Kathryn Finney: Author, Entrepreneur, Activist, and Advisor

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I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. This episode's guest is the remarkable Catherine Finney. She is an entrepreneur, investor, speaker, mentor, author and pioneer. She has achieved many firsts. She started one of the first fashion blogs. It was called the Budget Fashionista. MSN called it one of the hundred most useful sites on the web. She was the first blogger to be credentialed for the New York City Fashion Week. She was the first blogger to receive a major book deal. She was the first blogger to appear on the Today Show. She started the first venture capital fund focused on black and Latinx women founders. She was appointed by the Obama administration to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. And she was a White House Champion of change. Katherine has received numerous honors and awards, such as the Grace Hopper abie Award, Working Mother's 50 Most Powerful Mothers, Route 100 list, Marie Claire's 10 Women to Watch, Entrepreneur Magazine's Woman to Watch, the Ebony Power 100 Black Enterprise 40 under 40 list. She was inducted into Spelman College's Game Changers Academy. Her current project is called Digital Undivided. Its goal is to create economic opportunities for black and Latinx women. Its services include research, thought leadership and education. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. And now here's Kathryn Phinney.

Does your heart do backflips because you were born and raised in Minneapolis and it's kind of the epicenter.

Minneapolis is such an interesting place. So I grew up there in the 90s, primarily the 80s and 90s, and it was a place that was undergoing a great shift. So there was a lot of immigrants who were coming in from Ukraine, from Somalia, from Laos, particularly Hmong population. So it was, it was becoming diverse. So it's this place that was very much not diverse in the middle of becoming diverse, like deeply Scandinavian people eating lute fish. I don't know if anyone ever heard of that, but it's like fishy silk and lye. It is like, the most untasty thing ever. And so it was in this period of change that I grew up there and grew up with a really diverse group of friends. And the possibilities were always there. I think at the same time, though, it's easy to be diverse when it's not in your backyard. Right. And so people were really struggling about how can we maintain these very Scandinavian liberal ideas when it's in our backyard now. Like, it's not just over there, it's like here. And so we have to learn how to live with it. So it's not surprising that Minneapolis would have these challenges and has always had a history of challenges with policing. What I think is exciting is that Minneapolis is a place where the revolution can come from. And the reason why I say that is you have this openness to be corrected in Minneapolis. That is not something I see a lot of places. So if you can present something that's authentic and different, there is an openness to hear it in Minneapolis. I mean, this was a city that had Keith Ellison, first Muslim congressman, and like Michele Bachman in districts right next to each other.

That's quite a contrast.

And the governor is Jesse Ventura. I mean, like, you know, that's a pretty special place where you have all of that sort of going on. And so it's an openness. I'm excited to see how people are rethinking things and changing the premise. The head of the city council in Minneapolis is the first openly transgendered woman elected official. Right. Like, so you have this incredible of people willing to think of things differently, but it's a challenge. And so I'm really excited to see what comes out. I have family members who are deeply, deeply involved on the ground with movement there, especially my niece who's Gen Z and who's like, I mean, these kids are so smart. They just, they're grasp of policy. Like, when I was 22, was I thinking about policy? I mean, I thought I was smart, but not like them. They're like taking it and then translating into policy into action. And all the things, the structures that existed before, like, they don't give a F. But I don't know if I can swear, but they really don't care about it. They're like, so what? Like, why can't we do this? So I do think it's really exciting. I think this is an opportunity and I hope that we seize it for true change.

If your niece shakes you up, imagine how I feel because you shake me up. So that's a compounded shake up. For me, we kind of went down this hole right away, but let's backtrack. So tell me the story of Budget Fashionista, because I think that is such a great story.

Oh, gosh. You know, I. So I started my career as an epidemiologist, which has nothing to do with budget fashion, has nothing to do with startups, but was living and working a lot abroad and had a sick parent. And also at the same time met my husband and I was going to really far away places. Like this is early 2000s. I was going to Shrem El Shrek in the Sinai. I wasn't going to, like, Chicago. Like, I was going, like, really far away places that would take like days to get to and realize that I couldn't have a sick parent and be 8,000 miles away. I also couldn't be married if I wanted to get married and travel three weeks out of the month. This was before FaceTime. This was before Zoom. It was before all the technologies we have now. So communication was just not easy. So I came back and, you know, dedicating my life to saving the world and realized I would have to figure out a different way to do that. And was newly married and was frankly bored and shopping a lot. And my husband, who is an engineer, said, you know, have you ever thought about doing this thing called blogging? And I was like, what the hell is that? Like, I never heard of, like, what is that? And he was like, oh, it's this thing where you write online so you can talk about your shopping and the things you're finding and you can communicate with people and. And so we started the Budget Fashionista as a hobby and it was so early and you would appreciate this. We had to use a platform called Gray Matter, which was founded by this guy, I think his name was Noah Gray. And it was for him to sort of document some of the mental health challenges that he was having. Was like a public diary. And he took it and he, like made it open source. We're using this open source thing. I had to learn how to code. I remember going to my husband's office because they had a T1 line. And it was so exciting because, you know, you could like, you could scan and get things uploaded in like 3 minutes instead of like 10 minutes. Now it's like instant, right? And scanning pictures of the shoes I was buying at Nordstrom's Rack and then having to code them in HTML and then to build my SQL databases and order the housing. I mean, like all this stuff just for a picture to show up. And so we started. And about six months into doing it as a hobby, we were contacted by the Associated Press because one of the things that I had read about was this thing called search engine optimization. And so I was writing, but I was using keywords or I was bolding him, all these little things. And it was coming up onto Google, and people were just really starting to get into Google and they were using Google. And this Associated Press writer found me on Google and was like, I'm writing a story about people who travel to go shopping. And I was like, oh, okay, well, let's talk about it. And so we did this article on sample sales. It came out January 1, 2004, and it changed my life. There was an old IBM commercial where a company puts their website up. And then it's like the first second is like one person. Then like a couple seconds later it's a thousand. A couple seconds later it's like a million. And that's what happened to me. And we weren't in the clouds, so we had to figure out, I mean, all of this stuff that. Now it sounds ridiculous to anybody who's like, influencer on Instagram, but all the stuff I had to do for, like, pictures and things that show up, we had to have multiple servers because it wasn't the cloud. And so we had to figure out how to link them so that when one got overloaded, it could, like, scale to another. I mean, all of this stuff and it just grew. It became a thing. In 2006, I published a book called how to Be a Budget Fashionista with Random House. And it's funny because Random House at the time and publishing didn't know anything about blogging. They were like, what? I mean, I was like one of the top writers. They were just like, what is that? I remember getting in an argument. It was like a fight with the marketing team because they were angry that I was promoting Amazon links and not pushing Barnes and Noble and Borders. Right? Borders doesn't even exist anymore. But the argument was I created this thing called a blog book tour. And I was like, any person who writes about it and puts a link to Amazon, even if they don't write good things, I don't really care, just link to Amazon. And the irony of it is that that book is now in its 15th printing because of all of those Amazon links are still around, but Borders isn't right and Barnes and Noble isn't. And so I'm with Random House still, but in the more the business imprint. And it's funny because we're laughing about it now, but in 2006 it was like, what are you doing? And it just scaled and it became this thing. And it was really exciting to see content and how it was growing and people trying to figure out what is the business of the Internet, particularly in terms of content. How do you make money off of this? Is there money to be made? What is the direction? And so it was a really interesting period to see and to see things at the beginning. But then I discovered, and this was probably 2009, 2010, that this was going to be limited. It was changing. So blogging was very much service based pieces, sometimes personal diaries, things like that. It wasn't as visual because the technology just wasn't really there yet. Particularly in terms of getting photographs from the camera to online. That that leap didn't really happen until the iPhone, really until that. And then it became so much easier for people to put visual content online. And then it started to really shift. And to be honest, I just don't want to take pictures of myself every day. I just don't. And I want to be in the moment with my family and my friends. I don't want to say stop, let's take a self, you know, like I don't want to have to do that. I want to eat and talk and learn and experience and be present. And so really thought about transitioning and how do I do it at the same time. I was part of an early incubator program in which I was the only person of color in the program and was really met with some pretty harsh feedback and realities. It was the first time in my life that people had no expectations of me. And I grew up in Minnesota. I was used to being the only black person chocolate drop in the room. That was like not a problem at all. But I wasn't used to people having no expectations of me. And even low that that wasn't something I had ever experienced before. And it was difficult.

These were the other what other members of the incubator? The entrepreneurs or were they the people who ran the incubator?

Yeah, it was everyone. It was, you know, it was so weird. So I remember I got up and I pitched. So one of the things is this incubator were calling you to pitch and randomly that was the idea that you have to get up in front of this group of people and pitch. I was never once called on. So me being me was like, okay, I want to do it. And her was shocked that I was like going to do this. And I'm like Okay. And so I got up and gave my pitch, and it was like silence because they were surprised that it was so good. And it was almost a birch box of sorts for black women. And this was like 2010, right? So it was early subscription, early sort of that. And because I had the budget fashionista, I had relationships with all of these people, from Alexis at Learn Vast to the founders of Rent a Runway, because they had this platform and they wanted me to help promote. So I knew all these startups that were coming up. And I remember the reaction when I pitched was one person asked me, did I know of any fashion bloggers? And I was like, but, you know, I'm like the dean of the like. I know all of them. One person said to me, I don't know if you can relate to other black women. This was a white guy, and me being me. I'm like, maybe he grew up in Harlem. I don't know. So do tell, do tell me how you don't think I relate. And he said, because I had an accountant, and he didn't think most black women had accountants. So how would you be able to.

Wait, wait, what? What? Because you had an accountant, you could, as a black woman, could not relate to black people? Like what? Walk me through that line of reasoning.

I have no idea. You have to call him. Because what was hard about it was it was he said this publicly and publicly. And as a person of color, you know when people say stupid shit to you because you get it? I can't. Better word other than that. And you're in public and you have a moment and you have to think, what is the cost of me going off on this person? Because if I go off on them, this is what's going to happen. So how do I handle this? This instant calculations you're doing in your head of how to respond. And so my response to him was, does it matter? As long I think we all can relate to money, I think that's what we all are here for, right? We're all here to build businesses and make money. So whether I relate or not doesn't matter as long as they're my customers and clients. And. But it was really. It was really difficult, and it made me initially disillusioned with startup world. I was like, I just don't want to do this. And I kept building the budget Fashionist, and then I sold it, and then I went on to blog her and was the editor at large, sort of built out their sort of lifestyle segment that they were building with the fashion and beauty people and learned about what it looked like to be in an organization, a startup that was venture funded. I didn't take venture or private equity for the budget fashionista, mostly because I didn't want to stay. Right. I knew that if I took those things I would be kind of married to it for a while and didn't want to be known as a budget fashionista for the rest of my life. So didn't take it and sold it, but went to Blogger and saw the other side. Like, what happens when you get venture? How does it impact your company? How does it allow you to scale? And learned an awful lot from Alisa, Lisa and Jory, who are all still great friends of mine and mentors about that and how do you build? And was while there. I went to conference. I think one of the first. The first time I went to south by Southwest, I was actually on a panel of yours. I had never been before with my dear friend Patricia. And it was just seeing how just black people, we just weren't in the room. Like, where were we? And that really inspired Dajon Divided and the founding of it. It was, I know we exist. Why aren't we here? Where are we? Why aren't we here? What are the barriers? And because I don't have the fear gene, as my husband tells me, I don't have that gene that tells you not to do something. I was like, okay, I wanted to see start something, why not? And received early support. The first supporters were of course, Blogher, which gave me the first tranche of money and gave me a lot of mentorship and assistance on how to actually do. We started off as a conference. Andreessen Horowitz gave us our biggest check. I used some of the money from starting my startup. Ogilvy at the time had a free space in New York. They had a sort of event space on 47th and 10th. And I had a friend who was an executive there and they had never really did anything in the space. So she was like, would you like the space? And I'm like, oh my God, yes, we can have it for free. And we'll also give you some food. We're like, oh, word, this is great. And we did our first conference in 2012. Our keynote speaker was then Mayor Cory Booker, who had a startup called Waywire, if anyone can remember back then. And it was amazing. It was about 50 black women founders, many who've gone on to pretty major things and major positions both in tech and also in the startup world. And investors of all stripes and it was incredible. We knew we had something and we did it for three years and wanted to expand the part that was most successful, which was sort of mentorship, the virtual accelerator sort of thing that we were testing in 2012, 2013. And we had some partners who were interested but had no data. And at the time, no one really had collected data on women, let alone black women. It was just, yeah, there's some women in startups and you would say, okay, how many? There's some women in startups, like, actually tell you the numbers. And so, you know, I was really. I didn't know what to do. And my husband, who's very pragmatic as only, you know, engineers can be, because I didn't she, like, go to Yale and have a degree in epidemiology? I mean, like, didn't you just, like, pay that thing off? Maybe you can. Why don't you try to use that? Because you paid it off, like, use it, do something with it. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I know how to do this. And I think as women, even those of us who should know better, even as smart as we may be, sometimes we look outside of ourselves for the answer because we're often not trained to look within ourselves. And so I had the answer to my problem. I just didn't realize it, but I had it. And so we did our first project, Diane 2016. The numbers were shocking. We did it originally as an internal report. We were going to use this as a base to make this argument about why there needed to be gender focus accelerator incubator program. But the data was so stark, at the time, we'd only identified 88 black women led startups using the sort of Steve Blank definition. If we had gotten super real, it would have been even less so. We had to even be a little bit more liberal than Steve's. And it was shocking. I mean, we kept testing the number because we couldn't believe that that was it. And anecdotally, what we noticed was when we would go out to VC, so we used VCs, we combed, we did a lot of primary data collection. We combed the entire Crunchbase database of like 60,000 startups, went to every VC we could know of. We asked them to send it and we're like, send this. Everyone you think is blocked. Like, literally, that's what we said. Don't even question it. Even if they have like a dark tin, like, send this, everybody, and we will figure it out later. And what we found was fascinating. It was this sort of Bias in which investors would try to test us and say, well do such and such. And we're like, yes. And then the next investor we talked to would say such. Like the same person the other person said. And what we realized is that they were counting like the one black female founder they knew more than once, but it was only one or maybe two. But they were saying their names over and over again. And sort of in mind when you hear the name over and over again, you start to think there's more people. It was really just one or two, which was really, really amazing. We also found in 2016 that only 11 black women had raised over a.

Million dollars venture funding four years ago.

11. Yeah. No, yeah, this was four years ago. 11. So needless to say, it was a point where we were really small staff, like, what do we do with this? Because this is like so bad that what do we do with it? I don't even like, where do you go with this? And so we received a little bit of funding to start our first incubator program started in Atlanta. And we had decided that we were going to release this information because this was so. It was information that needed to be out there. A lot of people think data wants to be free. This was information that wanted to be free and needed to be free out there for people to see. I did not expect it to have the impact that it had in changing things. That has been super exciting to see how it's fostered discussions, especially now. There was an Update done in 2018 which also had some interesting data there. At 2018 it was over 37 black women who had raised over a million dollars in a two year period. It was quite significant. A lot of that having to do with the first project. I am. Because I think when it came out it was a little bit of panic. I mean, the number of VC firms, the number of LPs who called me and were like, we got a problem, what do we do? This isn't good, how do we solve? It was quite significant. So to see in that two year period, the increase, reflection.

What do you see as the main causes? Was it out and out racism? Is it? The explanation would be, well, our pipeline of black female entrepreneurs is so small, that's not our fault that nobody comes to pitch us. Was it systemic? I mean, what. How do you explain that?

You invest in what you value.

Okay.

And people didn't and probably still don't really value the work of black women and the work of black people. And I would even extrapolate that to Even the work of black and Latino communities. Right. And I think it's not just racism. It is in the fabric of our country. Our country was built upon free labor, right? Forced free labor for many, many years. Right? And so here you have the group of people for whom you had free labor now assessing a value to their labor, and they want the same value that you assess to yours. And I think it's hard Even now in 2020, for people to let go of that structure, to see the work that I do is as valuable as the work as a white man does. It's the same product, it's the same value. And maybe in some cases, maybe even more valuable because I'm a woman, I have access to different markets and knowledge that you may not have. I think that's really, really hard. And I think that's the discussions that we're starting to have about who do we value in America, and do we value everyone's contributions? Truly, do we value everyone's contributions, or do we still value some contributions a little bit more than others? And I think that's a discussion that we're starting to have.

If. If I were a white female entrepreneur listening to this, would I be saying, it's just as hard for me, or would I be saying, thank God I'm not black and female?

Well, you know, there's this interesting video, goes around and forgot her name. She's really famous white lady who's been sort of educating on race for, like, 60 years. She has a really famous video with kids and dolls from, like, the 1960s. And she's talking to this group of mostly white people in the audience. And she says, how many of you here would trade places with a black person? And no one stands up. And so I think that kind of answers that question. Like, no one would trade places with me, right? No one would want to be sort of in my skin. And. And so most of my white female colleagues and friends I know of, they acknowledge the benefits that they've received and that they're able to get further along than I am. But that doesn't mean that they get as far as white guys, but they're able to get further along. Because the value question comes back again. So many white male VCs, they're daughters. They have daughters, and they have people who they love, who are women that they want to see succeed. And so if someone comes in and reminds you of your daughter, it's not hard for you to see the value in them. It's not hard for you to see their Humanity. And they benefit from that. There's very few VCs who I will remind them of their daughter, even though I might have similar backgrounds to their daughters. When I come in, they're not like, oh my gosh, she looks like Genie, or whatever, but. And so it becomes again, back to this value. Who do you value? Do. Do you value my economic output at the same rate as you value others? I love to read obsessively. And one of the things I was reading about Harvey Milk, the great gay rights activist from San Francisco, and I was reading about how he kind of helped get the sodomy laws turned in California. And one of the things that he did was he had members of the gay community call their loved ones in, like, Orange county, right? This was in the 70s, so Orange county was even more conservative. Right. Than it is now. And he would have them call them to come out because the idea was, it's really hard to be mean to someone you know and love, right? It's really, really hard to not see the humanity and someone you grew up with, someone you may have birthed, right? It's really, really hard to do that. And once people knew someone gay, then it was really hard to criminalize being gay. And I think one of the things, particularly in the investment world, but in the startup world in general, is not very many startup leaders actually have relationships with people who are black. And so if you don't have a true friend who is black, if you've never really talked to someone black, if you never really talk to someone who's a black woman, I mean intimately, not just someone who is in a servant position to you, they're serving you, but really as an equal, as a friend, as a colleague, then it's kind of hard. It's a little bit hard to see the humanity and it's hard to see the value. She don't actually have that connection. And I think that's one of the reasons why we all do.

You think, therefore, that the pandemic has made things even harder because of a lack of analog personal connections? Or you think the pandemic has leveled the playing field so everybody's just a little box on zoom, you know, that's.

An interesting question, I think. So the irony of the pandemic, I don't even know if I would say it's irony. So it's impacted the communities that are probably the most essential, the most meaning. Imagine our world, if we didn't have Amazon factory workers, if we didn't have the delivery folks from Amazon, if We didn't have the Target cashiers or the cashiers that are grocery stores. Most of those people are people of color. Most of those people are not people who necessarily have college education. Right. And so what I think is interesting, it's shown how vitally essential we are, how important our work is for just the movement, the daily motions of America. Most of the home health care aides are women of color, nurses, the people who are keeping at America's lowest point Right. In recent history, the people who are keeping things moving were mostly black and Latino women.

So.

So does that mean with greater exposure there's greater appreciation, or it sticks them in a stereotype at a low compensation, low kind of position?

I think it's more so communities of color, particularly women of color. We're starting to realize our power as a result of that. So I don't even know if it's really about white people anymore. I think it's kind of about us and realizing exactly who we are and our importance. And that if we didn't exist, you probably wouldn't exist. Right? Like, if we didn't exist, you would have to go out and get your own food. You would have to kill a chicken if we didn't work at the all of these things. And I think it's now, as communities of color, we're starting to see what our power is, and we're starting to make demands as a result of that, because we are so essential, we're the most essential of employees to the health of our country. For us to even survive as a country, it's important for us to do well and to be healthy and happy at home. And it's in the best interest of white people that we are healthy, happy at home. Right. And because again, you would have to go out and do your own things. And I think that what I'm seeing now is this discussion of the power that we have, because we have a lot of power. We are not powerless. We never were powerless. But I think the structures wanted us to think that way and believe that. And now we're realizing, oh, wow, we're really important. So we don't want your policing anymore. We don't want your poor schools. We want health care. We know we need child care. If you want us to come and still work at your factory, you want us to come and still work at your warehouse. And you need to make sure that we're good the next time this comes up, we may not be here. You can do it yourself. And I think that's. That's the interesting discussion, that's the discussion I find more interesting.

Well, let's hope that that discussion continues and grows. But there is a faction who is fighting that tooth and nail.

Right.

The trend, the demographic trend is not their friend. But they're not exactly going with the flow nor taking advantage of this. So what happens now? I mean, is it, is it that you just have to swamp them or is there ever going to be a time when enlightenment increases and they see the handwriting on the wall?

I'm not sure if there's enough incentives for those people to change on their own. And to be really honest, I don't think I care about them.

Okay.

Mostly because change is going to happen. It's forward momentum, it's physics. You can't do anything about it. It does not matter what they think in terms of where this is going. In the short term, sure, it can be disruptive, it can cause all sorts of things and we're seeing that. But in the long term, it's moving forward. History is moving whether you wanted it to or not. You have a choice. And particularly for them. How do you want to be? Remember I was reading something about there's a Ruby Bridges who desegregated school, I believe it was in Arkansas. And you know, there's a famous Norman Rockwell picture of her like walking as this little black girl in like the, the army next to her really famous picture. And so there's one picture of this white lady who's probably like 27 or 28 at the time yelling at the 6 year old black girl. Right. I mean it's like if you can imagine like how yelling at a six year old is like hatred. And so it was an article where they went back and talked to that woman because I mean history has captured her in this way and she had like years of depression, hard time reconciling that. That's how history remembers her for her entire existence. And even I think she might have actually passed away. The world remembers her as that. And so for these folks, do you want to be remembered as that? Because you're being recorded and this is how the world is going to remember you when you're gone. It's like that because the world's moving forward. It's not going to go back to where you want to be.

Do you think Donald Trump spends a nanosecond thinking about how he will be remembered?

Oh no, he doesn't care, I think. But actually, you know what, I actually, I think he, I actually think he does care what people think about him. But I think it's people who he sees as valuable. That's who he cares about. And I don't think people like me. He doesn't give, he doesn't care about what I think at all. But I think for people who he admires and who he thinks are valuable, he does care. What the Gen Zers and the K pop fans did to him this past week was probably the biggest blow that could possibly do, right? You have someone who really cares about being perceived as this strong, capable person who's in charge. And they literally took all of his power away from him for everyone to see. And I think those sort of things is why, I mean, I just love Gen Z. I just love how they just don't care. They're just like, whatever.

That's what I say about you, Kevin.

It's really weird. I'm late millennial, early Gen X. And my role is being kind of like, almost like an elder now. Even though I'm not super old, but I am an elder. And it's like, you know, for my nieces and her friends, it's like, look, you are doing exactly what you should do at 22. You should be on these streets, you should be doing these sort of things. And my role is to bail you out. Literally, like, you know, I got you. So whatever you do, know that on the other end, you have a safe safety net. You have someone who's going to bail you out. You have someone who, if you want to talk strategies and things that I tried in the past, you want advice or you don't want advice, I'm here. But that's really, really my role. And then also figuring out how do we continue to do structural changes? And so really inspired by them. I'm inspired by the changes I see people doing. Inspired by even people who are trying to figure out what can I do, right? What can I do? And this is really hard, complicated problem that is embedded in the fabric of our nation. And so it's not going to just be money that solves it. It's not going to be solved in a month. It's going to take some real discussions about who are we, is gonna take some real discussions with white people, right? Sitting down, what does it mean to be white? What does it mean to be American? Like really what does it mean? What do we stand for? Who are we? Who are we as a community or communities? And that's not discussions that are easy to have.

Can I just ask you, so what should a 66 year old Asian American man do to Help.

There's a couple of ways to help, I think. One, listening. I think it's really important. I think two, most people, I think in this world just want to kind of be left alone to succeed or not succeed based upon our own skills. Right. And I think for. Particularly for other people of color who have own challenging histories with America, when you see things calling it out very clearly, especially someone like you, for whom you really do have a voice and people really listen to you and calling out and saying, yeah, this is. This is not good. One of the things I think too is there's some allyship things I saw that were really interesting. So a couple of years ago, Anil Dash, who amazing guy, he's like the CEO of Glitch now. He for like a year only retweeted women. Only tweeted women. Didn't Never like tweeted, never tweeted at. Never anything. Any man. And because he knew the people who were on his Twitter feed never had access or linkages with women, and he knew that if he was only retweeting it, then all of a sudden on their feed they would start to see because they were following him. Right. And I just thought that was like a really tiny, simple thing. But I got a ton of followers as a result of it. And people who discovered me, who would have never ever had me in their spear with the simple thing of saying, I'm just going to only be 20 women.

Okay, this is what we should do. I love this idea. So why don't I let you take over my LinkedIn account? Huh? You like, you just take my LinkedIn account. If you looked at my LinkedIn account, you would see how political I am. It's not about. Well, this is how to optimize your resume in order to get a job. My LinkedIn account is. Oh, my God, you should see the hatred. I. Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Let's do that.

I would love that. And there was something, I. There was something a friend of mine, Lovey Aji, who is really, really well known, like commentator, like New York Times, like amazing bestseller. And she did something where a group of white women allies black women took over their feet. And it was like Julia Roberts participated others. And I thought, I would love to do this where a group of black women took over the feeds of some white guys.

You know, I'm not white.

It's not just white, but other men of power. Yes, I know. Like, but men of power. Okay, would that not be awesome? And how many people would be. I would Love to do it.

So like, I have, I don't know, a million and a half on Twitter. I have 3 million or so on LinkedIn. My, my Instagram is mostly personal pictures, but you can take over that too. So that's, I don't know, 85,000. So do you want them all? You want to take them one at a time or how do you want to do this?

No, we could do LinkedIn and Twitter would be fine. Because if I show up on your Instagram, it's a bunch of pictures of like a woman and, and they'll be like, you want to tell us? Can I? Here's the thing. We're able to do a lot because people always under sell us, people always discount us. And the thing about it is when you're really, really smart and people discount you without knowing that you're really, really smart, you're able to get a lot of shit done, you're able to do a lot. And before people even realize it because they're discounting you on something that has nothing to do with your intellect or who you are, time they discover who you really are. You're like, all the way down the road and they're like, wait, what just happened? It's like, no, I never said I wasn't smart. You just assume that. So while you were making your own assumptions, you were over here, I was doing all of this stuff and you looked up and you're like, what the. And so that's what makes us powerful. We don't have any superpowers. We're not mythical or magical or anything. It's just we're constantly discounted, we talk constantly undersold, we're constantly overlooked. And as a result, we've been able to just get done because we don't have to deal with the other stuff.

I think that black women should be large and in charge, not having to sneak around.

Hopefully we will be. Hopefully we will be. I think we have our own flaws too. And. But I think it's the thing of the mental health. Our mental capacity is great. And the reason being is that we're trained to, like I said, those calculations I had to do when that person was saying this in front of this whole group of people. And how quickly I have to compute what I was going to say based upon and assess all the different possible scenarios in my head within like a three second time frame. We're trained to do that because of the societal structures. We have to think in that way. I call this person an MF in front of this group of 50, you know, VCs, I'm not going to get funding, and probably no other black woman's going to get funding ever from these people. So let me recalculate another way of responding. How do I not yell and scream? How do I not get angry? And that's the superpower. That's where it's really this capacity to assess a number of different situations all at once, to figure out what is the best.

Just.

Just remember I put you on a South by Southwest panel before. I was way ahead of my time. Right, so you were.

You were great. But no, I love the idea. Like, so takeover.

I don't know about the organize more, but I can only speak from my account. So when your episode goes live, I'm gonna announce in my episode that. How long do you want it for?

Just one day. I think a day is like.

Okay, so I'm gonna announce in the episode, when this goes live, that you are now large and in charge of my LinkedIn feed and Twitter feed. And you can post whatever the hell you want and just go for it. Okay. I don't want any unicorns or pixie dust.

Okay, but. Right. I can do some. No, I would love that. And I'm actually going to reach out to Lovey and see if she'd be interested. I mean, that. That could be some help that I could use of getting some named white guys to allow. And it's not just random black women that would take over their feet. It's like ones that maybe someone you've invested in, someone, you know, someone remarkable and giving someone remarkable. And there's a lot of women out there that I think could be incredibly powerful, particularly in the space of tech where people are trying to grasp. I mean, get Serena Williams to take over Jack Dorsey.

I can have mine too. I go with that.

Right. I mean, that would be pretty amazing. And we'll see. That could happen. But I think that would be. I think it would be really super powerful. Done.

So. Next question.

I haven't asked many questions, but. Next question. So with all, you know, your background, everything, total picture, what's your advice to black people, particularly young? I would say, like, what. What kind of mindset should they have?

What.

What's the right perspective to be successful today day.

There are no rules and old people don't know anything.

That's all they need to know.

I say that is that we're at a time where information is accessible in ways it's never been accessible. Right. We have tools to organize that we never had before. If you can imagine what Martin Luther King could have done with Twitter. And he was probably the most masterful PR person we've ever seen in history, knew how to use visual media like no one's business. Imagine if he had Instagram back in the day and what he could have done with that. So a lot of us older people, particularly those who are pre Internet generation, all the things that they're going to share with younger people are probably going to be wrong. And they're all old sort of structures, right? They're all old structures of how things have to be. What we would call respectability, politics. That if you just do this, then they're going to do this. It doesn't work anymore. We've seen that doesn't work. So I say to young people, look, you guys have tools that were not available. You have access to information that was not available and use it and to develop. And what us older people, and I'm talking about older, it's really anyone 40 and over, what we can do is we can bail you out, we can give you funds to build it, we can provide you some advice on people, right? Because we've lived a little bit longer, so we know a little bit more about human nature. So we can give you some advice definitely on that. But in terms of structures, there are no rules anymore. You are not bound by anything anymore. As soon as Donald Trump was elected president and all bets were off, anyone can be president. Anyone can. You don't even have to. I mean, all of the rules, you don't have to be Obama perfect anymore. All of the rules no longer exist. So you get to create what it is that you want to see. And that's incredibly exciting. They actually. And this is for all young people, not just black young people or Latino young people. You get to create the world you want to see now, because all rules have been disrupted thanks to Donald Trump. I think that's probably his greatest legacy is because he became president. And all that he stands for means that every rule that we were told growing up of, you have to go to college, you have to do this, you have to be this in order to succeed. All those rules no longer exist. And you can do whatever the hell you want to do now. You can rebuild this in any way you want to do. And that I think is the most exciting thing. People, you can see that being mediocre is not a barrier to success, then that means that anyone should do it. I mean, oh, my gosh. So go for it. I mean, I love that they're, yeah, I don't have to listen to this. I don't have to do this. Who says that this is the structure we should have to do? You know, the whole idea of, I can't even imagine five years ago, people talking about maybe we don't need to have police, or at least we don't have to have it in the same sort of way. Why do we have police responding to mental health challenges? Why do we have police responding, doing traffic tickets and checking meters, like, do you need that to be police? That does that, like, why? And all these things. But if you can imagine, I wouldn't even say five years ago, a year ago, Will we even be questioning these sort of things? We have a pandemic that no one has ever seen before. And I have did some talks since. The pandemic has begun with various groups of people from young to old, and I say all rules are off because we've never. There's no one alive who's been through a global pandemic right now. No one alive has ever been through this before. Except there was like one person who's like, I think 105 or something, but I'm like, but it's like maybe one person who's been through this before. But for the most part, none of us who are currently running and managing things have been through this before. So anyone who tells you, well, this is the structure and this is how it has to go, they don't know because they've never been through it either. They're making educated guesses, maybe on history and some data trends, but they literally don't know. And so all worlds and bets are off. There's a Sikh philosopher, Valerie Kerr, and she says, what if we're not in the darkness of the tomb but in the dark darkness of the womb? Meaning we're in the darkness right before birth. And that's where we're at right now.

Well, let's get some Pitocin and get on with this. Or a C section, whatever it takes. Yeah. So, Catherine, I'm gonna end this recording now because it ain't gonna get better than this. Oh, I've just loved having you. I, by any chance, do you know Simone Sanders?

So I don't. We're not like, I don't know know her, but we've been in a room together. You mean.

Oh my God, you would love her. I love her. Talk about a large and in charge, kick ass black woman. Oh, my God, she. You got to get to know her. You. You would love her. Yeah, yeah. And I, I looked at your Twitter feed and I saw this tweet about the first black female NASCAR pit crew member. Also a great story.

Yeah.

I mean, that would be a great movie. I mean, I can only imagine the stories that she has. And I mean, would we have ever thought we would be in a world where NASCAR is like saying Black lives Matter? I mean, I'm like, wow, we have, really?

And John Bolton is the good guy.

We're in a different. It is a different space right now. We're in a very different space. And my only concern is that this is probably not infinite. It's probably finite. You probably only have a short period of window to do things. And so I hope that we, while people are open and kind of uncomfortable and they're in this space and wanting to get back comfortable, that we kind of redefine things while we can't. And that's. That's my only fear, is that we're going to squander this and do like small, tiny, incremental change, but not anything big or bold. That really is what we're going to need to do if, if we don't want to have to deal with this again.

Well, I don't think there could be a more interesting time to live in, that's for damn sure.

So it's very interesting. I'm excited to see. And I live in the south mostly, so I live in Atlanta, which in many parts are still fighting the Civil War here. You know, they haven't gotten the memo now tearing down some Confederate statues in Atlanta. And so I'm excited to see what happens. America, you know, it's almost every hundred years that we had a revolution, right, in like 17, then Civil War and then the Civil Rights movement. But now it's only 50 years between the Civil Rights movement and this movement. And probably because of social media, it's probably going to only be like, you know, 25 years before the next movement. And so it's going to be really exciting to see sort of what changes happens and if we can get more of it right and get a little bit bolder.

Okay, so it's probably a few week process to get this edited and all that. And then I'm gonna contact you. We release on Wednesday mornings and I'm gonna contact you about a week in advance and say, okay, so next Wednesday you are Guy Kawasaki for a day. God help you.

I love that. Oh, my God.

Here's a couple of reviews for you, brilliant and refreshing podcasts. Noka oi5o this is guy 2.0 at his finest. These podcasts are direct, no holds barred and insightful. Guy manages to bring out personal insights about his guests that they would only share with someone that they trust. Guy's podcast on Innovation is like a greatest hits album, digitally remastered for both his loyal followers and new fans. Thank you Noka. Oy5o Here's the second one. Awesome podcast by Guy Puneet from East Coast Guy Kawasaki is a remarkable person holding podcasts of all remarkable people. His podcasts are awesome. He structured them very nicely and there is so much to learn from these podcasts, Guy. Please keep them coming Puneet. I promise you that I will. If you like my podcast, please go to the Apple podcast app and review it. Maybe I'll read yours next week. So back to Catherine Finish. Did you get the impression that Catherine is a kick ass kind of woman? You'd be right about that. She is loud and proud and has every right to be. I was so enamored with this interview that I offered her my social media platforms. So for 24 hours from Tuesday at midnight to Wednesday at midnight, she has all my platforms at her access. Go and check out my account at LinkedIn and Twitter. They're both Guy Kawasaki to see what she's posting. If you are a woman entrepreneur, be sure to follow the work of Kathryn Phinney. As we discussed, her latest project is called Digital Undivided. Speaking of undivided, Peg Fitzpatrick and Jeff C are part of my Undivided team and providing this podcast to you every week. My thanks to both of them also for this particular podcast. Alyssa Camelhort page helped me make this interview possible. I'm Guy Kawasaki and this is remarkable. People. Wash your hands, maintain social distance, wear a mask and listen to scientists and doctors, not politicians. And let's all get through this pandemic together. Mahalo and aloha. This is remarkable. People.