# Being a female founder in a male-dominated industry

- **Episode:** [155](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/155.md) (2024-12-19)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** female-founder, male-dominated, gender
- **Time:** 12:44–16:38 (start 764s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/155?t=764](https://truthliesandwork.com/155?t=764)

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[12:44] Al Elliott: I have a question which you may be offended by, and I hope you won't be, but do you feel that as a female entrepreneur that it was You had to ask more, you had to be more dogged than perhaps if you were male? I don't know. What's your perspective?
[12:58] Louise Hill: Yes, probably. Yeah. In fact, why am I saying probably? Undoubtedly. I've always approached things, you know, I've worked all my life from leaving university. And yes, of course, I've hit all kinds of barriers as a woman. I remember my— when I first left university, I got onto a House of Fraser graduate program and went to Cardiff and worked in Howells of Cardiff, the big department store there. And I can remember at one point I was running one of the departments and all of the sales reps just used to walk onto the shop floor, walk straight past me and go to speak Automatically to an elderly gentleman who only worked 3 afternoons a week. And I used to be standing there going, hello, I'm the manager. Yeah, all kinds of barriers, but I prefer to approach that by pretending that they don't exist. You know, I think I've always tried to just ignore the fact that I'm female. You know, it shouldn't make a difference. It shouldn't make a difference at all. So as far as I'm concerned, you just keep going. If somebody says something crass, you call it out. Sometimes you just ignore it. Sometimes you work around it. I think it's a case of, yeah, I did use the word dogged, dogged determination and keeping going. And for me, that's worked. Um, and, uh, I commend it to anyone because I think, I think if you start predicting that there are going to be barriers and that you're going to find it harder and, and maybe not succeed, then it's— that almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy
[16:30] Louise Hill: It can
[16:38] Leanne Elliott: But come back
[16:38] Al Elliott: Yeah, come back. Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this, so come back. I'll cut that out