#99: Learn How to CUT the BS and GLOW-UP Your Business with Betches!

Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity, and set you up for a better tomorrow.

I'm ready for my close up.

Hi and welcome back. I'm so excited you're back here with me this week and I need your help. So the company that I create the show with, Acast, has a new platform, which is a membership community platform where you get additional content, you get additional access other people don't get. And we, we had a meeting today about what that would look like for the show. At the same time, they're challenging me to launch a second episode every week. And the one thing I know about podcasting is whatever you're gonna do, you just have to be consistent and do it right. So you can't. Oh, I'll test a second show this week and see if people like it and if they do. Great.

Right?

You're in or you're out. You're pregnant or you're not. And so I need to decide, do I launch a second episode during the week? I also, ironically or strangely, I have had two this week, two listeners saying, hey, just some feedback. We think it would be great if you did some episodes just interview and some episodes just you talking, separate the two. So I thought that was an interesting concept and then that would be the answer to no longer doing just the one really long episode. Then it would become two episodes during the week. One would just be an interview and the other would just be me talking. So a few different ideas out there floating around, but I feel like since it's all percolating at the same time, it's gotta be something I wanna address and I wanna know from you, what do you want? What's the best way to support you? I also had a listener make a suggestion to me this week that said, what about launching a daily two minute episode? Just a quick talk, quick focus, quick idea. And that way every day the show can be downloaded. So please give me your feedback. You can get me on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, on Instagram, shoot me a Note in the DMs or comment on a post, or you can email me on my website. Heathermonahan.com I've got a chatbot that will chat with you live right now, so check it out. Heathermonahan.com I would love to hear from you and I wanna give you what you want, so please let me know what that looks like. This whole year is so bizarre and I wonder if you're seeing the same thing there was just no way to predict coming into this year what it would be like. And I have to tell you, living in Miami and looking out the window right now, it looks like it's 2019. I mean, there's people everywhere. It's so busy down here and it's so confusing because obviously there is a global pandemic and it's, it's just, it's a really strange time. My son's still on zoom school. You know, it's not back to normal, but then when you look out the window, it looks like it is. And then I'm seeing, and I hope you're seeing this too, because it makes me feel super hopeful. I'm seeing business pick up and I'm seeing a lot more inquiries about live events. I have my first live event this month, which you know about. I have my first live in person board meeting this month, which we. We've only done virtual up until now. So it does feel like things are starting to shift. And that makes me incredibly hopeful. Except I don't know if I mentioned this to you last week and then I had a call with someone outside of the country who was inquiring about me doing a virtual keynote for them and they told me they're on complete lockdown. So again, it's all over the place depending on where you live. I am here to tell you I have empathy for you wherever you are in this whole mess. And for me, it was really hard to project this year. What would it look like? What would business look like? What do my partnerships look like? What products am I leaning into? What offerings am I moving forward with? And the fact that I never wrote a book with a publishing house has been a huge variable I did not forecast correctly for at all. Let me give it to you. So when you write and self publish a book, you have one person to check in with, that's yourself. So you can move fast, get things done. I hired an editor. We had things done in a couple of months and I, I was happy with it. I knew I liked the book. I thought, this is. It's a really good book. I'm super proud of it. Let's go. And we went to market in under a year. That was from concept to first word written to out on Amazon as a bestseller, trumping Donald Trump for number one on the business biography list. Woot woo. Okay, so that was a super. It wasn't hard. And I tell people this all the time because you think, oh, writing a book sounds so hard and no, that's B.S. it's not. However, I am here to tell you writing a book with a publisher is hard. And I didn't know that because whenever you go into a situation as a beginner, you don't have the information. You know, people have different experiences. So you need to make up your own mind based on your experience. The writing part seemed normal. You know, I worked with my editor. That part all seemed pretty good. But I knew I had a deadline, right? I had, I believe, the first deadline. I say first because. Wait, so you hear how many deadlines I've had, but at first it was a Dec. 1 deadline to get the first draft of the manuscript in and I delivered and I felt so great about it and I delivered a 68,000 word manuscript. And I thought that was so nice of me to go 8,000 over. You don't go over on word count. So they came right back to me and said, cut 8,000 words. And you have a 10 day deadline or whatever. It was a super fast deadline. And so it's hard because what becomes challenging is you have to pump the brakes on other things you're working on to go all in on that book. And I got brought on as a teacher at Harvard, right. I accepted that the first week of January, so I lost a full day of the week. Mondays are completely dedicated to Harvard now, not only because of the class, we actually do the class virtually every Monday and we're teaching, but the prep that goes into it, the recon after. I'm also leading a social media initiative for the professional sales and sales leadership class. So there's a lot involved and a lot of work and a lot of reading and prep goes into that. I didn't forecast that correctly, right? So when they come back and say, hey, you have deadline 10 days, cut 8,000 words. I already have other things planned out. I have speaking engagements planned out. I have events planned out. I have my son at home on Zoom School, which wasn't planned out. You know, there's just so many variables going on, which I'm sure you have too, that it's been really hard to forecast. Well, I cut the 8,000 words. I hit that second deadline and then come to find out they did a round of edits. Okay, so now this is for me, this is going to be my third deadline with them. And I get an email just randomly one day, hey, we're working on your cover. We're not going to put you on the COVID And I said, wait, wait a minute, I thought we were going to put me on the COVID So Then we had this whole back and forth about the COVID I had to call my agent because I wanted an outside expert and she agreed with me. And she came in like fire and said, let me run with this one, Heather. Okay? And I trust her. And I said absolutely. And she did a great job and really was very direct with authority because she is an expert. She's published so many best selling books. And she went and did recon ahead of time. I mean, this woman was ready. So we ended up getting the yes. They said okay. And I'm just sharing this to kind of give you an idea of it. So different doing a traditional publishing house. I don't know which one is better yet. The only way we're going to know is going to be the proof in the pudding, right when the book is done. Is it that much better than my first book? I don't know. You're going to have to tell me that. The marketplace is going to have to tell me that. But I'm super excited to see what happens. I love my first book. I love the second book. Right. I don't know. So the world will let me know and I can't wait to listen for the answer. So then we were back and forth on the COVID We're still not done on the COVID by the way. My agent and I came up with and agreed upon a couple different concepts that we loved. HarperCollins leadership didn't agree. They wanted some other ideas. So we're still back and forth on the COVID But that deadline right now seems to be, you know, on a pause. No one sent a firebomb email back at me yet. Okay, so then fast forward to I get an email. Hey, we just, we had some kind of an editor. I don't know, it's a special kind. And my point person all went through and they have notes and so they mark up the document. It's your manuscript in all these different colors. Everyone has a different color. When I have my own color, they have their own color. So that you can tell whose changes are what. And you have to decide, do you accept the changes, do you edit their changes, do you delete their changes or do you reject their changes? Right. And then you have to leave comments. People just don't talk anymore, which makes it a little interesting. But everything's done in the document and it's a lot. So they came back to me and said, all right, on this one, you have two weeks. You have a new deadline, two weeks to complete these edits. And that one was interesting. They made A couple of really good points I agreed with, A couple things I didn't agree with, but I was able to hit that deadline. Okay. Now I didn't even know this was a thing. I get an email from some person I don't know, from a company I don't know. I'm thinking something's wrong here. I read the email and it says, yes, harpercon's leadership hired us on their behalf to do your next round of edits. A new company coming in outside of Harper that's going to edit my book again. I thought, you have to be kidding me. And I got so upset, I called my editor that I wrote the book with and I said, why is this happening? And he explained to me, I think it's really good they're investing money. No publishing house spent spends money on a book unless they're really behind it. Heather, this is great news. So he was helpful to shift my perspective. I saw it as a real negative and it turns out it was a positive. It meant more work, of course, more deadlines, of course. But it means they're investing in the book, which is really exciting and a very good sign. Okay, so then I hear back from this new team and they had a round of edits, so. And they gave me a deadline, a one week deadline. I don't even know these people. I want more freaking deadlines in 2021 than I know what to do with. So I go in. I just accepted the changes because to me, at this point, it's not worth fighting, you know, back and forth over if they feel so strongly. So I accepted a bunch of changes that they had made and then I went in to change some of the changes to make sure that I felt good about it. Then I finally decided, can I talk to the person on the phone? Because I don't understand some of these questions. I don't want to go back and forth in email where things can be misconstrued or, you know, I wanted to collaborate, not argue, I guess was ultimately how I wanted to make this work. They did let me get on the phone on a zoom with this new editor, Lee, who was super nice and very helpful and we talked through things. We were able to come up with a. I just hadn't understood his question and his idea and he had a great idea in point and I was appreciative, but it didn't come through in the words in the word doc. So just don't forget. So often in text messages and chat threads and slacks and email, words get lost and misconstrued and ideas aren't received in the way that they may have been meant to. So I was super grateful I got the chance to speak to him. And I was glad that I reached out and said, hey, pump the brakes, let me get on the phone with this guy, because this isn't working. And it worked out great. But then while I was in the doc, I pressed up some button. I don't know what I'm doing, right? I've never written a book for a publishing house before. And it starts. It's like a ticking time bomb of recognizing how many changes have occurred to the document since the document had been submitted. It was over 4,000 edits had been made, which is insane in a 60. What started out as a 68,000 word project which was then cut to 60,000 words, has now had 4,000 edits. Right? Nearly 10%. Is that right? 10%. Oh my gosh, that's crazy. Nearly 10, right? So I was mind blown when I saw how much work we put into this just since really January, because that was the first time they got it back to me. So it has not been very long. We've been working nonstop, head down on this book. And I had no idea it would be this intense and that the deadlines would come fast and furious. And as surprises, they don't give you a timeline. I mean, you have a meeting when you sign with them and they talk to you about what it will look like, but none of this stuff, right? They talk about big picture. Oh, you'll have you know, you'll get the manuscript on a deadline and we'll work to edit it and then we'll work on covers, and then we'll work on typesetting and then we'll work on format and. But they don't tell you this kind of stuff, right? So I don't know. If I had to go to work to a 9 to 5 job during the day, there's no way I would have been able to hit these deadlines, right? Cause the only time you'd be able to do it is really late at night and on the weekend and there just wouldn't be enough time. So for me, I'm grateful it's been work from home. I'm grateful that I haven't been traveling during this time because if I had a solid booked speaker schedule like I did right before the pandemic, this would have been so much harder. But it was hard anyway. So I'm just letting you know writing a book with a publishing house is much more Work much more workload than it is writing a book when you self publish. So I'm asked that question a lot. I wanted to give you that behind the scenes and that intel. I hope that that helps. Okay. Today I'm so excited. You know, I always think back to how one of the mentees that came into my program during COVID actually ended up being a mentor for me and he nominated me to be on the board of directors for HealthLink, which I got. And now we are on the board together. But the reason why I bring that up is today the women that we have on the show who I frickin love, they're amazing. They're much younger than me. However, I'm so aware that in any moment you can be a mentor or a mentee and that role can switch as conversations change. But I certainly go into this interview today being mentored by them, whether they realize it or not, because I am in awe of what these three women have created. And so I just wanna let you know, we've got the three female founders of Betches here today and they are gonna be dropping knowledge, blowing you away. I'm so excited for this. Betches boasts a devoted community of 43 million, a growing podcast division of nine original shows, and they've got their own network, 445 million monthly social impressions, 445 million monthly social impressions, multiple New York Times bestselling books, newsletters, virtual and in person events, a dating app, a partnership with Match Group and a popular e commerce shop. I mean this company is massive. These three, while they may not be old in years, they are very, very wise and they make extremely strong business decisions. They are light years ahead of me regardless of their age and I'm super, super proud of them and I'm super excited for you to meet Jordana, Aileen and Samantha. So hold tight, we're going to be right back. Hi and welcome back.

I am so excited to be joined by three unfold believable boss babes. Ladies, thank you for being here.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for getting the mics right.

That was a mission, huh?

Yeah, sorry, we're so not used to. We have not done a podcast, the three of us as with a host for so long and we're not, we're, we're not the host and we're not used to like deciding who will talk because even.

Yeah, I feel like we should just go like this.

Okay. Maybe we do a hand raised thing.

Isn't that funny though? It's so interesting. You, you each are host of two different shows and you're on podcasts all the time, but suddenly the dynamic changes and it takes everybody out of their rhythm. It's so challenging. Right.

It's been a while. I forgot to raise my hand, but it didn't seem like I had, I had any conflicts. Yeah, no. It's been a while since the three of us have gone on and like done one together. So I think we're going to get back in our groove really quickly though.

I have all the faith in the world and we're here for a really big reason.

So.

Happy ten year anniversary, ladies.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's weird for us because we've been also friends for so long. Like we've been friends since we were children, literally. And to say that we've had a company together for 10 years, like an entire decade, is mind blowing to say the least.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, not even just to say a company. I mean, I come from the background of media, traditional media. Right. Like radio companies, TV companies. You guys have a community. Over 43 million people in your media company. Cutting edge, relevant, winning awards on Instagram. I mean, that is freaking unbelievable. Back when you guys were in your early 20s in college, did you have any vision for this?

Yes and no. I think that we like really saw that it had a lot of potential, but we didn't know exactly. You know, the world has changed so much even since. Not just the world, but the platforms that we're on have changed so much since we started. So I don't know that we like, envisioned exactly, but I did. I do think we knew that it could potentially be really big, but I don't think we even like had any clue what that would take at the time.

At the time, since we were in college.

Yeah.

So how did it end up, you know, back when I was in college, I'm 46, so I'm considerably older than you ladies. When I was in school, it was go right to corporate America. There was no people doing the Gary Vee thing. I didn't even know who Gary Vee, who's probably living in his father's basement back then. I don't know what was going on, but I'll tell you, it was a very clear path. And you had to go to corporate America and I did as I was supposed to do. Did you guys ever feel that way or were you just drawn to doing your own thing from the get go?

I mean, all of us wanted to have jobs after college. That's why when we started Vetches as A blog. We were anonymous because we wanted to get real jobs. Like, when we started this, it wasn't meant to be a business. The three of us weren't business majors. We had very different types of majors, and we didn't really have experience in it. We just knew that we kind of thought we were funny. We found each other funny. We lived together, we laughed all the time. And we thought that we had, like a really good pulse on what was going on. We were just very observant and could make jokes of that. And we also apparently knew how to write about it in a way that people related to at the time. But yeah, we wanted to get jobs. But I think this was at a time when it came out in 2011. There were some blogs coming up and there was a lot of like, bro frat tire. And we felt like there was this space where there was nothing like that for women. There was a lot of content for women that was like, all about, like this cutesy perfectness. And we felt like that's not something we relate to. So we thought, let's make a blog where we talked about sort of about our lifestyle and a super self deprecating. We were very much in it. We were making fun of ourselves, we're making fun of women around us. We didn't really think it would catch on. Even like we, like I said, this wasn't meant to be a business. But at the time, we didn't realize we were writing about millennial women before we're even called millennial women. So it just kind of caught on and we were like, okay, maybe we could do this after college. We all live near each other. We moved home and you guys had internships, like in corporate America. But none of us really just kind of dove into that 100%. We were really committed to art, to batches.

And what, were your parents upset that you thought you were going to pursue this idea? Were they saying, no, this is the wrong thing, or were they encouraging you? What did that look like?

I think we were lucky enough also to be starting this while we were even in college, where we didn't really have much to lose.

We.

We were lucky in that way. We didn't have, like, a family to support or anyone really to think of besides ourselves. And we had the luxury of being able to move home and live with our parents. So I think a lot of them, I mean, slightly varied, I think, among the three of us, but a lot of them were kind of like, oh, try it out. Like, it probably won't work out. But it's pretty low risk at this point in your career. It's not like you already have this. You know, I think if we were like lawyers and doctors and we were the age we are now, and we said, we're going to stop and do this business, they're people might be a little more worried for us. But I think because we were so young, people were like, all right, give it a shot. Probably won't work out. We'll see what happens.

But also, I think the three of us would agree about this, that none of our parents actually would supported us, like, in a way that, like, yeah, you can go and live in the city. They're like, if you want to do this, you're living home. We're not paying for, like, a lifestyle where you can get everything you want. If you want to try to make money this way, you should. You have to stay home and figure it out.

So in those early years, you're all living with your parents, respectively, which that, again, cannot be easy right after you've been out on your own for calls. So you're making your own sacrifices. When were the first moments where you thought, okay, this is hard. There's three of you, right? I mean, it would be hard with just one person being the ultimate decision maker and going in. There had to be moments early on where you're saying, this isn't the direction. Well, and why do you think you know the direction? What is that? What was that like to get through?

I think that in the very beginning, at least, I think that since we were friends first, we, like, trusted each other. At the core, we really trusted each other. And also, like I said, we've been friends since we were children. We really know each other. We know each other's strengths. There's definitely, like, within the 10 years, there's been, like, ups and downs. But in the very, very beginning, we kind of really worked very collaboratively. And throughout these 10 years, I don't think that we would have gotten here if we didn't have such a strong bond and such a strong trust in each other and if we didn't work so collaboratively with each other. But also in the beginning, we were really just writing. We were creative. It's fun to write together. We were writing about. We were just telling jokes, and it's easy kind of to work off each other. And what we saw in the end is when we did work together, we got a better product at the end. So that was something we learned very early on. And we've. We've taken with us as a little piece of insight all the way for 10 years.

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You for highlighting the importance of trust in business, of trust in partnerships. You know, I talk a lot in my work about fire your villains. You cannot work with people who you do not trust, who don't have your back. It's the critical core of success. So thank you for sharing that. You just mentioned something, how you were creating and creative and coming from corporate America. That sounds so bizarre me, right, because everything in corporate America is business and spreadsheets. So how did you guys get through being these amazing creators, creating this phenomenal content that was cracking people up to actually turn it into a sustainable business model?

So I think honestly, like one of the hardest things for us was separating our responsibilities. Not that it was hard, like even emotionally. It's just that I think we were so intertwined for so long that we didn't really even understand how to do that. But we did begin at a certain point to seek outside help and to seek out advisors who could maybe help us figure out how to be a little bit more business minded and actually really strategically approach making money, dividing our responsibilities. We worked with a business coach once who really helped us figure out what each of our strengths are and who should kind of, you know, and ways to just be more efficient in that way. And we've been lucky that we've been able to find, you know, certain people who have helped Guide us to, you know, really be a bit more formal, not a bit significantly more formal in the business. Not like in a corporate way necessarily, but in a way that is organized and strategic and that we're trying to like really maximize how efficient we are.

Sammy love that defining roles is so important in any project and having that clarity, expectation, putting it in writing and creating those boundaries is flipping huge, which I know you guys, you know, were able to get through successfully. What was that pivotal moment like when you realize, holy cow, we are onto some. This thing is going to. We, we're going to make it.

I don't know if there was ever.

Like one universal moment.

Yeah, it wasn't like that. It was like we just kind of like stepped up and up over time slowly and like, we built it. You know, we weren't always able to like fully support ourselves and a whole team and pay for all the things that we do now. It was a slow. It was really like a slow growth. And you know, because we. The other piece is that we were self funded, so we've never had investors. So we were always really like working with our own revenue. And that made us. It made us like A, really agile, but B, pretty risk averse because we were always focusing on what's the most quality thing we can do that will be the most effective. So yeah, there was never really one thing where we were like, okay, we made it. We're always sort of looking for the next once we get to that last step.

That makes me so happy to hear as a solo entrepreneur. Right. You give me hope right now because when you're on the outside and you're looking into your life, right? And you're like, oh, I bet there was that one thing when they launched the one product. And I just have to find the one thing. I always call it, like, is it the field of dreams? If you build it, they will come. I frickin built it. Where are they? What am I waiting for? When are they coming? And I'm so happy to hear that it was that slow build. You mentioned that you guys have been risk averse. That's surprising to me, right? Because I think of Sarah Blakely when I think of you guys and, and we've been lucky enough to have Sarah on the show and she was not risk adverse. She's risk crazy, right? She's the opposite. And I wonder, what was it about being risk averse that paid off for you?

Do you think it was necessarily like just completely averse to all risk? We were just very, very calculated in our risks. I think that's the way that we kind of approached where we wanted to invest our money, because, as Sami said, we never had investors. We couldn't just sort of throw a bunch of money and then test something. So we were just really. We just calculated the risks of doing X or Y or Z, and we chose an avenue that we felt like we really, really thought about it before we went and chose an option. I think that's most. That's kind of how we went about it. I wouldn't say we were, like, taking risks. I don't think that we would have been here had we not.

I think we also do, like, a lot of testing of things. Like, you know, when we were getting into podcasts, we didn't start. We didn't say, like, oh, we're going to do 10 podcasts. We, like, did one podcast, then we did another podcast. It was really successful. Then we were like, okay, maybe we could try another one in this area. And now we have, like, eight podcasts, soon to be, I believe, nine. So that's really how it started. Once we saw that the podcasts were successful, they were driving revenue, we. We started another one. And, you know, when we've had properties or projects that didn't work, we've, you know, we've really tried to wind them down in a way that, you know, makes sense. So it really is a lot of, like, trial and error for us, and that's how we've been able to manage the risks.

So good data doesn't lie. And looking at the information to direct us is always the answer. Tell me, did you ever have a time where you thought, okay, I think we should take money from an outside investor?

We've thought that, like, many times throughout. I mean, I'm going to be, like, completely honest. We've. We've thought that many times. But we never wanted to just do it because we. Out of fear of anything. We wanted to do it for the right reasons. And when we said we would find somebody, we. We knew it had to be a very strategic partner because we don't need an investor. Like, we don't and we don't. Again, like, we don't want to do anything out of. In a desperate way. We want to wait for the right moment. And we feel very fortunate that we're in a position of kind of choice. Like, we can choose the right person when the time comes. But there have been, like, never going to pretend like this has just been a smooth ride for 10 years. There have been so many moments when we were like, okay, maybe we just should look for money. But because the three of us again know each other, trust each other, we come together and we say like, what are all of our options? How can we solve this problem? And we have never kind of went that direction because we've always solved it with a different approach.

Thank goodness.

What were some of those big challenges that you guys faced together?

I think like began because we didn't have like business backgrounds. A lot of it was like trial and error and then also like learning how to be better managers, learning how to run teams because we're not. I mean, we started this as like almost entirely creative process or a creative endeavor. So like opening it up and like you said, the creating, like taking it from, from that to an actual business involved a lot of stuff that we didn't have a lot of experience with. So a lot of it was like finding the right people to help guide us there and help help us figure out how to do things the best and knowing what we know, but also knowing in that sense like what we don't know and figuring it out and having the self awareness to say like, we need someone else's thoughts on this, someone who's done this before, someone who can, who's, who can tell us how to do it better.

To that point, did you ever think of bringing in a CEO that, that you guys would all report into or was that never even?

We've thought about it, but we instead chose the route of like finding advisors first to help guide our decisions before committing to something like that. Because that is a huge financial commitment. You know, one day, maybe down the road we'll bring in like more professional or not more professional, but like more corporate executive team, more experienced.

Yeah, they don't have to be more corporate even.

But you know what I mean, Somebody see a seasoned CEO, let's say someone who's been doing that, that's their profession. But I think when that time comes, we'll know when it's right. But I think yeah, a lot of the challenges also have been like, we want to start an E. Comm shop. What's the best way we want to, you know, do we need money to start it or can we do it on our own? Can we invest on our own? We've been also, also very fortunate to have a great CPA and a great accounting advisor and just a CPA with us for the last 10 years who's really helped us kind of forecast appropriately, project appropriately. Because the three of us with our lack of business Backgrounds. At the beginning, the idea of projections were. So we're just like, what do you mean? You're supposed to just figure out how much money you're going to make in three years?

You're supposed to just make it up.

Yeah, we're just supposed to make it up. And people are like, yes, but based in data. Like, okay, but. You know what I mean? So there were definitely challenges, but, like, we got through them without having to look for money.

But you didn't let it stop you, right? That's the key. So often people and people listening right now, they're facing a challenge not as big as the one that you're facing, and they let it stop them. I wonder what that difference is. You had to have those moments where you were feeling like an imposter, where you were feeling like, this can't be real. How do you push through those moments?

Honestly, I think that having the three of us to air out those feelings, because there have been many times when I felt that way or felt just so defeated. And I'll text one or both of them and talk about it. And something I've noticed is that when one of us tends to feel negative, the other or others are there to bring you up. And I don't know that had I been, you know, had, you know, there's been an individual project that, like, we wouldn't have given up. Because, like, I think that it's having, like, each other to lean on in those moments where you just feel like, I have no idea, like, what, what I'm going to do that you can, like, like you're not going to give up because, like, there's two other people who are, you know, unless we were all deciding we're giving up, you know, we're relying on each other. Yeah, right, Exactly.

So I think just to add to that, I feel like it can, like, social media can give you a sense that, like, success is so linear or like you have a successful business or you don't have a successful business. So you have a successful relationship or you don't have a successful relationship. It's kind of like you're, again, you're only seeing the highlights of, you know, we follow other people in our space, like, who are entrepreneurs, who are in that it always seems like people are doing things and it can make you feel like, should I be doing that? Am I fast enough? Are we big enough? Are we doing that? And it's kind of like, I think if you look at that, you take a step back and you realize, like, again, like for every deal that you're seeing on Instagram, there are two deals that have fallen through or like, you know what I mean? It's not the complete reality of like a linear business growth.

Jordana, thank you so much for sharing that because that's what people need to hear. For every deal you see, there were two that fell apart that we were praying we were going to close. Thank you for sharing that. And what I also want to highlight is it's incredibly unconventional that you have three leaders running a company. However, that's what your superpower is. You guys just identify that that's actually your strength. I love that things don't just have to be the way that they are for 90% of companies. They can be the way that works for you. And one of the things that I noticed when I was going through your marketing, your marketing is so different and it actually challenged me because I have been marketing very conventional my entire career and continue to today. But I started thinking I was writing things down. I actually wrote down batches, not for the easily offended. And I started thinking relevant to my business. What does that look like? Because it's so unconventional. Did you guys ever get kickback from people? Did people think you were crazy? I mean, it worked clearly. But did you get negative feedback?

I think mostly because we've always, like since day one, like it's part of our company's DNA is like to speak to our audience the way that we speak to each other, like the way that women speak to each other, as if we're friends, super colloquial, like casual in a way to gain trust with our audience. And we don't take that trust lightly. We want to sustain that forever. We're really, really particular about that communication with our audience. So I think because the audience feels that connection, it doesn't seem off, you know what I mean? So that's. And that's that voice that we've retained since day one that also is our secret sauce. Besides the US three being unconventional, three.

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That gives me a funny visual, a three headed leader. But I'm thinking about that a lot. It's fire, right? Like that voice that you guys have is so different than what's in the marketplace and it just it reminds me not to always follow the path that Everybody else is following.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean we've always thought of ourselves as super authentic before. People have been using that as a buzzword. That was always just the way that we are. We're always like very averse to market, markety marketing speak.

Bullshit.

We, yeah, we're. That's, that's, that was also part of our like, that's our internal tagline, like cut the bs. Like how can we say this in a way that sounds real where you're cutting the shit? Sorry. I don't hope I'm allowed to curse. That's, that's always been our M.O. and that's what you're seeing.

It's also our M.O. is like people, I think, like we bring that like, like that's who we are in real life. So it's almost just like impossible to fake it.

That's a beautiful thing. So we're 10 years right now, 10 year anniversary. Tell me, what are you doing to celebrate that and where are we going from here?

Well, if we were in person, we'd be throwing a big party and going.

Out to a really nice dinner and.

Going to a dinner and cheersing and giving each other a hug. But since we can't do that, instead we decided to give our company like a really great glow up and we're having a little bit of a glow up branding moment. So you'll see that across all of our channels we were redoing our website, our shop site, we're just all of it. You'll see. We're also, the three of us are taking over our etches podcast to share like the story of the company, to answer questions about anybody, any career questions or friendship questions or anything like that. Just so that we can have that touch point with our audience that we had in the very beginning when the three of us started our podcast. But since we start like grew to be this network and we're hosting other podcasts, we weren't able to do that anymore. So we thought like, let's bring it back together. Let's the three of us come back to one place and we're really excited about that.

What other offerings are you guys going to bring out now? I know that there was some talk about maybe is there business information that you're going to be sharing?

Yeah, that we're going to be talking about. Like so it's going to be a 10 episode series and every episode is going to share like the stages of how we built our company from even before we built it, when we were literally when we met in fifth grade to how we built it and, like, every stage and any challenges we went through. And we'll be answering a lot of career questions and all of that. So we're really excited to finally launch that. We already recorded our first. When we recorded our first episode, like, I texted the two of them, like, that was really fun because I was, like, hysterically crying, laughing, and it just. It was just like, it just felt so good. So I hope the audience feels the same.

That.

Of course they will.

I hope so.

We hope.

Yeah.

You could really only hope.

That recording was, like, the most fun I've had at work in, like, months. And also when I got the. When I got the calendar invite for, like, the new one, that was, like, the only calendar invite. I've not been like, I don't want to fucking go to this. I'm just kidding.

But, yeah, I think that the cool thing about the podcast also is just like, that, not only have we, the three of us, been running this business together for over 10 years, but it's really about our friendship and how it's evolved over the past 10 years. Because not only do we grow the business, we grew up together. In some ways, we're the same people we were when we started this 10 years ago. And in some ways, we were very, very different. So that's also just another element which I think is really unique to our business. It's really unique to our friendship. Most people don't spend all of their twenties running a business with their friends.

It's wild. But you can see you still have so much fun together. You can just tell right now, you guys are so close.

This is really fun, too.

Our audience has grown up with us, too. Like, when we started, we were talking about drinking in college. Those were the jokes we were making. And now we've just launched a betcha's mom's vertical. And a lot of those people who follow that were there when we were in college. So it's very much this, like, this celebration is not just for the three of us or our company of, like, the amazing work we've done all together and a team that we have, but also just the audience who's been there with us, like, from day one or from either day five, whatever. Whenever you joined, you've had some connection with us. And, like, that's also a celebration of that.

So that's so smart, keeping the focus on the audience and constantly evolving, which I know is not easy. That can't be easy for you guys with as busy as you are.

It's not easy, but it's like, that's the challenge, and that's the fun of business. If you're always staying the same, then it's sort of. It gets really boring. And, like, the challenges, like, yeah, while they're sometimes stressful and sometimes you can't sleep or something, that's the fun part is, like, solving all those problems and evolving. Like, there's no other option. You can't just kind of live some glory days back in the day and, like, hold on to, like, a time when there was no social media. Like, you need to go with the times. And because at the end of the day, like, your company's about your audience. It's about, like, who is following you, who you're creating product for. And if they're joining whatever platform is new, then you have to go where they're going. And because we are also. We are. Our company is our employees, everyone. We're part of our audience. We can intuitively sense where everyone is going.

I do think in some ways we're lucky, and we've always been lucky that the company and the content that we're putting out is really very relevant to our own lives. So when we were getting married, we started Betches Brides. When we were recapping the Bachelor, our job was to recap the Bachelor. And we're lucky in the sense that it's not like we're doing something that's so remote from the people that we are that we get to, like, kind of live. I mean, I don't want to say, like, it's so great that you, like, live at work, but, like, we do in the best way possible that we're able to, like, really, you know, we don't have to, like, compartmentalize as much. And that really helps when you're running a business, because, like, the truth of running a business is that you really do have to kind of make it your life. You can't just kind of, like, you know, half think about your business. You really have to make it everything. So we are lucky that it is something that is so relevant to us.

Or you guys aren't lucky. You're just really smart.

So I'm gonna go with the latter.

You're all very smart. Now, before I let you guys go, I want to hear, this is a really exciting time in your life. I hope you guys are journaling and really, you know, have a chance to celebrate this because it's so huge. I want to hear from each one of you. What are you most looking forward to in the future.

Jordana, hit me with it as it relates to Betches.

Yeah, she's like, my wedding, like, generally speaking.

So, I mean, this year we have so much that's going on. It's like, so exciting again. Like, there's that 10 year. But we also have the mom's podcast, which we're launching, which.

Sorry.

Oh, it was yours.

Even I'm not hosting it.

Elaine is hosting the mom's podcast. And I'm excited for her to host that. I'm excited for in life to, you know, that she's going to. She's moved. She's going to be having a baby and like, she's going to be joining this. And I think it's going to be a whole new world for the Betches community. We also have something really exciting launching towards the end of the year that we can't necessarily talk about, but I'm.

Very, very excited about.

Answers.

Sorry.

Did I take.

Did I.

You took my author.

Did I take your childbirth too? I'm sorry.

You took it all.

I took your birth moment.

Okay, well, those are the answers.

And Sammy's second dog. Sorry.

Yeah. Just. Yeah.

Joanna, what's left? I feel like there's. We have a lot. You know, we're constantly scheming and brainstorming and thinking and thinking really far ahead. And as Joanna said, we have something really big launching at the end of this year, so stay tuned. But I'm most excited about just like, to see us in the next 10 years. Like, what's betch's gonna look like? Like, it's crazy to imagine, but having experienced the first 10 years, it's a little bit less crazy now that you know that it's, like, possible. So that's what I'm most excited about is just the fact that, like, I couldn't even imagine how much we've done in this last 10 years. So I'm excited to get to the next 10 and stay and look back and feel just. Just proud of us, proud of our company again, proud of our audience for just being there with us. But that's what I'm excited about.

Something that is consistently exciting, I think, is when we grow the team and we get new team members and the dynamic will shift and usually for the better. And it's always really exciting to, like, watch new bonds being made or like, having new bonds ourselves with people who are working with. And it's. It's sort of. It's so interesting because some people who, like, I feel so close to. Because, like, I work with them all the time. It's like they weren't even. I didn't even know them two years ago, but it feels like you can't imagine the company without them. And it's just really exciting to have a team and grow a culture. And for people to see their work.

Paying off, honestly, that's so rewarding. And to work with good people that you enjoy being around, that you're doing good work with is like nothing else. Because as we all know, we spend so much freaking time there. You got to make it fun.

Yeah. Now it's like 247 because of Zoom, so.

Because of zoom.

Yeah.

I can't wait till I. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I am so excited to see this glow up. And thank you for all the work you do and for inspiring everybody to see how much you can achieve in 10 years. When you surround yourself with good people, you step into your creativity, and you have a lot of fun. Thank you, ladies.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Hold tight. We'll be right back.

I asked you to try to find your passion. I hope you loved the three owners of Betches as much as I did and getting a chance to learn from them. Truly brilliant what they have built and. And really cool down to earth, normal, fun, fun, fun people. So really am cheering them on. Hope you enjoyed meeting them. I definitely enjoyed hanging out with them. I didn't want to get off the zoom after. I'm like, can I hang out with you guys longer? Can I be the fourth batches? So, okay, so two things. One, as you know, you can always submit questions to me at my website, heathermonahan.com you can see the links below in the show notes. And you can get ahold of me on any social media via DM and I will answer your questions here each week. But I wanted to share something. The craziest thing happened. I had someone send me a note on LinkedIn and the person was from a billboard company and said, hey, Heather needs to get ahold of us. You know, I e one of her posts and I started freaking out. I'm like, oh, my gosh, did you know I put something wrong on a post or did my social media team make a mistake? What's going on? You know, I immediately went to worst case scenario, not helpful at all. And I'm sharing this with you in hopes that I can keep you from doing it. So I went down this whole rabbit hole of negativity, fear that I was in trouble. This person wanted to set Up a call with me. You know, I had done something wrong. So I immediately reached out to the head of my social media team and I said, listen, will you jump on this? Something went wrong with this post and I don't know what it is, but, you know, I don't. I want to keep a barrier between me and this person until we can find out what. What's going on. Because I was freaking out. Okay? Come to find out, the person wanted to sell me a billboard to actually put one of my messages up on in real life, right? Not just on social media, but actually in New York City. So here I was probably 24 hours, a whole day gone down a rabbit hole that I'm going to be in trouble and I'm going to get sued. And, you know, I shouldn't have used this billboard as an image and I didn't have the right to do that. These were just all ideas that I came up with. My social media person was so funny when she told me. She said, yeah, no, not at all. Heather, take a deep breath. You have beyond overreacted. He wants you to buy a billboard in New York. And it just was so freaking funny that I had to share that with you. So the next time you feel yourself going down that worry rabbit hole, pump those brakes and say, no, thank you, because this is not true. We do not have any information to support this and let things play out. It usually ends up so much better than we ever thought it would be. This one certainly did. Okay, I got a great question. I wanted to share it with you. This came to me on a DM on Instagram. Oh, Heather, I love Tuesdays and getting to listen to your show. Thank you. Please leave me a review. Okay. You are amazing at posting about your accomplishments without sounding braggy or obnoxious. Well, some people might disagree with that. How do you do it? I recently had some major accomplishments, but I am fearful of sharing them. I want to come across confident, but not, look at me, I'm awesome. How do you do it? I'm having a phenomenal year so far. Good for you. And I'm excited. I feel like I can't tell anyone. It's like, oh, look, mom, I'm riding a bike. I'm doing it. Thank you for your help. So here's the thing. And I get it right? I used to feel the same way. In fact, I never talked about my accomplishments. Never until about four years ago. It was my last year in corporate America. I was giving a speech at the charity at City of Miami Charity. I was on the board of that charity at the time, and I was giving a speech. It was at a woman's luncheon. I had so many employees there from my corporate company. And I didn't know, but my assistant had jumped up at the beginning and was filming the entire thing and live streaming it to Facebook. She never told me, never asked me, you know, fine, no problem. I would have never let her do that. After the talk, I was done and, you know, walking out with everybody, and I look at my phone, and my phone was going crazy on Facebook. So I open the app and I start reading. And it was all these beautiful messages that essentially said, oh, my gosh, I never knew that you were a single mom. I never knew the adversity you'd overcome. I am so inspired now. I realize now that I can, too. So basically, what I learned that day was the more I share my accomplishments, the more I allow others to know that they can, too. They are not alone. They are not alone in their struggle, and they're not going to be alone in accomplishing a lot. Because I can do it. You can, too. And so that really, it made me shift the perspective away from me and made it about them. Now, one of the things that I do differently that not everybody likes, but I like, is I share my low moments, too, right? So say I'm going to put a post up about becoming a professor at Harvard. Okay, this is a great example. I start the post off saying, could you get into Harvard as, you know, a college student? Let me cut to the chase. I couldn't. I was not an exceptional student. There was no chance I would even try to apply to Harvard because there's no chance I could go. That is why when I got the call asking me to be faculty at Harvard this year, I fell out of my chair. How did this happen? Right? So what I'm doing is I'm sharing the pros and the cons of it. That's just. I'm just sort of telling my story, right? Stories are powerful. And anytime you can tell your story, that's powerful. So this woman that sent me the note saying, how does she showcase her wins and accomplishments? Showcase them. And if you need to channel someone, channel me when you do it, or channel someone else that you see that's showcasing their wins and get it, because do it for the people that are out there that need the inspiration, that need to know that you can win in 2021. Right? That this can be a great year and that I, too, can have a great year and make it about others, not about yourself. But then another approach would be like I just described, which would be, hey, if 2020 was a horrible year for you, it was for me too, and I'm making this up, but for this woman, I did not do well. I did not sell a lot. I didn't hit any major wins. I felt frustrated and I felt discouraged. Cut to 2021. We're coming out of the gate hot, and I'm feeling more hopeful than ever. We just closed our biggest deal of the year. Right? So you could phrase it in that regard. You could. With that contrast of last year not being your best year and this year coming out of the gates hot and feeling like you're building momentum and relating back to the audience. Right? Relate back to them. Don't make it just about you. How can your words inspire, educate, or elevate other people? Because when you put everything through that lens, it's not you creating a post to say, I am the greatest salesperson in the world. I win every award, and I sell more than anyone. Thank you. Moving on. Right. That's just bragging without a point. But if you're telling a story, and I really like the idea of sharing story, storytelling is so powerful, especially on social media. You know, tell a story and show some contrast, right? A lot of my really big accomplishment posts that I put up is, oh, this is a good one. This super popular one I have. I talk about. I didn't write my first book until I was 43. I didn't start my podcast until I was 44. I didn't do my TEDx until I was 45. I didn't teach at Harvard until I was 46. At 43, when I got fired, I thought it was over, but in fact, I was just getting started. And you can too, right? So I make it the positives, but then also there's getting fired was not a positive. That. I mean, we reframed it into a positive, and now I feel that getting fired was, you know, the best reframe of my life. But, you know, in the moment, it was horrible, and I was devastated. So, again, tell your story, leverage your personal story, leverage the contrast of some other challenging times and some really great wins that you're having now. And test the water. It's not one and done, right? You can rewrite the story. You can tell a different story. You can try to see what works, what connects with people, and you can ask your audience for feedback, just like I'm asking you today. So I hope that helps. I hope that gives you some ideas and some things to try. Get out there and do it. Try it.

Test it.

Put the pose up until you take action and make something happen. There's nothing to evaluate. So go do it now. Tell your story. I'm always telling mine. That's for sure. Please. If you haven't yet, please subscribe, rate and review the show. It helps so much. Let me know if I should do a second episode. Let me know if you want me to break the episodes apart. Your feedback means the world to me and dictates where my biz goes. It means so much. Until next week. Keep creating confidence. You know I will be too. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably something will happen.

No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while.

You could miss it.

Come on this journey with me.