What Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Unwell Women
Marisol Andrade had built her supplement startup on eighteen-hour days and learned to shrug off the low ache she felt most afternoons. When a bad flare sent her to a doctor between investor calls, she left with advice to manage her stress and a nagging sense of not being fully heard. Reading that night about the long history behind women's physical symptoms being filed under emotional causes rather than investigated as physical ones, she recognized something bigger than her own frustration: the instinct to explain away discomfort had quietly shaped her company's benefits, marketing, and hiring, none of which accounted for a team that might be managing symptoms nobody had asked about.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
The old theories behind "it's probably stress"
Cleghorn's history shows that for centuries, physicians sometimes attributed women's physical complaints to emotion, reproductive organs, or temperament rather than investigating the body itself. Knowing this pattern helps explain why "stress" can still surface early in a diagnostic conversation, even when incomplete. This is not a claim about any individual doctor's intent, nor a basis for diagnosing yourself or anyone else, just context for how a conversation may unfold.
Treating this history as proof your doctor is wrong turns context into an excuse to skip evaluation.
Before your next appointment, write down your symptoms and their timeline, separate from how you feel about them.
When the pattern shows up in your own boardroom
The same tendency to reach for a tidy, less physical explanation can quietly shape how founders design benefits, write copy, or decide whose discomfort gets taken seriously in user research. This isn't evidence that any manager or clinician acts in bad faith; it's a documented historical pattern with echoes worth noticing in your own decisions. Founders building health-adjacent products carry extra weight, since a flawed assumption can reach thousands of users.
Assuming your product or policy is automatically enlightened just because you're aware of the history.
Audit one policy or product decision this quarter for an unexamined assumption about whose symptoms are taken seriously.
Advocating for your body like you advocate for your pitch
You already know how to walk into a room and make a case with evidence and a clear ask. The same skills apply in an appointment: a written symptom timeline, a named outcome, direct questions when something feels unresolved. This doesn't mean pressuring a clinician or diagnosing yourself; it means treating a qualified physician or specialist as a partner in an evidence-based conversation, and following up when concerns go unaddressed, as you would a stalled deal.
Over-advocating can tip into demanding a specific diagnosis rather than a thorough evaluation.
Bring one page of notes to your next appointment and ask plainly, "what would rule this out?"
Building companies that don't repeat the pattern
Individual awareness only goes so far; the book's larger argument is that collective, documented attention to this history has slowly improved research and care over time, and founders sit at a useful pressure point. A benefits policy or product decision built with this history in mind can quietly correct assumptions that would otherwise go unexamined, a modest version of the change the book gestures toward.
The tension for founders sits between recognizing the pattern and still working productively within an imperfect system. It's tempting, once you see the history, to treat every underwhelming appointment as proof of bias, curdling into distrust that keeps you from seeking care. It's equally tempting to dismiss the history because your own doctor seems attentive. Holding both means staying alert to the pattern without assuming it explains every interaction, while still advocating clearly and returning for follow-up.
Name one thing, honestly
- Where might an unexamined assumption about symptoms shape a policy or product decision in your company? - What would a well-prepared version of your next appointment look like? - Have you pushed through a symptom because slowing down felt like weakness?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Bring one page of notes to your next appointment and ask plainly, "what would rule this out?"