you feel comfortable at this point claiming your power?
IO: Yes, for the most part. But I will also say that it’s an ongoing work, self-work thing. You don’t just all of a sudden become comfortable with it and then it just stays that way forever. I think I constantly have to also check in with myself.
I’m back on the fundraising trail again. I’m given fundraising another shot after I wrote the book, after I reflected for a few years, after taking a break from all of that and really rediscovering myself and showing up differently. Now, before every investor meeting, I constantly repeat affirmations that make me feel powerful. I also constantly remind myself that this is an amazing opportunity I’m pitching to investors and that there is no such thing as power imbalance and I’m not already anticipating it before I even go to the meeting.
I’m also very much assertive in the meeting, too. I don’t let them lead; I take control back and lead the way. I have strategies in place in terms of my pitch, my talking points, and even who’s in the room and who’s not in the room, to be able to really feel like—before I even walk into my meeting, before I even walk into a situation, I already feel in control. [That] was never the case early on in my journey. I kind of winged it, and it was OK. That’s how I did most of the things in my life and it worked out. But now I think being prepared and repeating to yourself affirmations that make you feel more in control and powerful in your own skin can seem a little cheesy, but I think it goes a long way in terms of feeling like you can embrace that power before you even walk into a situation that may potentially turn into a power imbalance situation.
TS: Can you share with me one of the affirmations that works for you?
IO: I say, “I am secure in who I am, and I deserve to be in this room,” because [I always] struggled with imposter syndrome, and that’s something probably that came from my immigrant mentality, is that “I’m not good enough to be here, who am I to be in the same room as these high profile CEOs who have made fortune. I’m not that accomplished.”
I make sure that I say that to myself: “I am worthy of my success, and I do deserve to be in this room. I am secure in myself, in my own skin. I am secure with my own power. I have a great opportunity that many people can benefit from.” And just repeating that to myself has completely helped me switch that flawed perspective I had of myself before walking into meeting.
TS: Iman, at Sounds True, we have a program it’s called the Inner MBA, and it’s a nine-month virtual learning program, online immersion learning program, training people in the inner skills they need to be successful at work. In hosting this program now for two years, one of the things that I found is that many of the women in the program confess that they have a challenge speaking up, they have a challenge speaking out, that they end up keeping their mouths quiet at work even though they have important and valuable things to say. I wonder, from your work at SWAAY, what you’ve learned about how to help women have the courage and confidence to speak up more.
IO: Right. I have definitely experienced that with a lot of the women that we coach and meet with that are on the platform. Many of them are first time writers or thought leaders, but who are trying to be more vocal and speak up more about their stories about the issues they care most about, about their experiences whether they’re positive or negative, and they want to do it too in a way that’s not playing the victim or complaining, but rather educational and a way to also pay it forward and be an inspiration to other women who might be in similar situations.
But the first thing I ask them is, “Why haven’t you written about your story before or why haven’t you told the story before?” Or “Why haven’t you contributed some articles or blogged about this issue that you care so much about?” The first thing they say is, “Well, there are so many people out there speaking on it, why does my voice matter?” Or “I don’t know that my story really is that great for me to share. I’m not that accomplished.”
So, right away, you’re seeing that they’re discounting themselves before they even give it a shot. It’s a condition. That’s a very self-sabotaging thing to do—“Before I even go out there, I’m going to tell myself that I don’t matter, that my story isn’t great, that it’s not worth being shared, that my voice isn’t incredible,” things like that that you tell yourself that hold you back from doing things that could potentially be life changing.
I was, of course, one of them, but also, I think I didn’t have much of a choice. When I did win the title of Miss New York, U.S., I was forced to be an advocate and be more vocal, because of the platform that I had for myself, which is women’s empowerment, especially women’s entrepreneurship, and I had forced myself to create a podcast and be comfortable with being uncomfortable about speaking up.
It’s not an overnight thing that you just got to be comfortable with it and speak up. You have to constantly push yourself to do something that’s different and that you have to tell yourself that your story matters. It’s that simple.
Your story matters. You have a purpose of some sorts. What’s the worst that can happen? What if it all works out for you? Why don’t you take the negative affirmation or negative things you tell yourself and turn them into positive affirmation? So instead of saying, “My story doesn’t matter,” say, “My story matters.” Or “Why would people listen to me?” or “People should listen to me.” Small tricks like that that would start getting you more and more comfortable in your head first with being OK with speaking up.
The first time you’re going to do it, it’s going to feel maybe very cringey for you or very uncomfortable. But that’s the whole point, is that pushing yourself outside the comfort zone is the way to change your ways and it’s the way to change your life.
TS: Iman, in the book The Glass Ledge you offer 10 different types of limiting beliefs—we could say categories of limiting beliefs—that hold women back. Which of these, would you say, of the 10, has been the hardest for you to really bring into consciousness and make changes around?
IO: I would say likability. And I was very, very shocked to think that. Actually, before I even wrote the book, I had never really realized how much I struggle with just the likability syndrome because I—
TS: Wanting people to like you, being a people pleaser, yes.
IO: Yes, exactly. For me, it was always the extreme. Either seek to be liked way too much and that was at the forefront of my decisions or lack thereof, or I would say, “Whatever. Screw this.” I’d go the opposite side and I just become unlikable completely. There was no balance in terms of being liked and respected, but also not letting that affect your life and your decisions and the things that you want to do and your career.
I think maybe that also played into initially when I first hired my initial team, because I don’t have experience in the media world and I had to bring in experts, people who had a lot of experience in running media companies or great editors from other media companies that are successful, and I just felt like my leadership was driven by the need to be liked which was not really fruitful for the company or productive at all for our bottom line.
So, without really realizing it, I was trying to become their friend as opposed to their leader, as opposed to someone who can lead them in the right direction to benefit the company, to benefit the shareholders, to benefit them and help them grow as employees and as people as well. I was constantly trying to be showing up in ways that make me likable as opposed to respected.
It started showing up in the way they treated me in meetings. Also, when I demanded things to be done, they weren’t done. They got too comfortable with me as a friend as opposed to treating me like the leader I was supposed to be. But again, it was my fault. And I never really saw it that way.
At first, I blamed them for it, and I became a little bit more not aggressive, but defensive in every meeting. I started retracting. So, it just wasn’t a healthy way to lead at all. And again, this was early on in my journey of being a boss. Up until then, I never really had a company. I never hired people. So, I didn’t know how to show up. But that’s again, why I took a step back and figured out what is the kind of leader I want to be and what are the different themes I need to master before I’m able to be that successful leader. And likability was probably my least favorite one.
TS: What I noticed in reading The Glass Ledge, when I got to number eight, competition, that really got my attention, and especially the way that you wrote about it that it’s possible instead of seeing competition as a bad thing, especially for women, competitive, that there would be a way to, in your words, compete in the right way and maybe this is something you learned from your beauty pageantry time. But tell me a little bit about what that means to you, healthy competition or competing in the right way.
IO: Yes. So I think when I started running SWAAY as a women empowerment platform, and especially with a message that we’re all as women have to support each other and collaborate with each other which is also at the height of the women’s movement, I think people, especially women around myself, we started retracting back from embracing competition as a way to grow, it was almost looked down upon if I felt a little bit competitive with my fellow female founders who were in the same industry or the same career path.
It was almost like “you can’t compete with women,” which I don’t think is the right mindset here. I think there is a way to be able to compete in a healthy way while also supporting other women and also being collaborative and rising all together. Just because we’re in an era where it’s all about women supporting women, it doesn’t mean that you don’t want to compete anymore, because competition for me has always been a way to self-improvement.
You were right. I was able to really understand that better when I competed in pageants because that was when I first experienced true sisterhood and true collaborative environment, but also, we were competing at the end of the day. We all wanted to be better, not better than each other, but better than we were yesterday and show up in a much better light and be OK with that.
I wanted to really talk about that in the chapter because I’ve seen many women completely choose to not compete at all. Or also to maybe choose to not be open about it. You feel ashamed to say, “Oh, this woman raised more money than me. That motivates me to go back and raise more money. It’s not me taking away from her success. If anything, it shows me that it’s possible and it’s healthy for me to want to compete with her because I’m only going to be better than what I was yesterday and I could use that competition as a way forward.”
TS: Finally, Iman, The Glass Ledge, it’s a beautiful book about how we can each take responsibility for ourselves so that we are leading with healthy competition, confidence, our authenticity. We’re owning our own power, etc., regardless of the environment that we’re in, even in these difficult and toxic work environments, we can take that ownership. You’ve done a beautiful job in writing The Glass Ledge.
My question is, if you were to take a moment and envision a cultural context in which there wasn’t a glass ledge, where there wasn’t a glass ceiling for women, what would that be like? Can you envision what that would be like?
IO: That’s a really interesting question. I would. I think what that would look like is just all of us being able to show up with self-assurance and feeling some sense of control and autonomy over our career path.
From a cultural perspective, that would mean the media not pitting us against each other or the media not spreading this mentality that we need to look a certain way to be successful, or we need to be a certain way to be successful or be seen as successful. So really stripping away that outside cultural societal preconceived expectations of what womanhood is and letting us define it for ourselves.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Iman Oubou. She’s the founder and CEO of Swaay.com, and the author of the new Sounds True book The Glass Ledge: How to Break Through Self Sabotage, Embrace Your Power, and Create Your Success. Iman, wonderful to talk to you and best of luck with SWAAY.
IO: Thank you so much for having me again.
TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. And if you’re interested, hit the Subscribe button in your podcast app. Also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.
