Why We Need More Women Founders (Medium excerpt)

This excerpt is from the piece “Sydney Montgomery of S Montgomery Admissions Consulting: Why We Need More Women Founders & Here Is What We Are Doing To Make That Happen” which was printed first in Medium’s Authority Magazine on August 23, 2021

Women are still being held back from founding companies because of the unseen jobs that women have on top of their career. When you are an entrepreneur, everyone knows you are working basically two jobs, maybe three, wearing multiple hats. For the first few years of your start-up, you are really grinding. And when we think about someone devoting themselves fully to get their company off the ground, we are usually thinking about someone whose only responsibility is really to themselves. Unfortunately, for most women that’s not the case. Many women are not only trying to get their business up off the ground, but they’re trying to maybe deal with family, maybe they have children or a spouse that they’re taking care of, maybe they’re also helping out their extended family, their parents or their siblings. Women also traditionally bear the brunt of the housekeeping and the homemaking and women are less likely to get help with all of these day to day “life” chores. So when we talk about what’s holding women back, it’s actually this concept that even in a traditional 9 to 5 women are supposed to be able to work their job and then work a full-time home job. Because we have not stepped away from that mindset in a traditional corporate space, it is almost impossible for us to shift from that mindset when we talked about the entrepreneurial space. So in order for us to move into that mindset we really need to start understanding that it is not okay to continually expect women to work multiple jobs, only one of which may be paying them.

Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?

Many of the things that can be done as individuals or as society or the government to help overcome these obstacles, are the same things that needs to be given to women in corporate America. For starters, there needs to be more robust affordable childcare options. In many families, it was disproportionately the woman who was responsible for taking care of the children during Covid and doing the online schooling while also trying to balance their own work from home job. Even when we talk about women entrepreneurs there’s this belief that if you’re getting your business off the ground from your home you can still do childcare. I think that’s incorrect. Nobody can devote themselves to their business and also be a full-time mom at the same time as being a full-time homemaker.

On the individual level, I think there needs to be a greater cultural shift to encourage more men and spouses to step up. If your wife or the mother of your children is trying to get their company up off the ground then you might need to be a stay-at-home dad for a little bit. You might need to be to be the one in charge of managing extracurricular activities or baking the cupcakes for ballet class. We need to have a more thorough understanding of gender roles when it comes to parenting. I think the other thing that we need to do as a society is make more grants available to women who are trying to start small businesses and also make sure that that information is disseminated widely. There are a lot of funding opportunities, but many women might not know about them, or they might not feel like they have the skills or qualifications to pitch themselves to these competitions. I think that’s why companies like Thinkific,and the Think in Color Summit, along with their bursary programs, are so important because they are empowering women with much-needed professional development to show them how to enter a scene that was ultimately not designed for them.

This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?

As you mentioned earlier, only 20% of funded companies have women founders, however, women make up 50.8% of the U.S. population. It is important that women are just as represented in the entrepreneurial and business sector as we are in other sectors because when you have women in charge of companies it drastically changes how that company operates. Women have a completely different mindset, I might be biased, but I think that women are a little bit more creative, more innovative, more out of the box. Women just see things a little bit differently than men might and because we have had to fight for our seat at the table for so long, we are not afraid to break down the status quo and buck tradition. I think that women also are a little bit more empathetic in their dealings — not just at the top level, but all the way down even to the consumer base. When you even look at the global pandemic the countries that are run by women have had drastically different solutions and ideas for their citizenry than other countries. So we need more women to be in charge of these funded companies so that we can continue to have the diverse perspectives and representation in the boardroom and so that we can actually start to change the larger corporate culture and shift how companies interact with society.

What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder. Can you explain what you mean?

There are two myths that I would love to dispel. The first is a myth that almost stopped me from even starting. And that myth was that you needed to have a safety net of at least three to six months (maybe even a year) before you launched full-time, and that you should not expect to see a profit in your first year business. I think that might be fine advice for those privileged individuals who have that financial safety net before they decided to make that pivot, but I pivoted to entrepreneurship full-time when I was 26. I did not have a safety net. I actually was still financially supporting my sister’s academics as both my parents work two jobs. I come from a working-class background. If I had listened to that myth, I probably still would not have launched my business full-time. And I think we need to tell people that yes, you absolutely can be profitable in your first year. During those first six months of going full-time, I was able to gross $102,000 in revenue. Is it better if you have savings — absolutely! Is it absolutely necessary? No, it is not.

The second myth is that you cannot maximize your profit while also aiming for the greatest amount of social good. I think that there’s this misconception, especially in educational consulting where people think that the majority of the money comes from working with wealthy clients. 91% one of my students identify as a first-generation or as a minority college or law school applicant. And I have tremendous success with them. Over 78% of my students have gone to a top 30 law school, over 56% of my students have received or have tuition scholarship to law school, 98% of my high school students get into one of their top three colleges. I love what I do, and I love the people that I work with, and yes, it is incredibly profitable. You can do good and you can make money at the same time.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/authority-magazine/sydney-montgomery-of-s-montgomery-admissions-consulting-why-we-need-more-women-founders-here-is-f0551c857f0d