Читать книгу Single. Women. Entrepreneurs. Second Edition - Erin Albert - Страница 24

Yes, it has been mostly all my own capital. Now I’m in the fortunate place of having a financial angel giving me some help. But, I’m also now in the place where I’m trying to raise capital. Women go to banks to get money, and that is not where you get capital for a business. It’s a whole different game to raise capital, as I said before. I think this is a difference between men and women. With men, if they like another guy, they are willing to give him money to run his business. I don’t know if it has something to do with the mother in us as women, but there’s something where men don’t think we can handle the ugliness that can happen in business.

There is a code that must be cracked to get capital. I learned about this at CEO Space, but you have to find someone who is willing to share the secrets with you. Guys have a network, so if you have a relationship with someone, they’ll tell you. My dad taught my brother about money, but not me. He assumed I’d grow up, get married, and the man would worry about that. That’s changing to some extent, but it is really hard to figure out how to get money unless you have friends with money. Also, the investors out there who have money to give to you are mainly men…about 95% of them are men. Men respond better to other men. It is a relationship that they understand.

It is also my own personal belief that if a man doesn’t grow up with a sister, he doesn’t really know what to do with women in business or how to treat them. They don’t view women as peers. I think a lot of sexual harassment is really men trying to figure out how to relate to women in business, because men treat men differently. It goes back to my previous comment about the ranking thing—men are constantly ranking themselves against each other. When men run into women in business, they either think they are moms or something else but NOT peers. I’ve seen that in corporations too. Women were well respected by their male peers, so they were treated as part of the guys’ club. But, the women didn’t perceive the men respected them AT ALL. It’s sad in some ways, because women who have done amazing things simultaneously felt absolutely disrespected, but they actually weren’t. Men felt they weren’t appreciated either.