Tips for Women to Be More Fearless, Boost Your Confidence and Celebrate Your Mistakes    

It’s a hot topic in Hollywood right now – the Hollywood Gender Gap, with 85% of films having no female directors and 92% no female cinematographers, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. Unfortunately, that statistic doesn’t shock me, as I’m a woman in tech – where I’ve personally seen a decline in women, as I’ve advanced in my career.

While the aforementioned statistic didn’t surprise me, the decline did, since my undergrad degree was in Communications, where the class ratio was 25 females to 1 male. We graduated around the time of the tech bubble, and many of my female friends went into marketing positions in the tech space. Working in the tech world led me to Grad School and taking coursework in web development and design — where the ratio shifted to one female to every two males. An instant change, but still not quite like I see today. The longer I stay in this space, the fewer women I see. Is this in my head? What is happening?

According to a Reuters study, “56% of women leave their jobs at the highlight of their career, which is twice the quit rate for men.” According to the same study, there has been a drop in women in computer-related jobs from the 90’s until today, despite it being one of the fastest-growing U.S. professions. I can only hypothesize reasons for the statistics: women leaving at their career peak coincides with having children; wanting a work-life balance, but tech being the industry that never sleeps; feeling like there aren’t equal opportunities for women in tech. But what is great is that people are talking about it and aiming to change the conversation.

At SXSW this year, I visited a pop-up space dedicated to helping women connect. It felt like a safe place where you could drop your guard and just talk to other women in the room. There were chats within the lounge with inspirational women — from Jaime Fabricant, Senior Marketing Manager of Pepsi, to Lara Balazs, SVP of North American Marketing at Visa — on how together women can be agents of change.

I particularly enjoyed one chat about words that have powerful meanings. My favorite word, I decided during the conversation, was “fearless.” After all, must we either be the world’s greatest mom or the world’s greatest chief executive? Let’s be fearless, and not choose.

Another inspiring pop-up was the Refinery29 and Neiman Marcus School of Self Expression – “an immersive intersection of discovery, technology, fashion and play.” Where The Girls Lounge was about meeting others to discover oneself, the R29 event was about internal self-discovery. There were school lockers filled with tech products, quotes, and materials making you take a moment to learn and introspect. As I opened each locker and walked past the trophy case, it immediately just clicked. I was back in high school — but a high school with no judgment, where everyone belongs. It was about having fun, being yourself, getting a bit goofy, and rewarding your creativity.

My favorite part was probably the “Bucket List Wall,” where you write one thing you want to achieve in the next few years.  One person wrote “Make something that matters,” another wanted to really “get” taxes, yet another longs to “become a designer.” I loved the idea of writing this down, in a public space, to almost make you commit to it. Let’s commit to discovering what we want in our careers and being fearless to achieve it.

What tied this all together for me, was the SXSW session with Founder and CEO of Glossier, Emily Weiss. Emily had so many quotable moments, from “Your opinions on beauty are enough” to the concept of “self-sells.” How true is that? All too often in the beauty industry, brands are trying to tell women what we should be, when all we want to be is ourselves. Let’s own that. Blogs started because women wanted to listen to other women. However, soon that became not enough, and the false Instagram reality set us back with perfectly-staged images. It is the same in our careers. We have a vision of what we must be, and perhaps if we don’t get that we think maybe this isn’t the right space for us. Instead, Emily explained, “Celebrate your mistakes and phases.” Those are wise lessons to be had.  Those are stages that get you to where you are. We all make mistakes. Own them, learn, move forward.

And then that word “Fear” came back into the conversation. Emily’s worst fear is crickets – as in a deafening silence to a new idea. Fear that she will launch something and there will be no response to it. But if you don’t try, you won’t have the chance for the opposite to happen. Just like females in any industry, we need to push forward and realize, worst-case scenario, we hear crickets — and if we do, we keep trying. But if we don’t at least start, the decline in women in tech will continue.

So…the first step was starting this whole conversation, but now we need to take it a step further and give females the platform to feel secure in their careers. A platform I am now defining as “The Fearless Movement.“

Becoming Fearless

• Plan your 2021 career bucket list. What do you want to see on it? By writing it down, you’ve created a roadmap to achieve.
• Celebrate the small moments. To be fearless, you need to recognize your wins, small or large. Every week write down a few successes to keep you on track. Think of it as a graph – you always want to see movement; it is when your line is still that you are in trouble. You would be surprised how a little visual positivity goes a long way.
• Define your career-related fears. Before a presentation, what is the absolute worst thing that can happen? Sometimes we are so scared of just taking the chance; we forget that the “worst thing” really isn’t that bad. It’s something that could seem terrible like that zit on prom night, but in the larger picture, the dance was still pretty fantastic

Creating a Bucket List

• Think small. A bucket list can be very daunting to fulfill if all of your items are what you want to complete before you die including swim in the Great Barrier Reef. But this is a career bucket list and should be broken down into specific details of items you want to complete. For example, instead of saying “Have an advertising campaign that wins an award,” be more specific. What type of award? What type of campaign?
• Become a project-management diva. Like any project at work, once you receive it, you break it down into bullets to achieve that goal. Do the same for items on your bucket list. This helps you see progress and have that satisfying feeling of checking off a list!
• Insider Tip: Use free project management software like ASANA to actually manage your list. We use it for work, why not for life!
• Cut your list in half. This is the hardest part. If you want to get really detailed, I recommend creating a spreadsheet and offering a numerical value to each item on it under certain categories. Break it down by different categories such as “difficulty,” “happiness,” or “requirements.” You then total up the scores, and the ones that have the highest value to you are the ones you keep, and the ones with the lowest, you cut.

Celebrating Your Mistakes

• Critique is a gift. The best thing to happen is to get an honest critique of your work so you know how to improve it for the next time. It is the same with mistakes. They happen. We are human. Take a few minutes to wallow (we all need that), but then break it down into why that happened and how to ensure that doesn’t happen next time. Not just that but how to make it better. Learn from them.
• Own mistakes. Do not blame others. You were a part in the mistake and accepting that, helps you learn. If there are others involved, they will appreciate that you own it. They will actually look up to you for admitting the error. That shows leadership.
• From mistakes comes innovation. I was watching Chef’s Table on Netflix the other day and Massimo Bottura spoke about how one of his most famed desserts called “Oops-I-Dropped-a-Lemon-Tart” was made. His sous-chef literally did that — dropped a lemon tart — and was in a panic. Massimo told him to calm down and look at the broken tart, how beautiful it was and how they could remedy the gaffe and take it to the next level. So they splattered items from the tart across the plate and made two identical works of art, making it look like the tart was broken on purpose. They took a mistake and turned it into a masterpiece. Lesson: When mistakes happen, step back, and look at it from a different perspective.