One of my buddies,
a female executive,
only works with companies
who have women on their pitch teams.
Her reasoning is…
if the company doesn’t value
women enough
to place them on their pitch teams,
the company won’t value
her, a female executive, enough
to listen to and respect her input.
She has an empire
to build and to run
and she has options.
Why would she choose
to work with people
who didn’t respect her?
No one has time for that.
Nick De Paula
shared
this story about Beyoncé.
“She had a meeting
at Reebok
and they had a whole presentation
of everything,
potential products,
how this could all look.
And she kind took a step back
and said,
‘Is this the team
that will be working
on my product?’
Somebody said yes.
And she said,
‘Nobody in this room,
reflects my background,
my skin color
and where I’m from
and what I want to do.’
So she kind of
took a step back and left.
And then it did not come to terms.”
If you’re a business builder
and you have choices,
save yourself time and effort
and work with companies
that respect you,
that, at the minimum,
won’t hold who you are
against you.
If you’re pitching
to a company that values diversity,
ensure your sales team is diverse.
We WILL notice.