Find Your Allies Fast with philanthropist Melinda French Gates | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

Simon Sinek 0:00 One of the reasons we make decisions out of fear is, "I don't wanna be uncomfortable." [laughs]

Melinda French Gates 0:03 Totally. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable.

Simon Sinek 0:06 Like, people stay in bad relationships for fear of just not having a relationship.

Melinda French Gates 0:11 Oh, that's definitely true. I've, I've seen a lot of that.

Simon Sinek 0:15 Every single one of us has gone through some sort of difficult transition, whether we lost a job by our choice or theirs, whether we moved somewhere new by our choice or the choice of someone else. We often feel lost and powerless, and sometimes it challenges our very identity. And that's exactly what happened to Melinda French Gates. She has gone through transition after transition, and some of them were pretty damn big. And it turns out we have more agency than we think we do. You may know Melinda from her work with the Gates Foundation. She's the author of a new book called The Next Day, and she explores what transition means. And it turns out in these times of feeling powerless, we actually have more control than we think we do, because we can control who we surround ourselves with as we go through the transition. This is A Bit of Optimism. Let's make a transition to talk about transition. [laughs]

Melinda French Gates 1:19 [laughs] Okay.

Simon Sinek 1:20 What have you learned about yourself as your life has changed over the past few years? What is the life you're forging yourself now?

Melinda French Gates 1:31 I've gone through a tremendous amount of transition. You know, I've written this book. I'm not done with transition. I'll never be done with transition. But I wrote this book when I've turned 60. I have two granddaughters. I left a marriage. I left the foundation. I've struck out on my own in philanthropy. And what I've learned is in that process, even though I was leaving things, just I've, I'd left my career at Microsoft to stay home for a while, then I went back to work, there is so much to learn in a transition, and so much growth that can happen. And you find yourself on the other side far more resilient, so, at least in my case, I have. And I think I'm way less afraid of change now. I'm much more like, "Bring it on." [laughs] When you've gone through a lot of transitions and you've taken-

Simon Sinek 2:20 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 2:20 ... the time to look at them, examine them, see where you've grown, seen where you've made mistakes, then when a change comes, it's, it's not as scary at all, 'cause it's like you've been there before. You've been in a, a s- situation of change, and just when you thought something beautiful might not come on the other side, it eventually does.

Simon Sinek 2:40 H- how did it affect your identity of yourself? You know, we define ourselves, too many of us define ourselves by the, the job we have, the title we've got, the role we play, and, you know, a lot of the transitions you're making are the job you have, the role you play, the title you have. You know, h- how does that affect your own sense of, well, yeah, identity? Like, who-

Melinda French Gates 3:01 Yeah

Simon Sinek 3:01 ... who am I?

Melinda French Gates 3:02 Yeah. I observed, so I knew, you know, a lot of people, I started at Microsoft when I was young, when the company was still very young. It had just gone public a couple years before. And I observed in my 30s a lot of men and women leaving the company because they'd made enough off the stock, so they go on to do something else. And an observation that I made was that the women, at least that I knew, tended to do better in the transition than the men did. And I started kind of asking myself why, and just observing over nine or 10 years, and I realized a lot of times women were quitting because they had a child or it was a second child, and they knew what their place was in terms of raising their child. Yes, they had a hard time saying, "Okay, but who am I still as an intellectual working person?"

Simon Sinek 3:51 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 3:51 But they were switching-

Simon Sinek 3:53 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 3:53 ... such a big role identity, whereas the men were leaving work, but then they were, "Who am I after that?" And so I, for me personally, because I made that transition for the first time in my 30s from working woman for nine years to full-time mom, and I'm not saying it was easy, [laughs] I definitely had an identity, a crisis identity in the middle of there, I realized, oh, I'm much more than just one of those two people. And then I start working on boards, and then I start working in philanthropy, and you start to realize you're a whole person, and so I didn't wanna-

Simon Sinek 4:24 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 4:25 ... have just one identity. But I think if you lived kind of this one identity for a long time, you, your ego gets even more attached to, and then it is a harder transition on the other side. I don't know. What do you see? What do you see about people who've made good transitions or not good transitions?

Simon Sinek 4:42 I think this, it, somewhat of what you're saying, which is the women were going to something, right? Now I have the financial freedom to go be the full-time mom that I wanna be or take a little break to go, you know, l- be at home again, right? And yes, you deal with the who am I, and I've seen that many times, which is like, if I'm not thinking every day, am I not a thinker anymore, right?

Melinda French Gates 5:07 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 5:07 I've seen that happen with some wonderful and successful women. But at the same time, they made the choice, they made their choice to go to something.

Melinda French Gates 5:17 Mm.

Simon Sinek 5:18 Whereas the way you're describing it, the men are going away from something, which is, "I have the money. I don't need to do this anymore. I don't wanna do this anymore. I'm gonna go into the great yonder." But I, I think the, the, the people who s- make successful transitions are the ones who go towards something, and the ones that are going away from something I think struggle more.

Melinda French Gates 5:37 Mm.

Simon Sinek 5:37 Because I think also the decision-making, right? I think you're more careful when you go to something, 'cause I know what I want, I wanna make sure it's the right thing. When you're going away from something, you're like, "Ugh, I hate this. Get me out of here," and you take the first shiny object that's not that. We do it in jobs. We do it in relationships. We do it all the time, right?

Melinda French Gates 5:53 Definitely. I've seen it in all those forms. And you can even think of one female b- high-level business executive who as soon as she left something, she literally was jumping to the next thing. And I s- I literally said to her at the time, I knew her well enough, "Don't do that. Like, just tell them you're probably gonna take the job, but give you six months," you know? And she jumped-

Simon Sinek 6:12 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 6:12 ... to that thing, and sure enough, two and a half years later, she stopped doing that thing.'Cause it was just too quick, right? She just, she didn't really know what she wanted. She didn't wanna sit-

Simon Sinek 6:23 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 6:23 ... in that uncomfortable space of not knowing. It's hard to not know.

Simon Sinek 6:28 So what does that mean to sit in that uncomfortable space, and how are we supposed to do it? Going back to fear, right? One of the reasons we make decisions out of fear is, "I don't wanna be uncomfortable." [laughs]

Melinda French Gates 6:37 Totally. Nobody wants to be uncomfortable. And, um-

Simon Sinek 6:40 Like, people stay in bad relationships for fear of just not having a relationship.

Melinda French Gates 6:45 Oh, that's definitely true. I've, I've seen a lot of that. Um, yeah, I know how I went through it that was supportive of me, so I'll say this in case it's helpful to other people, is I surrounded myself with good friends who reminded me, "We don't know where you're going, but you will be okay. Like, here are the places we've seen you in the past and you've been resilient, and yes, you're sad now, or yes, you don't know what comes next, but you're gonna be okay." And on the, my saddest days or darkest days, I could also go to them and even share the hardest pieces, the grief, the loneliness, all of it. And again, they could hold up their perspective that I'm gonna be fine, right? But I let myself go through those cycles of grief, anger, denial, and you go through them multiple times. You don't just go through them and oh, done, cleaned up with that. That would be nice. I, that would be lovely. But you don't. But so you just, you literally have to sit in that uncomfortable space. And it's also part of why I do talk about openly that I saw a therapist.

Simon Sinek 7:50 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 7:51 And I used to think therapists were for people who had something wrong with them or a problem in life, but I ended up... I went in because of a toxic work employee we were dealing with, but in the end I realized, no, no, no, no, and I ended up learning so much about myself.

Simon Sinek 8:07 The thing that you said that I think is really important to highlight, I, I think it's more important than even, "I learned to sit in discomfort." "I surrounded myself with friends who..." dot, dot, dot, right? That I... There was an action taking place. That you didn't just sit in discomfort, right?

Melinda French Gates 8:25 Mm.

Simon Sinek 8:26 It's like you put-

Melinda French Gates 8:26 Just-

Simon Sinek 8:26 ... the parachute on before you jumped out of the plane. Like, there was some-

Melinda French Gates 8:29 Right

Simon Sinek 8:29 ... preparation before the difficult thing, and that preparation was, "I surrounded myself with people who knew how to hold space for me to be uncomfortable." And I've seen men who've gone through similar transitions. First of all, I don't think they surrounded themselves in it with anybody.

Melinda French Gates 8:50 Mm. Mm.

Simon Sinek 8:51 And worse, the m- other men who showed up in their lives to give them advice kept telling them how to fix their feelings-

Melinda French Gates 9:00 So-

Simon Sinek 9:00 ... how to get over it.

Melinda French Gates 9:01 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 9:01 They kept telling them, "Get a bigger job to say F you to the man," you know?

Melinda French Gates 9:07 Yeah.

Simon Sinek 9:07 "Sh- show them-

Melinda French Gates 9:09 Yeah

Simon Sinek 9:09 ... who's right here." And I have one friend I'm thinking of in particular who he was going through transition, and I, I... When I met him, I didn't know him that well. I don't know, for whatever reason, I found myself at a, at a table with him, talking to him about his transition. It was very raw and very new.

Melinda French Gates 9:26 Mm.

Simon Sinek 9:26 And one of the reasons we became close friends is I was the only person who said, "Just, just mourn."

Melinda French Gates 9:34 Mm. Mm.

Simon Sinek 9:36 Just-

Melinda French Gates 9:36 That's great advice

Simon Sinek 9:36 ... just be sad.

Melinda French Gates 9:37 Yep.

Simon Sinek 9:38 Like, it's okay. What you said is so true, which is w- if you're gonna go through some transition or if you're forced to go through some transition, 'cause sometimes it's not our choice-

Melinda French Gates 9:46 Right

Simon Sinek 9:47 ... the agency we have, we always have agency. The agency we have may not be to fix or make right the situation that is, but we do have the agency to surround ourselves with people who we know can simply be there and hold space for us as we go through whatever we have to go through.

Melinda French Gates 10:04 Absolutely. Well said. And it has to be a trusted relationship. As you said-

Simon Sinek 10:09 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 10:10 ... you created space somehow for that person to feel trusted. And I think we do, men and women, but I see it a lot with men, we do them a disservice by saying them, to them when they're young boys, "Buck up. It wasn't that hard."

Simon Sinek 10:25 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 10:25 "Just pick yourself up and keep going on." No, they have real feelings. Let them feel their feelings and then go on, right? And, um, I just think, you know, sometimes we don't have all the right messages in society. And then if someone doesn't actually deal with their feelings and their emotions, it often comes out what I call sideways. Comes out as anger at somebody else.

Simon Sinek 10:49 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 10:49 It comes out in bad behavior. And so we need to have trusted friends, and as you said, hold trusted space. I think that is so well said.

Simon Sinek 10:59 When we feel powerless, and we may be powerless in the situation, you know, divorce, getting fired, choosing to leave a job, moving, all kinds of transitions we're forced to make or we choose to make that are very disruptive to our lives, we haven't given up all control. The greatest control we have is who we go through it with.

Melinda French Gates 11:19 Mm.

Simon Sinek 11:20 And I just love that you said that.

Melinda French Gates 11:23 Mm.

Simon Sinek 11:23 If I were to interview your friends-

Melinda French Gates 11:25 Mm-hmm

Simon Sinek 11:27 ... and I would say, "Who is the Melinda you knew before the transition, and who's the Melinda you know now?"

Melinda French Gates 11:33 Mm. Many of them have said, "You are so much more like," either if they knew me in high school, "the girl I knew in high school or yourself in your 20s." Like, just more open, more joyful, more willing to try new things, go out and look stupid, have fun, right? I just, I, I, it's almost, I've called it almost a learning back to myself. I knew a lot about who I was when I was in high school. I was lucky enough, I went to an all-girls Catholic school, so we were very much standing in our power and, and even the nuns around us taught us to question our faith and to listen and to think about community. But I think when you get, or I'll say in my case, when I got launched out in society, then I started to come up to, against what many women have described as the 10,000 paper cuts, just barriers in society of people who treat you like less or tell you you're less or, you know. And that stuff wears on you over time. As I really stepped into my own power at the foundation and understood my role and who I wanted to be-

Simon Sinek 12:38 Right

Melinda French Gates 12:38 ... that made me start to feel more and more and more like myself, that I had my full voice, and I was by God gonna say what I believe whether you like it or not, right?

Simon Sinek 12:48 So if you were that young woman, if you were that girl, for some reasons we know and some reasons we don't, it was taken away from you, that you lost a piece of yourself to some degree. It took 30 f- you know, 40, 35 years, longer than you were old when you had it-

Melinda French Gates 13:05 Mm

Simon Sinek 13:06 ... to get it back.

Melinda French Gates 13:07 Mm.

Simon Sinek 13:08 How can we make sure that young women and young men, and particularly young women, don't have to spend 35 years trying to get it back? That when your friends say to you, "Wow, you're like the person I knew when you were 20," like, that's sort of a very scary thought.

Melinda French Gates 13:27 [laughs] It, it is.

Simon Sinek 13:30 Like, did they not enjoy hanging out with you for 35 years?

Melinda French Gates 13:32 [laughs] Well, I think we certainly had some fun moments, don't get me wrong. But I think I looked-

Simon Sinek 13:38 [laughs]

Melinda French Gates 13:38 ... very stressed to them. Stressed, anxious, more sort of buttoned up. And look, I think in my case, l- let's just say this, I'll just say women in general. If we sent young girls, when they come out of university, and women, into society where they're more welcomed, you know, they're not harassed, [laughs] they're not looked down on by other people.

Simon Sinek 14:03 Mm.

Melinda French Gates 14:03 They don't walk into a room and when they sit at the table, they're the only one like them. This stuff happens all the time. And so whereas if you walk into an environment where it's fully welcoming of men and women, like fully welcoming, I see women step into their power far more quickly.

Simon Sinek 14:22 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 14:22 But you still see those barriers. You see them in medicine. Even though we are-

Simon Sinek 14:26 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 14:26 ... graduating essentially 50/50 male and female doctors, it's still, though, I mean, who's at the top of the profession? Who's revered? It's the neurologist, right? The, the surgeon. Oh my gosh, you know. And who's looked down on in the hospital? The nurses. But yet-

Simon Sinek 14:45 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 14:45 ... who's caring for us? Like, who's really there at bedside most of the time? It's a nurse. Are you kidding? Are you kidding me? Right? The surgeon might, you know, fix your bone and put it back together, but it's the nurse. So we have-

Simon Sinek 15:01 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 15:01 ... a, some things backwards in society.

Simon Sinek 15:05 Can, can I pull on that thread and even push a little bit?

Melinda French Gates 15:07 Sure.

Simon Sinek 15:07 Which is, the question was, like, how can these young women in particular retain who they are so they don't have to go through some loss of self in order to regain it? And we're putting the onus on the workplace. "Well, if they a- accepted women more, and if they just did this, and they didn't feel like that," and that seems, though true and though necessary, it still takes the control away from that young woman, doctor, lawyer, businessperson, whatever it is. And so I wanna go back to your own advice, which is maybe, just maybe, the way for a young woman to enter the, any of these professions is to have the agency to surround themselves with the people who will spa- who will hold space for them, so that when they go through this, they're less intimidated, they're less pushed down. They push back, because the safe space is not the boardroom, but the safe space is the group that they've created around them.

Melinda French Gates 16:07 Totally. I mean, when young women ask me for advice, that's what I tell them, is find the allies around you.

Simon Sinek 16:13 Find the allies.

Melinda French Gates 16:13 The other women, the other men. You know, a man who's willing to hold space in a room for you at a meeting or say-

Simon Sinek 16:20 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 16:20 ... "Hey, she just said that. Let's move on here," right? Find those allies. But not everybody's lucky enough to do that, and I do think... I mean, that is one of the things I say about those of us who are or have found ourselves in positions of leadership, men and women.

Simon Sinek 16:38 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 16:38 We really have to create the space. I mean, I finally learned one of the things internally when I was working at the foundation, the culture of the foundation is, if I saw a man talk over a woman, in just in a really nice way, I'd let him finish, and then I'd say, "Okay, I heard what you said, but she also had something to say." And I just created space-

Simon Sinek 16:55 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 16:55 ... for her to speak up. And boy-

Simon Sinek 16:57 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 16:57 ... sometimes the ideas that would come out, everybody would be like, "Oh my gosh, okay." So I think w- I think if we're a bit older and we're in a position of, of leadership, we need to do, create that for others. And if we're in a peer situation, we have to be allies of others-

Simon Sinek 17:14 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 17:14 ... for sure.

Simon Sinek 17:15 And the best way to do it is to be in service, right?

Melinda French Gates 17:18 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 17:18 If you wanna select people to surround yourself with to give you the support and love as you go through the transitions of life, then we have to accept the responsibility to be a part of the communities for others as they go through the, the transitions of life as well. It's a give and a take. It's not just a take.

Melinda French Gates 17:36 Well said. Definitely.

Simon Sinek 17:39 So you've done a lot of work in women's empowerment and celebrating women in the world. Beyond the obvious, is there a particular reason that you went down that road and not one of the many, many other roads that somebody who's interested in helping the world and advancing the greater good would take?

Melinda French Gates 17:59 I had been working in philanthropy for over a decade and doing large scale grants, um, traveling the world, meeting so many people all over the world on the ground and seeing their lives. And I came to realize that if we didn't invest in women, we weren't getting the most out of our grant-making. We just weren't. Because everywhere you went, all over the world, it was the women who predominantly were in charge of the family. And so she decided, especially in a low-in- or middle-income country, who eats and in what order and what the finances of the family are spent upon. And on the converse side, when she would have resources, she was far more likely, we knew from very good research, to invest in her children than her spouse was.

Simon Sinek 18:54 Th- there's such, it's such an interesting point, right? Which is it's not reallyIt's, it's not born out of feminism per se, it's born out of efficiency

Melinda French Gates 19:01 Absolutely. For me, this is not an argument about, you know, this is just the right thing to do or it's time. It's an argument born out of, if we want the world to get better, invest in women. And if you're not-

Simon Sinek 19:15 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 19:16 ... looking at that piece of it... I'll give you a specific example. If we, which we were, were investing a se- in a seed that was more drought resistant or pest resistant for an area. So, okay, the farmers are getting more yield off their farm. They can put more on the market. They can make more money. They can feed their kids more. But what was happening is 50% of the farmers were women, but those seeds weren't getting to them, because guess what? They couldn't go to the person who was the agri-dealer giving out the seeds and selling the seeds. Women, for lots of reasons, were stuck on the farm. So it's like, okay, we're getting half of what we ought to out of this grant making. So yes, it was an efficiency argument.

Simon Sinek 20:00 And we know this, we, you know better than I do, Muhammad Yunus, when he started doing his, his microloans, he knew that women that he gave microloans to were more likely to pay back their loans than the men [laughs] by significant, by significant numbers. Um, uh, and so again, an efficiency argument. Um, and, uh, I guess there's an irony to this, right? Because it's the, the patriarchal system in so many of these developing countries where the, the, the husband is, is the, is the alpha of the family, even though the woman's looking after the kids, [laughs] cleaning the house, s- doing the farming. That actually works counter here because the men are using money for other reasons other than their families. So if you wanna invest in a community that ad- advances money further, you give it to the women. I just think there's an irony where the men are supposed to be the protectors, it actually backfires because of the way they spend money.

Melinda French Gates 20:57 It is an irony. [laughs] And I would say not just in low income countries. [laughs]

Simon Sinek 21:05 Mm.

Melinda French Gates 21:05 The world has inadvertently, no, no wrongdoing in it, but the world has inadvertently been set up for men. Look at our own constitution in the United States. Women did not have the right to vote. They weren't essentially seen in the Constitution. So what happened then was we set up a society, even here, where our workplaces were places that became, if you think about after the Industrial Res- Revolution, were set up really for men to go to the office, and we assumed women would take the childgiving, caregiving role, right? So, so-

Simon Sinek 21:44 Mm-hmm

Melinda French Gates 21:44 ... it got set up that way, but even today, in a high income country like the United States, of all the couples that have children, 67% of them, both parents are working. And yet, we still, in this country, in this day and age-

Simon Sinek 22:02 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 22:02 ... we are the only country in the world, in the United States, that doesn't have paid family medical leave, of high income countries. And so that means that you're putting a double burden, for the most part, on the women. And so I, I just look at society after society, and over time, the ones that tend to do better is when they start to really make sure that women can step into their full power.

Simon Sinek 22:26 So you started doing philanthropy by bringing all kinds of resources to nations around the world, and the investment in women was about efficiency, not feminism. Then, then k- take me down the journey how you got to now and the new work you're doing.

Melinda French Gates 22:40 Hmm. Well, so I did the work at the Gates Foundation for 25 years, uh, traveled all over the world, which was incred- I was incredibly lucky to do. The foundation was at a point where it's in very good hands. We have a board.

Simon Sinek 22:55 Mm.

Melinda French Gates 22:55 We have a fantastic CEO who I've known for 17 years. He's just doing a great job. And then there was a rollback of a law that had been on the books since I was a child for women's rights in the United States. I never, I never thought my granddaughters would have fewer rights than I had growing up.

Simon Sinek 23:20 Mm.

Melinda French Gates 23:20 And so I started to see, you know, we all started to see what was happening in the United States and, and here I am pushing for women to step into their full power all over the world, and my own country is rolling back. So I felt like, you know, the foundation's in a good place. I've turned 60, and it's just time for me to step into my next decade of philanthropy, and there's so much work to be done here in the United States. Not that I'm not still doing global work, I am.

Simon Sinek 23:48 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Melinda French Gates 23:49 But less than 2% of philanthropy, philanthropic dollars goes towards women. That just shouldn't be. You know?

Simon Sinek 23:57 Mm.

Melinda French Gates 23:57 Less than 2% of women get a VC to invest in their business. That should not be-

Simon Sinek 24:05 Mm

Melinda French Gates 24:05 ... in this country. So we're still, in our country, more than 300 years away from gender equality, and I thought, "Gosh, I've been to so many places in the world that look towards the United States, but here we are rolling back, and instead we need to be pushing forward."

Simon Sinek 24:22 W- what are the reasons for it? It's too easy to simply say misogyny, you know, or sexism or the system. You know, I'm,

Simon Sinek 24:30 I... What are the reasons that, that that happens? That so little, like, you said so little VC goes to female entrepreneurs, for example. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm curious as to what the foundations of why it's happening in the first place.

Melinda French Gates 24:45 I don't think we fully know, and you have to go sector by sector. But one thing I'll say in the VC sector is... Or let's just say in the tech sector also, broaden it a little bit from that, 'cause I worked in the tech sector. I, I-

Simon Sinek 24:57 Right

Melinda French Gates 24:57 ... understand that to some extent.It has not been the most welcoming place for women.

Simon Sinek 25:04 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 25:04 You have to go all the way back to the Apple II computer and the IBM PC. When the Apple II came out, lots of young girls were actually coding and being on it, but when IBM came out and started promoting the PC, they started promoting gaming and boys' games, and it became very gamified.

Simon Sinek 25:22 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 25:22 And so boys really enjoyed that, and so fewer women went into computer science. Then what happens?

Simon Sinek 25:27 Right.

Melinda French Gates 25:27 Okay, well, if boys are already playing with the computer when they're young and they go into college, they know a lot about it, so women go in feeling like, "I'm learning a brand-new language," right? So you started getting... When I was in college, literally we were on our way up in terms of computer science degrees. We thought it was gonna be like medicine and law have gotten to today, and then it had-

Simon Sinek 25:46 Right

Melinda French Gates 25:46 ... this precipitous drop. And then what happened was when you got women not going into the field, the f- the industry where they would go to work felt very unwelcoming to them 'cause there weren't very-

Simon Sinek 25:58 Mm-hmm

Melinda French Gates 25:58 ... many people who looked like them, right?

Simon Sinek 26:00 Right.

Melinda French Gates 26:00 And so then, okay, who- whose the money go into the hands of? Who are the VCs? They're mostly men. So when they look at these-

Simon Sinek 26:09 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 26:09 ... businesses that are coming before them, quite honestly, they don't understand some of the businesses that are coming before them from women. They sort of laugh them out of the room, and it's not because they're necessarily doing anything wrong. It's because they don't have the same lens on society that a woman has, right? And so it just becomes this sort of self-referencing mechanism, and the flywheel gets going, and the momentum gets going.

Simon Sinek 26:32 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 26:32 And so what you have to do is figure out how do you put something in there to stop it so that, you know, we can make it so more women, their businesses get invested in.

Simon Sinek 26:41 I love your point of the, the flywheel, the self-licking ice cream, right? It's the system-

Melinda French Gates 26:46 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 26:46 ... that perpetuates itself because i- if I look at some of, you know... You s- you look at y- young male entrepreneurs, uh, you know, their standards of success or their, their, the, the bragging rights are how much VC they were able to get and their rate of growth, and yet there's no data to show that a fast-growing company is healthier than one that's not, in fact, sometimes the opposite. But, you know, growth is the metric because it benefits the investors, not necessarily the companies. But that's their metric, right? How much money did I raise, and, and how fast am I growing? Then I look at some of my favorite female entrepreneurs, you know, your S- Sarah Blakely or your Carissa Bodnar-

Melinda French Gates 27:28 Mm

Simon Sinek 27:28 ... you know, from Spanx and Thrive respectively, and they raised no money. They built their businesses themselves with, you know, the few dollars they had in their pockets. They actively turned down VC. Uh, a lot of m- m- male venture capitalists told them they were stupid. They both resisted the overwhelming pressure to go public because they didn't see a need for it, and they didn't need to raise the money, and they weren't looking for a liquidity event.

Melinda French Gates 27:55 Mm.

Simon Sinek 27:55 And both of them ra- uh, built unbelievably strong, resilient companies. And w- the sense is is that their metrics, it goes back to the, the same thinking as, as, as before with the efficiency, why you invested in the mothers in the, in the developing world. It's because the way they made decisions and how they spent their money was very different, and you have these female entrepreneurs who are spending their money to actually build really good companies. They're, you know, quote-unquote, "taking care of their families."

Melinda French Gates 28:21 Mm.

Simon Sinek 28:21 You know? They're investing in the farm. They're investing in, in the things that-

Melinda French Gates 28:24 Sure

Simon Sinek 28:24 ... that help the children, where, you know, not to make too broad a generalization, but [laughs] the men are investing the things that look good and make them look talented-

Melinda French Gates 28:35 Mm

Simon Sinek 28:35 ... and impress people. But what I find ironic is it's the exact same logic as the, g- as what you said before, that the patterns you saw in, in the developing world, which means, for efficiency's sake, we should be promoting and investing in female entrepreneurs more for all the same reasons as we invested in, in, in the mothers in the developing world.

Melinda French Gates 28:55 That's right. That's exactly right. And so for me, I'm not just doing philanthropic work with my company, Pivotal Ventures. I'm doing investment. I'm putting investment-

Simon Sinek 29:04 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 29:04 ... capital down because what I wanna prove out is that those businesses are worth funding, for sure, and when I start to get a return, and I think that other people start to see, males included, females and males-

Simon Sinek 29:16 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 29:16 ... "Oh, she's getting return," people don't like to leave money on the table, men or women.

Simon Sinek 29:22 Right.

Melinda French Gates 29:22 And so I think once you can prove to the VC community, "Hey, there are lots of good ideas, and you didn't really take a good look at it," I think that will start to change the flywheel. And so I'm literally moving capital not just... both directly to, to female-led businesses. There are some phenomenal ideas out there, particularly in women's health, but also to other limited partners who are over-indexing on those businesses. So we'll see. We'll see if my playbook works out.

Simon Sinek 29:50 Is your, the way you invest different from the traditional male-dominated venture capital model? Like, you know, are your time horizons longer? I don't mean disrespect by the question, but are you practicing what you preach in the way you invest?

Melinda French Gates 30:03 I am definitely practicing what I preach. And so I might put only a small bit in, you know, their first round. They prove themselves out, I'm gonna give them more money in round two, and guess what? I'm gonna really be there in round three. Like, I'm not just doing this as, oh, I don't expect a return at all.

Simon Sinek 30:20 Sure.

Melinda French Gates 30:20 Am I taking a bit less of a return than I'm taking... Well, we can't talk about the stock market because today is not... The last few days haven't been particularly good, but for my other investments, I might make a slightly less return right now, but over the-

Simon Sinek 30:34 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 30:34 ... long haul, over the 10-year f- timeframe, I bet you do, I do quite well. But ask me in 10 years.

Simon Sinek 30:39 So you're more comfortable with the long haul here than the traditional

Simon Sinek 30:42 VC.

Melinda French Gates 30:42 One of the things I've learned from philanthropy is if you're trying to change something, you have to take the long view. You just have to.

Simon Sinek 30:53 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 30:53 I mean, as Warren Buffett constantly reminded us, you are taking on the problems society has left behind for a reason. And so-

Simon Sinek 31:03 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 31:03 ... for me, if I'm gonna try and change an industry, holy smokes, that's not a three-year thing. I'm not just trying to create a product. I could do that-

Simon Sinek 31:11 Right

Melinda French Gates 31:11 ... try it fast and have a return, but I'm trying to disrupt an industry, so yeah, I gotta be patient about that.

Simon Sinek 31:18 When you define yourself, do you find yourself first as a philanthropist or an investor?

Melinda French Gates 31:23 Um, [laughs] I would say these days both, but I guess first philanthropist. Yeah, philanthropist first still, for sure.

Simon Sinek 31:31 When I meet men who have a liquidity event and make a lot of money, if you ask them, "What do you do now?" They say, "I'm an investor."

Melinda French Gates 31:41 Mm.

Simon Sinek 31:42 So people who've made a lot of money, their job now is to make more money.

Melinda French Gates 31:45 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 31:45 That's what they say. Now, I know they give money away as well.

Melinda French Gates 31:48 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 31:49 They, they, they do philanthropy, but they tell you, "I'm an investor now." When I've met women who've had a, a liquidity event or made a lot of money, they say... When you ask them, "What do you do now?" They say, "I'm a philanthropist." And of course, they invest as well, and I just think it's really interesting. This goes back to this, this, and dare I call it a maternal instinct, but it goes back to, once again, how women and men view money differently, where the man makes a lot of money and wants to make more money, and the woman makes a lot of money and wants to primarily give it away. And again, they both do both-

Melinda French Gates 32:20 Mm

Simon Sinek 32:20 ... but it's what comes first on the list, and what your identity is wrapped up in.

Melinda French Gates 32:24 I have a slightly different theory about that, which is one of the things if you think about, just take, take that off the table and we're gonna come back to it, but think about the sciences.

Simon Sinek 32:36 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 32:36 Somebody labeled certain sciences hard sciences, and then they also labeled other sciences soft sciences. Like, you can't prove that out. Turns out a lot of things that got put in the soft sciences bucket could be proved out but were a bit more feminine. I have met a lot of, a lot of philanthropists in my life. Like, I started the Giving Pledge with Warren Buffett and, and-

Simon Sinek 33:01 Sure

Melinda French Gates 33:01 ... my ex-husband Bill. It takes a lot to switch your brain into philanthropy. Like, I know a lot of people who've done quite well in business or as investors, but it's actually scary, and they don't tell you, but they, they know it. Like, when you talk to them deeply, switching your brain to philanthropy is hard. You're learning a whole new field. You're worried about, "Oh, is somebody gonna take me? Oh, do I really... How, how will I ever measure this? I don't know if it can be measured, that field." And so they label it in their mind soft. And so do I wanna-

Simon Sinek 33:34 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 33:34 ... look like a soft male? No, I probably wanna look like an investor, right? Whereas I think it's more-

Simon Sinek 33:39 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 33:39 ... it's just easier for women to go, "Hey, this is what I'm doing," you know? And switching your brain over to philanthropy does mean being open. Part of my book is all about transitions, and you have to be willing to literally, for, I will say for me, it was like a gut punch. Like-

Simon Sinek 33:57 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 33:57 ... I'm a computer scientist. I don't know anything about biology or global health, but 25 years later, I know a fricking ton.

Simon Sinek 34:03 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 34:04 But you gotta be willing to make the switch, right?

Simon Sinek 34:07 As you're saying that, I'm thinking of this conversation I had with a, with a billionaire-

Melinda French Gates 34:12 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 34:13 ... and asking about giving away money, you know? I was like, "Hey, by the way, I, I, I, I know you have a foundation. If you're looking for some places to give away some money, I got some places for you to give away some money."

Melinda French Gates 34:23 [laughs]

Simon Sinek 34:24 And, uh, and he, he started asking me questions that, like, what guarantee will he have that he g- if he gives this money, that... And I was like, "You don't have that guarantee when you invest."

Melinda French Gates 34:38 Mm-hmm.

Simon Sinek 34:39 Like, you... I know how you invest. You invest in 10 things knowing that eight of them are gonna be meh, one, two or three of them will be probably complete failures, and one or two of them hopefully will succeed, and you're spreading your risk. Why would you put, like, these guarant- d- demand these guarantees from... And he, and, and, like, this fear that he has that people are gonna steal his money. I'm like, "If you give a bunch of money to a bunch of people who've devoted their lives-

Melinda French Gates 35:07 Mm

Simon Sinek 35:08 ... to whatever cause they're doing, and by the way, they're not getting rich doing it, odds are they're gonna keep doing that." And will there be inefficiency? Absolutely, there'll be inefficiency. Like, there's inefficiency everywhere, and money gets wasted everywhere. But I just... It w- it was crazy. He seemed to have a higher standard for his philanthropic dollars than he did for his investment dollars.

Melinda French Gates 35:29 I think that may come from a fear. None of us wanna look stupid, right?

Simon Sinek 35:33 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 35:33 Nobody wants to look stupid, and if you're an investor, over time you have a portfolio, and most investors don't go out and talk about all the failures they've had, but they've had failures along the way. B- you know?

Simon Sinek 35:44 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 35:44 They put money in things that didn't work, and then they've had some big hits, and that's what you hear about, right? Whereas I think, you know, again, switching into philanthropy, you feel like, "I don't know this, and what if I, what if I do waste the money, and will everybody feel it," right? And so one of the things we have learned through the Giving Pledge is people feel more comfortable giving in a group quite often, es-

Simon Sinek 36:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah

Melinda French Gates 36:06 ... especially if they're learning. Like, "Oh, 'cause there's a trusted source. You vetted it. You think it's good. Okay, well, let's go into that together." And so they start to learn, and then they develop where they're most interested, and then they start to feel more comfortable giving on their own. And I, I always go back to what Warren Buffett said to Bill and me. He said, again, "You're working on the problems society's left behind." Like, you know, capitalism's not perfect, right?

Simon Sinek 36:34 Mm-hmm.

Melinda French Gates 36:34 It's a good system, but it's not perfect. "You're l- you're working on the problems society left behind. They are hard. But take big swings, big swings for the fences, because it's the only way-

Simon Sinek 36:46 Yeah

Melinda French Gates 36:46 ... you're gonna make a change." And he was right. Um, and that's not easy, because you do fall on your face a few times with a few big swings that don't hit the fences.

Simon Sinek 36:56 What a great insight, that it's fear that's driving him, because you're right. He has built a career where he's the smartest guy in the room, and he's this brilliant investor, and, you know, he has so many hits. And the fear or the risk that he puts money in a charity that, who knows, you know? And bec- and especially because the, the, the metrics and the systems are different, that the fear that if it doesn't work or the money, quote-unquote, "gets wasted," whatever that means, that he will somehow damage his, his golden touch.is such an interesting insight that it's, it's so basic and so human

Melinda French Gates 37:30 Don't you think most things come down to human dynamics? We label them other things, but so many things are human dynamics.

Simon Sinek 37:37 And I often forget how often fear plays the role. No matter how big the ego or big the success, that fear, fear of losing it, fear of losing reputation, fear of being humiliated, all of these things, that fear is such a mighty motivator for so many v- extremely successful people.

Melinda French Gates 37:55 And often, the bigger the ego, the bigger you see the ego out in public, the more doubt and fear there is underneath, that the person actually feels small or not seen at some point in their life, and they're unresolved about that.

Simon Sinek 38:12 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 38:12 So they puff their ego up to make themselves look really big.

Simon Sinek 38:16 Yeah.

Melinda French Gates 38:16 And in our country, we, in my opinion, revere capitalism and, and people who are business leaders, but we don't always see that, okay, they might be great in business, but we ask them all these other questions about society, and they might not actually be the best human being, right? But we so value in this country, you know, the entrepreneur who's made it, the person who's made it as the CEO. But quite often, there's something small inside of there.

Simon Sinek 38:45 Melinda, such a joy. Thank you so much for coming on. I so appreciate it. Um-

Melinda French Gates 38:49 Thanks, Simon

Simon Sinek 38:50 ... really good, really beautiful insights. I, I really appreciate your, your openness. Thank you very, very much.

Melinda French Gates 38:55 Thank you. All right, have a good one. Bye. [upbeat music]

Simon Sinek 39:01 If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simonsinek.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbinus, David Ja, and Devon Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Ruetgerschan.