Karren Brady, Whitney Wolfe Herd, Trinny Woodall: Moment 152: The Top 4 Most Successful Stories From Women in Business!

00:00This year, most business owners have had one thing top of mind, which is how to make AI work for them. Because its potential is limitless, but if you don't know what you're doing, then you're guessing, which can be incredibly risky. Our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle helps businesses to get AI embedded throughout their organization, whether they're earning millions or hundreds of millions.

00:23NetSuite is the number one AI cloud financial system. Through their platform, you get all of your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR in one place. Their AI connector also lets you pick the AI of your choice. Connect it with your business's data, then you can ask it questions, like how much cash on hand have we got in the company, or who are our key customers?

00:46And because all of that data is connected, it makes your AI smarter, so it can automate routine tasks, deliver specific actionable insights, and help you cut the costs. Already, over 43,000 businesses have chosen to future-proof their business with NetSuite.

01:00So if you'd like to learn more on how you can help your business, just get their business guide, which is called Demystifying AI, and you can get that for free at netsuite.com/bartlett.

01:07That kind of brings me onto a wider point about, as you say, the reason why you're in Saudi is this battle that I know you've had through your career with men underestimating you or sexism, which I guess started when you first got the job at Birmingham.

01:23Yeah, I mean, I remember my first away game, I think it was Watford, and I turned up and I said, "Hi, could you tell me where the boardroom is?" And this little old boy, a little steward on the desk, he went, "Oh, directors' wives are over there." And I said, "That's interesting, but where is the boardroom?"

01:42And he said, "Dear, you don't understand, the directors' wives go in the ladies' room." And I said, "No, I don't think it's you who understands. I am the managing director, so I want to know where the boardroom is." And this little old boy put his little glasses on, and he went, "Oh, yes, yes, you're that woman. Stay here and I'll find out what to do with you."

02:00Because there were no other women in football. So there was never a woman in the boardroom, and women weren't welcome in boardrooms because it was meant to be the place where the directors all met, and of course, they were all men. And I remember thinking that it was the very first door I'd kicked down, and I was determined that I would keep that door open as wide and as long as possible to get as many other women through as possible.

02:26And that is something I've spent my last 30 years doing. It's really important to me. It's really important that there is a sense of equality and equal pay and equal respect for everything that you do, regardless of where you're from, what sex you are, what your beliefs are, how you look, where you're educated. Equality is very important to me.

02:47Why do you think it's so important to you in particular?

02:49I think because, look, at 23, I was given the challenge and chance of a lifetime, and I took that. And I knew that that started with someone having trust in me. And I knew that there were so many talented people out there that didn't have someone that had that trust in them, and I wanted to be that person.

03:16Going back to the question which I kind of took us off on a tangent away from, about why you think Bumble won or was successful and was able to break through into that very small category of dating apps or dating sites where there's really only a handful of real players. Why?

03:45Because I have to say something. I know that the other dating apps, because I was sometimes in the room, tried to launch dating apps of themselves. So they took their existing network, they tried to launch a new dating app into it, and it didn't work. I've seen it happen over and over again. I know Michelle from Peanut. She's one of the people I used to work with when we were doing the marketing at Badoo.

03:52Oh, really? Yeah, she's great. I think what she's done is awesome.

04:02Yeah, I love Peanut. It's great. But I know it's not easy, and I know it's not chance, and I know it's not luck because I've seen—I can't tell you at Social Chain how many times we had dating apps come to us and say, "Can you do our marketing?" Maybe 200 times.

04:12There's 5,000 dating apps in the App Store. It's impossible. It's impossible to start a new one because of the network effects and all of those things. It's impossible.

04:23Impossible. So why you? How you?

04:30Every other dating product until Bumble had been solving for the wrong side of the coin. They've been thinking about men. That's all. They woke up in the morning and thought about how to make a dating app good for guys, and they had it backwards. Why are you solving for men when this is all about what women need and what women want?

04:54No one was asking women. Do you think women want to get abused on the internet? Think again. Find me a woman that enjoys being harassed on a dating app. Not one. But for some reason, that problem didn't strike anyone as a problem. So it's not that hard to say, "Wait a second, this is a double-sided marketplace. This product can't survive without women, yet we're exploiting and degrading women on a lot of these products, not naming any names."

05:32What? And so for me, it was all about taking that original concept of Merci, a kind space for women, a safe space for women. And to Andrey’s push—gotta give him some credit for being so interested in dating, right? I was so turned off of dating. I wanted nothing to do with dating. When Andrey was like, "Oh, let's do a dating app, come be my CMO," I said, "First of all, I'm not for hire. I'm starting my own company. I must be Founder and CEO of whatever I do next. I cannot work for someone. I just have to be my own boss."

06:05And I've got to give him a lot of credit because he trusted that and he said, "Okay, do whatever you want to do, but my one stipulation is it has to be in dating because I know dating and I want to get behind a dating product." So when I was sitting there, we had kind of agreed to do this dating app. What's it going to be?

06:27Well, what about Merci? I want it to be Merci. I want it to be about women and I want it to be women only. I want safety and kindness and accountability. There are no internet spaces for women. Nothing's been built for women. We have to do this for women.

06:40And then it kind of just all clicked. And I sat there and within literally minutes, it all just wrote itself. I said, "Wait a second, I know the problem. Well, women don't go first, men do. Men message as many women as they can. Women are getting inundated. They never respond. The lack of response is causing a rejection, and the rejection is triggering an aggression. And that aggression is now translating into harassment."

07:09And this is why women are being abused on the dating apps because if only they would go first, the man wouldn't feel rejected. They'd feel empowered. It would totally calibrate this whole experience. And I said, "Okay, great. I know what we're going to do."

07:23Women have to talk first on this product, and they only have 24 hours to do it. I knew nobody else could conceptualize the way I would explain it, so I was like, "Think Cinderella, the pumpkin and the carriage." And men can send one extend on time a day to capture their attention if they want to. Now, we have to also call out something. This was back in 2014 in a very heterosexual-oriented dating app experience.

07:54The landscape has evolved. We have to be inclusive to all. And so, of course, we are, and of course, we are currently, as we speak, spending countless time and putting all of our heart and soul into how to make the experience better for non-binary, for the trans community, for anybody that identifies as a woman as well.

08:15So that's a big portion of the future, but that was really how I would say we became successful because of two things: women—making sure that we were solving for women's real problems on the internet—and marketing to women. So when I went back to those sororities and fraternities, instead of going in with whatever we had gone in at Tinder, I went in with things for women. I went in with items women wanted, cute yellow cookies. I understood that we are going to build a cute brand, not a sexy brand. And that's what set us apart.

08:51I wanted it to feel warm and cozy and inviting and soft and feminine and safe. And that's the beginning and still the current through line of Bumble.

08:57Starting a business like that at 53, a lot of people have a stigma or a stereotype that you can't start a business in midlife. You shouldn't be doing that at that point or you won't be able to raise, all of those kind of stigmas around starting a business in midlife.

09:14Crap. Total crap. I started a business at 16 called Bo's Unlimited when I was at school, I sold hair bows. I know. And then I started a business at 53. So it's like, there's no other way to put it that age is a number. It is just a fucking number and you can either mention that number endlessly, or you can look at what energy do you have at that moment in time to execute on your dream. That's all it—that's all you need.

09:44Energy.

09:47All you need. Well, you need a lot, but you need to feel that. You need energy, passion, drive, relentlessness, perseverance, resilience. Pick yourself up and just get fucking on with it. You need all of those things, but you need the energy so that you jump out of bed in the morning and you are on it.

10:08Did it take time for you to cultivate that in the passing after Johnny had passed?

10:13Because I did Ready2 before, and for that, I did 18-hour days for two and a half years. It's in me. I've been a grafter for quite a long time.

10:25So you'd been mulling this idea for many, many, many years and then you finally put it into action. I heard you say "I started pitching in 2014 and it took me three years to launch."

10:40Yeah. I started pitching in 2013, I think.

10:44And what were you pitching? What was the elevator pitch?

10:46The elevator pitch was to create portable, cream-based, personalized makeup for women 35 plus.

11:00And how was that pitch received?

11:02I did 48 pitches before one person bit. I must have sent 300 emails.

11:08What kind of negative feedback did you get?

11:11Oh, I had lots. I had "you don't have enough followers." Fine, I had like, I think 50,000 followers then. I had "you're too old to start a business." I had "who's going to really run the business?" Classic one.

11:26Oh, that's a nice backhanded one.

11:29Love that one. "You live in this Neverland, it's not like it's never going to happen, but it's never going to happen." But they don't put words to either, you sit like this place. And I had that feeling, I thought, are people ever going to get it? But I thought I'm never going to give up. So they both sat side by side, really strong.

11:43Why didn't you give up?

11:45Because I knew it was a fucking good idea and I knew it would work. I just had to find the right people who would get it.

11:53But everyone's telling you no.

11:55I don't care if everyone's telling me no. I know. And I know enough and I believe in myself enough to know I know it's a good idea. I just know it. I just got to find somebody who has the vision to understand it.

12:03How do you know it though?

12:05Because I know women.

12:07As you look forward at your mission and your future and what you hope to achieve in the next chapter of your life, what is that tangibly? If I had to measure success, if I was to say that all the things you write about, the change you write about in this book, if I was to measure it and say it was successful, what would the world look like?

12:31That we have true equality. You know, that little girls can be everything and anything honestly. That they can be president or prime minister, that they can launch a company and get seed funding, that they can be a scientist, they can literally—or they can be a stay-at-home mom. That they can be whoever and whatever they want.

12:56And I think my hope for mothers is that they too don't see their biggest dreams die on the vine. That they don't live a life of regret and envy and "should have, would have" because they let things happen to them rather than change things. That we live in a world where we respect and we dignify women and girls.

13:16We're not there yet. We're so far from being there in many ways. And I think part of it again is because of the things that we've sold women, that we've basically told women that the problem is you. Think about all the books that women read—Confidence Code, I gotta learn how to do a power pose, I gotta lean in. All of it is about women thinking that you're wrong.

13:41The amount of times that women come to me and say, "I have imposter syndrome." I'm like, "No, no, no, they didn't let you in. You're in there because you are the best." But now you're made to feel like you snuck through the back door. And so what I am saying in many ways is really radical and it's very deeply seated in us.

14:02And it's not just women, it's people of color, it's poor people, anybody who is not—who has really had to through grit, perseverance, found themselves in rooms that people don't look like them. We're still asking ourselves, "Do I belong here? Should I be here?" And we're constantly being fed information—books, podcasts, movies—that tell ourselves that we just have to change one more thing about ourselves, that we have to fix one more thing.

14:30And it's just simply not true. I always say that I feel so lucky that through the work that I've done, I've been able to be in almost every single powerful room. I've probably met every single powerful person in the world. And I used to be that girl at Yale Law School in my constitutional law class going like this.

14:55And a few years ago, I got asked to give a speech at Bill Gates's summit. And the slot that they had given me was between Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. And it was the only speech that anyone was giving. It was a summit of Fortune 100 CEOs, so you can imagine who was in the room.

15:15And I remember them saying, "You know, this is a really hard speaking slot, Reshma, because most people are really intimidated because Bill and Warren are sitting in the front row and it can be a little scary." And I remember as I was sitting there in the backstage, they had given me 10 minutes of speech.

15:32And I remember thinking, "Man, I wish they gave me 12 because I really had some more stuff to say." And then I remember thinking, "How did I become this woman when I used to be that girl?" And I remember thinking, "Yeah, it's because I've been in every single powerful room. I've met every single CEO, every president, every prime minister. And when I meet them, I'm like, you? You're running what? Me and my girls, we can run circles around you."

16:07And I realized that it's never been about whether we're qualified, whether we're prepared, whether we're ready. That we've really never really dissected all of the undeserved, unearned privilege that so many people have, and that we have literally bought and been fed basically this propaganda that we're not good enough, that we're not smart enough, that we don't belong.

16:30And the real resistance in this moment is saying no more. I'm not reading those books. I'm not taking those courses. I'm not taking that class. I'm not buying into that bullshit. I'm here, and I can lead too.

16:51This year, most business owners have had one thing top of mind, which is how to make AI work for them. Because its potential is limitless, but if you don't know what you're doing, then you're guessing, which can be incredibly risky. Our sponsor NetSuite by Oracle helps businesses to get AI embedded throughout their organization, whether they're earning millions or hundreds of millions.

17:15NetSuite is the number one AI cloud financial system. Through their platform, you get all of your accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR in one place. Their AI connector also lets you pick the AI of your choice. Connect it with your business's data, then you can ask it questions, like how much cash on hand have we got in the company, or who are our key customers?

17:35And because all of that data is connected, it makes your AI smarter, so it can automate routine tasks, deliver specific actionable insights, and help you cut the costs. Already, over 43,000 businesses have chosen to future-proof their business with NetSuite.

17:49So if you'd like to learn more on how you can help your business, just get their business guide, which is called Demystifying AI, and you can get that for free at netsuite.com/bartlett.

17:58This episode is sponsored by Morgan Stanley's Thoughts on the Market. Today's financial markets move fast. Morgan Stanley moves faster with their daily podcast, Thoughts on the Market. Thoughts on the Market covers daily trends across the global investment landscape with actionable insights from Morgan Stanley's leading economists and strategists.

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