Today we’d like to introduce you to Haley Hoffman Smith.
Haley, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
It all started when I was 18 years old and I was struck by the idea for a nonprofit. It was my first time feeling the weight of a truly great idea – the way that it seizes you, unexpectedly, and won’t let go until you pursue it. The idea was to donate empowering literature to girls around the world in mentoring groups and to write a curriculum to go along with the books. I had always loved reading and writing, and my calling in life is to empower girls and women, so it was the perfect crux of my two life interests.
Lit Without Limits was born, and over its two years, I donated over 300 books to girls around the U.S., Pakistan, and the Philippines. I created an Ambassador program of over 40 girls from countries such as Italy, Russia, and Canada. It was the single most exhilarating and empowering experience of my life: seeing how my idea could impact others, and how I could do something about my idea.
From there, I realized my true calling was to help other women start businesses and navigate entrepreneurship. During my time at Brown University, I served as the President of Women’s Entrepreneurship and started the first women’s entrepreneurship incubator on campus, helping female-identifying students bring their ideas from concept to reality. I wrote my honors thesis on female self-agency in entrepreneurship and venture capital and converted that research into a book called Her Big Idea. It was published in June 2018 and debuted as a top 3 bestseller in the Women & Business category on Amazon.
Life since then has been a whirlwind. I launched the book in conjunction with a fund I started with Brown’s Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship called the Her Big Idea Fund. Half of my book’s proceeds go to the fund, and we are about to issue our very first grant of $500 to a female founder with a BIG idea. It’s my small way of combatting the funding gap.
I turned my book into a speaking tour called Your Big Idea, and spoke at dozens of conferences and colleges over the past year, including Harvard, TEDx, Columbia, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and many more. Then, in February, I launched my line of false lashes called Her Big Lash. I studied Gender Studies at Brown and this intersection of feminine expression and the business world always fascinated me. I love beauty and makeup, and because there is significant research that finds that women who are perceived as more feminine are taken less seriously than their male counterparts, the intention behind the lashes is to be subversive to feminine business norms and allow others to underestimate us – because, wowza, will they be surprised!
Up next: plotting my next book, traveling as often as possible, and continuing to find ways to give back to the female entrepreneurship community.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think any path with entrepreneurship is going to be winding and at times, difficult. I’ve learned a lot the hard way. I’ve had a company dissolve and a major co-founder struggle that weakened my confidence for a long time. But, I found that we have the most power in the stories of our valleys. It’s one thing to get up on stage or to write in a book about our accomplishments and successes – it’s quite another to be candid about our failures and slip-ups. But one thing is for sure: the stories of the failures, and how we’ve bounced back, inspire others so much more than the successes.
So, for that reason, I urge young women to not fear failure. First of all, failure is necessary for growth. If you go your entire life without failing, you’re probably sitting on your couch not doing anything. The most exciting parts of life are multidimensional – there’s as much fear and risk and hardship in there as much as there is achievement, purpose, and fun. The best thing you can do is take failure on as part of your story, rather than running from it or trying to pretend it never happened. The best thing we can do for each other is, to be honest about where things have gone wrong, so it isn’t as isolating when things inevitably go wrong for those who come behind us, or when we fail again.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into your business story. Tell us more about it.
I’m most proud of the “Her Big” brand that I’ve built – encompassing my speaking tour, my lashes, my fund, and my book. My personal brand is really important to me and I strive for authenticity and fluidity through everything I do. I stand for helping women make BIG splashes and take BIG leaps towards their goals and endeavors, and this is really where my research, entrepreneurial endeavors, speeches, and education intersect. I’m proud that I can link all of those together.
What do you feel are the biggest barriers today to female leadership, in your industry or generally?
I believe one of the biggest barriers is the confidence gap. Again, I wrote my thesis on female self-agency, so I was really interested in learning how women’s experiences over time are internalized. The theory of self-agency asserts that every experience we have with the outer world teaches us something about ourselves, then impacts how we act next. So, if we have a disempowering experience and we’re criticized for sharing our ideas, we’re less likely to share them next time around.
The confidence gap is enormous. Women are dropping out of the race to the top of their respective industries because of the continued preferential treatment towards men, which we are internalizing as something wrong with us personally. I believe my next step with the “Her Big” brand is to help more women tap into their innate bigness, and bounce back from rejection and internalizing experiences of perceived inadequacy.
Then, an entirely different can of worms in my own industry is the lack of female representation in venture capital. In 2017, only 2% of venture capital spending went to female founders, which only marginally improved in 2018. Venture capitalists are almost exclusively white males who don’t understand the products and services female founders create, or have an inherent bias against female founders. They’re more likely to ask female founders questions about the risks and potential downsides of their business models, and more likely to ask male founders about the potential upsides of theirs.’ We could be here all day talking about how inequality plagues the venture capital industry. That’s why whatever steps we can take to close the funding gap are so important for supporting more female founders.
Pricing:
- $16.99 for Her Big Idea on Amazon [Half of all proceeds benefit the Her Big Idea Fund]
- $17.99 for Her Big Lash
Contact Info:
- Website: www.haleyhoffmansmith.com
- Instagram: @haleyhoffmansmith
- Twitter: @haleyhoffsmith
Image Credit:
Noah Berg, Michigan Daily, Rebecca Grant Studios, Rebecca Slaughter
Getting in touch: VoyageDenver is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
