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Annie Bartley: “We’re Never too Small or Insignificant to Make a Difference.”

Annie Bartley – Founder & Creative Director of I Am Female, a queer-led brand communications agency, talks about reclaiming the idea of ‘difficult women’, prioritising your mental health and making active decisions that build better businesses for all. 

I believe empathy is the biggest trait you need to have as a business owner. When you’re running a team, or crafting the company you want, empathy is so important to build what you want to build and work with people in a better way than what currently exists. Because empathy involves listening and connecting with others. I think we’ve got a real chance here as founders to create better businesses, not just in terms of turnover and profit, but in terms of how we actually impact the people that we work with. So I pride myself on being empathetic.

Running a business is a massive roller coaster ride, so resilience definitely is key. One of the most important elements to have as a business owner is the ability to just go, “Okay, so that didn’t work.” and pick yourself up and carry on. That ability to be adaptable really helps with those ups and downs of business.

The funny thing is I’ve never actually been employed! I’ve worked for myself for nearly 17 years and I class myself as unemployable. I launched the agency in the pandemic when I was running my previous studio. I wanted to expand and grow, so just thought, “fuck it.” If I don’t do it now, I’m never going to do it. That’s how I launched I Am Female.

With the agency, I knew I’d be able to create something different. Not just a business but a culture in which we want to work better, especially for neurodivergent people, but also for women as a whole, and to be able to lead in that. I wanted to be disruptive in what I was doing and really show the rest of the industry that we, as women and queers, can do this. I’m neurodivergent so I process the world differently and quite frankly, I don’t think people do things efficiently or in the best possible way. We don’t have to just do things because it’s always been done like that. We can make change, and that change can be impactful. We’re never too small or insignificant to make a difference.

I think as women, we should strive to be difficult. When we look at the word ‘difficult’ attributed to women, it’s always super negative. But to me, being difficult is a positive. It means I’m not taking things lying down and I question everything. I teach my daughter to not be afraid to be difficult. Because you need to be difficult to disrupt industries and make change. Change doesn’t happen when you’re quiet about it. Coming in, raising difficult questions, pointing out situations, and making people uncomfortable is a really important part of actually making change.

There’s a real lack of funding and financial support for women and non-binary business owners. I launched I Am Female with £7k I owed HMRC because I had no access to cash. FYI, I’m all paid up with HMRC! There’s a lack of funding, especially, for service-based businesses. I’m not talking about being a tech entrepreneur trying to launch a new app, but just funding in general to help people to get to the next level with their business.

I think the biggest support female and non-binary founders need, is more support from men. The gender gap burden is often the responsibility of women, but it shouldn’t be. Women can only do so much, we can only push ourselves up and up so far, but if the ceiling keeps getting higher, we’ll never reach it. That ceiling is in the power of men, and we need their support and allyship to help bring that down. What does that look like? Pay us. Hire us. Fund us. Ask questions like ‘are we doing enough to represent different groups?’ ‘Am I pulling up sexist behaviour?’ ‘Maybe let’s look at queer agencies to work with. Let’s look at agencies run by people of colour.’ Women do enough to try and grow with communities like Female Founders Rise. We need allies and we need that support.

But most of all, don’t lose yourself. Don’t lose your mental health in the process. As a founder, we can often think: ‘we’ve got to work all hours to make it work’ And yes, that is sometimes the case, but if you don’t look after yourself, ultimately you can’t deliver what you want to deliver.