Kicking ass (and balls too for that matter)

Following these women making waves and building wealth 🚀

Author

Rebecca Leppard
August 10, 2023

Welcome to episode 11 🔥 of The Upgrading Women Newsletter 

I’m your editor, Rebecca Leppard, a feminist and communications nerd who loves shopping: groceries, furniture, shoes, 50 shades of pink lipstick, the ever-missing earphones, everything!

That also means I have to keep earning. And it pains me to see that women don’t invest as much as men, even though, and evidently, we are a better at it. Look, Forbes wrote all about it!

Having finished Girls that Invest 📚 I now want to spread the gospel:

🤑 Vote with your money; if you care about the planet then invest in BCorp certified companies, for example.
🏡 Property is not the only sure thing in an investment portfolio: diversify!
💪 You can choose to invest in female-led companies only, especially considering that they tend to perform better in the stock market. No brainer!

For the first time in my life ever 😍 I received a tax return (finally a First World privilege). I didn’t run to the nearest shoe shop, though.

I went and bought Disney shares. 🧜🏻‍♀️ (Psst… go to the tech stack section at the bottom of this episode if you want my referral code for the trading app.)

Thanks for reading, ladies. 🎉
💪You’re supporting this Barbie to buy Mattel shares soon 👛

A LOT happened last week:
a documentary about endometriosis premiered 🎬

I didn’t know I had endometriosis, but hey most of us don’t 😓. One in 10 women has it, but even in countries like the US a woman could suffer from the symptoms for 10 years 😤 before she is diagnosed.

Executive produced by Hillary Rodham Clinton and several other A-listers, Below the Belt will finally put a spotlight onto this little-known disease that’s affecting 176 million women worldwide.

If you want to know more, including how to be a supportive employer, check out Endometriosis UK.

A raw-vegan-food chef dies and people are speculating about the cause of death

While many jumped to conclusions that Zhanna Samsonova died of malnutrition, there has been no official statement from the family or authorities. What’s interesting is that the far-right media made it sound like this is a perfect exhibit to call out plant-based diets as inhumane.

But I’ve never seen deaths caused by diseases related to meat consumption be called out. Despite, of course, the fact that eating beef is udderly 🐄 unsustainable.

Photo from Zhanna’s Instagram

First-timer Jamaica team rocked the Women’s World Cup

Khadija Shaw received The Guardian Footballer of The Year award in 2019 but this doesn’t mean that Khadija and her national team’s journey to the 2023 World Cup was easier. The Reggae Girlz did not have enough money to get to Down Under!

Why? Because the Jamaica Football Federation stopped funding them in favour of the men’s team 🙄. Cedella Marley, yes the daughter of Bob Marley, learned about this and volunteered to be their official ambassador. She and midfielder Havana Solaun’s mother started a GoFundMe to help pay for their training camp, food, staff support and travel for the 2023 tournament.

Photo from The Guardian

🔴 GO 👏 FUND 👏 WOMEN 📣

Female athletes broke swimming records

Move over, Michael Phelps: Katie Ledecky now holds the record for the most World Championship gold medals after she received her 16th last week in Fukuoka, Japan. She finished an 800-metre freestyle race in 8:08.87 🏊🏻‍♀️

Just in case the world is unconvinced that girls can dominate in water too, Sarah Sjöström added another record: she has now graced the podium 21 times with 12 gold, 6 silver and 3 bronze medals. 🥇🥈🥉

News from around the world:
wears hijab, will kick balls ⚽️

Photo from Nouhaila’s Instagram page

Nouhaila Benzina, Morroco’s national team defender, is the first hijaber in the World Cup. And if you think ONE WOMAN cannot move the needle, check this out: EA Sport introduces the hijaber avatar for Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina in the FIFA 23 video game. Follow her amazing journey here.

💰 A woman AND a remote worker?

Here are some links to find work that are not your usual Upwork or Fiverr. Search by skill, location and type of contract.
Remotive
We Work Remotely
True Up
Working Nomads
Jobpresso

If you’re a founder who’s exploring a 100% distributed team set-up, I recommend subscribing to RoRemote for best practice and actual consult with Rowena Hennigan.

A message from a communications nerd:
3 ways your customers are using social media (and what you should do about it!)


💜 Sizing you up
Yes, customers do judge brands on their social media cover. Your brand's social media look and feel play a major factor when someone discovers a new brand (yours) and is not convinced whether you're a pro or not.

👏 Some of you will remember the days when a website cost a fortune to build. These days you cannot skimp on social media if your potential customers would give you the time of day at all. Choose 1-2 platforms and get REALLY good on those.

💜 Gushing and ranting about something
OK, more ranting than gushing. But instead of them talking about you behind your back, you actually prefer it if they talk publicly so you can address them.

👏 Proactively inserting yourself as part of the solution will do wonders!
There are many lurkers who do not post any comment but will judge the way brands. Respond to criticism on social media. Impress them!

💜 Giving and asking for a recommendation
Your washing machine is broken; the next thing you do isn’t search on Google yet but ask your friends first what brand and model they use and if it's worth the money.

👏This conversation does not happen in review sites but in Groups.
Make sure you have a frictionless transaction process and the smoothest customer service because these two will tug at the hearts of your customer to recommend your product/service more than the bells and whistles of features.

BTW, AdWeek just announced that in 2021 73% of agency leaders were white, and last year 90% of us are white. Here’s how you can fight that backward trend: hire 👏 Upgrading Women 👏, this impact-led agency is owned and operated by a brown mother of three from the Third World 💃🏽 and she kicks harder than her 🙍🏼‍♂️ pale, male and stale counterparts.

How she they did it ✅
three co-founders at Hertility 🍳

L-R: Deidre O’Neill, Dr Helen O’Neil, Dr Natalie Getreu

I’ve always been suspicious when I see a femtech company founded by a man, but Hertility is not only female founded but also scientist founded.

This UK-based hormone and reproductive health company does a lot of things right, including:
🍑 Their hiring practice: female-dominated and full of colour.
🍑 Their communications: pun-intensive, their brand design is attractive to multi-generational female audience, which is hard to pull!
🍑 Their merchandising: showing stealth-wealth look with a purpose.

Follow the sleek Instagram page.

Stop blaming the algorithm

Yes it’s a tough pill to swallow that it’s probably:
- Your content that is not scroll-stopping.
- That you don’t engage with your audience.
- You use robotic automation to do your bidding.

Yes content marketing is a full-time job.

Yes hiring an agency may not be an option for you yet.

I think this club is for you!

Girl Brand is a content club where all can learn and hype each other up.
You’ll also get access to:
💜 Tool and tactic tutorials
💜 Daily post inspiration and engagement
💜 Best-practice insights from our chief strategist 🙋‍♀️
💜 Regular live, global co-working sessions (remote working can be lonely!)

📣 Founding Members pay £47 (or US$57) once for a lifetime subscription, while club members pay monthly. Save a sh*tload of money by joining the waitlist for a limited-seat Founding Membership today!

If you’re on the fence, just taste this delicious freebie of THREE month’s worth of carousel template for your LinkedIn. Is it re-purposable for TikTok and Instagram sliders too? 🤌🏾 Yes of course: who has the time to reinvent the wheel! 🥨

Click the image above to get the file

Inspect her 📲 gadget

Something to add to your tech stack: Freetrade

What’s the thing that we do when we cannot sleep and there’s nothing to binge on? Online shopping: am I right?

Here’s a new habit I’m trying on: instead of browsing new dangling earrings (love those!) I browse stocks on my FreeTrade app and if there’s one company on my watchlist (at the moment they are: Meta, Tesla, Microsoft and Netflix) that has a price drop, I’ll buy it.

My brain processes these as a dopamine shot✨💃 the same as buying a half-off handbag on Black Friday. But instead of losing money for something I don’t really need, I’m gaining a stock portfolio. Neat! 👩‍💻 

And BTW, I just taught my 10-year-old to buy his first S&P500 share on this app. Yes, it’s THAT easy 💜

🤑Psst! If you use this link, I personally will get one free share. And you can generate your own referral link for your network. So girls, let’s invest!

What to enjoy next week

📕 Mum Face: the Memoir of a Woman who Gained a Baby and Lost Her Sh*t by Grace Timothy
I judge books by their cover, and this one I can relate to. It’s a photo of a young mother screaming into a pillow. I picked it up, read it and was totally validated. Like meeting a new mum-friend who’s equally witty and foul-mouthed.

🎙 Start Here with Mel Robbins
This 13-episode of audio series talk about what people, but especially women and girls deal with from emotional eating to achieving financial freedom. Listening to her is like having that cool aunt talking some sense out of you.

🍿Last Dance by Michael Tollin
Even if I weren’t a 90s kid who loves basketball, Michael Jordan is inarguably a beast to watch on the court. Binging on this 10-part documentary solidified my admiration to the whole team ethics, leadership, mental endurance, coaching strategy and even branding. You’ll see how Jordan took Nike then, which was a small player, to the Nike we know now.
🏀 
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That’s it. Thanks for reading.

Did you know that forwarding this newsletter to someone in your network to subscribe will add to your good Karma abundantly? 🤍

See you next Thursday. LOL!