The Soup is Getting Cold with Angelica Malin - Issue 6
Angelica Malin is an award-winning entrepreneur, podcast and event host based in London.
She is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of About Time Magazine and also runs #SheStartedItLIVE, a festival of female empowerment.
Angelica is also the author of She Made It: The Toolkit for Female Founders in the Digital Age.
Why Read: Entrepreneurship as a viable career choice is increasingly something to aspire towards; younger generations are clearly motivated by it and are driven towards this as a goal. But a lot of the language and culture around entrepreneurism remains male dominated, filled with a whiff of old-fashioned machismo and often the embrace of ‘bro-culture’.
From the hero-cult worship of male Silicon Valley CEOs to the testosterone-tinged assertions of ‘hustle culture’, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there were any female businesspeople out there.
But this isn’t the case. The global rate of female entrepreneurship has been increasing more quickly than that of male entrepreneurs, with an estimated more than 250 million women around the world engaged in entrepreneurship.
Angelica Malin is one such entrepreneur and this interview provides fascinating tips and advice for those thinking of taking the plunge and launching their entrepreneurial journey.
Tell us about your book?
The book is called She Made It. It's a handbook for female entrepreneurship in the digital age, so it's all about starting a business, but using the digital tools of social media to elevate the business with a focus on women starting businesses. I interviewed many female entrepreneurs for the book and looked at specific things that women often struggle with in terms of business.
Some of the chapters are quite practical. So, they cover things like ‘how to show up on Instagram,’ and branding that way. But there's also quite a lot around leadership, and mindset, and imposter syndrome.
When I was introduced to many female entrepreneurs, these were things that came up again and again - and I was hearing a lot of the same questions.
“I don't feel ready,” “when's the right time to start something?” or, “I feel like an imposter, I feel like a fake, I feel like people are about to, you know, finds me out”.
I interviewed women who were top of their game; who'd raised loads of investment and done incredible things. And I noticed that this was still a problem. So, the book also addresses how you can get into the mindset for success and how to overcome challenges and hurdles without internalising the problems.
Did you find that male CEOs or entrepreneurs have the same challenges?
I think it is less of an issue. Many men obviously struggle as well, but I think, especially on the leadership front, there's a lot more conversation around how women are perceived as leaders, and the struggles of wanting to be liked, and wanting to lead.
There's all these worries and concerns that in my experience men just don’t have, and they just step into that power, and they're like, “I don't really care if people like me,” or “I'm going to do this my way and you're going to listen to me.”
It's not the same for every man or every woman but I did see that as a bit of a theme that women in leadership roles can often feel intimidated by the roles that they're in and there's just a lot of anxiety around it.
Is mentorship the answer to overcoming some of these anxieties?
Mentorship is something that we talk about a lot. It's actually hard to find a mentor. If you're doing something that is in a bit of a frontier industry where there's not quite the trodden path ahead of you because you're doing something quite new, or you've got a portfolio career that has quite a lot of different strands to it, which lots of millennial women have these days; it’s actually really hard to find a mentor.
So, one of the focuses of the book is how can you find mentors within your network and how can you ask them for support in a way that doesn't feel creepy – ways that can bring them in and you can ask for help. It's a less traditional sense of networking.
How would you describe what you do?
Let's say I'm a writer. A writer with a lifestyle magazine.
I think we often ‘niche down’ too early in our careers, and we pigeonhole ourselves before we actually really know what we are yet. I find that a bit frustrating at times.
It's interesting when those shifts happen in your career, and you get into other stuff.
This weird thing occurs that you have to worry about a bit when you work for yourself, you're like, ‘am I getting too into this random thing?’
‘Am I getting too confusing?’ ‘Should I be doing this?’ These are questions I used to ask myself.
But I've learned to follow the curiosity and try not to worry about it too much, what it looks like as a sort of grand package.
What's been the biggest challenge for you during the pandemic?
The pandemic was very challenging for us on the lifestyle magazine. I went from having a team of four full time, to working on my own. That was really hard personally. Obviously it's difficult. It's difficult when your work changes, but I think it's more difficult when your setup changes with going from having colleagues and employees to not at all.
Emotionally I found that transition very difficult. And I felt a bit lost with it. I was like, “Where's my team? What am I doing?”
I kind of feel a bit like I got dropped kicked from the start of the pandemic and I've just landed on the other side. And only now I'm able to take stock, which is what a lot of people feel I think; they've had a really big shift in the last two years, and we're just catching up a little bit.
But on the other hand, the pandemic meant that I could focus on books: I've got the book She Made It, which launched in January, plus, two new books coming out next year that wouldn't have happened if I didn't have all this time, and suddenly going ‘okay, what else?’
There were a lot of new businesses launched during the pandemic, many of them small micro-businesses, what challenges do you think they have to overcome?
It's going to be an interesting 6-12 months ahead. A lot of these small businesses that started during the pandemic, were these small kitchen table things that people started in response to what was going on. I think there was a lot of enthusiasm from the public and consumers, and a desire to support them.
I think the challenge now for those kinds of businesses is how can they sustain that momentum in a world that's opened up?
I would say this is going to be a real crunch time for a lot of these businesses that have experienced an unusual interest and response from a customer base, and can they sustain that? That is going to be quite challenging. For these entrepreneurs it’s time to be thinking about things like digital and social brand building.
It's also where support networks come in super handy: when you have friends that are perhaps, like, a few years ahead in business and things like that. That for me has been a bit of a game changer. Finding some people that might not be in identical industries but are doing or have done something similar - where you can like voice some of those concerns – is super helpful, because it can be very isolating doing your own thing.
So what inspired your own entrepreneurial journey.
Getting fired! I think I have been fired from every job I've had.
I don't even think it was ever an option not to work for myself. I've been fired from everything from being an editor to working in a pub. I've only had a handful of jobs, but I think some people are just born to work for themselves, and I'm one of those people.
I find the flexibility and the freedom that it provides amazing, as someone who likes to travel a lot, it works for my lifestyle. I also, just personally, find myself a lot more motivated when it's for myself, and the times that I've worked for other people I've struggled to connect with the world the same way. I just find it an inspiring way to work.
When I interviewed Martin Lindstrom a couple of months ago, he predicted the rise of freelance contractors as something that will really grow alongside working from home. He then said that if you're freelance, you basically need to build a personal brand. You are someone with a personal brand. What advice do you give to anyone about building that personal brand?
It can be a bit frustrating the whole personal brand thing. It is kind of annoying if you don't want to be someone that is putting your face to camera, or if you don’t want to be very public. But if you're going to go down a freelance route - you must be thinking of yourself as a business and yourself as a brand.
But my advice is to try as much as possible to be authentic to who you actually are.
Trying to create a social media version of yourself that is as close to the real version is always good advice, because otherwise you run out of steam with it. Social media becomes really draining when you're trying to create a brand that feels like an exaggerated over-the-top version of yourself.
Over time that becomes really exhausting to keep up with and that's why people lack the consistency with social media. That’s when they find the content creation, a bit draining, because you can't constantly be like a shouty over expressive version of yourself.
You see a lot of people fighting for superlatives to talk about how passionate they are about their work, when I think most of us are passionate about bits of our jobs, not all of it, all of the time. I'm not passionate about all of what I do. Some of it I do for money. And that’s got to be okay too.
Women get far more abuse for putting themselves ‘out there’ on social media. I can certainly see why many women feel reluctant to put themselves ‘out there’ in that way. Do you have any advice for women who want to build a brand for themselves but are put off by this toxic element of social?
Yes, I can identify completely. Just last week I had a post that went viral. I thought it was relatively vanilla in terms of its content, but I was absolutely trolled for it, and it was merciless for two days.
I think people often think that vulnerability is a weakness. If we reframe that - it can be a bit of a superpower because people buy from people.
I think when you show your vulnerability online, it helps with a bit of a human connection, which can make people feel stronger about your brand or business and then they can want to work with you.
So, I would try not to hide away all the messy, vulnerable parts of your life, and only show the stuff that feels glossy. That feels really hollow. When I've shared things that haven't gone right in my business, as an example, or the times that I've just found things difficult - that's actually when I built the connections that feel stronger with my audience.
Try not to shy away from those moments that feel vulnerable, but actually lean into them and to use them.
What advice would you give to any women, that are considering taking the plunge and become female entrepreneurs?
Don't wait on it too long. I've seen it many times, both anecdotally with my friends and through interviews in the book, of people sitting on an idea too long. Ultimately talking themselves out of it by adding too much feedback and insights from friends and family.
Then you get to a stage where you've talked about it too much and then you don't actually do it. So, if you have an idea, and you're in a position to do it, run with it. Do a minimal viable product; do a focus group and just get it off the ground and don't worry about it.
The other thing is just getting a sense of clarity to keep it all super simple. Just basics like who the customer is; what language, tone of voice, you want to speak to your customer in and what the revenue model is. Just a really simple business plan. Having a really simple business plan nailed down all help. Then, just go for it.
Thanks for Reading
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Past Issues:
Issue 1:The Soup is Getting Cold with Martin Lindstrom, best-selling author, brand expert and TIME magazine’s one of the “world’s 100 most influential people.”
Issue 2: The Soup is Getting Cold with Nick Entwistle, the founder and Creative Director of The Bank of Creativity and One Minute Briefs, a social media phenomenon.
Issue 3: The Soup is Getting Cold with Alon Shtruzman, Hollywood TV producer and CEO of Keshet International, Keshet Media Group's global distribution and production arm.
Issue 4: The Soup is Getting Cold with Sheree Atcheson, Sri Lankan-born Irish computer scientist and world expert on diversity and inclusion, as well as the author of Demanding More, a Financial Times business summer books of 2021 choice.
Issue 5: The Soup is Getting Cold with Justin Calderón, a Barcelona based journalist whose work appeared on the BBC, Foreign Policy, CNN, Newsweek, The Bangkok Post and more, on his new life as a digital content marketer.