How starting a note helped me transition from a 'young female CEO' to 'just another business owner'

I heard that a tag called #noteでよかったこと (Things I'm glad I did on note) was created, so as someone who has benefited greatly from note, I decided to write about it.

There are many things I'm glad I did after starting note, but to summarize them roughly, they look like this:

・Monthly income of 200,000 to 300,000 yen
・Speaking engagement fees have tripled
・Received 3 publishing offers (and all 3 companies are ones I like)
・The quality of job applications has clearly improved
・The amount of input has also increased

I would like to talk about each of these carefully, but since I think other people are also writing about them in detail using this hashtag, this time I want to focus on something only I can talk about.

Transitioning from a 'young female CEO' to 'just another business owner'

I have been making various things and posting them on social media since I was in high school, but because of my age and gender, I was often labeled as 'High school girl so-and-so,' or even if it wasn't explicitly stated, I was often framed in ways like 'A young and cute person who is also a CEO!' This continued even after I entered university, and I have always felt that just by being young and female, a sense of being treated as a novelty has always clung to me.

Therefore, no matter how much I achieved through my own efforts, I was aware that I was being viewed through biases like 'There must be a powerful mastermind behind her' or 'She's only getting attention because of the hype, she has no real ability' or 'She's being overrated because she's young', and for a long time, I felt frustrated by that.

Also, because I was viewed through such biases, even when I posted job openings for interns or employees, I received many unrealistic applications like 'If it's Hayakawa-san, she should be able to do something about me (vague)', which made hiring very difficult, and I truly regretted my own self-promotion.

I started using note in earnest from April of this year, and in these six months, the situation has changed significantly.

First of all, I rarely used to share my thought processes or inputs externally, but by summarizing and sharing what I was thinking and learning at the time in a monthly magazine, 'Gomi Hayakawa is actually working hard' became a correct perception that spread among my followers and note readers. This effect was particularly immediate because I have all the elements that make me easily misunderstood—being in my early 20s and female—and since there are few people in my generation doing such things, it quickly changed from 'a shady young female CEO' to 'a relatively reliable business owner'.

As a result, requests for speaking engagements changed from 'shallow self-help seminars' or 'shallow entrepreneurship promotion lectures' to 'more practical EC seminars' or 'more realistic marketing lectures.' Along with that, my fees tripled to over 100,000 yen per hour, the number of attendees increased significantly, and events that used to have empty seats are now routinely sold out.

Also, there have been various results outside of speaking engagements. For example, because I used to be seen as just some vaguely amazing person (?), I received many intern or employee applications saying things like 'If it's this person, she should be able to do something for me!', but perhaps because it was conveyed that I am actually working steadily and diligently, the number of serious and ambitious people applying has increased significantly recently.

Up to this point, it was within my expectations as I had aimed for it to some extent when starting note, but this was something unexpected: 'The amount of input has increased dramatically'.

I currently run a monthly magazine that is updated four times a month, and writing four pieces of content of about 3,000 characters each consistently is quite a chore. Moreover, I do it in my spare time on weekends and days off, not as part of my work, so if I catch a cold even once, I'm in big trouble (and I was indeed in trouble at the end of last month). In such a hard update schedule, the only way to consistently put out new content is to significantly increase what I learn at work, summarize even small lessons diligently, and read a lot of books to dramatically increase my input.

As a result, since starting the monthly magazine, my reading volume, which used to be good if I read 3 books a month, has increased significantly to over 10 books a month recently.

That said, reading 10 books a month costs a fair amount of money, but because I am active on note, many editors contact me, the number of books sent to me has increased (which I'm super happy about), and since I have a constant monthly income from the magazine and other sources, I can buy books with peace of mind.

Like that, it's only been about half a year since I started note in earnest, but I deeply feel that it has had various positive influences.

Since the only way I can give back to note is by saying how great it is, I've written this brief post. I hope you all give it a try, too. And that goes for my employees as well, haha.