It’s Time to Build (that Business, that Life, that ___ ) and Kathleen Griffith Is Here for Us
written by Stacey Lindsay
“You’re either building your dream or someone else’s, it’s never both.”
As both a woman in the world and a self-made businesswoman, Kathleen Griffith has been thinking deeply about what it means to thrive as a woman for a long time. In her new book, Build Like a Woman, she interrogates—with her trademark accessible and fun sensibility—contrived ideas of what it means to build a business and instead offers a roadmap for doing it in a way that is wholly unconventional and you.
This is easy to say and hard to do, we realize. But with every page, Kathleen, whose media company advises Fortune 100 brands, shakes up contrived ideas and leaves us with a feeling that creating anything in this life, be it a new company, life, or way to be, is possible. “I love the idea of making the business building process fun and less intimidating,” she says, “and more accessible for regular women like me, who just want to go and build extraordinary things in this lifetime.”
Chatting with Kathleen Griffith
It seems there's an upswell of women who are fully seeing that they no longer want the status quo and are seeking more outside the lines of work and life. What are you seeing in your work?
There's something really afoot in the women's space right now, and I track nothing but the women's space between my consulting business and my work with Build. We see a lot of women delving into doing more personal growth work, examining their internal world, all of which was buried and repressed for so long. From my perspective, women emerged from COVID, critically evaluating their external worlds and taking a hard look at the workplace. So many women went into corporate and did all the right things, and they're seeing and feeling: This is not a space or place I want to be in. I don't have the flexible work conditions I was hoping for. I don't have the promotions I was promised. The microaggressions are still very much there. Women have been brokering who they are to fit into places, and it all feels off and disillusioning and overwhelming. So, in my view, women were in a suspended state of sorts, and they're now very committed to their internal truth of who and what they are and what they want to go and do.
We have this wave of what I call "accidental entrepreneurs" who are done trying to fix places and spaces that were not designed for them, and they're just getting down to the unglamorous work of building. And what's interesting is, statistically, women are more ambitious than ever. Ambition was made to be this dirty word, and I believe women are now reclaiming it, not in a performative way, but in a way that it's about designing my own life.
Your book offers a blueprint to build, and it takes a more holistic view of creating things, be it a business or another expression of going after one's dreams. What does your book offer women that perhaps other business and development books don't?
There are many fabulous personal growth, self-help, and peak performance books. You have that shelf. Then, you have the business shelf, which tends to be very mindset-driven. And then you've got the business shelf, which tends to be very self-driven, focused on skill building. As an entrepreneur myself, I found that I started only focused on my skill set. As a consultant, I'm trained in those skills, but when I found myself trying to create a life on top of that, it was kind of a mess. So, I started working with personal growth coaches and mindset business coaches, and I found as I started doing that work, it paid the highest dividends in my business. When I became mentally strong, my business started to take off. So, my book is the blueprint I wish someone handed me when I started my business. First, we're going to work on getting your mindset strong. Then we'll focus on vision and creating an integrated life that you feel really good about, including figuring out your values and learning who and what you are so you can be a mindful leader. This is all to ensure you're not just running around with super sharp scissors, which I was doing for a long time. Once you have that foundation, the book offers the skill sets you need for success.
Throughout the book, I sprinkle what I call "Golden Tools," which are my tried-and-true techniques to supercharge success. As I was going through this process, I found these shortcuts that were magical for me that many traditional business books or MBA programs would scoff at—but they really, really work.
You're honest about how building a business and a life we truly want takes work and is not easy. This is refreshing, given our culture's focus on quick fixes or overly positive insight. Will you talk more about how it can be hard?
It can be hard and really rough if you don't have a plan and are just trying to figure it out as you go. When that happens, I believe you make something that is naturally difficult more painful than it needs to be.
There are two things I feel can be most challenging: One, the more you design a life that is true to you—because at any point, you're either building your dream or someone else's, it's never both—what tends to happen is things can get lonely, especially in the beginning. The more unique you become, the more things tend to change. Maybe you want to move cities; maybe you want a new partner, or maybe you are spending your money building your business instead of going out for drinks with everyone. So, that, initially, can be quite difficult, but what is exciting is that over time, you start to have a life like a bespoke suit. And wow, is it juicy because it is so unique to you?
The other facet is that the more you find yourself in power, the more power you have. The power dynamic can become confusing as you assert boundaries, as you put hard lines in the sand around what you will or won't tolerate through your business. I found that to be a confusing thing because I didn't understand the blowback, especially from men. It was quite intimidating at times. It was then that the mindset became so important.
What does it mean to you to be a builder?
To be a builder is to have a gigantic vision—that's step one. Step two is to then step into realizing that vision daily. It's as simple and hard as that. Some days, it might look like you only have 10 percent to give toward this grandiose vision that only you and you alone can see, but you still take that courageous action to step toward this thing that only you can touch. Being a builder goes way beyond being an entrepreneur. It's a mindset. You want to usher something from the unseen realm into the seen realm— that is really powerful work. You're a creator, ultimately.
Can we build at any time and at any age?
Yes. It is absolutely ageless. You can be 14 years old, or you can be 104 years old. I love the stories I include in the book. There's Vera Wang, who almost qualified for the Olympics, and when she didn't, she started this dress company that no one understood. There's just Grandma Moses, the great painter who started her career much later. We all have something unique we were put on this planet to do. I believe with all my heart that our work is to find it, make contact with it, and then go about serving it as best we can. It does not matter when you get to that work or whatever it is; it just matters that you try.
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Learn more about Kathleen at kathleengriffith.com and order her new book here.
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