How to Become a Million Dollar Woman — Part I
Julia Pimsleur, Founder and former CEO of Little Pim, author of Million Dollar Women, former documentary filmmaker (founder of Big Mouth Productions) and nonprofit fundraiser, has raised $26 million, ($6 million for Little Pim) to date. She joined SheWorx for breakfast to tell us how she did it and how we can too.
Part 1: Show me [more than] the money
The Triple Win:
“To me success has a more complex meaning than 0’s.”
Of course, 0’s are important, Julia will agree, but it’s only one part of the big picture. The triple win of success certainly includes (1) money, but just as crucial are (2) meaning and (3) mobility.
“As women we really want to do something that energizes and engages us, that we’re passionate about. We don’t want to just get a paycheck,” said Julia. This is meaning. Women are often also particularly keen on mobility — having control over their own schedule. This is unique to entrepreneurship.
Thus, money for a woman entrepreneur isn’t simply a metric of success. Money can steer women entrepreneurs toward the other two wins, which is why Julia is on a mission to help one million women entrepreneurs get to $1M in revenues by 2020.
“It’s not that when you get to $1 million in revenue the clouds part and the sun shines down,” Julia said. Rather, getting to $1 million means that you:
- Know the business of your business — the core moneymaking machine that keeps delivering
2. Have an easier time raising money
3. Can make more choices about what to do with your time
A former film studies and gender studies major, Julia is an ardent feminist, and for her, that means women getting to make more their own choices. Money provides the critical runway necessary for women to get their businesses off the ground so those choices can be made.
“If you look at where money flows in our society it only flows in one direction — and that is to the 1%. If you don’t intervene, all of the money in America will just continue to flow to the 1% — so I actually consider it very important social justice work to redirect some of that money into startups, into nonprofits, into amazing causes.”
What is your 20-foot chasm?
“Sometimes when you have to cross a 20 foot chasm, you can’t take two 10-foot leaps, you have to figure out a whole other way to get across.”
Like many entrepreneurs, Julia found herself mired in self-doubt on her journey to success. Just as she was thinking of selling off her company, her cousin sold his business for $400 million to a media conglomerate. Her family encouraged her to call him up, and though she was reluctant, trapped in a “shame haze”, she did so.
What he suggested generated even more reluctance.
“When he said venture capital I was like a deer in headlights — ‘Not those guys! Please don’t make me go talk to those guys!’”
Julia had spoken to “those guys” in her former nonprofit fundraising work, and she was terrified.
“I thought, what was the point of being an entrepreneur if I have to go talk to these people? We don’t really speak the same language. I’m a mom running a business for moms and for kids, and we’re really not going to have anything to say to one another — no, what else do you got?”
But Julia soon realized that venture capital funding might be the 20-foot bridge she needed to cross the chasm. Instead of just working harder and harder and harder, taking “10 foot leaps”, as women and minorities often learn in life that they must do, she needed to stop and think about how to work smarter.
“We’re very good at having all this fiery moxie, but how about we get some money? It’s time to turn all that drive into capital, so that we can really run proper businesses,” she said.
So she took 10 months away from her family and company to work like crazy researching and learning the “dance” of venture capital.
Find out what Julia learned from her research in How to Become a Million Dollar Woman, Part 2.
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Reserve your spot at at the next SheWorx breakfast with Ellie Wheeler, Partner at Greycroft Partners to sit at the table and get insights like Julia’s in person.
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