UrbanSitter CEO Lynn Perkins on Egoless Leadership, the CEO Playbook, and Successful Startup Lessons

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and today I am super stoked to have a fellow San Diegan on the show. What's up Lynn? How you doing? Lynn Perkins from UrbanSitter.com thanks for having me.

I'm doing, I'm doing great, great, great, great.

You grew up here in San Diego. Let's chat about San Diego just for a second. It's beautiful here. I'm out looking at the ocean. You grew up here? When did you make the move? Why did you make the move? Was it good to get your tech millions or like what's the, what's been the hero's journey so far? You know, what has been your, your way that you've created your lifestyle so far?

Well, I hope, I hope I'm mid journey because I'd like to come back to San Diego at some point. Trying to put the hard sell on my husband. But I grew up in San Diego, moved to the Bay Area for college and then I did a stint in Chicago. I made it through one winter. I did an interview there for a job in February. It was 62 degrees so I got some false advertising on that one. Loved it. Stayed there for a year, but the winters were too much for me. Had an opportunity to move back to the Bay Area and I've pretty much been in San Francisco ever since.

So yeah, I actually spent a year in San Francisco. I was up there in 2011 trying to make my tech millions like Tim Ferriss. Didn't quite work out that way, but I came back to New York and sorted it out another way.

That's great. I love San Diego though. If I the Bay Area is great, but San Diego is kind of always going to have a special place in my heart.

Awesome. Well, I always have a saying that, you know, people will respect you for your successes and you're obviously very successful but they'll love you for your failures. So let's talk about some of the things that didn't work out so well. For example, I heard you sell dog beds to kind of get by while you were making your moves early on.

It's true. When I was shortly after college, I had been in Chicago, moved back to the Bay Area and had started at A very, very small Internet startup. And this was back in like the early days of the Internet scene and we were pre funding, so unfortunately I didn't have, you know, I wasn't living, I didn't have any money built up at that point. It was early in my career, so in order to work at the startup, I needed to do something on the side. And a friend of mine had started this business where she was making these very like high end luxury dog beds and she needed a salesperson in Northern California. So without having any dogs or any real like, I mean, I like dogs, but without having any real passion for the pet space, I took this mission on. And I'll tell you one thing. Number one, I was not very good at selling them. But number two, when you, when you don't have any money or any furnishings in your apartment, these fluffy dog beds actually do double well as bean bags for watching tv.

Good times. Good times. I love it. So you ended up selling dog beds even though you didn't have a dog?

Absolutely. Yep.

I love it. That's really great. I think we all have journeys like that at some point. You know, entrepreneurship was kind of, you know, it happened to me accidentally when I was 12 years old. I went to my neighbor's house because our lawnmower was broken. I'm like, hey, can we borrow your mower to, you know, until ours is fixed? And by the way, we don't have any money to fix it. So you pay me 20 bucks to mow your lawn. They're like, yeah. And I was in business and that's how it kind of went. Can you tell us a little bit more about how you've become an entrepreneur? Like, why was this always a calling for you? Some people are like 100% gung ho, unemployable. I'm going to do my own thing. And then some people are more kind of toe in both waters. Which one are you?

I'm a toe in both waters person. I actually feel like I've bounced back and forth between bigger companies and startups. And similar to your story about the lawnmowers, I've kind of fallen into my startup opportunities. So while I was in Chicago, I knew, like I mentioned, I just didn't have thick enough skin for the winters. I had started to look at jobs back in California and I was seeing a lot of interesting jobs in the tech space. They weren't necessarily the right jobs for me though. I would call up the recruiters from those companies and say, hey, I see that you're Using a recruiting firm. If I find somebody for you, will you pay me a third or a half of what you've got negotiated with that firm? People said sure, why not? I had all these friends that were really unhappy at their consulting and investment banking jobs. So I started to find jobs for friends, which I'm a matchmaker at heart. So I just started to set friends up with these jobs. One of my roommates in Chicago said, we know these engineers in Berkeley and they're building this thing called a job board and they need a business person. You should join them. It's kind of an example of how all of my startups have been that way where I've sort of fallen into the opportunity because I've either been really passionate about the problem or just by chance have sort of seen an opportunity.

Well, let's talk about some of your other startups. Besides Urban Stutter, what else have you worked on?

Well, the first company that I went to work with, there were two or three engineers there and I joined them and that was called Bridgepath and that was sort of premonster.com and it was a very basic job board to help recent college grads find jobs at companies that maybe weren't doing on campus recruiting. So that was the first one. And then I actually did go from there to another startup and I went to, I co founded a company called Zuni.com and that was with a woman who was very excited about the fashion space. And keep in mind this was like back in the day when it was really expensive to build e commerce sites and we figured out that we could feature these sort of hard to find designers that kids were seeing on whether it was MTV or through at concerts or at Friends. So if you were a kid living in the suburbs outside of let's say Tulsa or Cleveland, and maybe you didn't have these kind of shops nearby, this was a way for you to get those goods. So that was the second one and I've sort of progressed from there.

I love it. And now talk about Urban Sitter a little bit. So what is Urban Citter? What do they do? How do they help people? And other types of life, I would imagine. And what can we do to support you on that mission? Because that's what we're all about here at Make More Marbles.

Thanks. So Urban center again. I had another situation come up where I felt like I had a real need in my life and that was actually I needed to find good, trusted childcare for my twins who were about two and a half at the time. And I had been in the workplace working kind of full time since they were born, but had taken some time off. And so it was the first time that I had really started to connect with other moms out there. And whether it was working friends or stay at home friends, they would say to me, you know, you have this amazing nanny and these great babysitters. Can you help me find someone? And so kind of, I guess the common thread in my history has been this matchmaking piece.

So similar to connecting the dots between.

Connecting the dots, exactly.

That's kind of what I do. I get it.

So I started to talk to these parents about why is it like, what is it about your current system that isn't working? And for most people it was that they didn't even have a current system. And I felt like there was a big opportunity there. I had started to look at different tech opportunities and I was seeing trends where there were peer to peer services emerging and recommendations from your trusted community. And I felt like, wow, this is really a space that it's not a nice to have. It's not like hiring a gourmet chef to come to my house or partnering up with somebody who's driving across the country if I want to go on a whim. This is truly a marketplace for. It's a real need. There are millions and millions of people out there where not having trusted childcare either impedes them from having the job that they would like or continuing with plans that they've made. So for me, it really resonated and it kind of lit a fire under me. And next thing I knew, I ran the idea by some people, including an engineer friend, and we had a prototype underway. So I hadn't really planned to go start another company. It kind of came my way, I guess.

I love that. And you just knew the right people. Right. You don't need to have the right answer if you know the right person who has the right answer. Right. You don't have to go out there and try to figure out how to code. You don't have to go out there and try to figure out how to do all these different pieces if you just have the people in line. That's a very supporter credo. And wealth dynamics is something we geek out on all the time. I would, I would guess and wager that you're probably either a star, a supporter, or a deal maker somewhere on the extroverted side.

On the extrovert side.

Yeah, yeah. And those people's strength is all about people, you know, and if you just understand that, okay, you know, if I can line up the right people with the right mission and the right way with the right values and magic happens. And here you are.

Big. Yeah, I'm a big believer in that and, and this Internet, this company. I did something a little bit different than I had in the past where I sort of took a step back and looking at those strengths that you just mentioned, I said, okay, like, I clearly am not a programmer and I'm also deficient in a lot of other areas. And so I looked at the areas that I'm really excited about, and then I looked at the areas where I'm either not as excited or not as strong. And I kind of built my co founder team around the opportunities that existed where I had weaknesses. And it's really been a great team because I really kind of thought long and hard about, like, where were my skills and where were my passions and like, how could I fill in the rest of that?

Yeah, we're so aligned in that regard. That's the whole make more marvels mission. Right. It's like not grabbing for all the marvels or trying to do it all on your own, but making more marvels so everybody can win more. We collaborate and we create together. So talk about urban sitters penetration in the market so far. Where are you guys now operating?

So we are now. So we started off just in the San Francisco Bay area. We're now in over 60 cities across the United States. We've had something like two and a half, three million hours of babysitting completed on the platform. So a lot of babysitting and it's been really fun. You know, we're truly. Our model really is to kind of roll out city by city because it's has such a local component to it. We show you babysitters that have been used by your friends. And so for instance, in your area, let's say that you were to put in where it is you live in San Diego. We might say, oh, you know, do your kids go to this school or are you part of these groups? And we know that there's popular moms groups in different areas. And so once you go through the process, we can actually show you sitters that have been recommended by your friends and other families you trust, whether that's the surf soccer club or you name it. And so because of that, we are really a city by city model. So for us, it really started out by being in just one market and then moving to more. And now we actually have a playbook to launch new markets a lot faster.

And that's really important. And I don't want to gloss over that. Having the playbook allows you to scale. Right. It allows you to bring on the right people in the right cities that have those kind of local knowledges and just execute with a strategy that, you know, works and then just adapt tiny little bits that just make sense for that city. Like, I'm sure New York would be a different rollout than San Diego, would be a different rollout than Chicago, but not that different, where you can't use the same playbook as a beginning.

Absolutely. Like that 80%. You know, it's that 80, 20 rule where 80% of it works in every market. And then you kind of have to finesse it based on, you know, what resonates in that market. And to your point, yeah, New York's a great example where school, where your kid goes to school is even more valuable in New York than your neighborhood because obviously the neighborhoods are massive. So, you know, really fine tuning what is the playbook in each city, but kind of using the same framework for each one.

Yeah, I'm curious now because I have a lot of. I'm from New York. I have a lot of friends there. What has been the rollout strategy in New York? Is it like the private school, public school model is, like, based on, okay, you're Upper east side, but your kids go to this private school, and then you go to this park. And, like, what are some of the parameters you guys use?

Well, we started with, rather than trying to tackle all of Manhattan from the get go, we actually put a big emphasis in Brooklyn early on because that's where a lot of families with young kids are relocating from Manhattan to Brooklyn. And there are also some very strong online moms clubs there. And more people tend to send their kids to public school than do in Manhattan. And so we started actually with a big focus on Brooklyn, the Upper west side. And then I kind of moved into, like, Tribeca, Upper east side from there. And so with me, with New York, with sort of the five boroughs, we actually took each sort of sub area and treated it almost like its own city. So the campaign that we ran in Brooklyn was very unique to Brooklyn versus the one that we ran for the Upper west side. And what we really found in New York is that because you're talking about much denser neighborhoods for people who do have kids in preschool or in elementary school, they really put a lot of trust into that school community. So we put a lot of emphasis around schools and Both public and private, but really kind of neighborhood by neighborhood strategy there.

Okay, great. So let's talk about the customer acquisition model just for a second because I'm geeking out on this. I love this type of stuff. There's three different ways to get new leads for people who would want to use your service. There's referral traffic, we call it lent traffic. There's paid traffic, certainly ads, which is the hardest to convert typically. And then there's organic traffic or creating content or what have you. So made paid and lent, that's what we call it. What have you seen those kind of breakdowns be as far as people coming in through referrals, I'm sure it's pretty heavy since they're referral based. Network versus paid and lent. I'm sorry, versus paid and made rather.

So on the maid, on the organic side. So we're very fortunate. Over half of our traffic is organic. And I think that's to your point about referral. I think in our case it's very interesting. But I think referral a lot of times still happens offline. So you're dropping your kid off for school and you see a mom that you know and she says like, download the app. Download it. Yeah. Or like, hey, like to your point about going to see Metallica recently, like, hey, we have, you know, two extra tickets to see Metallica or you know, whoever, whoever it is on Saturday night, can you go? And the other mom might say like, oh, I'd have to get a sitter. And that mom will say like, oh, go check out urban sitter. And so it's interesting because for us, maid and lent might actually have a big overlap because I think some of it's still offline.

It's really hard to track when it's offline.

Yeah, absolutely. And then referral is big for us too. So we do have a way that parents can tell other parents. And then on the paid side, it's very interesting with our business, SEM is really big for us because if you are online googling last minute babysitter, like you clearly have an immediate need. And we do really well because the way our technology works, our average sitter response time is under three minutes. And so when you're in that bind and you find us through SEM and then you see that, hey, not only can we help fill that need that you need for tomorrow morning, but by the way, you're going to actually be able to see sitters that your friends know. That's really kind of our aha moment. For parents. And so I would say we're kind of 50, 50 between made and paid. But I think that the referral component for us is a lot of. It's still word of mouth and probably shows up in the made section.

So I have two thoughts. And you can. You probably already considered them, but you know, the Uber model of hey, give 10, get 10, that's, you know, obviously working and I'm sure you're using that. But then additionally, I'm thinking, is there a way to track that offline traffic? Like maybe it's a how did you hear about us? You know, caption or something like that. Are you guys implementing those two strategies already?

Yes, we do. And that how do you hear about us really does come. It is referral from a friend is the big bulk of that piece of it. So it definitely works. You know, one thing that's fascinating about this business that I wouldn't have predicted through the online piece. So we allow you to do some really interesting things. Like right now, you could see all of this if you and I are Facebook friends. You can see all the sitters that I've used. And that's a great way for the trust piece. I would have assumed that as a mom that you would be willing to send me links to your sitters and so forth. And it turns out that you're willing to share a link that shows all the sitters that have been booked by parents at your school, but their parents carry this guilt about how often they use babysitters and maybe how many they use.

Interesting.

So thinking about Lent, we have to be very clever on how we use Lent, because what we know is that it's less of a one to one relationship. So I'm less likely to say to you, hey, here's my three favorite sitters. I'm more willing to say to you, hey, here are the top sitters that you know. Top sitters from this soccer. Every parent on our soccer team uses these sitters. And I'll send you a link to that page. It's just interesting. We've had to really fine tune how we think about. Sitters, on the other hand, are willing to tell each other about our service all day long, but on the parent side, it's been a little bit trickier. Yeah.

And it's also, if you can anonymize the data so it's not tied to any one particular recommendation, but they said get a anonymized version of all their friends data, then they're more likely to use it. That's Cool. I like that. And then additionally thinking about, from the lead generation standpoint, what have you found to be your biggest learnings or wins or stumble upons or ahas in that whole journey? Because building a company is a challenging thing regardless. But especially getting that marketing and messaging piece right, like that is something you can never really completely outsource as a CEO. As Joe Polish saying, he says, you can't get rid of the marketing, you can't get rid of the checkbook. Those are two pieces that you can never really truly let go of.

Right. And I would say, like, ultimately, also probably I'd add to that list, like dealing with like tough complaints, whether it's from employees or customers, like, that piece is always going to come back to you. It's interesting. So we were talking about the playbook a little bit, which really ties into marketing for us. So we used to have people on the ground in these different cities. So we had somebody in San Diego. So we would go to these different markets and in New York we might have two or three people. One that covers Brooklyn, one that covers sort of the east side of the city and the west side. And they would go out and they'd form these partnerships with all these local groups for us. And what we learned is that for us, the grassroots marketing was incredibly expensive. And so ultimately having a field team was a failure for Urban Center. The learnings that came from the field team, however, were really some of the big unlocks about the business in terms of which partnerships did these field team people form that ended up contributing more users to Urban Center? Could we automate some of these partnership processes? And really a lot of those learnings we've now built into the product so when we go to a new market, we can actually launch a market a cold start from cold start from a cold state with nobody on the ground there. And that was a big learning for us. I think it was a tough one for us because we so heavily value social and local as part of our business. But it was really figuring out how to take it from a marketing perspective and implementing it in the product because we couldn't scale. There was no way to scale the marketing costs and pay those kind of acquisition fees for customers. If we did it, we couldn't grow the company on a grassroots marketing plan.

Yeah, and you just gloss over something that's really important. It might be second nature to you, but I want to point out to the audience is that you aren't like, oh no, it's the whole failure. Forget field teams. No, you Just realize that you either win or you learn. And sometimes you learn and the learnings are actually more valuable than the actual customer acquisition piece. So you still use that as a tool even though it's not directly tied to. It's more like R and D, right? At this point.

Absolutely. And I think if you look at your, if you can quickly identify your mistakes and take the learnings from them and pivot on that, I think for me that's been one of the biggest learnings of running a startup in general is that we have different culture, company values here. And one of them is decisive action. And decisive action is really all about taking in the data that you have that's best in that moment and making a decision. Because not taking an action doesn't work. When you have a startup and you're running super fast, but also making decisions willy nilly doesn't work either. You really need to say, okay, I've got these eight pieces of data. What did I learn?

I love that. And yeah, just being a CEO, I'm sure you've had to grow a lot, right? Because your company can only grow as much as you do. What are some of the things that you wish every company owner, every small business owner knew? Like maybe two or three things that just, you just never knew and now you wish everybody knew.

Well, I guess one that I've known but has become more apparent for me in recent years is just not to have an ego. I think you just can't having an ego or having your blinders on you just, it prevents you from both being open to other opportunities as well as like learning from mistakes. And so, you know, I think everyone out there has probably worked for that person who is, you know, you are wrong until you prove them. Until you prove yourself right, or they are always right unless you prove them. It's really a frustrating situation. But think in a new company you have to be able to move quickly and, and you can only do that when you have no ego and you're willing to absorb feedback from people and being able that, dialing in feedback from people and kind of saying what piece of this feedback am I going to take versus what piece of this am I not going to take? And that's been one learning. I think another learning that's actually going to sound kind of counter to that is that being at a startup or starting your own business, it feels like you are running 100 yard dash when you're in it, but then it's like you get to the 80 yards and all of a Sudden you find out, no, no, no, this is actually a 400 yard dash. And then, you know, it's actually, it's a half mile. And so I think like always keeping some reserves in the tanks. And so, you know, back in my 20s when I had these two other Internet startups that I was involved with or co founded, you know, I burned the midnight oil and it was, you know, I was working 247 and it's really interesting being a little older now and even, you know, having to take time off for work because I want to be with my family. But having that headspace to clear your head and whether you find that through exercise or time with your kids, like I try to remind myself that it really is more of a half marathon and not a sprint because you have to have the endurance and things don't work out right when you're in that first fast paced piece. And so you have to be willing to adjust.

Yeah, I've told everybody like, if they knew, if I knew how hard it was to start a business, I probably would have never started. I think life just gives you just the amount that you can handle right now where it stretches you and then it's like, okay, here's more. Right. And the reward for solving problems is you get higher quality, bigger problems.

Right, Absolutely. I know. Which is so like, if you're somebody who is open and making mistakes and like constantly learning, running a startup is great because you're constantly learning. You're like, if you're not learning, you probably aren't doing it right.

Yeah, absolutely. So, okay, where do you see this company going? You guys look at acquisition, IPO or are you looking to like, you know, what's your go forward strategy from here?

World domination. You know the thing I'm most excited about, we are now, you know, I mentioned we're now in 60 cities. We're going to continue to expand geographically. I think there's a lot more we can do. We've really focused on the one time last minute childcare need. We're now getting into doing a little more recurring care. So helping you using that same trusted network, find the person who will be with you every Tuesday and Thursday to pick up your kid from school and take them to soccer. So on the product side, we have a lot that we can do. On the recurring care side, I think because we've built our model around this idea of really finding you trusted care. There are all these other categories of care that people need in their homes when it comes to their family or maybe not care is not the right word, but services that you would have in your home where that same level of trust is so important, and whether that's tutoring or pet sitting or even like a mother's helper type role, there are a lot of things. And I think when you talk to families, especially those with young kids, the fewer providers they can have, but the more trusted and qualified they are, the better. And so I think there are other skills that our sitters have that we could be tapping into, and I think later down the road, we'll get into that, too.

Yeah. And so how do you guys differentiate that when you start to get in other things? I mean, you obviously own the sitter market, and that's not being contended at the moment, at least I don't know of anybody else who's doing this at the level you're doing it. But now you start to get into the realm of like a TaskRabbit or some other type of service provider network. You see all these niche ones like Soothe for massages and Uber and all these different pieces. How do you see that changing the company as a result of you guys switching? Or do you think it'll. Do you think? Well, obviously you're excited about it. You wouldn't have brought it up, but I'm sure you have a good strategy to kind of transition from that. Okay, divide and conquer. And now what can we do to expand?

Yeah, I mean, I think in our vertical. Our vertical is very sort of like skinny and deep right now, and that for childcare, like, it really is all about delivering the best solution. Because this isn't, like you mentioned, TaskRabbit or Thumbtack or HomeAdvisor where there's some trust needed. Because these are people who are servicing your home and coming into your home, but these are actually people who are with your family members. And that's kind of how I guess I would think about where we would probably go next is something that involves an interaction with somebody in your family on your premise. And so I think we've really done a good job on that trust piece. And I learned a really interesting thing. I mean, similar to how I enjoy. I enjoy speaking to entrepreneurs on your show. You know, I also love getting ideas from other people. And I had the opportunity to meet with Meg Whitman a few months ago. We were talking about ebay.

Meg Whitman. She's a supporter. I love. Okay, cool. Go on. Sorry.

So she was talking about ebay and how ebay really was all about the collectibles and the Beanie Babies. Early on, and then I don't know if you'll remember this, but they had a miscellaneous channel and that miscellaneous channel, all of a sudden they started to see massive growth in it. They started to notice that Instead of selling one car a week on there, they were selling 10 cars and 20. And it kind of led them to figuring out which categories they were going to actually turn into full on channels. We see the same thing on Urban center where we're starting to see on our posted job function where people can post for a wider variety of things that people who have used the platform regularly and like how we show you trusted providers and make it easy to book, have started to post for other things on there. And it's such a wide variety of things. It can be everything from I want somebody who speaks Mandarin to come and not only babysit my child, but speak to them in Mandarin too. I'm hosting a party for 40 people and I'd love someone to come and help. And so I think we would use our own organic job post functionality to help us figure out which categories makes sense. And I would want something that has a recurrence to it and really taps into this, our sitter skill side.

Okay, I love that. And I want to kind of extrapolate into the future here. How do you see kind of new technologies coming down the line? You know, like I'm a geek about blockchain and all these different pieces. What do you see is kind of the next thing that's gonna change your business? Like I say, one day, you know, we're gonna have robotic babysitters that are like caring for our kids and helping us out and playing with the dog and doing all the things. But in between those two pieces, maybe like, what are some of the next things you see really disrupting this industry?

Well, I mean, for our space, like machine learning is huge. So the more that we can look at patterns of behavior and predict things and look at like one of the components, we do a really. So in our category, in our area, it's probably two things. One is probably trust and safety, like true, like better background checks, true security clearances, things like that. But the other way I see that developing itself is also in our ability to surface better results and that are very, very specific to you. We already have a very complex but efficient algorithm that shows you. Like, if you and I are both looking for a sitter in San Diego tonight, even if we're friends, we're going to have very different results and it's going to be based on if you've used the product before, where you live, precisely where you live, where your kids go to school. And so the more advanced that we can make that algorithm and the more that we can use machine learning to pick up patterns and behaviors, I think our product will deliver even better results both for the sitters and for the parents. And so there's. There are a few things coming down the pipeline on the trust and safety side and also in that area that I think will kind of further strengthen the trust that we surface for parents.

I like that. And when you talk about trust, I think blockchain makes a lot of sense as well, from an identity standpoint, a privacy standpoint, from a, you know, just a record keeping standpoint, not just the financial pieces. Everybody's getting excited about cryptocurrency, but the blockchain is going to change everything. It really is. At least that's my current leaning. So that's really great. So who else? You talked about Meg Whitman as being one of the people that you speak to and you kind of look up to in that space. What other CEOs, what other type of people do you look up to in the space as either mentors personally or just people you kind of pay attention to, especially females. Because I had the opportunity to spend time with Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx recently, she said something that hit me, really between the eyes. She says female entrepreneurs are the most underutilized resource on the planet right now. I was like, you're right, you're right. Come on, let's support more female entrepreneurs. And not that there aren't. It's just so skewed.

The discrepancy is big. Yeah.

And it's just crazy. So, like, who else in that space are you looking up to? And others that you see female leadership really rising?

Well, I was really fortunate early on at Urban Sitter to be introduced to a woman who ended up becoming one of my early investors. Her name is Sonya Perkins, and she started an organization called Broadway Angels, where she and a bunch of other women who had been at larger VCs or had been CEOs of successful companies came together and decided to form what truly was one of the first all female women's angel investment groups. And so she's not only just been a mentor, but she's also been inspiring in terms of who she's introduced me to. And one of the women she's introduced me to is a woman named Magdalena Yesel, who was the first investor in Salesforce. One of the first investors in Salesforce I've been able to meet some really interesting women like that who have both scaled large companies and are now interested in helping earlier stage entrepreneurs. I think one of the things that I really admire about the two of them is that by becoming more public about this Broadway Angels fund and helping entrepreneurs, I think it's getting female CEOs who are probably more like at my level to get together more frequently. And then we can sort of figure out, okay, how do we inspire women who are just thinking about starting their company, whether that's going to be a VC funded company or one that they're just going to run in their hometown, I think the more you have exposure to other entrepreneurs like yourself, and I'm in a CEO group where we trade best practices and it's been incredibly valuable. You know, I'm really bullish on the fact that there will be more female CEOs in the next decade.

Yeah. And you hit on something really important, which is, you know, the masterminding aspect of it. That's what we do here. We message, we mastermind and we mentor entrepreneurs. That's make more marbles. Right. In a nutshell. So if I had to throw away every other toolkit or a tool in my toolkit for entrepreneurship, I would keep masterminding because that's been the above beyond. I've been a part of like two dozen masterminds and I've start four of my own. So I really believe in that tool. And you've really like hit it on the head. If you're not talking to people who are at your level or above on a consistent basis and keeping each other accountable and sharing best practices. You're really behind the eight ball in most respects. I also want to ask you about personal development work because you obviously didn't just. You weren't born this way where you just kind of, you're on it and you're the CEO and you're the mom and you know all these different pieces. What type of personal development work have you done and what do you recommend of what you've done?

I think it's a little unclear if I'm actually on it. I try.

You fake it really well.

Thank you.

This is all fine and the fire is destroying and you're sitting.

So I'll give you like a very basic thing. One is that I've always been open to criticism or feedback from bosses. I got this advice really early on in my career. I worked for a guy who was a great first first boss and he's gone on to be really successful. And I got really lucky being paired up with him and his group. This was doing in finance, real estate, investment banking. And he was kind of a black sheep in our group in the sense that he didn't sort of follow the traditional path, but he gave incredibly honest feedback and really mentored the people that worked for him. And he ended up having kind of the most successful team in the organization as a result. But I remember the very first time he gave me a review, it was, you know, all the analysts got these reviews. Maybe it was like six months in or a year in, and I didn't get a great review. Like, it actually was like, pretty. So. So, I mean, I'm sure there were great things in there, but I was really surprised by some of the opportunity, or I guess you could call it like feedback of things I could work on. And none of my other peers got these. They kind of got like, yeah, you're great, working 60 hours a week, whatever. It was like, check the box. And I remember, like, my boss could tell I was really upset and he said to me, well, do you want to stay at where you're at or do you actually want to improve? Because my point in giving you this feedback was, yes, I think you're great. I think I picked one of the better analysts. But if I don't give you anything to work on, like, A, you're going to get bored, and B, you're not really going to get any better. And I, like, took that to heart. And I've kind of tried to, both in terms of when I give people feedback, but also when I receive it, to really look at that as an opportunity to improve rather than like sort of feeling down on myself. And so I guess I've kind of like embraced, like, taking, whether it's customer feedback or feedback from my kids or feedback from my co workers, like, trying to take it to heart and sort of. There are components of it that you maybe can't act on right in that moment. There's components of it that probably aren't true because they caught you at a certain point in time. But in every piece of feedback, there's some kernel of truth that you can kind of look into. And I've tried to do that. The other thing is I've tried to work for really smart people. When I've been. I mentioned that I've gone between big companies and small companies, and when I've gone to big companies, I've made a point of working for people who I think are really inspiring and smart. I'm actually less interested in what I'm actually doing in the job and more interested in working for people who I think are willing to debate and have good conversations and have good work ethic. And I've learned a lot from them.

I love that. And, you know, working for really smart people is one of the things that I never really utilized until much later. Like, I was always, you know, very egotistical, looking back, being like, oh, I can figure it out on my own. Oh my God, you saved so many years. If I asked the right person, there's the right answer. Absolutely no. It's incredible. And they want to help you. That was the other limiting belief I had. Why would they ever help me? Giving back and contribution is the highest possible value you could espouse to. So giving that person that opportunity to serve you and give back is probably more valuable to them than it is to you. Right.

And you just said something about like asking them for help. And I feel like I'm really open when an entrepreneur emails me and asks for a 15 minute phone call to run an idea by me. Or, you know, I try to actually put a couple times on a month on my calendar where I just leave that time open for entrepreneurs that might reach out to me. It's like the first step is asking and kind of reaching out and connecting. And I think that people are sometimes reticent to do that. But to your point, like, people really do want to help.

Yeah, absolutely. So I also picked on another thread. So the way I kind of do interviews, as you may have noticed, is I kind of pull on the threads until the sweater unravels and we're just there with the naked truth. So that's a good time. You started out as an analyst, which is not an extroverted job typically.

No.

Were you an investment bank?

Were you like, the company did like real estate investment work. So yeah, like a real estate investment bank. Okay, great.

So that's actually very interesting because I started out in hedge fund land and did a long time, even though I'm way extroverted. And the only reason I actually won is because of the team I was on and built and helped build partnerships I created. But looking back, I had no idea. So was that a similar thing to you? Like, started out in one thing thinking, oh, this is what I'm going to learn. And then you went and realized, oh, wait, I'm really much better with people.

Absolutely. And I got lucky in the sense that I mentioned this team I was on. I got lucky in the sense that my boss was willing to give me opportunities that maybe a normal analyst wouldn't have received in terms of interaction with client and stuff like that. I think otherwise I would have not lasted as long as I did and I was constantly learning. But I will tell you, it's interesting having had that experience and having sort of the financial rigor as a background has served me well because I probably wouldn't have sought it out if I really was like if you looked at where I fit on the strengths and weaknesses, it doesn't necessarily match up with where I am. But that financial rigor has helped in every startup that I've been at and that understanding of how finance works and what it is you're looking to achieve. I don't regret having that experience. Like I wish I knew how to code. I don't necessarily need to be the person at the company that codes but you know, it's, it's something that I think like having that building background, sort of those building blocks of finance or coding, if you have a tech product or you name it, would be really useful.

Yeah. And I think it's really important to understand that you can have the big vision, but if you have no way to create reality around that. Right. Or to help that align with reality, that's what numbers and systems and priorities processes are. So if you have zero, like you're completely wishy washy, it falls apart. And if you're all numbers, then there's no innovation. It's true that understanding that balance and.

I think a lot of people struggle on the entrepreneur side. One of the things I've seen, and I might be wrong on this, but I'm going to throw this out there, is that people often wait too long to get their fully baked idea out there. And so I think that's like the other thing I've learned is that it's something to have the envision and it's something to know how to build to it. But it's even like another skill to be willing to put out prototype a when you know you're going to get a lot of negative feedback on it. But it's amazing what you can learn from it. I think that's the other thing I've taken away from working with my co founders is that it's often hard as an entrepreneur to say okay, I'm going to put this version out there. Even though in your head. I don't care whether you're opening like a retail store or building the latest heart device like in your head where it's going and kind of where it is today are probably never aligned. And that's. That's like a tough thing to kind of become comfortable with.

Yeah. And you just never know what's gonna happen. So you almost just gotta surrender and say, hey, this is what. This is what I have. This is the best I can do right now. And give me feedback. Let's figure it out. And we fell forward together. That's a great thing. Okay, great. So, Lynn, you've been an incredible guest. I just want to say thank you so much for just taking the time and doing all that. What's the way we can support you best. So at make more marvels. We're all about, you know, not grabbing for the marbles, making more for everybody and winning together, co collaborating, co creating. And one of the ways we do that is we connect resources, opportunities, people, and systems together. We call it crops. It's our little acronym.

Right.

So what are some of the ways that we can do that for you? Whether it be myself, my team, the people listening, and to move your mission forward faster, essentially.

Well, one of the things I'm really passionate about right now, we've had some companies come to us and want to offer Urban center as a corporate benefit to their employees because they understand that oftentimes employees have to take time off of work to be with their kids, whether it's, you know, Veterans Day and most people don't have that day off to, you know, last minute, the nanny calls in sick. So I'm always looking to work with really great companies that are interested in offering this as a background service for people when their childcare needs become, like, urgent. So that's one thing I'd love to meet good companies that are looking at that also. Like, I think one of the things I hope that entrepreneurs out there who have children will use Urban center because one of the things that we find is that I think it's something like 70% of the women that use Urban center are working moms. But of them, half of them actually have a very flexible schedule. So they're either starting something on their own or they're consultants. And so I think it's a great service to help for working moms and hopefully for entrepreneurs as well. I'm always looking for product feedback. I'm just at lynly n n urbansitter.com and, you know, if I've mentioned anything on the. On this interview that people disagree with, I'd love to get their feedback so I can think about it more.

Yeah, absolutely. And Lynn, and that's the you've just nailed what it is to be a CEO. No ego. Here's my email. Tell me what I'm messing up. Help me, Help me get better. And please, you know, if you, if you like what we do, support us. But like, you lead with, hey, I'm just figuring this out like everybody, right. I just happen to be in the captain's chair, so help me out if you can.

I love that. That's right. Absolutely. I'm always open for new networking opportunities, things like that.

Absolutely. So, yeah, reach out to Lynn if you have something for her. And you know, I really appreciate you being on the show. And on behalf of everybody at Make More Marvels, thank you so much for being here.

Well, thanks for having your show. I love the purpose of it and I'm honored to be on.

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