Women's Equality Day: Carol Fitzgerald offers insight for female entrepreneurs

To celebrate Women's Equality Day we are proud to introduce Ms. Carol Fitzgerald, Co-founder and President of the Book Report Network, which includes such popular sites as BookReporter.com and ReadingGroupGuides.com. Ms. Fitzgerald reflects on the challenges and successes of being a female entrepreneur. Enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at an exhibit called “American Women: Fashioning An Identity,” which chronicled women’s fashion from the late 1800s to the 1930s. As part of the exhibit, there was a display of women marching for the right to vote. Suddenly a flood of memories about women’s lib, bra burnings, breaking the glass ceiling and other symbols of women fighting for equality rolled over me.

Since then, and after being asked to write this piece, I have channeled thoughts about women in the workplace and how technology, as well as all the women who proceeded us fighting for equality, have made changes. While we are still seeing inequalities, much HAS changed. 

In the mid ‘70s, I worked for a newspaper for five summers during high school and college doing a number of jobs on the advertising and business side of the paper. While I have many wonderful memories, one of my favorites on this particular subject was the day the ad director called me in and asked me “to take a letter.” I put out my hand and asked, “Take it where?” He looked at me like I was daft. Instead in what would now read like an episode of Mad Men he wanted me to take dictation, which I was clueless about. I sat there poised with the steno pad I had seen his secretary carry like a talisman and wrote down what he said as he leaned back and relaxed back in his chair waxing prophetic. I was hoping I would remember what belonged in the large spaces that were left where I did not write because he was going so fast --- and because I was trying to think if I agreed with what he was saying. I was also hoping he would not fall as he leaned back further and further in the chair as he talked. I went back to my desk and typed up my notes on my manual typewriter filling in words and polishing the letter to something that looked good. Later as he was signing it he said to me, “You really need to learn shorthand if you hope to get ahead.” I turned and said, “Actually I plan to have your job.” I still can remember his laughter as I walked out the door. Today, luckily, most everyone types their own correspondence, making computers and email the emancipators of a whole world of women.

From there I spent the first 17 years of my career at Conde Nast, where most of the audience for the magazines we published were women. Despite that, there was only one woman in top management: She headed Human Resources. Sure, there were female editors-in-chief, and eventually female publishers, but there was just one lone woman on the Executive team, and her office was not on the Executive floor. Most of the men in management expected their secretaries to do everything for them. If their secretaries (if you were far enough up the exec chain, you had a secretary, not an assistant) were at lunch, they were helpless on the machinations of the company. One day it was lunchtime and our publisher needed a paper clip. I asked him if he would like to come with me to see where they came from. Intrigued, he followed and we took the elevator up three flights, where I showed him the supply room. It was like having a kid in the candy store. I remember him later saying that was really cool. In any job I have ever held I have always prided myself on the fact I know how things happen so there’s no need to “wait for help.” You are equal to everyone else when you can get every part of the job done on your own. 

Shortly after leaving CN in 1995 I started an Internet company, TheBookReportNetwork.com with two men who had worked with me on marketing films when I was at the magazine. They wanted me on the team since I “got the train out on time” and had a “business brain.” We were one of AOL’s Greenhouse properties – 45 websites that they planned to program like television shows online to attract people to the AOL network. While we were given seed money in exchange for stock, we clearly needed investors, which meant it fell to me to make those grinding presentations at conferences whenever the opportunity arose. Once again, I was back in a man’s world as almost every potential investor was male.

Now these were the gold rush days of the Internet, when every moment people were creating ideas and trying to raise money. And for the record, both of my male partners had exited day-to-day working at the company by nine months in, so this albatross lay squarely on my shoulders. I would go to investor conferences and watch pitches of products and services that I knew would never work, but because there were men presenting, the big fund players were lining up to play. Why? Well, the boys in the room were totally comfortable to say, "We will make $50,000 this year and $50 million the next." Sure, I exaggerate a tad, but trust that I watched a lot of ideas that made not one shred of sense get funded because of the old-boy culture that was in the room. After one day of presenting, I was asked to meet with four possible investors, each of whom told me I was the best presenter of the day and I just needed a bigger idea and they would have funded me. So I asked each, what ARE you funding? And they would tell me, quick to share how smart they were. I then would dissect the ideas they were backing ---- since seriously, folks, everything was JUST IDEAS at the time --- and watch their faces fall. I knew I was the smart woman in the room and I always left with their respect, if not their dollars.  

Oh, of those 45 Greenhouse companies, we are one of four still in business. We now have eight editorial websites and are plotting a ninth. We have expanded our business to include website design/development, Internet marketing and publicity and research for authors and publishers. And we are profitable. Why? Well, it was a grounded idea, with a real plan that made sense and I was willing to do whatever I needed to do to make it work. And I never got ahead of myself. But trust that the guys on the street still would not want to take two looks at me. I do pride myself that we have three female angel investors among those who did take a risk on us.

I think women sweat the details more and the details matter. We look for the fractures in things before they happen to figure how to conquer them. We juggle a number of tasks simultaneously with great aplomb. We do not just see problems, but a need for sensible solutions, some of which are not the shortest or the easiest.  

That said, I still love that I know how things work around the office. A few weeks ago, there was a moment where everyone was trying to figure out why the printer was not working and was ready to call the repair company in to fix it. I crawled under one desk, matched the cords to the computers and came up with the one stray and held it up to be plugged into the printer and then went on with my day. That day I had some successful meetings, signed up some new business and got some good news about one of our sites, but on the drive home, the fact that I saved the time and money of a call to the printer fix-it team meant just as much to me!  

You can find out more about Ms. Fitzgerald and her company at www.BookReporter.com or visit the Book Reporter Facebook page.