Female Founders: Rhonda Swan of Unstoppable Branding Agency On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Sometimes it feels lonely as an entrepreneur, just know that there are billions of other people out there doing the same thing. So, find yourself a network to tap into for the days that you feel like you’re completely alone.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rhonda Swan.
Rhonda Swan is the founder and CEO of one of the leading PR and branding companies worldwide — the Unstoppable Branding Agency. She works with CEOs, authors, speakers and conscious entrepreneurs to grow their personal and professional brands creating a defined google footprint, using top tier PR and media. With her vision to empower women, especially in business, Rhonda also hosts the “Unstoppable Women Entrepreneur“ show at NASDAQ. She regularly interviews female powerhouses who go against the stream and showcases their entrepreneurial journey. You can watch her show on Bloomberg, Fox Business, Market Watch and nasdaq.com.
Simultaneously, Rhonda also hosts the Rhonda Swan Show, which regularly gets over 1M+ views per episode! In her show, you get to listen to experts, thought leaders and changemakers from all over the world, who guide you into living not only purposefully, but to ensure that your entrepreneurial journey is purposeful, passionate and profitable! Her passion for female empowerment led her to creating a movement for female empowerment! She is the founder of Women Gone Wild, a community with the vision to empower women and to create a safe space for everyone to live authentically and speak their truth! The first edition of the book series was published in 2021 and quickly became a bestseller in multiple categories. This year, the second book — the Wealth Edition — was published to help empower you! Likewise, the book became a bestseller in multiple categories. For her work, Rhonda has landed coverage in print and broadcast outlets around the world, being featured in FORBES, Entrepreneur, INC. Success, Business Insider, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, Thrive Global, Medium & Buzz-Feed.
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?
I grew up in Detroit as an athlete kid who wanted to run a large corporation. So, I went through university and through my master’s degree, and then landed a job with a Fortune 100 company.
I moved to California and worked with the best companies in the world, like Philip Morris and GlaxoSmithKline on marketing, branding, and really showing how companies can touch the masses with their brand.
Ten years later this led me to making a big decision to quit my job to become an entrepreneur. And the main reason was — I watched a woman put her six-week old baby into daycare and I vowed to myself that I would never do that, I didn’t want to put my daughter in daycare.
This is the time when the internet was just becoming popular. I watched an interview with Steve Jobs and he said: “If you’re not learning the internet, then you will be left behind.”
So I dug deep and started working with the best of the best, like Perry Marshall, learning Google ads, SEO, building brands online. This led me to starting my branding and PR firm in 2004, which has now grown to be one of the top-rated branding and PR firms for entrepreneurs by Forbes magazine.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
In 2007 and 2008, after three years of building our company and doing very well, as we were preparing for our baby to come, my husband and I invested heavily in real estate. When my daughter was born, we found out we were about to lose everything. At that point we had to make a decision to continue on the path that we were going to try to keep the assets that we held, or to make a massive shift.
So in 2008 on November 25, we left with our daughter, and sold everything we had. We left with $12,872.62 to our name with a vision about never letting my daughter go into daycare. So, we started traveling the world. That downfall was our greatest catapult and asset that we ever had.
This November 25th will be 15 years that we’ve traveled the world, lived in over 52 different countries and built our company exclusively online to be the empire that it is today.
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 was working, making sales calls and talking to people about how I can help them build their brand online and I had someone ask me if this was an MLM. And at that time, I had no idea what an MLM (Multi-level marketing) was. These companies were so big and I had no idea even what that was.
I was on this sales call and I was trying to answer the question, and then I realized and said that — I actually have no idea what that is. I learned what an MLM was from a sales call with a prospect.
Lesson that I learned was just be open and be able to reply to people with your transparency, especially if you don’t know what they’re talking about.
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?
Perry Marshall in 2004. He’s considered the grandfather of online marketing. He actually wrote the algorithm or broke the algorithms for Google and really figured it out — how to run Google AdWords, how to really dominate on Google.
I started working with Perry, one of his master classes and his masterminds, started mentoring. Because of his copywriting skills and his knowledge on the online world I was able to become one of the first women to earn a million dollars online by using a sales funnel before a sales funnel actually became really cool.
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?
There’s $11 trillion that is purely procured for businesses every year, and only 1% of that is going to women. Now that still might be $110 billion dollars. Can you imagine — just by increasing that by 1%, that adds on another $110 billion into women owned businesses.
I think what keeps women from creating and founding companies is that they’re afraid that they actually can’t do it themselves or they get knocked down, or they’re not seen enough. They’re afraid that they just can’t achieve. So, women end up always hovering in someone else’s spotlight.
As an entrepreneur, it’s challenging. You do need funding and you need investors and people that will support you to get to the next level. And I think that’s what happens to most women — they don’t have the support, so they’re unable to really get to the levels that they really want.
I bootstrapped my company and self-funded it very slowly. But what that did for me, it allowed me to learn along the way.
It also depends on the personality of the woman who is really determined to make a difference. I feel that if you create a business around your love and passion, and the impact you want to leave, you won’t quit.
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?
First off, it’s recognizing the distribution of funding and looking at alternative businesses that women are creating. Create more opportunities, but don’t make it special — like “you’re diverse or you’re a woman, so you can get special grants from us.”
It’s more like — you’re a woman, just like you’re a man — you’re a human, who is an entrepreneur, who wants to create a business.
Be more open to the equality of someone’s ideas, not the fact that they’re a male or woman.
I am for women’s rights, that’s what I stand for. However, I also don’t like to be compared.
I think inclusivity and equality is everything. If someone is willing to go the stronger road to become an entrepreneur, then they shouldn’t just be considered a woman or a man — they should be considered an entrepreneur and seen as that as well.
Also being given the same opportunities that men have, especially when it comes to funding — within government and within society.
I think our society tends to lean on gender equality. When you look at someone, whether they’re a person of color, or a different gender, or have different gender preferences, there’s an instant judgment. Society really needs to open their minds to not judging each other. Discrimination is what’s gotten us into a really bad place in this world.
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?
Yes, because women lead from their heart. Women have empathy. They look at the impact that they can leave on the world with their work. And more women are stepping into that space — that intuitive space, that compassion space, they’re creating bigger and better products and better opportunities and companies that can help change the world. Women need to stand up for themselves in their power and know that their feelings and their intuition can create magic, and create an amazing business.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
Myths of being a founder — is that you know everything. People think that when you’re the founder or visionary of a company, that you should know it all.
In reality, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you need to step out of the room. You need to have a great team and people around you who support you. This is what helps you really become one of the most powerful business owners.
Another myth is that you have to be hard or tough and do it all on your own. It isn’t true. You can’t get there on your own, you have to take a chance with someone else.
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?
I don’t actually feel that every person can be a founder of a company.
In my opinion traits needed are: resilience, the “Go get them!” attitude, wearing blinders and not allowing things to distract you — this is what founders need — not listening to other people’s opinions.
You know, I think that alone is what makes a founder and someone who’s a visionary.
There are also people we need to have, that are workers. They can execute and bring ideas to light. If you have a lot of idea makers, as visionaries as founders, but you don’t have someone that can help execute that, you’re not going to have a successful company.
Our company was built to utilize the Human Design system. It shows you who you are. For example, I’m a manifesting generator. That means I’ve got a lot of ideas, I keep bringing ideas, and opportunities come my way. And then there’s those who are generators. These are the type of people who make things come to execution. So, you need different types of personalities inside when you’re developing a company, and not everyone can be the visionary. You need those different levels of people with those different types of personalities and skills to help execute and come to the end goal.
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.)
Number one — Get used to failing every day. Because the more you fail, the faster you’ll get to where you want to be.
Number two — Sometimes it feels lonely as an entrepreneur, just know that there are billions of other people out there doing the same thing. So, find yourself a network to tap into for the days that you feel like you’re completely alone.
Number three — Not everyone is there to be your friend or to help. Be discerning on who you work with, who you employ, and who you bring into your valuable space that you’ve created. Because many people are only there for themselves. So, the most important thing is to do background checks, to give people contracts, and to make sure that you protect your value and your assets.
Number four — Do projects, not partnerships. One thing that I learned in growing my companies is that when you bring in people as partners, you also bring in their baggage, their problems, their issues, and also it can be very hard to separate when things go wrong as a partner. But when you’re a project partner or equity partner, there are certain contracts and guidelines that you follow, so that you’re able to split easily. Like it’s a lot easier to break up a relationship than when it is a marriage. So, I treat partnerships and project partnerships very differently.
Number five — Don’t talk about big projects until they’re launched — people’s opinions will deter your focus.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
My family gives away 8% of everything we earn. I also have created a “Women Gone Wild” book project where I give away all of our Amazon digital book sales to charity, so that we can make the world a better place. We’ve also created our own foundation called Heartstrings Foundation, where we teach music to children in the orphanage here on Bali and provide them with instruments so they can actually have a longer-term life with a skill that they may never have.
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 create a movement that is called Women Gone Wild, which we have done that inspires women to tell their story, to collaborate, to come together, so that they can support each other and do business to work differently and to create long-standing friendships. This is not something that I was taught growing up, and something I think is so well needed.
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 like to have lunch with Warren Buffett — I use his quote so often in life and in business. And that was: “You find out who’s been swimming naked when the tide goes out”. This can be related to so many things in life — to whether people are invested properly, or if they are protecting their assets or if they are telling a story. That may not be fully true, or they are representing themselves in a way that also may or may not be true. I think that when we start to be very conscious and aware of who others really are and listen to our own intuition, we then start to see things as they truly are. And the biggest and the greatest lessons I have learned are from Warren Buffett on how to protect my long-term assets, how to protect my family, and how to give back or create wealth that allows you to give back and to be someone of pure authenticity so that when the tide goes out, you’re not the one standing naked.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Rhonda Swan of Unstoppable Branding Agency On The Five Things You Need To Thrive… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.