Episode #3: How Women Can Grow “Balls” in Business
In this episode, we tackle the meaning behind “how to grow a pair of balls” in business, and ways you can address it while not being called the another B-word. This topic is of particular importance to women in the creative industry, as only 30% of marketing and advertising leaders are women, with only 12% of women in creative roles. You may have been told to “grow some balls” a time or two in your life, so we’ve identified some helpful takeaways from our experience for feeling empowered in the workplace: kill impostor syndrome with confidence, be brave and don’t fear getting uncomfortable, and always be selling yourself.
How Women Can Grow “Balls” in Business Episode Recap
This podcast explores the phrase “grow balls for women” and aims to reframe it to mean confidence, bravery, and empowerment in the workplace. Hosted by two marketing and advertising professionals, the episode delves into the struggles and wins they’ve experienced while building their careers. They focus on the challenges faced by women in male-dominated industries, such as marketing and advertising.
The hosts discuss the controversial and sexist nature of the phrase “grow balls” and how it’s often used to suggest that someone needs to be more courageous, assertive, and confident, often in a more traditionally masculine way. They propose a different perspective, emphasizing the importance of being brave, daring greatly, embracing vulnerability, and displaying assertiveness without resorting to sexist language.
The podcast hosts share personal anecdotes that shaped their confidence and assertiveness, such as engaging in sports, taking on challenges, and having supportive parents who encouraged them to excel in their careers.
The episode provides advice on how women can navigate the workplace with confidence and bravery, including self-promotion, avoiding hesitation, and not shying away from confrontation when necessary. The hosts encourage women to be assertive, decisive, and fearless in their professional lives while staying true to themselves.
Overall, the episode aims to empower women in the marketing and advertising industry and inspire them to embrace their confidence and courage in their careers.
Episode Transcript:
Julia
In this episode, we break down the phrase grow balls for women and talk about how to reframe it to mean confidence, bravery and feeling empowered in your career and the workplace.
Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms Podcast. We are two women with more than 50 years of marketing and advertising experience between us. And we want to talk about the struggles, the fails, and the wins that we experienced while building our careers. Being a boss, juggling work and home life, and arguably the hardest and yet most fulfilling job being a mom. This podcast was created for marketing and advertising professionals, especially the up-and-coming marketing stars of the future. We hope these tips tricks and advice will help you navigate work in life and get ahead. Kelly, let’s dive in to this week’s episode, which is how can Women Grow Balls in Business..
Kelly
Yeah, the phrase, let’s “grow some balls” is a rather controversial phrase. And it’s a sexist phrase. Frankly, it’s a sexist term. And but people continue to use it and what does it mean? Let’s talk about that for a second. I mean, a lot of times it’s directed towards men, but sometimes it’s also directed toward women. It means you need to have courage, you need to be braver, also, to a certain extent more masculine, more manly, more badass, more brave, strong, courageous, defiant, assertive, all these manly characteristics, which are associated with balls, is what it means to grow balls.
I look at it in a different way. Because clearly we’re women. And I look at it as I don’t know that I would use that word to someone. I sure hope I’ve never used that phrase to anybody in any way, shape or form. But I see it as the whole Brene Brown “Be brave, daring greatly” “Dare to lead” “embrace discomfort be vulnerable”. Fearless, shoulders back, head up. Amy Cuddy, you know, this kind of thing. And that’s what it means to me. And I think we need to come up with a better phrase. But I think it’s the meaning behind it, there really needs to be a phrase for women, because women need to figure out a way to center themselves, to steel themselves. And you know, we do this every day, probably without thinking about it. We steel ourselves before we go into a big meeting. We look in the mirror, we stand up, we do our power poses, you know, we walk in with confidence, and we gather ourselves. And so, where does that come from? And I think some of that we’re going to talk about today and what that means, again, we don’t want to be crude, or rude, or disrespectful to any women by using the phrase, but what we’re trying to do is kind of turn the meaning behind the phrase, into something positive.
Julia
Agreed and you just listed so many great authors and leaders, I feel like we live in this time with so many amazing women who have rephrased this and have allowed us to think about this masculine energy and how do we harness it in a way that empowers us? That helps us get ahead. I love this topic. You all are listening. Right? We got your attention with balls. So just before we get into it, I thought that I would talk about…Why are really talking about this? Kelly, and I really wanted to talk specifically to women, and moms and new up and comers, not that we’re leaving males out, right, because I think males can definitely relate to this. Some males identify, and sometimes are also offended by being told that they need to grow a pair. But because of that, in the marketing and advertising world, most of the creative industry is male led. And that’s why it’s so relevant to us. We’re both women that have had to come into this industry, and find a place for ourselves as women.
Just a couple of stats that I found online, easy Google search, you can find these, about 30% of ad leaders are women. As you move up the ladder, you are going to encounter probably some harsh male masculine energy. And it’s going to give you a run for your money. Out of that only 12% creatives are women. I mean, you think of Mad Men, right? Don’t get me wrong, but it was a pretty good depiction of women where very few, especially when it came to creative. And there’s a huge pay gap between genders, not just our industry, but a lot of industries. And, over the past many decades, women have really pushed that forward, and it’s getting smaller bit by bit, right. And yet, most women have the purchasing power. So, if you think about that, a lot of the decisions are being made about marketing and advertising campaigns by men, or men led teams and women are really the audience in a lot of cases. So anyways, this is kind of the segue for why we are talking about balls. And really, I think the takeaway, correct me if I’m wrong, Kelly is that we want everyone to take away after this short podcast, just some ways to harness “growing balls” and not being called the other be word that we know…
Kelly
And have been called…
Julia
And have been called. I’ve actually never had someone tell me to grow a pair. I have had people call me the other B word.
Kelly
Yes. Me too.
Julia
So anyways, before we get to our tips and tricks, we thought we might just tell our personal anecdotes about how we kind of were pushed to grow some balls along the way.
Kelly
And I have four personal stories. Four ways really. I think the start of assertiveness in women starts when you’re very young, and I was a tomboy and my dad was an athlete in high school in college, he played every sport there, was he played football for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. He almost went Pro with the Broncos, and was hugely into sports. In fact, sports and athletics in my family was more important than grades to a certain extent. My mother, believe it or not, is a professional triathlete. She’s one of the top triathletes in the world in her age division and has done the Iron Man four times. I come from a very athletic family. So, at a very young age, my parents had me doing softball and basketball and soccer in the 70s. In the Midwest, where I grew up, they would only let one girl on the boys’ team, or you had to be on the girl’s team. And I was like, no way am I going to be on the girls’ team, so I was always the one girl on the boy’s team in elementary school, and the highest scorer, by the way. But from there, my mother started running to start a training for the New York Marathon and started asking me to do a bunch of races with her. I starting when I was about 10, in fourth grade. And I started running and I started winning my age division. And from there, I went up to do cross country in junior high and then track in junior high and in high school. Eventually in high school, I set a school record in the mile, the two miles, and the three miles.
Julia
What was your mile time, Kelly?
Kelly
I believe 6:18 was my fastest time. I’d have to confirm with my records, but I’m pretty sure that was it. It’s of course it’s since been broken. And then I also did the mile relay. So, for me sports and this really came from my dad and he taught me four important things.
The first thing is that he felt it was really important for his children to differentiate themselves through sports or through whatever activities, but for him sports were really important as they helped paid for his college education. And so, he pushed us in sports because he also believed that team sports teach you a lot about what you learn in corporate America, and being a part of a team is extremely important. So that was the first thing that he did is he pushed me participate in sports and athletic, which really I think helped me to believe in my own personal power, my own fearlessness, and my own personal strength that, hey, gosh, my body has a bigger ability than I thought it does. Because I am capable and able to win races and place well. I will tell several things that he did for me, and then I will go back and forth on your stories too.
He also told me that he never wanted me to marry for money. He never wanted me to feel like I needed a man to support me. And so, what he did is he encouraged me in my 20s to purchase a home when I was still single, to start building equity and wealth. Because he believes that people should have three streams of income, not just your regular job, but also the stock market, if you can afford it, and then of course, real estate as another way of building wealth. And so, when I was in my late 20s, I bought my first condo, which helped me, and I bought it in San Francisco, let me just say, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge between two buildings, it was fantastic. And I sold it for a lot of money that I ended up using with my husband on a down payment on our first house. And that taught me a lot about financial stability. Right. And, learning about finances.
The next thing that he did was in my college years, and my young 20s. My mom was busy with travel to triathlons, and with my brother’s and so my dad started taking me on a lot of his business trips. So, he’s taken me to Germany, to Monterrey, Mexico, to Scotland, to Moscow, all around the world. And I had to participate in these socializing dinners with different people that he worked with. So, at a young age, I was kind of thrown into communicating with, really men that were significantly older than me, my dad’s age. And so, I had to learn how to communicate to them and how to be an interesting person and how to not speak like I’m a teenager and speak like I know about things in the world.
And then the last thing is related to me, he encouraged me to excel in business and hone my skills as a communicator, to have an opinion, we talked about this last time, and to be well read. And so those four things really helped me to “grow my own balls”, and to be fearless because he had faith in me, and pushed me to be the best that I could –it could be through athletics, through school, through grades, through my career, etc. And so that’s where a lot of my confidence was born from in terms of how my dad raised me. And so, I absolutely have to give him kudos for pushing me. And I understand you have some similar stories?
Julia
I do. I do. I also think it’s important to mention that a lot of people weren’t born into a family that helped them build that confidence, because, like you, I did. And so, I can imagine that, when you’re starting off in business, if you came from a background where you didn’t necessarily have those skills ingrained in you, you can maybe feel a little bit behind the curve. But as I said at the beginning, all of these amazing authors, you can go into TED talks and walk watch an insane number of amazing women.
And now today is the time for you listeners to be growing that confidence. So, I just wanted to say that it’s so funny Kelly, because we just have so much in common that we probably didn’t know. You know, I agree. My confidence was also kind of ingrained taught to me from an early age. My dad is kind of from the south and was the black sheep of his family and moved to New York City to work. And that is where he met my mom. A very tough as nails northern woman. And she, my mom, really was the one who taught me what a hard-working woman who was going to accomplish what she put her mind to, was going to accomplish in her world, in her life and was certainly part of the kind of the Mad Men era in her industry. It was pretty much all men. And so, she became really tough living in New York City and being part of that. I think she was really tough. So, agreed about your story about sports. I remember I was a runner; I was in track. I was a sprinter. And I did the hurdles.
Kelly
Oh, gosh, that’s the hardest.
Julia
And I remember at this one, districts, I just got out of my head for once and just won by a landslide. And afterwards, I was so filled with emotion, it was just this emotional release that I needed after the race. I was so surprised that I had just made a personal record, and my dad was there and was walking across the field to me, and I was kind of crying because the tears were just released, they didn’t mean I was sad. And my dad told me to man up. I’ll never forget that. And like I was, on one hand, so insulted. And then on the other hand, I get it. Like, there’s, There’s.. what is the saying? No crying in baseball, right? I wasn’t crying about anything particular. It was just my release from winning. Anyway, that just gives you an idea of the kind of guy my dad was. So, I’m just like you, my parents encouraged me to buy my own house. I did when I was 23. And then also, like you my dad also brought me on a lot of business trips. And when I was in the end of high school and in college, my dad was working for a company that sold parts to the racing industry. And he was a NASCAR guy his whole life. He loves cars. And so, and I grew up on it. And I guess when I graduated high school, he took me on a trip to the NASCAR beltway, aka Charlotte, North Carolina, and we got to go Dale Earnhardt’s headquarters, he was my personal hero, and talk about a male driven industry. It is full of testosterone, and not a lot of women. And it was just such a great insight into what business was like from a really, a pretty sheltered, privileged, naive point of view. I hadn’t gone out into the world yet. So that’s just a story that I wanted to talk about just kind of setting me up — just those little increments of experiences. And what I learned growing up about confidence and not being fearful, not being a fearful person, just going out and conquering and showing up.
Kelly
That says a lot about the role of parents and especially dads, if you think about both of us having similar experiences. Our dads not treating us like “girls”, right?
Julia
My dad wanted boys.
Kelly
I was the only girl and I was the oldest. But, not treating masculine versus feminine, both boys and girls need the same types of experiences and balancing them out as a parent is really important. And I wanted to add for the moms obviously, I feel like moms have the most balls in the world because we actually gave birth and nurtured humans until they could eat, sleep, and speak on their own. And yet there’s a shame about what our bodies look like after giving birth. And instead, it should be celebrated. I mean, look at the scars that we’ve been given to show what we’ve been through. So, moms have balls big time.
Julia
Yeah, it’s all about those little experiences that builds you up to growing that confidence. Those balls. Anything we all anything else we want to talk about, like in terms of our stories?
Kelly
That recaps the stories, we want to talk about our advice…
Julia
So, I’ll kick this off. Because I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I think one of the things that I keep seeing is people talking about imposter syndrome. And it kind of drives me crazy, because I don’t I have moments where I think about this, but I just have confidence in what I’m going to say and do. And if I don’t know the answer, I think we talked about this on another episode, I just say that I don’t know, I will figure it out. I never try to pretend to be anyone that I’m not. And what I think that does, for me, it just makes me feel like I am approaching every situation in an authentic way. That way, when I do have to stick up for myself, if I do have to have a hard conversation, if I do have to step in it, I’m, I’m doing it knowing that I know exactly what I want to say. I know what I want the outcome to be. And I’m not going to apologize for it. That being said, there’s a good percentage of time that I fail at that because I am an emotional person. I’m not saying that I am always a winner. But I think if when I come at it from that approach, I’ve had success in being seen as a leader, as a strong leader, as a respected leader. And maybe have had very little of the negative stuff.
Kelly
Yeah, those are some great points. A lot of bravery is, obviously, you have to have something inside of you. And, and even with imposter syndrome, if you feel that you have to fake it in order to succeed in any career, you have to figure out a way to push that away. And, be brave and be fearless. And, and steel yourself, like we talked about. And that could come out in many different ways. And a lot of it can come in terms of helping you in your career, by asking for raises. You’re not going to get a raise.. no one offers you a raise, no one just say “oh, you’re doing a great job, here’s some extra money,” you’ve got to ask. And so, if you’re one of those who hasn’t asked, you’re not going to receive. And every single time that I have asked for a raise, every single time and I have asked, many times, I have received one. So, it’s not like I didn’t have a backup to it and a rationale, and a 10-page document stating why I deserve it. But, I’ve never received something I haven’t asked for. And so that’s where the bravery comes in.
And little things, even like getting an interview. You don’t just send your resume into the HR director; you need to be brave. And I’ll give you another example of what I did in the year 2000- 2001. I was starting to look for jobs in DC and I had no connections to DC, because I had lived on the west coast in San Francisco and LA. And so, I figured out who the top advertising agencies were and I literally reached out to the heads of agencies owners, and I got three meetings with three different advertising agency owners, those did not lead to jobs, but I met them and the most interesting one is David Martin, the head of the Martin agency in Richmond, Virginia. I emailed him, and he said “Come on down to my house in Richmond, Virginia, and we’ll meet”. I went down to his house in Richmond, he has a house behind his house where his office was, he gave me his books autographed and we sat there and talked about advertising. And you know what? No, you know why? You know why? Because people don’t have the balls to ask a CEO for a meeting. I just want to pick your brain. I want to learn from you. People will always accept an informational interview. If someone wants to pick my brain, hey, that makes me feel smart. They’re not asked because people aren’t brave enough to do it. And I was brave enough to do it. And I got a meeting at this guy’s house.
Julia
I feel like I’m sure someone famous has been quoted, but this is just a personal mantra of my own is if I’m not uncomfortable, if I’m not doing something that’s brave, or I’m not doing something that’s out of me out of my zone, which means I’m not growing and I’m not being pushed to learn something new. Like what you just said, make new connections. And I feel like that that kind of sums that up there, like you have to get uncomfortable and brave, and do the things that you think may be impossible.
Kelly
So, let’s start with some advice, I think being being proactive is important. And another word which is can be seen as a bad word, or phrase is self-promotion. You can’t be afraid to self-promote. We’re in advertising and marketing, we promote our clients all the time. You should also be able to promote yourself and be okay about it.
Julia
Yeah, I feel like for women…my husband was telling me… we’ve spent this entire week talking about balls. And, funny enough, we were talking about it last night. And this morning, I found that my daughter had written to my son, it said “Brooks, you have balls, ha-ha”.
Because we were so in depth into this conversation, but he had said that part of his master’s program, he was taking psychology in marketing and advertising and design. And one of the articles was kind of like this test of women that had you had applied for a job. And kind of like an A B test. A woman that had been more self-promotional, maybe what you would consider “aggressive language” in their cover letter and resume, versus a woman who came across very nurturing, and not confrontational, and how to totally, maybe in some cases, you could see it as a very passive and soft approach. And that the woman who was aggressive and self -promotional, was looked at in a negative light. And the whole lesson he was learning was about differences in perception, and how to really position yourself in the right way. So, I think when it comes to self-promotion, there is a balance that you have to strike between being that really confident, but also nurturing leader, because you can be both. So, some women come across really cold, and have a lot of masculine energy, and then some come across, maybe too soft, too much feminine energy. And I think you’ve got to figure out the intersection of both of those. So, the way people perceive you as empowered, as a leader that they want to get to know. Instead of someone who is, maybe too into themselves, that could be the impression. It’s such a hard balance.
Kelly
It’s funny that I don’t think men think twice about this stuff. And women do. Another funny story I have is that once I did not get a job. And the rationale for not getting the job was that I was told I was “too polished”.
Julia
Oh, I mean, I feel like, oh, wait a minute.
Kelly
What does that mean? Okay, I’ll wear a T shirt next time. I mean, smudge my makeup? Not be so prepared as I present? I think, would you say that to a man?
Julia
That’s what you were experiencing was probably intimidation?
Kelly
Yes, yes. And I think I think we should definitely do an episode on that. Because I think you and I, as Type A people definitely probably suffer from being told we’re intimidating. I have definitely been told I’m intimidating. And Gosh, that’s not my intention.
Julia
And I get intimidated all the time.
Kelly
I feel like you can come off as intimidating too. And, you know, we don’t realize that and so, how do we change or should we change our behavior, knowing that piece of information? Anyway, getting off course. But that’s another topic for another time.
Julia
So, I think pitching yourself. Always, always, always be pitching. And that doesn’t mean that you should be in people’s face about it, you should always be thinking about where you’re placed and how you’re going to grow. Within a position a company with a client, on a project, whatever it is.
Kelly
I was going to say, Stop hesitating. You know, women, a lot of times men will just jump in with a response. And I’m not saying that women should do the same thing. But there’s a point when you don’t need to hesitate, you don’t need to necessarily, be careful with every single word that you’re saying, if you know what you’re doing. And a lot of times women hold themselves back with their opinions and hesitate, because they’re waiting for someone else to step in.
Julia
Here’s another good one to build off of that. I often, or not often, but I have hesitated, because I am afraid that my response will be too emotional. And in that case, I feel like hesitation is a good, just like innate quality, right? It’s going to tell you when to go or not to go.
Kelly
How about not avoiding confrontation?
Julia
Yeah, well, that’s another one where you kind of have to use that. You know, fear that quality inside you that tells you should I go for it? Or should I not? Because some confrontations are worth it. And some confrontations are not.
Kelly
Most are not, I would have to say.
Julia
Agreed, and I think pick your battles. I think the ones that definitely are, which now I’m thinking about this now. The ones that aren’t are emotionally charged?. So, I think for me, as a very emotional person, I can be all of the emotions within five minutes, sometimes I can get caught up in that. And my responses are emotion based. And you know, men love to say that women are emotional,” you’re being too emotional”. I was actually talking to a friend of mine who works at another agency. And she said, you know, the men are more emotional than the women in our agency. And yet the men run the agency, and they’re always telling us that we’re emotional. So, I’ve always tried to, well, I want to avoid that at all costs. I don’t want to tell someone to tell me that I’m being emotional, because I think, from a woman or from a man to woman, that’s kind of a dig, or it’s meant as a dig. And so, there are there are times confrontation or not, and also hesitation times where I’ve hesitated is when I’ve felt like maybe I’m in too much of an emotional place. And I need to dial it back and get access to more of my rational side, so that I can come up with an argument that has more logic than emotion, and that it will bounce so much better, I think.
Kelly
Sure, sure.
Again, what does it mean to have balls? We’re going to reframe it to make it less of a sexist comment. It’s all about being fearless. It’s all about being brave enough. Shoulders back, head up. You’ve got this, steel yourself. Move forward, be decisive. Lead. Be courageous, be assertive, respond maturely. When they go…Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high”. All of those things are a way of reframing the concept. Because the concept is there, and it’s a demeaning one, but I think we can turn it into a positive one and those are messages that women need to hear in order to be successful.
Julia
Agreed. good tips, Kelly. All right.
Kelly
Let’s close that today. And we’ll see you next week. Thanks. Bye.
Julia
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