Do we need to act like “one of the boys” in order to get ahead?
If you know anything about Cindy Gallop—and if you don’t know her, please crawl out from under that rock—you know that she’s never been shy to speak her mind. Gallop is the founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn and the former advertising executive who founded the US branch of global agency BBH. As a trailblazer in a male-dominated industry, I wanted to ask her: Should we be trying to break down the boys club or should we just build our own club?
Her answer: Neither.
“My personal philosophy is never waste your time banging your head against closed doors,” explains Gallop. “Instead, engineer yourself into a position where doors open automatically as you approach.” According to Gallop, our solution is simple: “Design the world that we want to live in. Because when we do that, the men will desperately want to be a part of that as well.”
“We live in a world where the default setting is always male," Gallop continues. "Men have no idea how much happier they would be living and working in a world that was designed equally by all of us. And so what I urge women to do is to don’t worry about what you think the business world laid out before you looks like. Stop and ask yourself what would make you happy. And design that...You’ll be amazed by how many will be drawn to somebody who is doing things differently and enabling others to do things differently. Because people really want to do things differently, but a lot of people need somebody else to show them how they can do that.”
So what’s holding us back from building this type of world? “Oiled grooves,” answers Gallop.
“Social conditioning is such that from the moment we are born, we are set on tracks where everything around us conspires to make us feel that there are things we should do,” she explains. “It also conspires to make us worry enormously about what people will think of us if we don’t.”
In such an environment, the only thing we can really do is to stop worrying.
“The single best moment in my life, and this wasn’t a moment this was a gradual realization, was the moment when I realized that I no longer gave a damn what anybody else thinks,” Gallop says. “That is the only way to live your life: not giving a damn what anybody else thinks.”
And she’s leading by example: “I am deliberately very public about the fact that I never wanted to be married, never saw that as an end goal. I never wanted children. I date younger men. I’m open about all of this, and by the way, not because I’m saying everyone else should do what I do, but because we don’t have enough role models in our society for both women and for men that demonstrate you can live your life very differently from the way society expects you to and still be quite extraordinarily happy.”
That same life advice applies in business as well: Start building what you wish existed.
“Take a long hard look around you at your industry...and identify what you think is missing, that you think should be there,” urges Gallop. “What has nobody yet done that you could bring to the table? What would you love there to exist that you could make exist? Identify the gap in the market—and there will be plenty of them in any industry where the default setting is male. So apply the female lens, apply the diverse lens...then begin road testing that idea.” Gallop makes a point to say that you don’t have to go all in at the very start. You can test the waters slowly by launching a side hustle, starting a blog, or just putting your ideas out on social media.
“By articulating your point of view around this, you will draw people to you who are interested in it, you will get great feedback, you begin building your future audience, your community right then and there,” says Gallop. “You can build up a community that is ready and waiting to buy into whatever it is you start when you finally, officially start it.”
