Female Founders: Gina Bremer of LiftedViz On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
You can delegate but you can’t escape. I read quite a few books on starting your own business before I took the leap. A common theme was building your team by understanding your strengths and your weaknesses and partnering with people that compliment you. I did the self-discovery exercises and they reinforced things that I already knew about myself: I’m not great at sales and taxes/paperwork stress me out. So I took their advice and partnered with people who are really great at those things. In my fantasy world, this meant that I wasn’t going to have to be involved. It was delegated. But as a leader of an organization, delegated does not mean it’s outside of your purview. At some level and cadence, you will be involved in all areas of the organization.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gina Bremer.
Gina Bremer, CEO and founder of LiftedViz, a data visualization and consulting firm that helps organizations create intuitive business reporting as an alternative to overwhelming spreadsheets. Gina has produced data visualizations for Fortune 500 and non-profits working in Tableau, Microsoft Power BI and Google Data Studio.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Yes, of course. Growing up, I didn’t know a career like this existed. Math came easy to me as a child and I loved it. I loved it to the extent that I would ask my parents to quiz me on my multiplication tables and beg my older brothers to teach me what they were learning in their math classes. The challenge as I entered college and prepared to enter the workforce was the lack of creativity, design, and social aspects of the field. Having a creative-analytical brain, I felt like all the paths in front of me pushed me towards one side or the other. In a fortunate turn of events I chose analytics, completed my mathematics degree, and in my first role as an entry-level data analyst I was introduced to the budding world of modern data visualization.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
We couldn’t find anybody to paint or put together furniture that wasn’t 6 months out, so our executive team spent a month outfitting the new office! I am now a master at removing drywall screws and spackling (in addition to data viz)! Also, our intern hiring weekend data viz workshop was amazing! We weren’t sure how it would go putting our vetted intern candidates through our entire LV5D process to define, design, data prep, develop and deliver a data visualization for a real volunteer customer. But it turned out great for us and for the intern candidates we hired, and even for the ones we didn’t. We got a great feel for the skills and personalities of the candidates and they got a feel for us and for the work that they would be doing.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I even have this one on video somewhere. I started this business because of my passion and expertise in the field, not my business-savvy. So there were times when an overwhelming number of things to learn and tasks to accomplish made me forget about the basics. Like being able to actually unlock the doors to your new office. We were so excited for our first day heading to our new space after a few long months touring office spaces and negotiating lease terms. Me and one of my partners, Stephanie, showed up with coffee and breakfast and champagne and glasses and bags and 30 duplicate keys and phone camera in hand, ready for the grand moment. Nope not that key. Wait let me set this down.Try this one? Can you hold this? It’s not turning. Okay now it just keeps turning. Pull? Pull harder. Umm…
It took many attempts and some guidance but we did eventually unlock the door! This was a great reminder that every single part of this process takes time. We can be in such a rush that we try to skip and streamline every step, but in the end we’re in this for the journey. I will cherish and smile at this video forever.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I am fortunate to be in the situation where I’m struggling to pick just one person for this question. When it comes to career success, I am especially grateful to my first boss in analytics, Katie Bardaro. Katie hired me right out of college and was a role model both personally and professionally. As a young female entering the tech industry, Katie showed me that it’s possible to be a trusted female tech leader who makes it to executive by 30 while being an active mother and partner. All of this while being vulnerable and human in the face of male-dominated leadership. I continue to be inspired by her career and I am proud to be following in her footsteps.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Founding a company is a big risk. It’s taking the leap. It means you have to truly believe in yourself.
- I believe I am good enough.
- I believe I know enough.
- I believe I can found a business, have a family, and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
- I believe that others will believe in me too.
For anyone these can be challenging statements to own. As women, there are fewer examples for us to look to for inspiration and confidence. To say she believed in herself and I can too.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Encourage the entrepreneurial-spirited women in your life to take the leap. Tell them you believe.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
In my opinion, there are two main reasons. The first being that the more diversity that we have in business leadership today, the more voices we have shaping the business culture of tomorrow. Then maybe the statement “I believe I can found a business, have a family, and maintain a healthy lifestyle” gets a little easier to own. The second is for the next generation of women. If we can continue to increase the presence of female founders in the workforce, we are providing more inspiration and opportunity for young females to continue the trend, potentially reducing unconscious biases of females in leadership.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
I think with this generation it is a myth that all male customers and employees won’t take you seriously because you’re a woman. You need to pick and choose well who you associate with, but the good guys are out there and they’ll have your back.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
No, I don’t think everyone would enjoy the experience of founding a company. I think key traits that increase the likelihood of success are:
- You are decisive and can be a full-time decision maker
- You are organized
- You thrive wearing multiple hats
- You are comfortable with uncertainty and change
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- Don’t try so hard to balance — try to blend. This piece of advice was from Erin Baker, Owner and Founder of Erin Baker’s, a thriving female-owned Bellingham-based business. Earlier this year, I attended a women in business breakfast in which Erin was on the panel. She said these words and you could hear the ah-ha moment ripple through the audience. I don’t have it word-for-word, but my takeaway was that rather than drawing hard work-life balance lines that are impossible to maintain when launching a business, you can better set yourself up for success by blending your work into your life in a way that fits and flexes with your world. By adopting this approach, I still have my plans and schedule in place, but there is significantly less self-judgment on both sides of the spectrum: the late nights and the rest days.
- Prepare for decision fatigue. This is not just to mentally prepare yourself. It’s also to give fair warning to those in your life that it may be coming. When starting the business, I was prepared and ready to answer big questions like: What is our vision? How are we going to make money? What are our company values? I was also prepared to answer some mid-size questions like: What technologies, software, and hardware are we going to use? What is our hiring process going to be? And I thought the small questions would be a piece of cake comparatively. I was wrong. I dedicated time and energy to making the larger decisions and was able to approach them with structure and confidence. All the small questions, on the other hand, come flying at you all day long every day. So, when I get home from the office and my husband asks me what I want for dinner, my answer is often “literally anything if I don’t have to pick!”
- Expect to change your mind. With all those decisions to make, big and small, my first reaction may not have all the information. As I learn more about different situations and experience the impact of my decisions, I will pivot from my original plan as needed. A perfect example of this was my original vision for my first cohort of interns. I wanted each intern on individual projects and dashboards to ensure that everyone got equal opportunity. I was fearful that if I were to assign partner projects that teams would divide up work based on what they were the best at and wouldn’t practice the skills they were lacking. I have since done a complete 180. From observing the team in their first three months, I found that team projects resulted in more growth as teammates were learning from the strengths of their peers.
- Value comes in different forms. Our company is centered around enabling people to better understand and leverage data. We are all about the numbers. We have built our own dashboards to track our finances, employee resources, sales pipeline, and more. But when it comes to business, not everything is a simple equation. I do not believe that money and value should be used interchangeably.. I was recently rewarded greatly by recognizing that the return on investment for our business comes from more than just dollars in the bank. We chose to invest in our people by taking our entire team to the Tableau Conference out-of-state. This was a big ticket for us at our size and current state — and I am so glad we did it! Our team came back from this with more knowledge, ideas for business products and projects, strengthened relationships, and more trust. I don’t need a number figure to know this was a big value-add for LiftedViz.
- You can delegate but you can’t escape. I read quite a few books on starting your own business before I took the leap. A common theme was building your team by understanding your strengths and your weaknesses and partnering with people that compliment you. I did the self-discovery exercises and they reinforced things that I already knew about myself: I’m not great at sales and taxes/paperwork stress me out. So I took their advice and partnered with people who are really great at those things. In my fantasy world, this meant that I wasn’t going to have to be involved. It was delegated. But as a leader of an organization, delegated does not mean it’s outside of your purview. At some level and cadence, you will be involved in all areas of the organization.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I am trying to! I am fighting for the things that are important to me like providing entry-level job opportunities into the tech world that don’t require a college degree or privileged background, building cost-effective data viz solutions for local businesses, and providing a work environment that supports mental health and a well-rounded life.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I would start the #trueofflinetime movement. I have been in too many tech environments in which I felt that I needed to be “on call” at all times. I would feel uncomfortable if I hadn’t checked my email in an hour-long meeting, when I had my chat notifications off, or when I stepped away to take my dog for a walk around the block during the workday. It took me starting my own business to feel comfortable in my #offlinetime. We set clear expectations, proactively plan and tackle blockers, and have made it a core part of our culture to protect against last-minute “fires’’. We have about 20 hours of collaboration time scheduled each week in which my team knows they can reach me and I know I can reach them. Outside of that, we get to connect and disconnect when it is right for us. Fight for the #trueofflinetime.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I would feel unbelievably honored to have a private breakfast with Michelle Obama. Why? So many reasons. Plus some of her inspirational-female-power-sparkles could rub off on me.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Gina Bremer of LiftedViz On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.