50: Back to school with Home from College's Julia Haber

Hi, this is Michelle Wainwright and welcome to Creative Juicy. I'm recording this Intro on Tuesday, September 3, the day before this podcast episode gets released. And there is such a nice crisp in the New York air today. It's the day after Labor Day and so I figured let's do a little back to school episode with none other than Julia Haber of Home from College. Home From College is a nationwide career platform that helps students students start their professional journeys. Everything from building their resumes to getting gig work, securing internships, and a lot more. Julia herself has built a career studying and starting businesses in the college space. And I loved learning about how she's grown home from college. From an impromptu domain purchase on March 15, 2020, just two days after the world went into lockdown, to where it is today. This conversation really took me back to experiences I had during my internship days, my college experience in general, which is not a time of my life I would choose to repeat. And I know I would have benefited so much if Home from college were a thing when I was in that stage of life. This episode is great for anyone who wants to learn from a self taught leader. Julia has never had a corporate job and she's pretty badass. It's also a good listen if you're interested in learning more about Gen Z or. Or if you're building something and want to hear how someone else has done so very successfully and methodically so far. Definitely keep listening. Okay.

Yeah.

So happy. Back to school for all that celebrate. This is Creative Juicy with Julia Haber. Well Julia, thank you so much for joining me on Creative Juicy.

Thank you for having me. I love the name. It's like get, get a. Get a better podcast name.

Thank you. I live in Brooklyn, but a lot of the guests I have are in New York and I'd love to have an event just like every everyone at my apartment for like morning juice.

I love it.

Still work shopping that idea.

I feel like that's a great idea and you could even like partner with a specific juice brand.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's awesome.

But first, how I love to start off is can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?

Hi, I'm Julia Haber. I'm the CEO and co founder of Home From College. I've been building businesses in the college space since basically forever. And part of my job is a hybrid of a bunch of fun things which is coming up with really crazy ideas and bringing them to life. But a lot of it is super tactical and we are a Career platform that helps students start their professional journey. We work with hundreds of companies to help students get their foot in the door through our gig marketplace and have a number of products that we're bringing to life.

Yeah, so you mentioned that you have been in this kind of college space for your career. Can you walk us through a little bit about what you've done before home from college?

So actually the person who introduced us, Margo Lee, is very much part of that story. So I started my first company my freshman year of college. It was an experiential marketing agency, so very much focused on IRL activation, specifically in coach college markets. So we would create basically 40 foot trailers for brands like Shopify, Refinery 29 AT&T, ET cetera, and go to college campuses all over the US to create almost like IRL learning moments, teaching people how to start businesses, giving brands exposure there. And through that, I've been to well over 70 college campuses in the US which was an amazing experience. And doing it throughout college was really fascinating. And I did that full time. Like I graduated as well. So definitely in the mix of students and brands and universities and just understanding its own kind of ecosystem as well.

That's incredible. You did that as a freshman in college. Where did you go to school?

Yeah, I didn't totally grow its legs until, until later because I was still figuring it out as we were going probably June, my junior year, is when it really started to become an actual business. But I went to the new high school at Syracuse University and that's actually where I met Margo Lee and she joined a club I started in college called Vision. That was basically like, if you have an idea or a vision, let's bring it to life. It was a really amazing organization. People had so many awesome ideas. And that's where I met Margo and a couple of other of our good friends that still are in this entrepreneurial world too.

Where did the idea for Home from College come from? And I'm curious to know how that's evolved since the original inception, if you will.

So we were working on a concept of really thinking about career, almost like career centers and the next generation of what it means to actually start your journey. We realized there was a huge gap in the market. There's a very big emphasis on kind of post grad professional life. The LinkedIn world is very saturated. There's a lot of job platforms. But one of the main pain points that we learned from students was how do I start if I don't have experience? How do I get my Foot in the door if I don't know anybody, how do I know what I want to do with my life if my major doesn't at all align with what I want to do? And the world is changing so much in that regard that it's really hard for universities to keep up. And we had the real concept of those legs brewing for quite some time. But when the world shut down in March 2020, literally March 15th, we bought the domain homefromcollege.com when every student home from college and threw up a landing page, basically saying we're building the home for students to start their career. No clue what the product actually was. And we got tens of thousands of students to sign up to this landing page and we basically focus grouped with those students for about a year to understand what's the problem, what's the pain point, what's the solution? And what really emerged was being this almost like brand of the college market that encompasses a lot of technical products that help students in their journey. So the gig product that we have is very much like a similar to an upwork or a fiverr concept where it's freelance gig labor work. But we've started with low barrier to entry skills. So content creation, product testing, focus groups, Gen Z advisory panels, intern like work. And now it's really gotten more high skill opportunities where companies can work with students at scale. And that solved making money, trying things while you're in college, flexibility all year round. Um, and now we've really evolved to build this multi product platform so it's very robust technically what we've built and but the whole core is to be the place where students begin and feel like we're their like cool older sibling rather than their parent feeling like telling them what to do with their lives.

I heard a little bit about this story from Margo's episode. Hi, it's Michelle, just chiming in really quick. I wanted to point you guys to the episode we're speaking about. It's episode 45 with Margot Lee who if you're not familiar, Margo is someone who has built a career on social ever since I think it was high school when she started posting YouTube videos and she's now building a business called no Particular Order. It's really great if you want to hear a conversation from someone who is not only a content creator but a businesswoman in her own right. It was funny because I was chatting with Margo, she mentions Julia, now I'm chatting with Julia, we're talking about Margo. So take a scroll back and listen to that episode. It's a really great one and just another example of a badass businesswoman doing her thing. So I hope you're enjoying the episode. Let's get back to it. But I had no idea you did a year of research with these people who signed up. That's so smart. How did you get those signups to begin with? How did you get people to the landing page?

It's interesting because I think it was. It was a very emotional moment. Everyone actually literally went home from college, and it was a big SEO term that we didn't even really think about that people were saying, I'm home from college. News articles were picking that type of language up. So it boosted our landing. But also we. I have, throughout my college journey, built a number of relationships with collegiate influencers, and they were just feeling helpless as well, trying to think about, like, what can I do to serve my community? Because I'm also feeling vulnerable. And we were able to say, join home from college or sign up for this landing page to see, you know, they're building this product that's going to help you. And that really facilitated some meaningful focus groups. But that's, you know, almost like four years ago now. So it feels like such a different world from where we are today. But we do still do monthly focus groups and product testing, basically every button and every decision. I think that's what has really resonated with building a product that speaks to this demographic.

I have to ask, as someone who buys domains, every time I come up.

With an idea, I love it.

Was it a reasonable price or was it an investment?

Okay, it was an investment in something that we had no idea around. I think it was over eight grand and we had no money. It was not really like a feasible economic choice at the time. But I'm so happy we did. And for the brand has really evolved to be this home for career. And using the word home has been just a really valuable moment. And then also, the word college in your name has been also a great signal. My previous company was called Wave, and people didn't know how to place it. And I knew that in my next. I wanted to have it feel very literal and memorable. And I think, unintentionally, that's what has emerged with home from college. And. And we just see a lot of potential for that, even from a domain we didn't even think twice about in terms of the longevity of the brand.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you had a hunch and an intuition and then just pulled the Trigger. So you sound like an incredible self starter and a driven young student. But I'm curious to know what was your internship experience like in school? How did you kind of go about sussing out different careers and what was that process like for you?

The part of my story that's pretty unique and that I've learned over the years is I went to a really interesting high school and the concept was basically a Socratic learning method, so learning for the sake of learning. So I would take half of my classes, math, sciences in a normal setting, and then the other half, history, et cetera, English in conversational learning settings. And it also included interning. Basically. I think I interned. I. I graduated high school with around seven internships, which was amazing. And I lived in, in the suburbs of New York, so I would go into Manhattan every week as part of my high school career, which was really amazing. So I've had a ton of experience and I realized going into college when I was flopped in a lecture hall with thousands of people that most people were didn't have that access or didn't have that knowledge to know who they were or what they brought to the table or what they should even explore. But it gave me a really big head start to know kind of the categories that I was interested in. And in college I interned at fashion PR firm, a sports marketing agency, and then I interned at Spotify and Snapchat. And I interned at both of those companies at really fun times because it was hyper growth but not super corporate. So as an intern I was still able to do a lot and contribute a lot. And those experiences very much informed a lot of what I do today in my job and where I feel like I'm in my flow because I learned those nuggets pretty early. But I definitely don't have formal training in any capacity because I've never had a corporate job. But I take a lot of those learnings and still apply them today.

I see. Yeah, I was similar in that I, I mean, not so similar. I definitely didn't have internships when I was in high school, but in college I would have two internships a semester because I always wanted to work for a fashion magazine. And so summers I would come up to New York and intern. And when I was in, I was at UT in Austin, I would do like Texas Monthly, Austin Monthly, like all the local publications, but a site that I used, I don't know if you're familiar with, it was ED2010.

It's pretty old. I know that one.

A lot of People who now work in fashion or editorial. If you listen to some people on podcasts, they talk about Ed 2010.

It.

I don't even know where that. I guess it was in 2010. I mean, I graduated high school in 2010, but Ed was short for editorial, and that was the place where you would go to see, like, all the magazine internships listed.

Um, it still exists.

Oh, really?

They rebranded it. Looks like it's called the Talent Fairy. Powered by Ed 2010.

Okay. But this was like the most valuable resource for me as a young student. Knowing I wanted to do something in this world, but not knowing, you know, what it was you mentioned. You want to come across as like the cooler older sibling versus like a parent messaging to Gen Z that that would be something I'd pay a lot of attention to because I would want to come off in a similar way. So how do you think about that and how do you approach your tone of voice from a brand perspective?

I think it's interesting because there's how you speak and what you do. And I think a lot of brands try and speak Gen Z, or they add demure or they say brat summer and think that they're speaking to Gen Z, but in reality, it's more about how that actually applies in your specific product world. So, for example, for us, our gig opportunities are flexible opportunities for companies to work with students. The way in which we create those gig opportunities was written in a very specific format. Format that said very clearly how much you're going to get paid, what is the ROI in terms of, like, what are you expected to contribute in three bullet points, one little blurb on what your this, what this impact will give to the business, and then very low barrier. Couple of questions that we call IQs or interview questions that brands can ask in the interview process that happened pre even you having an interview. And many of those choices were to combat imposter syndrome and make sure people knew that it was compensated and understanding what would be on their resume if they actually did it. So a lot of those qualitative things that we learn that are pain points and anxieties and things that overwhelm students, when you look at a long job description and you feel super unqualified for the moment and you don't even know what the process is going to look like, we took a lot of those feelings and then applied that to product. And then the way that we show everything has a refined, like, product feel, but has a playfulness to its tone so it doesn't feel like heavy and Intimidating, but more approachable and not necessarily trying to be so trendy in the way that we talk, but have like a longer lasting impact and lean more towards those like generational moments rather than it feeling like a trend that we're trying to just adopt quickly to then speak to a demographic.

Yeah, makes sense. I see you on TikTok. How do you approach social when it comes to, okay, you have this audience, but you're also in a way kind of building a mini LinkedIn for them and a mini job board for them. So how do you think about using these other platforms like LinkedIn to get the word out not just, you know, to your target audience, which I'm assuming you're doing on TikTok, but to potential investors and other people that are more peers of yours in the business space.

Instagram specifically has been a really valuable tool for our homefront college account because for most brands it's like the new website. It's a really great way to get a real snapshot of what's going on in the brand. You just alluded to this. We have a lot of stakeholders in the mix, whether it's students, companies to use our platform or investors to understand. We very much do not focus on what we want an investor to see. And that's been a really big benefit of us having just a clear point of view and not trying to adapt who we are for that audience. But specifically for Instagram, we have this blend of where it feels like formal enough, where we're not trying to be comedic or humor centric really heavily, but have this kind of rapper and what we call ourselves is like the translator between companies and Gen Z and try to really provide value, add content for students and then also have brands feel like they, they can be part of our story. And that has worked really well. Specifically on the home from college TikTok, we've gone through a bunch of really interesting moments and iterations to see how to show up. And that's the place where we really speak to students and that is the platform where we really acquire students at scale, especially when we think of like pain point solution type of content does well. And then my personal TikTok has just been a fun way for me, I feel like, to share my experience as someone who sits in the middle of a lot of these conversations and hopefully embodies that kind of like older sister vibe, but they all kind of work together in synchrony.

How big is the home from college team?

We are about 14 people right now and continuously growing, have a number of roles open. So if anybody is looking for a job, please check it out from college.

What kind of roles are you looking for?

A mix. So this year has been a lot of building out our sales function and our sales team on the student side. On the marketing front we are really investing in content, so content creation and then on the engineering front we have a number of products. So been building out data infrastructure and full stack developers and people who are really focused in specific niches whether it's for a resume product or for the gig marketplace or just someone as a whole. So all, all three categories from business, sales and engineering.

Awesome. I have a lot of brand marketers that listen to this podcast a hundred percent if you can give even like little synopses about how brands can work with home from college. Because I feel like, you know, college ambassador program is something that's thrown around so much by people who really don't understand what goes into it. So how are ways that brands can work with home from college to bring different campaigns to life?

It's a great question. So the way that we focus and I'll speak more high level and then tactically the platform is really an end to end tool and we really invested in this from allowing companies to easily create opportunities to finding talent on the platform. There's an algorithm that helps rank and match students based on the role and the opportunity. Companies then can message through the platform, invite people through the platform, sign contracts and pay students and then run their full program. So it has mixes of Google Docs, slash Docsend, slash Monday, like as an end to end workflow tool. And we really built this whole ecosystem because you alluded to this as well. College is kind of specific and there's a lot of things that we've learned that we need to be the trusted guardrails for companies. So we learned frequently that a lot of companies like you alluded don't know how to run an ambassador program, don't know the cadence or the frequency they should be following up with students. So in our messenger we have auto notifications, it syncs to text message, it syncs to email. We built in a task feature that allows you to assign tasks to a full group that asks you them to share recording on it and photos. We have a content uploader that gives feedback on any content that they're uploading for a content creation program. So the way that most brands use our platform spans from what we call hiring to acquiring. So acquiring sits into the more marketing world which could be product testing, ambassador programs, content Creation things that would actually help you acquire the gemsy audience and utilize your loyalists for that purpose. And then the other side is more hiring which could be a one to one. I need a graphic designer, I need a video editor, I need a UX designer. One to one. But many programs are one to many. So where brands are creating content committees of 50 students who have alopecia or have cystic acne and it's I'm Hero Cosmetics and I want people who actually have this specific acne so that they can showcase it that live in Canada. So we can get super niche in terms of the audience because we have students across every campus in the US and all different types of archetypes. It allows us to help brands get really specific but also, you know, scaled.

That was so cool. Well, in April it was announced that you took a seed investment from Google Ventures. What does that investment fuel for you as a business?

We from the beginning and there's a lot of different ways to be an entrepreneur and we have many friends who have taken different approaches. Our strategy was to build a sustainable business first. So before we even thought about raising money or entering that world of venture capital, we wanted to build a sustainable, strong unit economic business where we could grow even without the capital that VC would come in. And that was an amazing choice for us because we had a ton of inbound because of that. And as a business that had not raised a seed round after being around for a pretty good amount of time, it gave us a huge leg up because we had a lot already in motion. A ton of users monetizing. We were already profitable and that was like a really important thing for us. And that's a principle we continue to value. The investment from Google has been an amazing partnership. I mean Google is a dream investor. They have this blend between being a tech product themselves and having a ton of resources that we can tap all the time, but also really long term thinking and in thinking about how big we have the potential to be, which has been amazing. And one of the main thesises that they invested in was us being the home for career and building out multiple products and services to support a really wide audience and then owning piece by piece over time. So really grateful for their support and it's been a huge catalyst in allowing us to take big bets and think about a really, you know, big scale and wide aperture.

So someone who has never had a corporate job, you are obviously so smart and are a leader and speak with investors like I guess I'm just wondering as you grow the Business. How do you level up your skills as a leader and as a manager? And are there any resources you found especially helpful in doing so?

It's a. It's something that I think about all the time, especially because I continue to challenge myself in these scenarios by choice or sometimes not by choice, as we've doubled the team in the last six months and we'll probably double again. And then think about really sophisticated conversations. The person I am now and the person I was four years ago. It is night and day. I used to get very nervous talking to investors. I would have a ton of time to prep before every meeting. And one of the big things that was a learning that I've seen over the last year is time management. For myself specifically, I would feel. And there's this, I'm sure you experience it too, like busy girl syndrome, where you feel like you need to have every minute of your schedule booked to make it feel like you're doing something. And then when you take a look at your year as a whole, you realize how much time you were spending on things that could have been done more efficiently by other people. And that's a big shift. I think, really thinking strategically about my time and doing things that really move the business forward for myself and not just spinning my wheels and overworking, because that is, I think, a way that a lot of founders burn out. But I'm part of two groups. One is a female founder book club, and every month we read a book together. But I would say half the time we talk about the book and the other half of the time we're talking about business problems or experiences that we're facing, as well as imparting a part of a different coaching group with other founders in my similar age and range. And that's been so valuable to constantly share resources but also be really vulnerable because it's super stressful. And that's a very safe space for that. Yeah. Is.

Are the books in the book club career related or are they complete? Okay, they are.

Usually they are. Sometimes they're a little dense and we realized we needed to throw fiction in here or there just to get everyone continued to be energized around it. But a lot of times they're usually lesson oriented, written by other successful female leader combinations so that we can take some, we can take some data from there.

When you, when you first mentioned that, I was thinking, oh my God, how does she have time to read a book?

But I don't. An audiobook while I'm on a Scare Master. That's like all I can do.

Okay, I love it. So what's your vision from home from college?

See the potential of home from college really being a place for every student to begin. So today we are more segmented towards a specific audience based on the types of gigs we have on the platform. We did that really intentionally because we wanted it to be low barrier to entry, easy for people to enter and that has put us in more of a marketing bucket. But right now we're talking to CIA about government contracts and we're talking to folks, financial institutions and thinking about the scale beyond just one kind of archetype of student. So that's really exciting in terms of being able to serve 35 million students that are in college every year, let alone the people who have just graduated. Because we very much target 17 to 28 like quarter life crisis or segment as well. But I think giving the brand like a true north star in terms of how we're showing up and how we become synonymous with this phase of life and I think we have a really big opportunity to do that and we're super excited to push the boundaries in that way and think about using our perspective as a thought leader in that way. So I think that will be a lot of what this next year and the next two years comes. And I think we, you know, as we've been thoughtful about how we've grown, we haven't wanted to hyper growth scale break our infrastructure and then give people bad experiences. So in this next two year period it's going to be a lot of user acquisition scale go to market motions that we've been gearing for.

Cool. I'm curious as someone who works so deeply in the college space, what your perspective is on college evolving as an industry in and of itself. You know, you see more and more how it's harder to get into tuition's higher. People say in the future it will matter less because you can do so much learning online. I'm just curious if you have a perspective on how you think college as an institution will evolve over time.

I think when you're 17 to 22, it's really important to have that independent time and that real experience of leaving the nest and challenging yourself and evolving with people around you. I think colleges by and large are very different. You could go to a small liberal arts school and have a very different experience than someone who goes to a really big university and get feel lost in the system. And college is also not for everyone. I've actively talked that college was not my favorite period of time. And it's actually funny that I spend my whole career talking about this, but I think it's also because of that that I didn't so traditionally fit in that box. And I think it's okay to not think they're the best four years of your life. We are never intending to replace college. That is not where we live. And we also don't live in the like academic world even I wouldn't consider us an ed tech business because we're not intellectual in that same regard. I think there is a place for college if you can financially afford it and that it sets you up for success more personally and emotionally and the relationships you build, then maybe what you're learning in the classroom. But I wouldn't say that that's by and large across every career field because sometimes there is valuable training there. But I do believe that the institutions are very limited in what they can provide for students at scale. And I believe there's a huge space for support in a lot of different areas. Whether it's in the mental health world, it's in the healthcare space, or it's in the career world. People need to be able to support that function.

Of the university system, I'm very similar. Like there are lots of different chapters of my life, if you will, that I loved and I would totally repeat again. And college is definitely not one of them.

Yeah, it's interesting. Why? Why for you? I.

I don't know. I. I think of. I've been thinking about this more recently. I'm from Houston and I went to UT Austin and I was like college hunting all across the US I wanted to go into journalism. I went to Syracuse. I went in the summer and it was cold. But at first I was looking at like small colleges to like big state schools. And I loved the vibe of a big state school and I wanted to go somewhere that was like in a city where I could get good internships. But I, I wasn't ready to make the move to New York yet. Like I wanted still a college experience. Anyways, I landed on UT Austin in their comm school. I did the whole Greek life thing. I don't think that was ever for me. Even though I made great friends. I don't know, I think just like the party culture, it didn't fuel me. I don't know, I just wasn't as excited about it.

And it's hard too when that is such a core part of your school's culture or the social life that's like put upon you. I think I said this to somebody the other day. Like, I think I went out in college, like, a total of seven times. Like, I am. That is not what makes me happy. Actually makes me more stressed out. And the fact that. And I'm sure it was similar at UT Austin, like, that is just part of life there, that it makes it really challenging to find kind of your place in the same way. So I completely agree.

Yeah. And I also. I don't know, I mean, I felt like academically high school was harder than college. Like, high school AP classes were more challenging than college. And I don't know, I just. Maybe I didn't feel like myself. I feel like when I moved to New York after school, that was when I really started to, like, get into a groove and feel motivated and excited. But college was just. I feel like thinking back, like, what did I do? I feel like I just wasted time in a way.

I agree in the sense that you make a choice at, like, really 16, 17, that you spend four years of your meaningful adult life, and you probably evolved to quite rapidly in the first two, and probably maybe don't align with the choice you made when you were 16 or 17 because of whatever circumstances, and then you're kind of stuck there, or you can transfer, but that's a whole other beast. So, yeah, I think it doesn't provide the flexibility that you should have as a young person who, like, wants to experience the world.

Yeah, it's interesting to talk about. It's funny. It's also. I've been thinking a lot lately about how so much about. I mean, just being in New York. Everyone comes from different walk of life, different experience. That's one of the reasons why I love it so much. But so much of your life is based on just what you see. Like, just like growing up, like, what you see, the people around you do, and you just take it on and assume that's what you do. I'm very much an independent thinker, but the whole sorority thing, that's just what people did. I never even thought, oh, I don't.

Have to do this.

Even though my mom was like, you.

Don'T have to do this.

Because I think she knew it wasn't going to be for me. But it's just, like, what's around you that you absorb. I think it's harder to pave your own path than it seems just because of what information you intake. As an evolving young human, there's a.

Lot more information than there was when we were at that phase of life because of social media. And the day in the lives of these, like, niche normal people that we only used to be able to look at specific couple of people online to have a sense. Even some, like, biomedical students, they're on my for you page, and I watch their day in the life, like, dissecting, like, labs, and I'm like, that's super cool. Maybe that would be interesting to me if I was curious about whatever industry they were focusing on. So I think it is a little different. But I know also within that, like, university conversation, it's still very restricted. Like, you still have to take a ton of classes in a specific specialty. And I think it's like 80% of people don't actually pursue careers in the major that they studied in school. And then you think about the financial implications of that as well.

Yeah, definitely. Hey, it's Michelle. I promise this is the last time I'm chiming in, but this conversation with Julia really got me thinking. And as I go back and am editing this episode, I just. I wanted to share this with the hopes of, you know, maybe other people feel the same way. But people always told me that when you look back on your life, you can connect the dots and see how one experience informed another, informed another. And career, as an example, feels much more linear than felt when it was all actually happening. That's definitely true for me. I think I'm just thinking a lot about the importance of doing what you're interested in at an early age. Because for me, I think back to what I was interested in in middle school and high school and what I wanted to major in in college, and all of those things are very much a part of what I do today. There's probably a good six, seven year gap where I didn't realize that I was a journalism major, even though I scrapped that. This podcast is a form of journalism, and so I just wanted to encourage anyone listening to think back on what those things were that really fueled you at a young age. And I guess just as a little exercise, like, how is that a part of your life today? I also loved to dance growing up, and now I'm looking into dance classes in New York City, where I can do it just for fun, because I think tapping back into that would really give me so much joy. So, yeah, anyways, sorry for the little tangent, but I find it really interesting to think about, and I really enjoyed kind of going back in time a little bit with Julia here. So let's get back to the episode and I'll stop talking. Okay. I'm curious. Your Take on this in terms of work, life balance with college students coming into the workforce, because I didn't think work would be easy. Like, I wasn't expecting that. Unpaid internships. One internship at Valentino, I didn't even have a chair. I didn't have a chair to sit in. And I just took it on because I was like, this is what it's all about. This is where I get my footing. Whereas I feel like lately it's much more work, life balance and mental health, which is obviously great. But what do you experience in terms of that topic with the people on your platform, the college?

It's, it's really interesting. I mean, I'm, I'm like, sit in the middle. Cause I'm a Zin Zen menial or whatever that hybrid is. And I'm obviously so in a different place than many, even people who are my age, as, as a founder. But yeah, I mean, we, we have a bucket of students that we. Every student has a score on our platform and it's based on responsiveness and engagement, rate and potential. It's not like who's the smartest? And it has to do with their investment in their future. And there is definitely a cohort of people who don't take their professional lives seriously. Every student, before they participate in a gig, signs a contract. Some people sign contracts and don't follow through. And there's repercussions on that on our platform. But that is something I think that is missing is what does it mean to be professional but also not extend yourself and respectfully set limits? And it's a combination that I don't think was taught to us because it was. Of course you're not gonna have a chair that you're not going to be paid, but I think the guardrails are important. I think there's a wide spectrum of what's out there. And a question I actually ask in a lot of interviews is what role does work play in your life? And it's really fascinating, especially depending on your age, how you answer that role. Many people, specifically Gen Z, say I work to live. And a lot of millennials slash beyond that. I interview, have thoughtful, longer term answers about what role work plays in who they are. So I think it's a generational shift. But I also believe that there's a cohort of people out there that have more of the millennial mindset of wanting to extend themselves, knowing what that is. And I do believe that those people will excel more than the people who set really rigid boundaries and aren't willing to be flexible.

Absolutely. I was telling the story the other night, my first day at this Valentino internship. I've had many internships, but my job was to find a copy of Elle Men's Mexico.

Oh my God.

And so I was calling every magazine shop, even going some, looking for Elle Men's Mexico. At the end of the day, people were kind of giggling around me and I realized that L Mens Mexico does not exist. And I wasn't even offended. I was just like, this is the.

Name of the game. Yeah. This is what I have to do. This is, this is hazing. We're have to get through this. But it's just wild. I heard, I heard a variation of that too. I had a fashion internship, unpaid of course, and I had to like go through the, you know, the closets of all of the clothes. But specifically my boss was very mean woman and she would refuse to eat a salad if it didn't have banana peppers on it. And one day I brought a salad back that didn't have banana peppers and she said, go find banana peppers. It's literally Devil Wears Prada. So I went to right. And got a sandwich with banana peppers on it and picked up banana peppers and put it on her salad and she still didn't eat. Was just one of those like power trip moments that. It's interesting, isn't it? I kind of miss those.

Okay, anyways, final question before we get to the final questions. But what do you think is the most common misconception of the working world from the eyes of a college student?

I think the spectrum's really wide. And the type of companies, I think there's this over glamorization of corporate curly. Like I think it has to do with social media and the benefits of being a corporate girly. And then on the other spectrum, I think there's the benefits of being an influencer full time or a content creator. And there's this like very substantial middle that people are striving for one of the or the other of those buckets and then it's over, glamorized. And many people don't actually know who they are, what they should be doing because they aren't able to fund their lives by being a full time influencer or feel unfulfilled in corporate, in the corporate world. So I think there's going to continue to be this reckoning between who I am and where I work and how I show up and then tension between those companies and those individuals to actually find value aligned people because what we were just speaking about before that previously, like didn't really matter. Back in the day it was kind of like I'm going to work at this company because it's Valentino. But now that is a conflict. So I think that tension between what, what are the actual expectations of this type of job I have and, and how ready am I for that? Whether it's for the corporate world or for pursuing something more creative. But a lot of trying out identities I think is going to continue to happen and I think that's a good thing. But more information should be out there about the not so beautiful truth of all sides of the world.

Yeah, definitely. Okay, so Julia, I have five final questions. We may have touched on some of these topics, but I will ask them nonetheless. So question number one. Why do you do what you do?

It's funny because I don't feel like I actually have a choice. Not because anyone's telling me to do it, not because I have stresses on my own about my professional goals personally. It's that there's no world where I could imagine doing anything different. And I think it's because I've been able to shape this business to something that I'm super excited about and actually does align with my skills. And it's funny because my co founder actually has a completely different background and has no experience in this space. But I have a ton of founder market fit and I think it puts me in a really exciting place to actually contribute and meaningfully impact thousands of students lives. I'm sure these experiences that you and I have just spoken about from internships have shaped our world substantially in terms of the choices you make and the fact that we can do that at scale and help hundreds of thousands of students get their foot in the door, knowing the long term impact of that is just such an exciting feeling and being part of that story. So feel like there's no better place where I feel like we can make a lot of impact at scale, where I also feel like I'm really good at what I'm doing, which is obviously always a super fulfilling moment.

I mean it's exciting even just talking to you about this. I think college is obviously something as a young person you like think it's in your future for, I mean a large part of the population. But it's also such a critical time in life that so many different people after the fact have certain memories or experiences. Just like what you and I were going back and forth about. Even when you're speaking with investors, you know, they have their own college experience and they can relate to the problem you're solving on a personal level or.

Sometimes don't because they just went to a tier one school and then worked in banking and finance and then vc, which was a really interesting experience when fundraising. Um, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

But yes, a hundred percent. Or they'd be like, oh, my daughter's in school and she's, you know, xyz. Which there's always stories there. So you're totally.

Yeah, I'm sure. Question number three. Where do you go to get your creative juices flowing?

So I'm definitely an outside person. And there's this one specific hike in la. It's called Westwood Westridge Trailhead and it's in the Palisades and it's up on the top. You drive up for like 15 minutes and you start your hike at the top of the mountain and then it goes up and there's this specific spot and it's like, pretty steep. And my co founder and I, we like, power up it and it's like all. It feels like the world's your oyster. You can see from downtown LA to like, very far in the South Bay. And it just gives you this, like, really wide aperture and that, like, always gets my juices flowing. And I would say we talk about, like, when we come back here in 10 years, we'll know all of the steps that went on this hill, like, were the building blocks between, like, what we've created, which is where all the juice is formed.

That is so cool.

This is so lame, but you should have, like a home from college bench, right? I think when we, when we, like, whatever the outcome of this business is, we'll. On the top.

Or a stone.

Have some stones. I love it.

I know that hike, that's a really awesome one. If you could tell your younger self one thing or one piece of advice, what would you say.

You can create a world that makes you feel smart and successful? Because I really struggled. I grew up with a learning disability and I really struggled being put in this box of, like, what smart and not smart was. And I was horrible at multiple choice tests. And it was the most frustrating feeling to feel like I couldn't actually be successful in that world. And now I feel like I'm totally doing what I'm meant to be doing and having success in the way that actually drives impact in my life and others. And that you will get there if you give yourself the time and the place. I love that.

And then finally, what are you looking forward to today? Is there anything that's coming up that's keeping you feeling motivated and inspired?

We have two new big products that are rolling out by the end of this year and early next year and I'm so excited for them because it's almost like the next iteration of what Home From College is going to be as like a multi product platform and excited to continue to tell that story and connect with our users and really help people at scale. So those two two big pushes are something I'm really excited for.

Amazing. Well Julia, this was so much fun. So thank you for joining me on Creative Juicy and I can't wait to see all that Home from College has in store.

Thank you so much. So fun chatting and love the Juicy so count me juice pop up in your house. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Creative Juicy. If you like what you heard, it would mean so much if you can take a minute to rate and review the show. Be sure to hit. Subscribe to stay updated on new episodes and follow me Miche Hwainwright on Instagram for more podcast updates. You can also find show notes and a transcript for Today's episode@creativejucypodcast.com. hope you have a good one. Bye.