The Value of Imperfect Action
The ProProject Podcast is BACK. We are going beyond project finance tips and tricks to giving you business strategy advice.
What does imperfect action look like? Our guest Sara Roach-Lewis, Founder of SRL Solutions, www.srl.solutions, and of The Ambitious Women Entrepreneurs’ Network, explains imperfect action and it's value to business development.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Darell Brown:
Welcome to the ProProject Podcast, with ProProject Bookkeeping. This is your host, Darell Brown, bringing you bookkeeping tips and tricks to make your project finances run a little smoother. The ProProject Podcast is back with a special guest. In addition to giving you tips and tricks for your project finances, we want to give you ideas and strategies on how to run a successful business. So today we have Sara Roach-Lewis, business strategist and coach, founder of the Ambitious Women Entrepreneurs Network, and last but not least, founder of SRL Solutions. Sara, thanks for being with us today.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Well, thank you for having me.
Darell Brown:
No, this is great. I know we talked a few months ago, we met via Shaper and hearing about your business knowledge and background, I figured you were a perfect fit for this. So thanks for being the official first guest of the ProProject Podcast.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Oh, you're very kind.
Darell Brown:
So Sara has a wealth of business knowledge that I want to delve into today. And I want to start with this quote from the SRL Solutions' website and it's, "Well, I basically do all the things entrepreneurs hate and I'm really good at it." So tell us a little bit about your background leading up to SRL Solutions and tell us what you mean by that quote.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Sure. So I have an interesting path to entrepreneurship, I suppose. I actually spent most of my career working in the not-for-profit sector. So I worked for a small women's organization where I live and I grew up in a fishing family. My father, my parents both, were commercial fishermen. And I live and I married another fisherman. And the interesting thing is that fishermen's identities are so caught up in being a fisherman that I didn't realize that I grew up in an entrepreneurial family until maybe last year, despite the fact that nobody ever got paid by an employer. So it's interesting in terms of re-understanding your past, I suppose, in some ways.
So I worked for a not-for-profit. I did all kinds of really amazing things in terms of creating programs and supports and services, to support women fundamentally to find their voice, fundamentally to make dramatic change in our lives. A number of years ago, I was ready for a change, and so I went to work for a startup and my job was to develop systems and structures, systems and processes within their business that could be scalable because they're a startup. And I thought, "I wonder why they think I can do this. I wonder if I can do this." And so the answer was, "Yeah, actually I can."
And one of the other questions that I had in my mind for that job, when I left the not-for-profit sector and went to the public or to the private sector, was, "Can I actually work for someone else? Because I've been the executive director for many years." And so the answer was, "No. No I can't." So my entrepreneurial path was one of, "Well, I think I best just go and work for myself because that's probably..." I'm fairly unmanageable and they were wonderful people, really lovely, this co-founders, one of the co-founders is a dear friend of mine. And so I really appreciate that they gave me that opportunity to test those many, many skills that I developed and honed in the not-for-profit sector and to see if they actually can translate to the business community.
And so one of the things that I learned in that process is that while there are many differences between a small business and a small not-for-profit, there are actually tons of similarities. And much of those are in the operations, much of that is around HR management and needing to hire and make sure you've got the right team and live within your means and what does your budget look like and any reporting that needs to be done. So there's a lot of similarity that need for sales and marketing.
So in terms of that path, it was a bit of a winding path and when I talk about I do all of the things that entrepreneurs hate to do, and I'm really good at it, that's really around developing those systems and processes that help your business grow efficiently. That first entrepreneur that I worked with all those years ago used to talk about her squirrel brain. It would be off madly in all of these directions. And so really much of what I do with my clients is focus. Focus, focus, focus. Really, in terms of business strategy, the most radical thing you can do in your business is focus. So that's what I, when I talk about those things that entrepreneurs hate, much of that is around systems, processes, making sure that you've got some things documented, repeatable tasks, all that, perhaps not so sexy stuff, but it's critically important if you want to grow.
Darell Brown:
So systems, workflow, processes. Do you, at this point, employ any automation is the big thing now that's, I guess, disrupting a lot of industries. Do you employ any of those systems with clients to make processes a little bit more, for a lack of better word, no brainer?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yeah. So I think it's funny how sometimes we jump too quickly to automation. So the first thing that I do with my clients is really get a handle on the client and what their needs are and what their own natural style is. So my own personal preference is to integrate tech anywhere that you possibly can. I love tech, I love anything that can automate, but you know what? That's not for everyone. So the first thing that I do with clients... So I work in a couple of different ways. I do coaching and training with people who are at that, they're experts in their business, and they want to grow their business to that next step. I also take on maybe one or two clients a year where I actually just get in the business in more of a COO, chief operating officer kind of role, where I roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty in their business.
So if I think about in particular one client in that role that I worked with a couple of years ago, marketing firm, really amazing, great company and their challenge and why they hired me is that they grew really quickly and they had all kinds of team, all kinds of staff and didn't quite know how manage it all. So me and my love of tech, I went in there with, "We're going to set up all of these systems. They're going to have an online project management," blah, blah, blah, and it's going to be beautiful. But because I know that we need to meet people where they're at, because that is my background, with working with women, I did pull back my enthusiasm and have lots of conversations.
And you know what I came to? Is that we developed an amazing system for them, they've got 10 people on staff. So it's a small team, but it's not tiny. And their system involves Post-it Notes and they have a wall of Post-it Notes. The designers have their own. Every team, every department within the company has their own system of Post-it Notes. It is not one that I would ever recommend, but you know what? It works beautifully for them and they love it. So while I do think that automation and any efficiencies that we can build into our workflow are important, we do have to think about who is the client first and what are their preferences.
Darell Brown:
I love that you mentioned the Post-it Notes. I don't know how many, I guess, manual Trello boards I've seen in offices with the Post-it Notes. It's like, okay, we finished with that, the Post-it Note now goes in this section and now we can... It's like, "Oh, okay. Wow." But I mean, I love walking into an office and being able to see what their process is from the moment I walk in. At times when it is on a computer, you have to log in and then you have to figure out the system. But actually seeing it laid out in front of you, gives you an idea of the business's framework and then the mindset of the people that really want to take that Post-it and put it on the next rung just to say, "Look, this is completed. We're on the next step." And in some places they really get a sense of accomplishment out of that. And it's actually great to see. It's like something you can't get by just moving it to the next spot on Trello. So I think that's pretty cool to see at times.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
It is fun. Yeah.
Darell Brown:
Yeah. Definitely. So I actually want to delve into a few more things that I know that you do as a con... Well, as a CEO, as you COO, as you mentioned, is that you get business owners to focus, not in their business as like working in their business, but focus their attention on their business. So how do you get a business owner to change their mind mindset from working in to working on their business?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yes. It's really interesting because in the business world, we tend to spend that time in December, January and we do all of the strategy and we have all these big plans for our business for the year, and we may map out, we may jump in the board room and map things out on the wall. This is what the year is going to look like, and then nobody looks at it again. And so when I talk to entrepreneurs, I do the same thing, no matter who I talk to. One of the things that I did in June and I really love it is I developed a workshop called 90 for 90. And it's 90 minutes to do develop a plan for your next 90 days. And what I think is really lovely about that is, it's this idea about we need to create habits in our business. And it is really easy when we are a small team or a big team that we get really immersed in the day-to-day running of the business. And we are the experts in whatever the topic is of our business.
So sometimes people feel that they're not doing a good job as a business owner or an entrepreneur when they don't pull back and do that 30,000 foot view. The reality is, often, particularly in service-based businesses, people start their businesses because of their expertise. They don't start their businesses because they did an MBA or went to business school or anything like that. And so often there's that missing piece of what is strategy, what is good planning and then how do I add that into my business so that I'm really proactively planning my growth? So that I am making decisions that are going to grow and build my business.
And one of the things that I've done is created this 90 for 90, it's a workshop and the reason why I did that is because I find in the business strategy world, that we can overwhelm people with jargon. We can overwhelm people with this idea of all of the things that you need to do, but at the end of the day, for most of us, we need a dash of strategy, a dose of planning and a whole lot of commitment to just do the work, to get it done. And so that's one way that I do it, is in these 90 minute workshops. They're beautiful. And part of what they do is any change that we want to see people make, it needs to be easy. And we can relate that back to the changes that we want to make in our lives, whether that is, "I want to integrate more activity into my life."
So deciding to run a 10K tomorrow, that is not easy. Deciding to go for... Put my sneakers on and I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk, that's easy. 90 minutes to plan your next 90 days, that's the 30 minute walk. We want to make it easy because those are the habits that people stick with, are the ones that start off and then we incrementally grow after that. But we want people to see those wins in their business. And to me, that's what good planning and good strategy is all about, is meeting people where they are in their business and giving them the really simple tools that they need.
Darell Brown:
What are some of the biggest challenges you say you've come across in trying to implement this strategy?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
The biggest strategies are-
Darell Brown:
No, the biggest challenges that you've come across.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yeah, sure. The biggest challenges, I think, that I come across in particular with women, I tend to work mostly with women, is analysis paralysis. This idea that it has to be perfect, "I can't try anything unless I'm really clear on what the strategy is," or whatever. So I think that's a big challenge for people, is really just confidence to make the decision. Often, sometimes people struggle with making the decision. On the flip side, the other two challenges that I see are from my quick start clients who decide that they're going to do something without thinking through how does that fit to an overall strategy? Is that going to help me grow my business? Or is it something that I think is a good idea today? So the challenges are on both ends of that spectrum actually.
Darell Brown:
And in my role, I often see the end results of these strategies as I'm running the month-end P&L reports. So if the strategy has gone well, then normally, we'll do a little bit of a review to see what went well, which cost went into that strategy and what the overall profits was. Unfortunately, if the strategy did not work out well, then that's usually much more detail that we have to go through and really delve into the different transactions, delve into the overall strategy and figure out exactly where it went wrong. If it was more of a financial issue, maybe we can say, "Okay, maybe next time we won't spend as much on this particular part of the strategy." And then we can see if that shows some incremental improvement, but if the strategy itself wasn't well thought out, then it's a matter of retooling that strategy.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Well, I really love your perspective on the finances. One of the things that... So again, if I go back to my background, I worked in the not-for-profit sector in a project-based organization. So what that means is you have an idea, you pitch that to a funder, they say, "Yes, send us a proposal." So you write a proposal and there's a budget attached to it. You get funded, and then you execute on what the outcomes are and they give you X number of dollars and that's all you have to do that project. And so that was probably one of the more interesting things for me, when I started working with businesses. So I lived and died by my budgets. I knew the budgets for every single project that I had in my organization. I knew what my overall budget was. I could pretty much tell you the line items for the money that we had in our organization.
And then when I went and started working for those first few clients that I had, and I'd say, "So what's your budget?" And they would look at me blankly. And it's a really interesting gap, I think in entrepreneurship, is an understanding of how important the budgeting process is and really being able to look at what are the potential revenues and are the potential expenses to any given initiative that you want to implement in your business. So again, that's where in that strategy, so I look at the strategy, so we decide, "What is it that we're going to focus on?" Then there's that all critical planning part. And part of planning needs to include budgeting. And depending on the business, again, I often work with service based businesses and there can be a fair bit of ebb and flow in businesses and yet... So that makes it easy to say, "Well, I can't really budget." Well, my argument is always, "Actually yes, you can." And then we just create a waterfall forecast and you just look at what are your variances every single month. We should be measuring against our annual operating budget.
So I just think it is interesting that it is one of those areas where... So the short answer to your question around a leaky profit session is I am often surprised about businesses that have enormous revenues and are not operating from a budget. So that's usually the first thing that I do.
Darell Brown:
I mean, I found that as well, usually companies that I work with they're quite possibly in their second, third year. And at that point in their business, they really haven't had a reason to really budget, as far as they're concerned. They're just, like as you say, they're experts in their field and they're just basically going out doing what they love and they've managed to make quite a bit for it. And they're at a point where they do want to expand, they want to bring on staff, maybe at this point they might be in a coworking space, maybe they want to get their own official office. So it's at the point where these costs are really going to start to build up and they will need budgeting at this point. But then it becomes that point where they have to get used to looking at those reports, if not on a monthly basis at the very least on a quarterly, so they can get an idea of what's going on in and on their business that they can plan further. So it's definitely interesting hearing it from that perspective.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
And I really just think, again, so much of what I do is help people set up what are we measuring against? How do we know that we're being successful? And what are those performance indicators that you set out for yourself and then you determine whether or not you meet them. And budgeting is one of those ones that is really important, particularly when you're bringing on... How do you know what projects are profitable? How do you know what product or service that you offer, which being able to have a really clear understanding of what that actually looks like from a P&L, a profit and loss statement is really important.
And I think the other piece to that is that's how we can make evidence based decisions, because sometimes we make emotional decisions where, I really love working with this kind of client, I really love this aspect of my business. Okay. And that's great, and right now that's a passion project. Because the other parts of your business are actually paying for that. So do you want to make profit or do you want to continue to volunteer your time with that particular client? Because you're not getting paid for it. So I end up having gentle and difficult conversations with people, and all of these things, that's why I think having someone to help you through the strategy and work on your business, even if it's... With some of my clients, I don't see them a lot. Others I'm in there on a regular basis. We want to be able to pull back to that 30,000 foot view of our business here and there at least depending on the size of your company.
I also think sometimes when it comes to budgeting, people get overwhelmed with all of the details. And so I always talk to my clients too about, what does reporting look like? When we want to get to that, we need to have financial information to make good decisions in your business. You do not need to input invoices. You don't need to be the person doing the invoicing. You do not need to be the person reconciling. I don't know how to do any of that because I'm really not detail focused. So you don't want me doing that. But what you want to do is set up those systems and those processes in your business that has those checks and balances to make sure that when your bookkeeper is doing their job and they're inputting things, that it goes to con... I think about it as a pyramid, the next level of that is someone who's checking, we're going to do a little bit of analysis on that. We're going to maybe check back to toggle and see what's happening with our time sheets and all those sorts of things.
And then really the owner, the business owner, the CEO of the company should be at the very top of that triangle or that pyramid where they're confident in the information that is being presented to them because there are checks and back balances along the way, but they don't need to know the detail of all of that. They need to know that, depending on the size of the company and all of those things, but they need to know really what is your variance? So this is what you I'm imagined your revenues would be for last month, you are 10% over or you are 25% under. And then we can have that conversation about why and what do [inaudible 00:25:41].
Darell Brown:
I have some that want that detail. They literally want to see every line item. And I want some that literally, they just want that summary. What was our total intake? What were our outflows? And what's that bottom line number and what did it look like the month before? And that's literally, it ends up being three line items, maybe three rows and three columns. And that's literally all they want to see. And they're able to get information from it. If it looks disastrous, then they of that full detail, like, "Okay-
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Of course.
Darell Brown:
... why did this happen? I want to see the full report." And then I know for a fact it's going to be a few hours meeting that we're going to sit there and go through it. All right. So next I know you talk about ramping... Well, actually let me not go into that one first. First, I want to talk about imperfect action. I see it's something that you often talk about. So I want you to give us an example of what imperfect action is and then how it could be of value to your company.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Sure. So imperfect action is really just this idea that done is better than perfect. We tend to agonize over our sales page or thinking, overthinking, what is that client conversation going to be like, if I need to make a prospect call. Regardless of what it is in your business, what I see so much of is this idea that people procrastinate because they're afraid. And people are afraid to make mistakes. And so what I talk about with my clients all the time and I embrace this, I love this so much because it's something that I've had to learn. So again, if I go back to my background, our process, there was not really much ability for quick action for just doing it.
And so what I love is that we treat our businesses like experiments. I treat everything I do like experiments. I talk to my clients all the time about, "Let's just play around and see what happens." Because people sometimes get really dug into, "Okay, so I need to have a sales conversation with someone. What is the process? What are the steps?" And then we get bogged down in all of that, and at the end of the day, the best information that you can get is from just doing it.
And so it's really just that idea about, in particular women tend to struggle with wanting things to be perfect before they go out into the world. And a few years ago I took a course on creating a course. And the guy said, "If you're not a little bit embarrassed about the first things that you put out into the world, you waited too long to launch." And I think that's one of the things that we often talk about.
The value in imperfect action is what we learn from doing. What we learn from our customers. And so my favorite example of that happened this summer. I go to a little tiny folk festival that is in Canada where I live. It is just a beautiful and magical place. And as with many folk festivals, there's food trucks and people who come to feed you. And so I was going to get some food one night and there was this amazing, one of the trucks had been there the year before I remembered their food, it was really good. And so I went to grab something and they had a line of four different cans of soda that they had produced with these beautiful labels on them. And he had said, "Do you want to try our soda?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, sure." And so he reached into the fridge and pulled one out and it was a can of soda with no label on it. And it just had blueberry soda written on it, handwritten. And I was like, "Oh, tell me about this. This is imperfect action. I want to know more."
And so the story was, they had created these four lines of flavors of soda. They had spent all of their time creating the flavors and they simply ran of time to apply the labels to the cans. And this guy was... A six year old daughter who was helping him, and they were handwriting blueberry soda, just so they knew which one it was. They had these four different flavors. At one point she had spelled blueberry wrong. And so they just crossed it out. And to me that is the beautiful, tangible example. That guy got powerful customer feedback on the four flavors that he had. He increased his revenues for his weekend because he was able to offer soda and he sold out. Not one person cared that there was no label on the soda. They just bought them. So to me, that is the shining example, super tangible, if we just go and do, nobody judged him for providing a product that wasn't perfect. They just loved the flavors inside.
Darell Brown:
Yeah. It reminds me a little of the MVP, the minimum viable product.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Absolutely.
Darell Brown:
Once you know your product is customer ready at the very least you can put it out there and start testing it and improve along the way. But I guess one of the arguments for that is, you have some companies, they start with MVP and then they never go to the next step. It's like, "Okay, you got the customer feedback. You know what the issues are, now, what's the second iteration going to look like?" And then that iteration, unfortunately never ends up coming.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
And so that's where you're planning and building that strategic thinking into your business is so important because that's where we want to come back and do our, whether it's a two week sprint review, whether it's a 75 day, a 90 day review, where we're going to go back and we're going to say, what worked, what didn't, what are we going to start, stop, continue doing. So I think absolutely, sometimes we get stuck there and I think that's where we want to be intentional about the imperfect action is all about iteration and we need to build in the time to iterate.
Darell Brown:
And that brings me perfectly to ramping up. So you get to that point where you have that action and you have the feedback and you've gone and you've done your sprints. Now, how do you help a company with ramping up and dealing with not only that increase in profits, but also the cost increase that comes along with that?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yes. So I tend to work with entrepreneurs who, like I say, they're ready to grow, they're ambitious and they know their business. They've already got some... If we think about that startup, in the startup, you're really doing a lot of testing. I mean, so much of a startup is you just don't know what you're doing and you're figuring out along the way. And then you get to that place where you know your sales, your sales process is working, your marketing is working, because you're making sales. And it's when somebody gets a new contract or something is happening, there's more opportunity for revenue to come in the door. And the business owner thinks, "I'm so exhausted. That just looks like more work for me."
So how I help people who are at that phase is really, again, it's the way that I do everything, it's just is first thing you need to do is an assessment. We need to figure out, what's really not working? What do we need to focus on first? What do we need to focus on second? So for some people it may be, often it's communications. It's when your team is starting to grow and all of this information is in the founder's head and they are the bottleneck in the business because everybody needs to wait to talk to them in order to build out.
So generally speaking, often it's... So if it's communication, let's say, what I do is really identify that's what the issue is. And then I would walk them through understanding of what are people's preferred communication styles? So then we can figure out what are the systems that need to be implemented in there. Is it a project management software that needs to be... Is that the most important thing? Is it people just straight out understanding what other people's communication styles are?
So I tend to know that there are standard things that need to happen and it's really custom to every business that it's... So I think about one that I'm working on right now, so she is a busy lawyer. She's developed an amazing product to sell to other lawyers. So she's created this other company. I am digging in there, rolling up my sleeves and helping her and what she needed to do right now, it's all well and good to say, "Well, I need to figure out things like, how do I have standard record keeping? How do I make sure all of these sorts of things?" What she needed, and we were working through all of that, she needed a first hire. And so the first hire is what was critical there because it didn't matter how beautiful the processes are or the systems that I'm going to help her set up, if there's nobody to execute, then the business isn't going to be able to grow as quickly as it should.
Darell Brown:
Do you advise people how, I guess, to work with that initial employee? Because I definitely feel there's always a bit of tension going from having all those thoughts in your head, as you said, to having some other person that may have a different process to them. So do you do any coaching there from, okay, you have this first employee, this is how you're going to work with them?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yeah. So regardless of who I work with, there's a few things that I always do with my clients. And I believe that the most important part of good problem solving is we need to know ourselves, we need to know the other person and then the overarching situation. And so in order to know ourselves, I love Myers-Briggs, I'm trained in doing Myers-Briggs assessments. And it's really just a personality assessment that is going to give you a sense of what are your 16 personality dimensions. So regardless of who I work with, I tend to do Myers-Briggs because then that helps people understand themselves and what they need and the other person's communication style.
So for example, it's a really good example, that first hire, the entrepreneur is crazy extroverted. She really is very engaging and gregarious and needs to speak in order to process information, that tends to be one of those extroverted tendencies. The woman that I head hunted intentionally to work with her tends strongly toward introversion. And so part of that initial conversation is what are they both going to need in order to communicate well with each other? So that is always a first step, is understanding your own communication style, understanding what is your own personality and how that manifests itself in your business.
The second thing that I always do with my clients is a conflict style. So what is your conflict style? Do you tend to avoid? Do you harmonize? Do you compete? What are those styles? And then there's a whole process of understanding that you're able to hunch what other people's are. So then those are the sorts of things that when we know that about ourselves, we're able to hunch it about other people and that's how we build in good communication because that really is the key to everything. When we're looking at teams and growing and building, we can have the most beautiful process in the world, but if people are not communicating well with each other or don't understand what the other person needs in order to communicate, that's where things break down.
Darell Brown:
I think I've definitely found that with how I work as well. Most bookkeeping services, I mean, obviously the technology is at the point where everything can be virtual and that's great, but I think one of selling points with my clients is that if necessary, I'll go see them once a week or every two weeks or once a month. Because sometimes it's just so much easier to sit in a room with a person and talk through issues or talk through a P&L or talk through a cash flow forecast or just their future plans. It's so much easier to do that in-person, to sit down and have that one-to-one connection, rather than doing it over the phone or doing it via emails, that connection really matters. And it really helps with the communication when you are working virtually because you do have an idea of how this person works and how they expect things to be done. So I've found that actually has made a difference in how I work with my clients.
And it's something I try to, when I first initially meet them or have those initial conversations, something I try to get a feel for like, what's the best way to work with this particular person? I'm doing their books, but I still have to make sure we have a communication style where I know what they expect and I'm able to communicate that to them in a way that they understand it. So I definitely co-sign on what you're saying right now.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Well, in particular with what you do, there's an awful lot of trust that is required with your bookkeeper.
Darell Brown:
And I've noticed there's just a lot of insecurity around finances as well.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Absolutely.
Darell Brown:
So in an email, you'll send them a P&L report and they may not want to email back to you and say, "Look, I don't understand this." But when you're in-person, they'll look at a certain line item and say, "Hey, what does this mean?" Or, "Why is this like this?" And you can delve into it. That's something, yeah, I've definitely noticed over the years. Okay. So definitely a lot of great advice from the business strategy side. And now I want to talk about the Ambitious Women Entrepreneurs Network. Why you saw the need to create a network specifically for women and what do you see as the future of the network?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Sure. Well, as I've talked about, my background is working with women and in my background, I tend to look at what are the personal? So there's those personal things that we can do to make change, help women move forward with their lives, whatever that might look like. And then there are the systemic and the structural barriers that women face in the world basically. And I really believe that gender equality can solve all of the world's problems. It doesn't really matter what they are.
And so what I've seen is that women do business differently. And women do business differently, and a number of years ago, when I was still working for the not-for-profit, I went to a breakfast and one of the women said, she asked the panelists, "Well, what do you do when you're just not support by the other women in your office?" And I was just floored really, because I lived in a bubble. My job was to support women. And so I was really horrified by this idea that there were women in my community who did not feel supported.
And so on a local level, I created an event called get up and go breakfast for women leaders. And so we've been doing that for, me and a couple of friends, we've been doing it for four or five years now. We meet once a quarter and we have a great people come, they have breakfast, we feed them really good food. They chat at their tables. I interview a woman leader in our community and then we give them an opportunity to really intentionally have a reflective conversation at their table, then we do celebrations where we celebrate the successes of women who are in the room. So you can stand up and say, "I want to celebrate my own success, someone else's." It ranges from, "This woman just bought a business. This woman just ran a marathon." Whatever it is. "This woman sold her business." So women celebrate and then at 8:45, we're done and dusted, everybody goes off to save the world and get to their job.
The reason why we did that is because I just felt it was important to create that space where women could feel supported and support each other. And so when I went into, looking at a more online space, part of the reason why I created the AWE network is, well, I love the idea of an ambitious women entrepreneur network, I just think that's super fun. The other reason is because I was really scared to put my voice out there on social media. I really feel that... I was really struggling with finding my tone and finding my voice. And what did that look like? And so I just created my own space. I created the AWE network as a sandbox. And it's a sandbox for me to play, for other women to play, for people to feel supported in a slightly quiet space, I guess. And so that's where it started. And I love the AWE network.
And my vision for it is a space where women... Often we have these online groups where you're not allowed to promote. You go in this group and it's somebody's group and there's all these rules. And if you promote your own stuff, then you're going to get kicked out. Well, I firmly believe that, I just so believe that it is important to support women in business. One of the most profound ways we can do that is by buying from each other. And how are we supposed to buy from each other if we don't know what each other does?
And so I see the AWE Network as a place where not only do we support each other, we share our tips and tricks on what works for us, maybe a soft place to land if we're having a hard day, but quite legitimately, I think it's really important for people to talk about what they do so that I can either buy from you or when I'm having a conversation with a client and they need a service that I can say, "Oh, have I got the business for you." So that was really the inspiration for the AWE Network.
Darell Brown: So a bit of a referral network as a part of a small network, which, yeah, that could definitely expand as women support each other as women network, then yeah, we can create our own network of services and goods. So that, I mean, that definitely sounds amazing.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yeah.
Darell Brown:
Where do you see the AWE Network going and growing to? What's the future of the AWE Network?
Sara Roach-Lewis:
So I had this really unexpected and super exciting opportunity to host a radio show. So they reached out to me in the summertime and it's a network on the internet called Voice America. And they have five channels, one of them is a business channel. And so they had reached out and asked me if I would be interested in hosting a radio show. And because I love podcasts and I love talking to people, I thought, "Oh, yeah, that sounds fun." So I have created this radio show called Breakthrough. And again, I just have this strong desire. I believe that the best thing that we can do is support women to be more economically independent, every step of the way. When women have more money, they turn that back into their community. It makes for healthier communities and healthier families. And it's a beautiful thing.
And when I started looking at this, I started doing some research because I love research and I love evidence. And here's what is interesting Darell, 88% of women-owned businesses have revenues less than 100,000 a year. Less than 2% of women-owned businesses have revenues in excess of seven figures. And it's about 4%. So 500,000 and above, that's 4% of women-led and women-owned businesses. So I've called my show Breakthrough. I am interviewing women who have already hit that million dollar milestone in their business, and I am asking them to reflect on what was that process like? What were the pitfalls, the great days, the days that you wanted to curl up in the fetal position and not get out of bed. And what were those, in particular, because I love strategy, what were those key areas of transition for you? And how did you make that leap?
And so the reason why I'm doing that is that I believe that these women, we're at 2%, they're the trailblazers, but that trail, it's just a trail. We want the next level of women to come through and maybe make that wide enough for an ATV to go through. My grand vision is that that path to multiple seven figures is a freeway and that women are just driving up that. And so that's really what my goal with Breakthrough is to facilitate those conversations.
So bringing that back to the AWE Network, is I really feel like over these next six to eight months, what I'm going to... I feel like there's going to become a really clear place for the AWE network. It's a little... Because this started really quite frankly, as a sandbox and a place for me to play around and encourage other women to play around in a soft space. I really see this as an opportunity to just see what emerges as I have these conversations with women who have achieved that success and continue to work with women who are on that path as well. And I think that's... So the AWE Network, I mean, truly my vision is exactly what you said, that this is a place where people are able to come and see what services are available because I just think that radical and intentional focus on supporting other women in business is what will change the world.
Darell Brown:
I definitely just love the concept, same as you, I always, I guess, every year, every couple of years look at the statistics around women's owned businesses. And I thought the last couple of years, I think there's been a lot more of a political climate looking for women-owned businesses and women to do better as business owners. But when the numbers actually come through, I mean the gains are minor and the gains are minor year over year in this climate. So I think definitely more of a women's founder ecosystem needs to be created to really get us from, as you say, this trail to definitely more of a waterfall of this happening for multiple women-owned businesses. And as women do better, the hope would be that they'll inspire other women to work along and maybe even mentor other women to be into the same position as they are. So that's what I hope from any women's network that I see. And it sounds like that's what you're trying to put together. So I think that's definitely awesome.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Well, thank you.
Darell Brown:
Ah, and it's the AWE Network, so yeah.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
See, it works. And I mean, the reality is, there are all of those intersections. So when we look at those numbers, and we start to drill down more into racialized women, those numbers are even more abysmal. And so I think it's really... And to me, sometimes there is there can be judgment, I guess, and there can be judgment all along the way. And I think it's really important for those of us who have hit whatever that mark or measure of success is in our business, that we make it part of our mission or our function or our life to reach back and to make sure that we are widening that trail and to make sure that we are creating opportunities for those women coming behind us.
And I've done a lot of work with really successful women and you read the research and those sorts of things. And sometimes there is that idea that, "Well, it was hard for me," and so I sometimes have to have those gentle conversations of, "Just because it was super hard for you to balance having three kids and this super high pressure job and you survived that, do we really need to have that measurement for everyone else? Could we not just..." And so those are gentle conversations and when you have them, people often go, "Oh, yeah, right." But a lot of that, I mean, we have a whole lot of internalized sexism that's going on. We are really good at oppressing ourselves and oppressing other people. And so part of what I think this widening that path to multiple seven figures is opening our eyes to other people's experiences and being really generous in the ways that we can.
Darell Brown:
Yeah. You've just made a lot of great points. Myself personally, living in New York, I attend a lot of events having to do with women's pay disparity issues and then diversity and inclusion. And I would definitely say I've never heard the issues put the way that you've put them. I think we definitely have to deal with a lot of internalized systems we have around gender issues and even racial issues for that matter if we're going to see any significant progress.
I would've hoped with all of the activism around the different pay disparity and business issues especially when it comes to investing and who receives more or less of the venture capital funding, that we would've seen a lot more progress in the last couple of years.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Yes.
Darell Brown:
Oh, my God. I feel like we could have did a podcast on this alone. My goodness. Okay. All right. I'm going to end it here. I want to thank Sara so much for being a part of the ProProject Podcast. And Sara, please give us your website info and potential launch dates of the Breakthrough radio show and any closing thoughts you want to leave us with.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
Well, I just want to say thank you so much for inviting me on your podcast. Like I say, I love podcasts. I love talking. These are some of... You've hit on all of my favorite subjects. So it's been a real pleasure. You can find me at www.srl.solutions. And so those solutions is the dot com is what I always say. And you can find me on LinkedIn, just Sara Roach-Lewis and the podcast, you'll be able to find it wherever you listen to podcasts and you can listen to it live, it launches on October 7th at 11:00 AM Eastern on the Voice American Network.
Darell Brown:
Perfect. And any, just one closing thought to leave us with.
Sara Roach-Lewis:
My closing thought, I think is be kind and gentle with yourself. And we have this idea about grid and hustle and we just have to grind. And I would say, you know what? No. We are creating businesses to make our lives better and more wonderful. So just be kind and gentle with yourself. Some days you're going to be in the flow and everything is going to be great. And on those days where it's not, it's okay. It's okay to go to bed when the kids go to bed and it is okay to have a bad day.
I always say, be kind and gentle and firm. So be kind and gentle with yourself when you need it. Our lives are complicated. Women bear so much of the responsibility for not only our businesses but our families and our parents, our elder care, our childcare, our community responsibilities. So be kind and gentle with yourself and then the firm is, after you've had that bad day, the firm is you get up the next morning, you look at yourself in the mirror, you say whatever it is that you need to say to get yourself oriented and you just go and you do it. Totally okay to have a bad day, don't let it become a bad month.
Darell Brown:
I'd like to thank Sara again for being the first official guest of the ProProject Podcast. You can listen to her further on the Breakthrough radio show on the Voice America Network.
I'd like to thank all of you for listening to our first interview as well. If you found any tips or any strategy or advice that Sarah has given, especially helpful, we always love to hear. Please feel free to email me at info@proprojectbooks.com that's I-N-F-O @proprojectbooks.com. And also if you'd like to be a guest on the show and share some of your insights, please feel free as well to email us, info@proprojectbooks.com. We're going to keep it going with a new episode dropping next week, October 16th. If you haven't already please subscribe to the ProProject Podcast so you can get that episode as soon as it hits. This is Darell Brown of the ProProject Podcast signing off. Remember, be kind and gentle to yourself.