Venture Capital Explained and Why You Should Invest in Women-Owned Businesses

Intro 0:06

Welcome to the Growth + Exit podcast where owners of privately held middle market companies talk about founding, scaling and exiting their businesses successfully. Learn how to maximize and monetize your business on your own terms. Let’s get started.

Heather Bennett  0:30

Hello. I’m Heather Bennett, a marketing and business advisor and your host for the Growth + Exit podcast featuring middle market owners and experts talking about founding, growing and exiting their businesses on their own terms. Past guests have included Lisa Mascolo, the CEO of Voyatek Allison Cummins, founder and CEO of Blue Outcomes, and Aneesa Muthana, CEO of Pioneer Services and M&M Quality Grinding. This episode is brought to you by Newport LLC, a team of seasoned executives helping CEOs of privately held companies grow de risk and exit their businesses successfully. Newport LLC is a winner of the prestigious Inc. Magazine Power Partner Awards recognizing elite B2B companies to see all the winners, go to inc.com/power-partner-awards. To learn more about Newport, visit us at Newportllc.com, or, of course, find us on LinkedIn. Before I introduce today’s guest, I would like to thank my good friend, Jennifer Lee, a venture partner with Cancer Fund and a very experienced board director in the life sciences industry for introducing us. Julie Castro Abrams is the founder and CEO of How Women Lead a national network of top executive women focused on advancing gender equity and increasing women’s influence in business and philanthropy. A long time entrepreneur and investor, Julie has built multiple successful ventures and helped channel hundreds of millions of dollars into women led companies and social impact initiatives known for her ability to connect powerful leaders and mobilize capital for change, she has become a driving force in expanding opportunities for women at the highest level of business and leadership. There is so much I could say about Julie. I could spend the next hour she’s done some Outstanding, outstanding things in the business world, and hopefully we’ll get to touch on a few of those. Julie, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Heather. So let’s talk about where, where did this all start? I, you know, I know a lot about How Women Lead, and we’re going to get into that later. But before that, you had worked on a couple of businesses and initiatives to to help women, and so tell me a little bit about that.

Julie Castro Abrams  3:00

You know, really, I come at this from a justice lens. In fact, my, basically, my first real, grown up job is at the Chicago Foundation For Women the year that it started. So I’ve really been, you know, when you, when you start out in a space like this, you start really diving in and deciding, what is your thesis for change? What’s your theory for how to make a difference in the world eventually? And a strengths based approach to poverty alleviation or really transformation, is how I started to frame what I believe in. And it started at a music conservatory in Chicago called the Merritt School of Music. And I know this sounds like it’s really far off from this topic, but this is what I want you to think about. And this can be relevant for every single one of us at any life stage. You’re known as the kid that comes from a challenging background, right? Let’s say you grow up in public housing or whatever, and and that could be, that could be a, you know, the mantle that you carry around with you, and it, and it, it can define how you show up and how people treat you. Well. All kids from all kinds of backgrounds will come to the merit School of Music. So instead, here in this environment, you’re the violinist, and it really trying on a new title and a new frame for who you are in the world. I really watched the transformation for kids, in this case, right? But then in 2000 I was recruited to be the CEO of an organization to help low income women start businesses. But also did a number of different financing tools for those women and and I once again, saw this transformational thing where you know, you may you know, and people were coming from really tough situations. So you may have been a domestic violence survivor, but when you were here, and as you started. Transforming all throughout your life. You were the CEO of your own company, and it was one of those things where I had this aha moment, like, look what the power is of self definition for you and for all the people around you to start to treat you differently. And really, what does it look like when we take it, take down all the barriers for someone to put on that new mantle, to become their own business owner, and in what economic, in social results can happen as a result? That really was what the magic was for me. And even though now today, I mostly work with you know, very successful, professional folks. We are all constantly transforming you. Heather may go from you know where you are today to say, you know, I’m a public company board director. You might be one on one already, as far as I know, but you can try on a new, you know, you can take on a new a new story for yourself, a new a new role, and and you almost sit up straighter, in some cases, and and really take on a new approach to how you want to show up in the world. And it is transformational. So a simple concept, but a thread that I’ve really seen a huge impact on how I wanted to work on changing the world,

Heather Bennett  6:24

absolutely and so, well, let’s, let’s go down that thread. So you you start. So is that where you learned about the importance of investing in companies? Because I know now you’re a venture capitalist, so talk about the evolution of your understanding from those years. So that was like over 10 years of really investing in all of these companies. How did that guide where you are as a venture capitalist today? Yeah. I mean,

Julie Castro Abrams  6:55

it’s inextricable. I mean, I started working with women who and they had to come with an idea. It had to be their idea, which is important. And so they would come with a, you know, I’d like to start, you know, in this case, it could be a hair salon or, you know, even as something that is more like a sole proprietor. I’m going to be a translator. You know, we had people, you know, I worked with over 6000 women, right? And of course, in many cases, they needed financing. And here’s the interesting thing, you need less than you think often, and there’s way less, you know, once you owe someone money a venture capitalist or a bank, the clock starts ticking on when they get their money back, and the pressure to make sure that you create the multiple, or whatever it’s going to take to be able to not only pay your expenses, but pay back that loan or get a 10x return for that venture capitalist. So I’m always cautioning people only take money when it is absolutely necessary, because in many ways, you’re stepping into a pressure cooker and a partnership at the same time where someone else can actually have a say over you could get, in fact, fired from your own company if you’re not meeting that you know what? Whatever that agreement and structure that you put into place so money can be an extreme, you know, amplifier can help you grow. It can be exactly what you need, but you need to understand the risk and the and the responsibility of taking on any whether it’s debt or equity. It has, it has a big ripple effect on how you how your life moves forward.

Heather Bennett  8:47

Absolutely, absolutely so as a venture capitalist, when you’re looking at founders, because I know you wear so many hats, so we’ll get to you as a founder later, but for right now, as a venture capitalist, how? What are you looking for? What are those like, key, you know, shiny objects. When you’re meeting an entrepreneur or someone to invest in, while they’re pitching to you that you’re like, Oh, this one, yeah, this is worth investing in.

Julie Castro Abrams  9:16

What are you looking for? Well, anybody who’s looked at, you know, any you know what, what is the qualities of a great founder? Grit is the first thing that you see, and I just want to reinforce that. Right now, today, as you and I are having this interview, the world feels like it is, like, completely unstable, and there, you know, from any moment, from one to the next, you know is, is Blackrock going to stop actually distributing their their funds to people who’ve invested in certain products at BlackRock? I mean, it is that serious, right? So you need to understand that this value. Founder is not going to give up when the time’s tough, that there’s someone who is going to find alternative ways to solve a problem. So, so if you think about like, okay, then how do I discern that well, past behavior and life experience has a huge impact on that kind of one of the easiest things you can look at is is it has this person had to it’s shown a history of risk taking or change or entrepreneurial behavior. And you know, who’s the number one person you mentioned, our friend that you and I both have, Jennifer Lee, and someone I admire greatly. She’s an immigrant, right? Immigrants, by definition. If you came to this country, you had to learn, you had to pivot, you had to create something from scratch. You took, it’s risk taking behavior. There’s so many things that you can literally just look at someone from their life experience and say they’ve already shown that they have this kind of, this kind of behavior. And when we, when I worked with over 6000 women, we would do, we had a statistician on staff, and we could look at trends and behaviors and do do analysis that told you, what are the what are the influences of the outcomes, right? And immigrants were, frankly, far more successful in building income and assets and growth over time. And I think it’s because of, by definition, they’re already, you already weeded out the scaredy cats, the people who were more comfy following the old brick road and stay at home. They’re the ones who are the, you know, we’re still the accountant in their in their hometown, but, I think, I think that’s one of the biggest things. And certainly, you know, in venture what you the structure of a venture firm is you raise money from from other people, and you’re investing that money, and there’s a fee structure on top of that. So when you are making investments, you need to see a 10 times return in order to be able to have a successful outcome for your firm as a venture capital firm, right? So I need to be able to pick companies that are going to have a huge hockey stick of growth. If they don’t, if they only grow to two times their size, I might not even get my money back. If they grow to five times what they were when I first met them, I might get two times my money back, which will pay my expenses and a tiny bit of profit for people. That’s not what people expect with venture capital, right? And so when I’m looking at a company, what is that game changing technology that’s going to make this a huge growth curve. What is the is this a blue ocean opportunity, like a new market that I know is going to be hot, and it’s going to be adopted, and they’re going to be able to be the leader in this space, because competition, that Red Sea of competition, you know that actually can really reduce your market share and your ability to have hockey stick growth. So just as a venture capitalist, you have a different lens in which you’re looking at things. So when I’m talking to someone who’s trying to determine whether or not they went venture funding, most of the time, my response is, if you, if it’s not obvious, you probably should avoid it. You can get, you can get a loan from a customer that someone who wants you to implement something, you can say to them, Hey, give me a loan for half of what the product delivery cost is going to be, so I can buy the raw materials. Like, there’s a lot of ways you can finance your growth that doesn’t require you to get into a situation where venture capital is looking for you to sell the company in five years. You know, that’s a that’s a pressure cooker, right there.

Heather Bennett  13:53

So talking about that process, let’s get super basic, because I know you are so dedicated to educating, especially women, about this process go through, what are the steps for for business owner to approach venture capital from from your perspective, like, what? What are those steps and what happens in that process?

Julie Castro Abrams  14:15

Well, it actually depends on your life, stage of your company. So first and foremost. If you have an idea and you’re going to build a prototype, you need to go seek. Generally, it’s friends and family money first, or an angel investor, someone will put in a small amount of money, understanding that it’s they’re taking a huge bet on you. And once you’ve exhausted or gone through those roads, you really want to find somebody, first and foremost, who invests in your industry and your stage. Don’t go to you have to research that first. If you come to me and all I do is later stage funding, and you come pitch me for early stage funding, you haven’t done your homework, and I’m not. It’s not going to be. Make You Look well, good and and even if I’m, it’s a long term relationship business, and I’m hunting for great people, you need to at least have done your homework. So so find, find the right VC firm. Here’s some other things. Make sure they actually have liquidity today. Make sure they have money to actually invest. Unfortunately, the market environment is constricting capital in all industries, and there’s one impacts the other. So public markets are impacting private market liquidity today, and that has a big impact on whether or not people are going to be able to invest in you or not, and sometimes they’re not upfront about that, not because they’re necessarily bad actors, but you just want to ask, are you deploying and when is the last time that you made an investment? I think that’s a great question to ask people. And so let’s say that you’ve done that homework and you see that the this is a good institutional potential pitch for you, then you have work to do. There’s something called the data room that you really need to be ready to share with someone. Now, when you’re just starting in your company, I’m going to expect you have a lot less developed already in terms of forecasts and understand like a financial forecast that shows hockey stick growth, you also are going to need to have all of your legal documents in order a venture firm is going to look for you generally, to be a qualified small business, which means I has less tax implications, or has tax implications less tax for me as a venture capitalist. So you need to have a legal structure that’s right for VC. There’s a number of things you just need to have in the foundation. And I need to be able to see your you know, the BIOS of your advisors and your team and who’s, what’s your org structure? You’re going to need to be ready to do a product demo for me. So that needs to be something you need to be ready for. I need to be able to see if you have, if you’re a little later stage, especially let’s say you’re so pre seed. I have an idea. I need to build my prototype seed. I have the prototype. I need to test the market and make sure people will buy it. Then, once I’ve tested the market, I have some customers, and that maybe even starting to repeat. That’s when I considered series A investing. Okay, you’re really ready for growth money, money that’s going to now that you know who your customer is and and what your product is, and it’s mature enough, it’s just ready to sell, that’s sort of a different cycle, right? If I’m looking at a series a investment, I actually can look at and need to see what is the track record of who your clients are, who’s on your prospective client list. How long does it take you to close a client? What is your average contract value? Has it grown over time? What is your cost to acquire customers? Can I see you have a strategy for reducing customer acquisition cost over time? These are all the things in a little bit. You know, the minute you can answer those questions, you need to be ready for that, because the more I can see the trends and the and how I’m going to be evaluating this company over time, and whether or not I agree

Julie Castro Abrams  18:33

in you know, that there’s a you know, that it’s the right balance of All of that those indicators right? That all becomes a really important part of the story. The more organized and ready to answer all those questions you are, the more the more at confidence I have in you as a leader, because it clearly shows you’ve done your homework and you know what to do. So it’s not rocket science, but it is a decent amount of work, and you can clearly use Google or AI to say, What should I have in my data room at this life stage of this type of a company and and don’t make me have to ask for it. Have it ready to go. That’s it’ll make all of our lives easier. And some people will get frustrated. They’ll be like, I thought I could, you know, I thought you’d have a decision for me on this investment in, you know, four weeks, and it’s like, well, I would have, if you would add all your materials ready. But if I have to keep asking you, if I can’t find reference information, you know, if I don’t have a quick response from you, not only does it take me longer, which is hard on my team, and so that costs me, but it but it also erodes my confidence in you that over time, when I asked for a quarterly report that I’m going to get what I need from you so

Heather Bennett  19:53

absolutely that that was brilliant. Julie, thank you so much. I’ve worked with companies I. Yeah, and advice companies all through every one of those processes that you’ve talked about, and they’re at no stage do you need to arrive unprepared for everything. I mean, that’s, that’s really, and, and to your point, you know, that’s something where AI can step in, like, what are the questions I’m going to get asked? There’s no reason not to use that ahead of time and to really and one thing I find founders don’t take advantage of is their advisors enough. Yeah, they tend to think I’m doing this on my own. I’m like, no, no, you have an advisory board for a reason. Please reach out to them. You know. Have them go over the quarterly numbers with you. Have them talk about forecasting with you. Really use that board to your advantage, because that’s what they’re there for, is to help you get ready for that

Julie Castro Abrams  20:48

next round, practice your pitch with them. Tell them like, you know, really get run me through the ringer it, you know, you’d rather have them do it with you, because they’re friendly and they’re not holding the purse strings. So, yeah, is the good news that we’re talking about women. Women are more prepared. They have to be, because they’re less likely to get funding. So I find that most of the time, the women are pretty darn prepared. Here’s another interesting thing, if I can talk about gender for a minute. There’s a lot of studies that show this. Men are in your life. You’ve experienced this. We all have. Men are hired, promoted and invested in for their potential. Oh, this guy, he’s, he’s, he could, you know, I believe in him, you know, I really think that this can be a big result, and that he’s the guy to do it. Right? We’ve all heard that women in our culture does not genetic. Women in our culture are hired, promoted and invested in for what we’ve already accomplished. Okay, that’s why, you know, we blame women this for this, but it’s cultural. That’s why women don’t apply for a job unless they have most of the criteria. Because in reality, people literally are not going to we’re not going to be successful. They won’t hire us just for our potential, culturally, and that’s the norm. Maybe there’s an exception, and good for you, if there is one for you, but in if you’re seeking venture funding, one of the things you need to really be aware of is that that bias in the system where the men are asked what we call promotion questions, hey, Joe, how big can this be? Do you think this could be a billion dollar exit? How fast? What would it take for this to become a huge exit? Okay, so that is what the guys get. What the women get is what we call risk management or prevention questions. So the exact same you can literally, you know, they’ve done these studies where it’s like same exact same number, same company, same solution, just a man and a woman. And so you need to be ready to pivot the conversation to and it takes it’s a lot of this is not fair, but it’s just the reality. You need to pivot the conversation to promotion. How big is this going to be? And you can just say you can find that in my data room. I really want us to focus right now, and how big this can be. I want you to understand the, you know, all the indicators of why this is where this market is going, and that. That’s PR training. 101, actually. So if you’ve ever been trained to talk to someone like Heather, when they ask you a question you don’t want to answer, you’re not prepared to answer. You answer the question you want to answer. That’s PR training, one on one. And I would say I would do that practice, doing that with a venture interview. Yes, you have to be ready with the answers. Make the and make those prevention question answers, milk and so, you know, that’s, that’s apple pie. That’s something that’s basic. But let’s actually give, give them the answer we want them to hear

Heather Bennett  24:02

that is such a great point. Julie, I work with a lot of executives coaching and careers and personal branding, especially when I’m brought in as an advisor, and I do Never underestimate the value of good media training. Oh, it’s just, it’s, it’s so important, even for day to day meetings, to understand how to respond to questions in a way that conveys authority and shows what you really know and what you’ve really done. So important well, and

Julie Castro Abrams  24:35

I don’t know, I mean, I’m sure everybody’s kind of generally heard this, but competence and warmth combined that competence and authenticity as a combo that makes people trust you and will go take you miles. So you should lock down competence. That’s easy, but then what you need to do is not puff yourself up and over. Or overdo it in a way that makes you not authentic. Like there’s got to be a nice balance between confidence and also, you know, if someone said this to me once when I was raising money, they were like, Oh, you’re great, because the first thing you did was ask me what I’m looking for. You interviewed me first before you started just barfing out your whole story, right? And I think for everybody listening like when you, when you go sit down with a venture capitalist, you know, you can say real quick before I share with you what my story is, what I understand is you invest in the following ways, in this, that and the other. Is that correct? And should I focus on X, Y and Z in the conversation today? Just, you know, you don’t. It’s not aggressive, controlling of the conversation, but you should not just showing up and be so scared and freaked out that you just like, jump into your story without understanding your audience. Sometimes you’ll realize the first two minutes, oh, this is not a fit. Or, you know, somehow that’s old information on their website. Or, you know, you might as well not waste your time and spend an hour doing your doing your pitch. And you know, if it’s not worth, if it’s not worth everybody’s time, so good to control the conversation and interview them a tiny bit in the beginning as well. I love that.

Heather Bennett  26:24

That great advice. Really great advice. Okay, so we’ve talked about you as a venture capitalist and your viewpoint, and you’ve given us such a great perspective on that. Let’s talk about you as a founder, specifically for How Women Lead. What’s the origin story behind that, because I know it’s quite a movement now, and I want to understand where did that start, and how and how you got it going.

Julie Castro Abrams  26:51

It’s a huge movement now, but like a lot of big movements and big things, it started by accident around the kitchen table. So I had run this type of a bank, right, and done this work, and it was amazing, but it was hard. And for those of you who were around in 2008 and 2009 there was a crisis in the banking market. And so it was not easy for me. So there came a point where I was like, okay, 12 years, did my part. I am no longer running anything ever again. I was like, I’m going to consult. And do you know, I was just going to, you know, do a portfolio life and chill a little bit. Well, after about 18 months, someone had written a book on the neuroscience of teams, and she’s like, I’d love to get this in front of some corporate women. I was like, it’s a great book. I’ll call some people I could, you know, I haven’t seen for a while. Anyway, let me just organize people for a lunch. What was really interesting is, you know, I think I invited 75 people. Because, you know, if you invite 7510 will come, right? If, you know, especially if you don’t give people a lot of notice, and it’s lunch time, you know, everybody’s busy. 70 people came. It was nutty. I was like, Wait, why? Why is everybody here? And people, and I also kind of looked around the room and everyone was a guest. They were like, Oh my God, you know the best people. And I was like, Oh yeah, I guess, like, I’m 45 my friends are running the world now. Like, it was sort of one of those moments where you’re like, oh yeah. I see, like, a lot of our people. I know it really was not it was all accidental in some way. LinkedIn had just really come out. This was like, 2013 maybe, and I had LinkedIn, but I wasn’t really using it. I didn’t really know much about it yet. And someone was like, I’m putting a LinkedIn group together. You have the best network. And then nobody would leave. And they were like, You got to do this again. I’ll bring some friends. We need to be around other senior women. And I was like, well, and then the restaurants like, you’re gonna have to pay another $1,000 if your people won’t leave. So I was like, All right, well, fine, I’ll do another thing, because I’m not paying this restaurant another $1,000 for you people won’t leave. And it was really magic. And then I started saying, Well, I get I’d buy at a bar, and people would fill it up. And I, you know, they would ask me to do it again after a while, it was like you’re paying for your own cocktails. So let me make this a little more structured, and I started interrogating, why? Why were people so hungry to be together? And I would ask people questions. They would say, Well, I in every room. I’m either the only woman in the room or I’m just mentoring everybody else. I’m never in a room with other senior women like me who get it. And this is the reality when you’ve been the only woman in the room and you’ve been the ceiling breaker, and you’ve been, you know, and you’re in your mid 40s to mid 50s, end up you really,

Julie Castro Abrams  29:41

you really are. Have been alone and have not. Had been in environments where people really get you and you can that’s fuel for you. It’s both understanding where you feel seen and known, but you also can grow because they figured out stuff you haven’t yet figured out, right? And. I realized a lot of this is life stage stuff. It’s called middle essence, and that was the magic Heather of what I built. And I think for a lot of us, you know, when you find, oh, there’s a great need here. It’s just like any other startup, wow. This is something that everybody’s leaning into. I realized women in that middle essence, life stage. They are really pivoting from, I’ve built my career, I built my family, I built my homestead. I now can discern and make different decisions. And all of a sudden, and you know this, Heather, because we’ve had lunch with some people who are in this space, you know, people are like, Oh, I’m not working for those people anymore. That the cost is too high, the moral cost, the whatever cost I am only going to work with people who fit this definition. They’re they’re, you know, positive. They’re on the growth curve, whatever it is you know, people who will be respectful to you, people who align with your morals and values. This actually becomes a clarion call for us. I will not do something that’s against my moral and values code. Once I’m at this life stage, I don’t need to, and I refuse to do it. And you start to really realize, like I have got to make a difference in this world at this point, and my life force is precious and my resources. So where am I investing my money? Am I just blindly giving it to the, you know, Schwab or fidelity, or handing it over to some guy? And someone said to me, once they were like, look under the hood about, you know, and see where your mutual funds are invested. And I, you know, it was very painful, and there was a lot of shame when I realized I was, you know, basically accidentally investing in things that are completely against my moral values, and things that I volunteered and donated to solve for. I was, you know, contributing to it as an investor. So there’s an interesting moment in that life stage where you’re like, Oh, I gotta align all these things. And it’s a big opportunity for anybody who’s in who has a solution or a resource for people. And you were talking about people’s brands before, a lot of people reset their brand in that moment in life. They’re like, Okay, I want to be known as the person who you know it might be like for a career goal. You might be like, oh, I want to be known for my cybersecurity expertise because I want to be consulting in this space. I want to be known for my governance expertise because I want to be chosen to and invited to be on some corporate boards. Or I want to be known as the person who’s the climate solution person, because I want to invest in climate solutions. So, you know, really saying, Okay, who do I want? What do I want people to say about me when I’m not in the room? Who do I want? What do I want the inbound energy to look like? And then you just start architecting that, making sure you know whether it’s just my LinkedIn needs to be aligned with that messaging, or I need to be doing a podcast or doing a writing articles that align with that, so people can find me and what my voice is, all important parts of what’s happening in this life stage. So really, my organization started understanding this life stage and then combining that with thinking about, Okay, well, if we all want to make a difference. And Heather, you know, I know you care deeply about women’s leadership, and you understand the value of it, right? How do we change the environment so it’s easier for women to lead, and women are invited into more influential rooms? Well, someone wrote a book called The Forces for Good, and it’s kind of a good Bible for me on change making so women on corporate boards. When I started my this organization called How Women Lead. Now, when I started this, only 10% of one out of every boardroom, for the most part, was a woman in in the public board space. Well, today it’s 34%

Julie Castro Abrams  34:07

we are three and four women on every board, public board. And why is that important? Well, one it once you’re at that space, those women are going to get more women on the board. It’s a there’s a critical mass there. It actually is ultimately ends up that 30% is protective for a company. It disrupts group think. When you’re the only person in the room, people don’t really listen to you. Even when there’s two people, you may at least have somebody to look across the table at when you know that the wrong thing is happening. But once you have three people in or 30% it’s kind of the magic tipping point for you to have a power base. And it disrupts group think. You stop having the frankly, the group think, which is so dangerous in corporate boardrooms and has caused huge disasters. So it’s protective for companies, but it’s also great for women. So the way we did it is we passed a law. So if you work on policy and and systems change, so you get rid of barriers and you inspire with a characteristic, if you do movement building, which is like me being on this podcast, I want every woman listening to this to put going on a board at some point in time, on your on your agenda, and make sure that you start to understand and not understand you’re probably ready before you think you might be really get in and interrogating, what do I need and what it would be the right type of board for me? And then when you train people, you educate them, you give them the tools. And then you have board opportunities. We place women on boards in our organization. If you can work across that whole spectrum, it really matters. It can move the market. And that’s how we move from 10% to 34% by working on all of those, those levers for change. So Heather, you know, I’m a venture capitalist. Last year 2025, literally, there was only 1.2% of all venture funding went to companies founded by women. So I am now on a mission to do the policy change movement, building all of those pieces to move that so we’re more in line with what is would make sense. 45% of all businesses are started by women, and 1% of venture funding goes to companies founded by women. Women return 34% more for their investors. Like there’s cognitive, cognizant, there’s dissonance happening cognitively, when that those numbers are out there.

Heather Bennett  36:38

Yeah, and it is interesting, if you you look at the numbers on either women owned businesses and how they perform in terms of return on investment, or to look at boards that do have women on them, you know, with that level of diversity, they those companies tend to be more profitable. And it’s just clear, it’s just clear data, yeah, so it’s interesting to think, why product?

Julie Castro Abrams  37:03

Yeah, why three times faster? Because it disrupts group think. And if you are disappointed in the behavior, the influence, the undue influence and the bad behavior of the corporate leaders in our country today, I am very disappointed. I have to tell you, a little bit of group think disruption would be helpful right now, if we could get 330, 4% of the public company, public companies run by women as the CEO, to me, you know, that would change some of this behavior, because you’d have more competition, and people couldn’t continue to have these beliefs and behaviors that we’re seeing that are so negative,

Heather Bennett  37:42

yeah, and I think it’s important, too to look at like everything we’ve talked about how you started working with entrepreneurs, and you started actually with merit school, and how that showed you how a person can redefine themselves. I’m very, very much love the Merritt School of Music. They work very closely with the foundation for Hearing and Speech resources, which I’m on the board for and have been working with for over eight years now. But Mira does amazing things, but you talked about like that first step, which is being able to redefine who you are and not being controlled or contained by your original identity, and being able to take that step to find a new identity. And then, you know, taking that one step further when you talk about How Women Lead and why that resonated, because at that stage, you want to redefine not just who you are, but what work you’re going to do, and who you’re going to work with, and how you’re going to do that. And then that leads to, you know, the ultimate goal is, what impact are you going to make? What’s your purpose in this world, and how are you going to be able to do that? So I love that you you see the through line in your work, it’s so purposeful, you know, starting at the beginning and being able to help people develop. And it is growing businesses. But I think in a way, a lot of the work you do is growing people, absolutely.

Julie Castro Abrams  39:13

And you know, understanding human behavior and what influences and inspires us and motivates us is, frankly, one of the most important things you can do as a leader in anything that you’re doing. Somebody once said to me, stop talking to me about human behavior. And I was like, if there’s anything else more important at the core, you know, you know numbers are numbers, but humans influence, you know, their behavior and what makes them either have grit and work harder or give up easily. You know, those are, those are massive, massive impact, all of the things that we care about

Heather Bennett  39:54

exactly, exactly. So we talked about How Women Lead you. You’ve breathed. We mentioned a little bit about How Women Invest, and then talk a little bit more about How Women Invest and how women give.

Julie Castro Abrams  40:09

Yeah, well, I think for for all of us to really be thinking about, you know, when you’re in my life stage, you know, our life stage, if I can say, you know, over 40, you know, you really start to think, all right, I have some resources. What am I in? And I have goals. How do you know, how am I going to use my resources to meet the goals that I have? And one of those goals can be, you know, financial, safety and independence. You want to be able to build or or do something, but other parts of your life are, I want to be able to be in the rooms where important things are happening, and it could be philanthropic, or in it could be corporate, or in it could just be innovation economy, right money, and how you’re managing and leveraging your money has an impact on all of those things, And that honestly, in this life stage, and when I think about 10 to 20 years from now, I want to have enough resources that I can donate to the things that are important to me, that I can be on those nonprofit boards and be in community with people making the change I want to see in the world. I also want to be able to be part of the innovation economy. I want to be in the know. I want to be part of change and making the world a better place. In the corporate world as well. Innovation side of things, and my money can be leveraged in a lot of ways to do that. So let me give you an example of how I can do all of that in one work stream, one financial stream. So I know I want to donate when I 20 years from now, it is better for me to put money aside today in in a tax deductible vehicle called a donor advised fund, or another structure like that, because if I am taxed today on money. I might as well put some money aside now for my philanthropy in the future. Well, I want to be able to donate that money in 10 to 20 years. What am I doing with the actual assets today? I can direct that that money that is already I got a tax deduction any income off of that money. And the core assets all have to go to philanthropy, or get to go to philanthropy, right? So I can invest that money in a venture fund. I could invest that money in a startup through certain through it has to be impact focused. And there’s some tools like Cata cap is something that’s relatively new out of impact assets. There’s a couple others like that. And so I could actually use that money today to both invest in something that I think is really important in the world, and then I can get involved. I can go on the board of that company, I can get involved in that venture firm, because I have assets to invest. When that money grows and we have returns now, I have more money to donate. So I can donate that money, I can actually go on a board and say, Here’s my annual $10,000 donation with that money. Like there’s all kinds of so I’ve used this money over and over and over again. By the time I get to 10 to 20 years from now, I’ve leveraged it for investments and gotten maybe some access and opportunity along the way, and did things that were important to me and meaningful. And then once the money becomes available for philanthropy, I could just donate it, or I can also donate that with some strings, like, I want my name on a building, or I I’m, you know, that’s part of my board competition.

Heather Bennett  43:47

I love that. And really, that’s the type of strategic thinking that we we all need to be thinking about when it comes to our careers. And what we’re investing in is is not just now, but how it can compound itself, not just through natural compounding, but through targeted actions and impact by what we can do ourselves throughout. Julie there, I could keep asking you questions all day. There’s so much we could talk about. I do have one last question, so I know we’ve talked Is there anything you’re working on next that’s exciting that you want to share about right now?

Julie Castro Abrams  44:25

Well, a couple things that are interesting in in the venture space. You know, we are we? There’s a law that we’re trying to get through. It’s gotten through the house that democratizes investing in venture funds. So for a lot of people listening, my guess is your new to venture like I was 10 years ago, and you think, Well, I don’t have enough money to do that. Well, what if I told you that just for $6,250 that could be your minimum investment amount every. Year for four years, and you’d have a $25,000 investment stake in a venture fund, in a group of investments that actually is accessible. So I want to make sure that our legal and financial structures allow for democratization, where a lot of us can participate and not have it be a million dollar minimum, which is outside of the reach of almost all of us and so. So that’s one thing, both the law and other systems and structural things that are, you know, right now might be barriers. I want to make sure that there’s no barriers and do movement building. I want you, everyone listening, and all 10 of your friends to know that you could potentially invest in venture capital. So I want you to spread the word. And what you can do is you can say, I care about climate. I’ll invest in a climate focused venture fund. I care about health. I can invest in a healthcare focused or a fund run by a Latina focusing on la m opportunities, huge financial growth opportunities in the Latino market in the United States, if you don’t know that. So, so, you know, I’m trying to make sure that we are disrupting and making sure that we can smooth away one other part of what we’re doing. I didn’t really touch on the giving too much, but if you are concerned about what’s going on in the world, but you can’t do it full time, and you want to start to support some of the leaders who are really sacrificing and putting their neck out to solve social issues, health care issues, poverty alleviation. Our organization has a Fellows program for people running social impact organizations. So think reproductive rights, think voter rights. You know, all kinds of problems we’re all trying to solve. You could give an hour a month of your time as an advisor, and this might be a good part of your training to ultimately get on a corporate board, because you’re advising a CEO. So you know, there’s a lot of ways you can assert leadership and engage in things that have a multiple bottom lines. They’re good for your career, and they’re good for your they’re good for the world, and make you feel like you’re making a difference.

Heather Bennett  47:20

So absolutely, absolutely, Julie, this has been amazing. I want to direct people to your website, howwomenlead.com And, of course, to reach out to you through LinkedIn, I’ve been talking with Julie Castro Abrams, thank you so much for sharing your story, your journey, your mission. I know that you’ve offered so much, and our audience is going to get a lot out of this episode. So thank you.

Julie Castro Abrams  47:47

Thanks for having me, Heather. It’s great to be here. Thank you for creating this container, absolutely.

Outro 47:58

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