Most of us are taught to wait for proof. Get the data, find the comparable, make sure someone has done it before. But the ideas that matter most rarely come with evidence attached. Jen Barnes learned that in the fall of 2021, when one of the best women’s soccer teams in the country was a single win from a championship, and not one bar in Seattle would put the game on a screen.

The answers she got when she called around were casual and complete: who are you talking about, or maybe after the men’s football games are over, if there is anything left. The inequity was not hidden. It had just become so normal that most people had stopped seeing it. Jen saw it, and it made her angry enough to do something about it.

Jen spent more than 25 years leading other people’s companies, often the only woman in the boardroom, before she opened Rough & Tumble in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood in 2022. It is the world’s first bar built for gender equity in sports viewing, a place where every screen, every night, plays women’s sports. She opened it with no market comparable, no proof of concept, and nearly everyone in her life, including banks, investors, and her own landlord, telling her it was a stupid idea.

In this conversation with host Kim Bohr, Jen talks about what it takes to trust your own read of a situation when the data has not caught up, why saying no became her growth strategy, how she built a team that stays, and the honest math of keeping a restaurant alive. It is a story about conviction, but underneath it is the moment every leader eventually faces: when the people you trust tell you your best idea is a mistake. Listen on Courage to Advance.