For Women Who Refuse to Be Underestimated, Underpaid and Undervalued

My mother was obsessed with Dolly Parton. She entered Dolly look-alike contests with her best friend, a hairdresser who kept her in wigs for the occasion. My mother was naturally well-endowed, so she had a head start. There were photos of Dolly all over our house growing up, and if you have ever been to mine, you know the tradition carried forward. I have one too.

I grew up thinking of Dolly as something like family before I understood anything about who she actually was. Then I learned the part that mattered. When Elvis Presley wanted to record “I Will Always Love You,” his manager demanded half the publishing. Dolly said no. Elvis was Elvis. She still said no. She understood something it took me much longer to learn: someone else having more fame, more certainty, more status, or a bigger title does not mean they have more leverage than you.

For years, I made the opposite mistake. I would sit across from someone who sounded completely certain, assume they knew more than I did, and start handing over credit, ownership, or decision-making power before they had actually proven anything. Dolly never seemed to confuse someone else’s power with the absence of her own.

This week’s guest on Takin’ Care of Lady Business, Nicole Eckels, learned that lesson the hard way too. She built Glasshouse Fragrances from her kitchen into the largest fragrance brand in the Southern Hemisphere. Then her own board and leadership team tried to push her out of the company she created. They sounded like they had the power. Nicole remembered who actually owned the company.

RIP Dolly. We were lucky to have you.

With Love & Lady Business,
JJ 

In today’s edition:
1. They Tried to Push Her Out of the Company She Built
2. You Already Had the Leverage
3. TJD Power List
4. Lady Bits

1. They Tried to Push Her Out of the Company She Built

Nicole Eckels built Glasshouse Fragrances from her kitchen into the largest fragrance brand in the Southern Hemisphere. Then the people she hired to help run it tried to push her out.

That is the part I wanted to understand. How do you build something, bring in people who appear to know more than you, and wake up one day realizing you have slowly handed them authority you never actually had to give away? This episode is for anyone who has ever built something valuable enough that someone else decided they wanted control of it.

Nicole and I get into:
— How to spot a market opportunity before everyone else sees it
— Why hiring experienced people does not mean surrendering your own judgment
— How her board and leadership team tried to push her out, and what it took to regain control
— Why she ultimately restructured compensation around long-term incentives and ownership

🎧 Listen here: Spotify | Apple | YouTube
Explore Glasshouse Fragrances: glasshousefragrances.com

2. You Already Had the Leverage

I made a real mistake early in my career, more than once. I would sit across from someone, decide within about thirty seconds that they knew more than I did, and start handing over things that should have remained mine. Credit. Ownership. The decision itself. It took me years to climb out of where that habit put me. Here is what I understand now.

I was never actually measuring what they knew. I was measuring how certain they sounded and treating that certainty as proof. Those are not the same thing. And confusing them was one of the most expensive mistakes I made in my twenties and thirties. Someone else’s confidence does not reduce your leverage. Their title does not reduce it. Their ability to dominate a room does not reduce it.

Leverage is not a comparison. It is a measure of what you specifically bring to that exact table. Before you hand over ownership, credit, or a decision that is yours to make, ask yourself three things:

1. What do I know that they do not?
Write down what you specifically bring to this situation. The relationships you hold. The history you have with this exact problem. The information you know. The instincts built from actually doing the work. Do not discount knowledge just because someone else presents theirs more confidently.

2. What is their certainty actually built on?

Do not confuse confidence with competence. Have they done this exact thing before? Can they explain why they believe what they believe? Are they specific when you push for details, or do they get vaguer the closer you get to the real question? Confident and correct are two different track records. Find out which one you are dealing with before you defer.

3. What happens if I am not here?
If you disappeared from the deal, the decision, the company, or the room tomorrow, what would actually change? Would something stall? Would someone have to replace what you were doing? Would a relationship disappear? Would the outcome get worse? If the answer is yes, you are not a nice-to-have. You are the leverage. Your leverage is not how loudly you speak. It is not how impressive the other person looks. It is not how certain they sound. Your leverage is what changes when you leave.

REAL TALK
Confidence is performance. Leverage is information. Stop grading yourself on someone else’s performance. Know a woman who keeps mistaking someone else’s certainty for her own lack of leverage? Send her this.

3. TJD Power List: Sonya Passi

Sonya Passi Just Turned a Pop Star’s Festival Into $1 Million for Survivors. Sonya Passi is the founder and CEO of FreeFrom, the largest provider of direct cash assistance to survivors of gender-based violence in the country.

Full disclosure, I sit on FreeFrom’s board, so I have watched this work up close for years. This week, Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields named FreeFrom one of ten nonprofit partners in a $10 million donation, bringing $1 million directly to FreeFrom. That matters because Sonya built FreeFrom around a radical idea: survivors know what they need better than any system designed to manage them.

FreeFrom puts cash directly into the hands of survivors, without someone else deciding which needs are legitimate enough to fund. Money is power. Sonya puts both back into the hands of people who have had them taken away. And that is why Sonya Passi lands on this week’s TJD Power List.

Learn more at FreeFrom

💋💋 Lady Bits

👩‍💼 The most highly qualified generation of women in history is being pushed out of the workforce. So much for “just work harder.”

🪨 A VC firm had a rock outside its office shaped like male anatomy. Apparently everyone noticed. It took a female founder to actually say something. Welcome to “Dickrock Ventures.”

🎢 Dolly Parton was offered a licensing fee for her name. She negotiated ownership instead. That decision became Dollywood. Try that at your next annual review.

🧪 A 23-year-old woman figured out how to make a treatment for leprosy actually work in the human body. A man got the credit for the next eight decades.

Hi, I’m JJ

Since starting the Justice Dept, we have increased women's wealth by over $100MM in just over 5 years. Want to know what inspires me to do this work, other than making women money? My clients' surprised reaction when we manage to get them much better terms for themselves and their companies, whether via talent agreements, employment, severance, partnerships, asset sales or investments. They often admit that they never thought they could get that result. Not even hoped. This blows my mind. As we know at The Justice Dept. you are all worth everything you ask for and more. Reach out and we’ll show you how!
x TJD