769. Shattering the Pink Ceiling and Focusing on Pleasure with Cindy Eckert

Big thanks to Gusto for supporting Earn youn Happy. Gusto offers modern, easy payroll and benefits to small businesses across the country. They were even named Best online payroll by PC Meg. Get three months free when you run your first payroll@gusto.com Lori.

You deserve to own your pleasure in the bedroom and in the boardroom.

Welcome to the Earn your Happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, Founder of Light Pink, best selling author, three time fitness world champion and I'm a crazy, multi passionate entrepreneur. My journey has taken me everywhere from being a broke waitress, barista, retails associate and personal trainer with massive anxiety and no belief in myself to later becoming a multi millionaire in love with my life.

In 2007 my husband and I lost everything. We found ourselves hundreds of thousands of.

Dollars in debt at rock bottom. We had no ideas and I had.

No education to fall back on. This is when I found personal development.

And learned everything I could about business.

Not by choice, but because I realized.

No one was coming to save me. The conversations on this podcast are going to let you know that you're not.

Alone and that we all feel like we don't know what we're doing.

We're going to give you the tools to help you face your take action, start your business, and grow those massive.

Dreams that are keeping you up at night.

It's time to create a life that you can't hide from and put so.

Much on the line that your higher.

Self is forced to come out. You're going to stop waiting for someone to approve of you and you're going to anoint yourself.

Because I'm obsessed about building businesses that give women a platform, I want to feature you.

So if you text the word podcast to 31049, you can get your questions.

Answered on our Q and A segment along with a shout out.

And if you rate, review and subscribe to this podcast, we're choosing someone every month to get coached and featured on our show. It just might be you. So let's get started. Welcome back to the show.

I'm so excited for today.

Today's guest you guys, we covered everything from starting a billion dollar business to women's sexual health and let me tell.

You everything in between.

So you're gonna want to stay tuned on this episode because my guest today is Cindy Eckert. She's a self made serial entrepreneur and vocal advocate for women. Cindy defies convention in her industry, in her companies, in her outcomes. Her work today in the Pinkubator continues to break barriers by investing in and mentoring other women to get to her same outco. She's on a mission to make women really rich, which is why you want to tune into this podcast today. You can't miss Cindy. Everything she touches turns to pink. And you guys know it's one of my favorite colors. So her and I totally jived because we both love all pink everything. Over a distinguished 25 year career in healthcare, in only the last 10 years, she's built and sold two businesses for more than $1.5 billion. First, Slate Pharmaceutical, which redefined long acting testosterone treatment for men. Then Sprout Pharmaceuticals, which broke through the first ever FDA approved drug for low sexual desire in women. Dubbed the female Viagra by the media after selling the company for $1 billion in 2015, she successfully fought to get the drug back and launch it on her own terms. She's made waves and made her own success. Success creating mission driven companies that deliver big. Her results have become a widely covered business success story, featured in major media outlets and she is most proud of helping others take command. The profoundly positive impact those companies have made in people's lives is what keeps her coming back for more. Let's get started.

Cindy, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

Lori.

It is about time that we're doing this. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

That is exactly how I feel. I'm like, I cannot wait to talk to this woman. I've just been loving, honestly, just following you on social media, especially just for the season of life that I'm in and especially the listeners who listen to this, you guys, if you do not follow her yet, you absolutely have to go and follow her because just your quotes and the different things that you share, truly, they're, they're good, they're punchy. They'll punch you in the face right when you need it.

Like, they're great.

They're so motivating. I love it. It's just like bang on for where you're, for just kind of where you're at. If you're building a business, like, like go bigger mindset, like what do we have to lose? Like what, you know, it involves risk and all of these incredible thoughts around. You know, I think especially with women building different businesses, I think that we have to break through a lot of different beliefs that maybe we grew up with, which I'm going to get into. But I just want to say you started in healthcare. In the last 10 years, you started two businesses that ended up selling for $1.5 billion. One of them was female Viagra, which is so interesting. And now you're all about helping women as well. And you have something called the Pinkubator, which I'm obsessed with Pink. Everybody knows that on here. And also you invest in women. You do so many other things. I know that this is just a few things, but would you share just a tiny, tiny blip of your journey and how that all got started with you creating female Vigora?

Oh, yeah, I'd love to. So look, my career was actually very conventional at the beginning, and I was in a big company and realized, like, I don't want to be like, number 4537. No one's listening to me and my great ideas. And the truth is, I just didn't fit in big environments. I wanted to be in smaller environments where I got pushed, where I had to try new things, and frankly, where I had skin in the game. I wanted a piece of the value I was creating. And so that actually is really what took me on this journey to go.

Smaller, smaller, smaller to all of these.

Innovative companies, to learn. Until I felt like I'd gotten enough of a landscape that I could do it for myself, which is always the bold move, because you just don't know, right? And it's kind of joyful that you don't know what you don't know when you start your very first company. I started a company, I called it Slate Lori, because it was truly like, clean slate. I was doing it on my own terms. All the mistakes were my own and I had to clean them up. And it was just the best, not the best, because I turned on sales and day one, they went like this. They did not go like this. I think the first day, I was just telling somebody yesterday, I had two sales and I was like, okay, okay, that's two sales.

Two sales.

And I had no more sales for like another two weeks. But I started this company and it had. Right. And it had a. One of the male sexual health drugs. So that was my first company from scratch myself. And I loved that ride and I loved everything I learned about building a business. But I looked around and I said, now wait a minute, there are 26, 26 FDA approved drugs for some form of male sexual dysfunction. And there wasn't a single one for us.

That's crazy.

Which is crazy, right? Everybody can look at that number and say women have issues in the bedroom as well. And yet all of us, like, we've almost not even rioted against that in the sense that for 20 years, we haven't watched a Super Bowl. We haven't turned on the radio and not heard an ad about how important sexual satisfaction is for men. So that was really, honestly, there was the lightning bolt moment of, this is what I really want to do in my life. I want to crash the ceiling, break this door down. And that in and of itself was a crazy ride. To get the first ever drug for women's pleasure through the fda, you might imagine that was a crazy story. It involved fighting the government publicly for women's pleasure. But in the end, science won, women won. And actually, it emerged an entirely new category. So in 2015, we never even talked about femtech. So these products that help women put power in their own hands, related to their health and wellness, that term was coined after we broke through with this product. It's going to be a $50 billion category by 2024.

Wow. So when you looked around and you were like, wow, there's nothing here. Was it an empowering feeling, or was it like, why is there nothing here? Are there things I don't know? Are there problems here that I'm going to be. What were those first thoughts around that?

You know, what was so clear to me? So when I looked around, I actually was at a meeting in 2010, the biggest sort of scientific conference related to sexuality. And I was always so excited about this emerging science. We were learning what it is that unlocks desire for women. It's in the brain. And I was watching all of the big companies with big resources run away, and I thought, that's my signal to run toward it.

Wow.

When everyone else is running away from something, I think many times, or all of us entrepreneurs, that is our signal that if you have the courage, run toward it and figure it out. And it was really ever so simple to me. This was a societal narrative. The science was spectacular. The problem was nobody wanted to open Pandora's box and deal with women and sex. And why is that? Because if something goes wrong for men in the bedroom, we say, biology, let's fix it. If something goes wrong for women, we go, oh, psychology. And we tell a woman to have a bubble bath or to go on vacation. And we are not even conscious of how dismissive that is to our basic chemistry. Right. Biology walks into the bedroom with men and women. We clearly had this scientific breakthrough of what was available biologically. And I wasn't going to take no for an answer.

Yeah, that is so interesting. Especially, I'm sure you heard it all the time, being out in you know, being a woman out in the world working like we hear from women who have jobs, they have families, they have all of this stress and yes, I'm sure some of it psychological. But also there are so many things going on in our bodies as we're probably aging and different things like that. Or maybe we were just born that way and need some extra help.

It could be childbirth, it could be use of birth control. There are so many factors. I just think that as a general rule for everyone listening as it relates to your health and why it's so important to be your own advocate is nobody knows your body better than yourself, right? And it is dismissive that women are considered to be only psychological creatures. The truth is, by the way, things can go wrong in the bedroom for men because of psychological factors too, right? Ed can be psychological and yet we are fine to just fix it. And I think with women we're like, oh, but what is it? So it's just about there is. You have to consider all the factors. And the fact that we were just completely dismissing the factor of biology was outrageous to me.

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So tell me about how you kind of started tackling that and what were the first steps of even like creating it?

Yes. Well, I'll tell you, it's really so simple. I started listening to women.

Go figure.

Go figure.

It's so simple, right? We're gonna solve a problem. Who do you talk to?

You talk to the people experiencing the problem.

Like always at the center of any conversation, right? Of challenges. We're trying to address the person facing the challenge. And I felt like it's so classic that nobody had really spent time just talking to women, struggling with this, losing their sense of self from these issues, losing marriages many times. And I spent about a year just listening to women. And I thought after that if I've listened to them, everyone's going to listen to them because we're going to get beyond this like unconscious hang up that we have for progress here. And that was really the magic of it all. I mean, going through the process and the Science of it all is just the scientific path. But I'll tell you, that was the biggest piece is listen first.

So then I'm sure the passion just totally built, which is one of the most important things that you need to be breaking through obstacles because they keep coming and keep coming. What were some of the common things that you were hearing like that just. They just kept showing up that maybe one that you kind of knew was coming and then one that was surprising.

You know, here's when I first started talking to women about this. First of all, we've actually known this in the medical literature since 1977.

Wow.

77. So it's not like we didn't know it, but no woman actually knows there's a name for it. And so that was like. That's the surprise factor, right, Is that it's been medically known about forever but never really discussed. And when I started talking to women who were struggling with this, so they basically have a lack of desire for sex. Like they once had some sex drive. It's changed. It's not where it used to be. They're unhappy about it. They want to do something about that. And that's what we were seeing from these brain scan images. It was this awesome. What's the biochemistry of it all? When I started talking to them, here's what I was so struck by. Their stories were remarkably consistent.

Wow.

And yet they felt totally alone. So all of them described it as. And they would start with, I love my partner. I love my partner. It's just like the switch went out. All of a sudden, the switch went out, and I want to want it. And they would describe their loneliness. I think they're feeling this way that they were certain that something was just wrong with them, that they were struggling with the breakdown, you know, when break down in the bedroom, they break down across the breakfast table. So it's really true that in a relationship, this is part of the relationship dynamic. And that connection feels a little fractured. And I have to tell you what struck me so much is that they all told the same story. And the story for so many of them was, I'm losing my life as I know it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can only imagine how much they project out, you know, how much we all project out into the future when something isn't the same. And then I'm sure a lot of them never ask, like, never talk about it with their partners because there's probably shame around it.

So much shame and so much wanting to protect their partner. I'll tell you one Moment that surprised me, sort of fast forwarding ahead. So I think, you know, you. You want to protect your partner because you do love them, right? You just know, like, I don't know why, but, like, I'm never into it anymore. I think about it. I don't really want it. Like, when you smack me on the bum, I'm like, not tonight.

Like, come on. And I think, look, some of this.

Is obviously, like, the ebb and flow of desire. We're not on all the time. But for women who are really struggling with this, it's not ever there, and they wish it really was there, and.

So they'll protect their partner in not telling them. And I spoke one time. This is Fast Forward, after it was approved. And I was speaking at this meeting. And after the meeting, I was in a JW Marriott. I went to the Starbucks, and this guy behind me in line tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned back to him, and he said, I think what you're doing is really cool. And I was like, that is so nice. And then I thought, how do you know what I'm doing? Like, I was sort of surprised by it. And he said, I was the AV guy in your meeting where you just spoke. And I said, oh, my God, that's great. Thank you so much. And then he, like. It's like he held onto my arm for a second, like, one beat too long, and I teared up. And I knew something. He wanted to say something. And he said, I just got divorced. And I said, I'm really sorry to hear that. He goes, yeah, but I think this was it. And he said, and I never considered. It wasn't about me.

Oh, my God.

And I just thought, oh, my God. This is a man's perspective who was certain that because she never responded, she never initiated anymore, that she didn't love him, that she wasn't attracted to him, that she wasn't. And none of us should be surprised, right? We all want to be wanted by our significant others. And the fact that this was something totally outside of her control, it was biochemistry that she can't will away by taking a bubble bath and suddenly turn back on. It just was heartbreaking to me. And that is the truth. I hear those stories every day. I have to tell one more. I was speaking at another thing in San Francisco in 2019, and I got off stage, and a woman came running, like, running across the stage or across the audience to come speak to me. And I was like, tell me what? And she said. She goes, I had to meet you. I had to speak with you. And I said, okay, what is it? She goes, me and my husband were literally with divorce lawyers. We both lawyered up. She said we'd stopped having sex. That was a big tension in our relationship. Everything else, all the other resentments built from that. So that was it. And she goes. And we literally were with our attorneys already. I was sitting in my car one day and she heard a podcast I was on and she said, and I thought, what if this is it?

And she went to her doctor, she got the medication, she said, can I take a picture with you to show my husband? Because we stayed together. And I cried my eyes open.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I just never, you know, those both made me tear up because I'm just. How many things too that just even this could open up communication. Just the idea that this is out there opens up a line of communication of like maybe something you wouldn't talk. Cause there is so much around it. I've even experienced this with my partner. Just where it's like verbalizing what you're going through is the start of helping anything, right? Because I think with so many women, we're so afraid to talk about it. I find really high achieving women as well, like all of a sudd this conversation opens up, someone's brave enough to say it at a table of like, really, like at this, you know, I look around, I'm like, holy crap, all these women are amazing. And then this conversation starts because it's something on their mind and it's something important and it's something that's bothering them or it's something that's actually really affecting their personal life. And I can't believe how many women that it affects. And I would. I'll tell you that a lot of them, what I've heard at the table, think this is conversations even years prior to this. Like, they think it's them and they don't think that they can be successful because their brain is too busy or they want too many things and they wonder if they can have it all. Like they think it's them or their brain is busy.

I'm going to tell you, Lori, so you said magical words there. This actually affects more women who are very type A. The information processing part of their brain is going, right? These are the women who are lying in bed going, I got to do this tomorrow. I got to do this tomorrow. I got to do. It's like their brain never quiets for sex. And that's actually how we work biologically.

We in essence Shut all the tabs.

In our brain to respond to sexual cues. So if you're one of the people who can't shut the tabs in your brain, it wouldn't be surprising. If this is like the chemistry issue. You need this sort of magical balance to respond to sexual cues.

But it's a third of women in.

Surveys who have low desire for sexual. And it really is, to your point.

I mean, we will talk about our physical health, right? We have come a long way to talk about our mental health, but I am going to say our sexual health is the third piece of that perfect triangle. It really is so important, and we don't talk about it, and we are ashamed. And I think if there is one thing that everybody who is listening takes away from this is you deserve to own your pleasure in the bedroom and in the boardroom. And it is something that is absolutely like, you're entitled to that. And I want you to speak up. If something feels like it's not right. It's not you. It's very well documented. This is very common, and just ask your doctor about it.

So it's so amazing what you're doing. I absolutely love it because I do think it's something that is just. It's so crazy because we've evolved so much, and I feel like looking on Instagram, we talk about everything, but we kind of don't. We actually still don't. And I think, you know, women who are either in their 30s and 40s right now, like, still, it's something that maybe growing up, that wasn't you for sure. I don't know about you, but in my household, there was zilcho talk about sex or let alone desire. Like, if you had desire that was squashed. Like, keep that away. That's like, you want to act like you don't even experience that. So it's just such an interesting concept because it's like to feel desire is also to feel desired. They have to go hand in hand. So if you're not feeling it, it's hard to. It's all an energy exchange. Right? So it's kind of like you can't blame one or the other. It's both. Individual people have to figure out their desire, which is a crazy thought.

It is. It's so true. No, I'm with you. We don't talk about it. And even younger, even younger, we're not. There's still. Sex is still taboo, right? It exists at the extremes. It's either like this crazy, hyper sexualized, so overt, which Are like, so many of us are like, oh, like, I.

Don'T want to talk about sex like that.

Or it's, you know, you can't talk about it at all, and it's bad. And to your point on pleasure, I.

Think we're really like.

If you think about, we went through sort of the sexual revolution. How do you do that and end at reproduction? Like, you don't. You go into the bedroom, right? Many times in your life, only a few of them probably to reproduce, and I hope always for pleasure. I really do. And I think that's just, again, a piece of your power is your sexuality. And I think owning that piece, this.

Is what makes me so sad.

I think for women who struggle in silence with this, they mute that part of themselves. They're shutting that down. And I would say to you, this isn't really a conversation just about sex, right? This is a conversation about how you tap into your whole kind of authentic self. And I think if you mute that whole piece of yourself, you lose a little bit of how you show up in the room, your power, your feeling of connection to others. And that's really that sort of ripple effect once you don't address something like this.

Man, you're making me think of so many different areas of our life that we kind of, like, mute out where pleasure was meant to be. But we kind of, like, took it out of the equation, which is so interesting, because, you know, I grew up in a family where it was like, we took pleasure out of so many things, whether it was, like, hard work or, you know, like, we just never talked about it except for in the area of food. Like, so I feel like the more that we kind of don't find and seek and become super proactive for our pleasure, not only in this area, but in every area. Like, how can I make my workday more pleasureful? Whether that's turning on music or a candle or whatever that is. Like, how can I make an experience that doesn't, you know, seem or that seems like a chore, Right? Because that's what I hear from most women. Sex feels like a chore after a while or whatever that looks like. Sometimes if you're really busy, like, you're gonna start putting that pleasure all in one place. That's probably not healthy.

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Where do I get it from? It's just a crazy thought of like wow. This is another way to like spread. Spread that out. Spread the joy Spread the pleasure. So no pun intended. There's a lot of funny puns there. We're going to let it go.

You're with so many landmines when you're talking to me always. And when I'm talking, I'm like, oh, no, that sounds like innuendo.

You're like, that's what I'm going to. By the way, we are in the middle of the craziest thunderstorm I've pretty much ever seen. So if you're hearing it and flashes, have no fear. As long as we keep our connection, we're good. We'll just pick up.

Okay.

So so many questions for you. You know, you've done incredible things. You went from what you said was a fairly normal career into something quite large, risky, what would be considered maybe even crazy. I'm sure people had said that to you. So what I would love to know, just like with growing up and how you grew up, what were three belief systems growing up that you had to break and unlearn in order to become the woman that you are today? So whether that was from family belief system or family patterns, what were three of them that you had to break to become the woman that you are?

Oh, that's good. So first of all, I have to make a comment because you said people that had to be a crazy idea. Absolutely. And people told me that. And you know what? I'm so appreciative for that because I look at a landscape today of entrepreneurship that is way like, cooler, sexier. Right. It's kind of cool to be an entrepreneur. And I think about how we keep praise on ideas before execution. And I'm so grateful that people told me, like, you're insane, this will never happen. Because all of that became part of the fuel and the drive as opposed to being celebrated before I delivered. Sorry I commented. You saying that made me think of it from a family perspective. I am Irish Catholic and I love to say, hence why I got into sex. And my mom is like, please don't say that.

But.

But it's so true. So that really, I mean, some of the topics like that I've taken on absolutely had to unlearn, if you will, some of the narrative from when I was younger. What are some of the other things I've had to unlearn?

I think probably I moved my whole childhood, so I moved every year to a different from the fourth grade through my senior year of high school. And I think when you're in that kind of formative age, you tend to go in and think about how you win the favor of the group. And I think one of the things that you have to make a conscious choice on is I'm not for everyone. And that's okay. And especially if you're going to do things that defy convention that are really. You walk to a different beat than other people, that's okay. And I think probably getting comfortable with that was a piece of unlearning. And I'm gonna work on the third. But I feel like as I'm sitting here thinking about it, I almost need to have gratitude a bit toward my family in that my parents were. My dad has an expression, he does this with my nieces and nephews. So my dad was never about. He was always that you have to be smart, right? You have to be resourceful. In essence, street smart more than anything else. And if my nieces or nephews say anything, he says, now why can you do it? And he makes them say back to them, because I'm an eckart. So I grew up with a dad that would say, now why can you do this? Because I'm an eckert. And so I think about the positives of that with my dad in particular, who was about, you can do it, you are smart, you can figure it out. And to that extent, my brothers and I have two big brothers and we, you know, you always compare notes, like when you're older, about the things that happened in childhood. And we were talking not that long ago about how when we would ask our parents for help with homework, they would always give us the exact same response. So, you know, you're like wanting them, like just one gimme answer, right? I have this homework, tell me one answer to this or help me with this one thing. And any question we would ask them, they would give us the same four words. And they were, what do you think? And I have to tell you, it was infuriating at the time. And now looking back at sort of the design of that, by doing that, they basically were saying, you're going to have to go figure it out for yourself. And I think what that at least conditioned in us is your first step as a kid, I think being told that is to go ask the next person. So you automatically got conditioned to go and ask other people, if you will, for their opinions. And then you kind of had to form your own. So that he did teach us to be resourceful. And so fortunately, that was the one gift I had, I think, coming in and not something I had to undo.

Oh, I love that. So much. I love that question because even as I'm, you know, we've had different teams throughout the years, but even as I'm building a new separate team that I get to really dream up of how I want it, I've actually been asking that question. So that just reinforced because I also think it shows that person or showed you showed all the kids that their opinion is also valued. Like what you think is valuable and what you think is what I want. I want to know what you would do, you know. So it's an interesting, it's like a two sided, amazing question to be asking. I love that putting that one in the pocket for when I have kids.

Let's take a quick break to talk about Gusto. If you're a small business owner like me, you probably wear a lot of hats and some of those hats are totally great. But some, like filing taxes and running payroll are not exactly most of our zones of genius. Because of this, these, these tasks can become time consuming and a total headache. Now you can tame the chaos of payroll, benefits and HR with Gusto. I've teamed up with Gusto and they're offering you three months free when you run your first payroll@gusto.com Lori having multiple businesses to manage, between myself and my husband Chris, there are so many moving parts when it comes to HR and other important administrative tasks. Gusto keeps payroll, benefits, HR and management tools all in one easy place so you can stay on top of it all without juggling numerous subscriptions and logins. On average, it takes 11 minutes to run your payroll with Gusto and you keep track of all W2s, 1099s and other employee documentation all online. Gusto also automatically files and pays state, local and federal payroll taxes. Such a relief, you guys. Gusto was built for small businesses from the start. To help streamline your business operations, we're giving you three months free when you run your first payroll at gusto.com forward slash Lori go ahead and give it a try@gusto.com now let's get back to the episode.

What were the habits that you needed to break in order to really create all the success that you have created? What were some maybe bad habits that you needed to break through?

Overthinking it. Overthinking it. And I think that and actually even I'll pin that maybe to the third. Maybe you just add question asked a different way is the perfectionistic tendencies right? Win the favor if you will be at my parents or whoever else it was like had to be perfect. It had to be the best. It had to be this. And I think that is perfection. It's the bit of what would you tell your younger self? Right. I would say the perfectionistic tendencies are just slowing you down from getting to where you're destined to go. And I think when I started doing all of this, you have a tendency to think, oh, can I do this? I don't have all the answers. And what has become so clear to me and Laurie, you probably know I say this all the time, is success does not come from having all the answers. It comes from having the courage.

And it is that courage to act. And so that was really. That's a habit that, you know, still to this day, like, I can start the wheels turning, and I'm like, nope, go. Like, we're going to go and it's going to change anyway, right? Your vision of where. Your perfect vision of where things are going to go will never quite play out in entrepreneurship. I guarantee you it will not play out that way. So you might as well not become too obsessed about it. And I think the other thing is really flipping a bit the notion of confidence to competence. And because we talk a lot as women about confidence, right? Like, oh, look at her confidence walking.

Into the room and this and that.

And yet I knew that in my experience, like, you know, my palms were sweating. I'm feeling all those nerves, like, oh, well, that defies our notion. The confidence is swagger where you have no care. I don't. I reject that. I think it's about competence that you walk into the room knowing, I've got this. Nobody knows it better than I know it, and I am absolutely capable if I don't know something in the room of figuring that out. And so that was a big piece. Making that shift in my mind made me not. Made me perform my best, I guess, in the room.

So good. I'm just. Yeah. So in that season right now of just, like, the things changing, things looking so different than I thought, and expectations, you know, like, needing to release quickly those expectations and thoughts of what it is, being super nimble. So that brings me to some questions just to share with people, because I think some of the biggest things that I hear, especially from women are just, you know, they'll go and ask for help. And they're like, yeah, but they said no. Or, you know, I asked and they never.

I never heard back.

And I'm like, but how many times did you follow up? And, you know, I am in a season. I will be honest. I have some, like, texts out and emails out because I knew I need to ask people who have been in this industry before. I'm not getting the answers that I need right now to make smart decisions. So I literally have asked some people 5, 10, 15 times. I legitimately have to breathe and pray before I send my 10th email sometimes because they said yes and now they're not showing up. And I'm like, I know they're just busy, so I have to stay on it. If I want this dream to come true, I have to stay on it.

We need to talk about that.

Because women just, like, they don't want to. They don't want people to not like them. They don't want to feel like a stalker. I mean, I feel like stalker level right now. But then when I asked guys, they're like, I don't know, keep sending. They said yes. And I'm like, wow, it's a different mentality and mindset. So can we talk about what it actually looks like to bust through some of these walls? Because I'm telling you, they are crazy walls and they feel like they're not coming down.

Yes, perfect.

Your sense of humor, it's getting there, right? It's really, it's. It's not personal. And I think that that's part of.

It, is we are conditioned to not be a bother.

Yeah, exactly.

Seen as a bother. And you just can't, you have to reframe it for yourself. That this is, you know, this is my passion. And it would be a disservice to them if I didn't have them included in this because it's going to be huge. And it's going to be big. And I think as soon as you think about it that way, you lose a little bit of that piece. And I think your point on follow up is huge. And there is no such thing as anyone that you meet. You talk a lot about network, Lori, and I love it. Everybody you meet has a possibility to do something incredible with you in your life.

Right.

And so how do you keep in touch with them? Very intentionally. I'll tell you a crazy story. So my fiance built a tech company. He's also. We could only be together, being both entrepreneurs with how crazy we are.

You get this. Totally, totally get it.

And so when I was first dating him and I was telling some friends who were like Silicon Valley type investors.

They'Re like, who are you dating?

And I would say his name and they'd say, oh, I know Justin.

And I'm like, what? How do you know Justin? I met Justin in Raleigh, North Carolina. I'm like, how do you know Justin? Were you an investor? And they're like, no, no. But I always got his updates, and every person he met along the way, they said, no, they may have never invested. He put them on the list.

Oh, my God, I love that.

Send them a little, little update. And I got to tell you, I hadn't done this either, Lori. And I thought, this is genius. So he would always say, here's how we're doing. Here's the latest and greatest. And his list was huge. And by the way, these folks knew Justin and they knew exactly how the company was doing. And they repeated back to me and think how many people came into his fold that to your point, they were just busy. It wasn't on their radar. But four months from now, they're like, oh, I need to call Justin.

Wow.

So I love that lesson to keep in the follow up. Treat it like you're inviting them into the experience and you want them to be part of it because they were kind enough to give you their time. You admire their expertise, whatever that is. Nobody will ever fault you for keeping them in the loop.

Oh, I love that so much. It's brilliant to give them just, like, the updates, too. Like, the excitement.

Right?

We always. We have, like, our, like, core word of. One of our core values in all of our businesses is enthusiasm. Like, just to keep that enthusiasm for. I'm telling you, I will take an enthusiastic person over. Someone who has the crazy credentials and gets. You know, I don't even know. It's because enthusiasm is like. It gets things done. It keeps relationships. It keeps excitement on rough days, which is most of them.

It's just.

It's. Yeah, I think that's. That's an amazing. I'm taking notes from.

I have. So I'm with you 100% on when you hire in your teams, to your point, versus you can have the most perfect pedigree ever for the job. But if you don't have the it factor, if you don't have that kind of motor that is born out of enthusiasm to show up. And I think there are questions you can ask that get at how early did that kind of show up in this person's life? I was talking to someone about this, and he shared a story with me that stuck with me so much, I have to share it again. He was obsessed with how it was.

During COVID and these reports were coming.

Out about dogs being able to sniff Covid. Like the same dogs that can do drugs or this or that. And they're all different breeds, right? There's beagles and labs and German Shepherds. And so he was obsessed with, like, how do they know? Like, how do these dogs have instinct.

When there are all of these different.

Breeds and everything else?

So he went and ended up getting.

To, you know, some elite trainer in the police force.

And they said, we go to the pound, we see which dog is jumping the highest.

No.

And we pick the dog who is the most enthusiastic.

No way.

And we train them. And I was like, I love that story. Because that he. He had been interviewing me, and he was asking me questions about how I hire people, and he told me that story back, and he goes, aren't you basically picking the person that's jumping the highest? And absolutely. For any idea, I would pick the person with the most enthusiasm.

Oh, that's so interesting and so good to know. Oh, so good. Okay, so as women, what muscles do you think that we need to build to be in business or to have a successful business? Have fun. All of the things.

A couple things. So I'll pick three. Curiosity. Constantly be flexing that muscle. And if you haven't read the book, a Curious Mind, read it. And it's all about having a curiosity conversation with somebody once a week. Somebody who's completely from a different walk of life than you, a different industry than you, just somebody whose brain you can pick. I mean, look, we're having a curiosity. We're learning from each other right now. Now that to me, of the most successful people I know, who've done the most extraordinary things, if there's one common thread, they are insatiably curious. And I love that about them because it means you're never bogged down in only one thought of how to do something. You're constantly willing to learn and apply. So I think for all of us, flex your curiosity muscle. I think the other piece is natural. It's resilience, right? We have to be willing to just get punched right in the face and stand back up with a smile and.

Be like, watch this, watch this.

And I think it can't come from a place of anger or frustration. I think it has to come from a place of kind of amusement, if you will. At least for me, I think I had such a crazy ride and so many curve balls, like all entrepreneurs, right? These absolute go to zero moments where the company is finished, I can't make payroll, whatever that may be. And there has to be this way of just, like, laughing in the face of that and going right through it. I Think that's a big piece of it. And then I think the final piece is. I don't know that women have to flex this muscle. I mean, I think we're gifted with a certain empathy, but I do think an underrated value in leaders is humility. And I think that particularly if we try to overcompensate for the imposter syndrome that sometimes we feel or anything else, you can lose some of that. And that isn't. Always show up as authentically yourself. Right. Always show up in the room. And if you don't know it, say it. And if you need to cry, cry. And if any of those things, and if you're compromising any of that because you're trying to be something for somebody else to fit an image that you've told yourself a story that that's who you have to be, it's not going to be abundantly successful. And look. And if you're in a room and you do any one of those things and those people reject you for it, they're not your people. Go into the next room. So I think those are at least my takeaways. But curiosity tops my list.

Oh, that's so good. I've already been on some calls where I'm like, I literally have. Yeah, it's just literally feel tears in my eyes. And I'm like, well, we're just gonna. Like, you can't. I would never be able to. I'm a person who literally can't fake it through that. So I've given myself the permission that that's gonna just have to be the way that I build. But I think that's so powerful for other people to hear because I don't even. I mean, I haven't necessarily even shared that yet. Of like, yeah, I just did a couple calls where I got numbers, and I'm like, okay, this is how I feel right now. But I know I'm gonna go and, like, work process through this, and I'll be back more powerfully. But, like, it's real. It's real.

Like, it's real and it's. And it's okay. And I want to say that to women, because we don't.

We.

We always are comparing ourselves to, like, the model that we've seen.

And the model we've seen is male.

It is. That we have all seen, unfortunately. Like, I like that we're now seeing different types of models, but I'll give an example. I was in a pitch this woman, Jessie, who I tell this story a lot. Jesse always sort of laughs, like, can you tell me a story about me? But she came into a pitch and it was me and a group of like very classic investors, right? Exactly what you would imagine. I'm sort of the lone woman in pink in the room and just. And she starts to cry in the middle of the pitch. And she just was overwhelmed in that moment. I think of like the magnitude of everything, like hanging in the balance, right. And so my reaction was really simple. We walked out of the room and the guys were in actually in my space, sitting in my hot pink chairs, looking at the companies I was looking at. And like they were kind of watching my lead. And we walked out and they said to me, what did you think when she cried? And I said, I thought I'm going to invest in her. And they were like, what? And I said that showed me that she will wake up every morning earlier than anyone else, she will go to bed later than anyone else, and she will do everything within her power to make this dream a reality. That her showing the state. Right. And I think we just. It's okay like that we're that emotionally attached to these ideas. It's part of the power of women with these solutions and we solve problems that we probably have experienced or, you know, we're solving the problem for our friends who have like, we are very driven by that empathetic problem solving. And so for her, like, why she was doing it was so personal. And all of that emotion came into the room and it made. Makes me love her even more as a founder.

Oh, God damn it, Jesse. I have tears in my eyes.

I know I have tears in my eyes telling the story because I felt all of that. I felt it right alongside her and it makes me so enthusiastic to help her make this a reality.

Oh, this just. These are those moments that I'm in a bit of a rough patch right now just with in the best way. But it's whatever. I'm at a block that I know will be busted through in the next two weeks. But this is why we get these little godwinks and this one, one for me today. So thank you. Of just. I have like such fiery passion about getting women in those seats of the decision making table because it probably would have been another room that was turned down because we just work differently. And it's okay. I love men. I'm obsessed with them. But we need, we just need more women in those pink chairs like, who understand it.

We absolutely do. And I'll tell you, for me, I'm so. I share that Passion with you so deeply, because it's just. We're always benefited by a different lens, right? A way that somebody will look at something differently. The guys that walked out of the room with me that day will consider it very differently if somebody cries in a room with them, because they sort of took my perspective and were like, holy shit. Like, we've never thought about it that way. And they're not bad people. They just process it differently, and it opens their eyes to have, you know, the hot pink sitting at the table with them. I had a man who was so important, I will say, like, his validation when I was raising money for, you know, for Addie and for Sprout would have really meant the world. It would have been like getting the, you know, the absolute anointment. And he laughed me out of the room. Like, I mean, brutalized me in a room. And. And, you know, I walked out of that room and I thought. I didn't sit with. I didn't sit with the heaviness of that and the anger over it. And it's funny. My girlfriends would be more pissed about these things on my behalf that I would. And so fast forward, like, years later, I sell the company for a billion dollars in cash right now. I had to. That's when I had, like, the Justin spirit. I had to, like, send out a little note to some of those people, like, remember when I mean with humor, right? I gave you a billion reasons to believe in me now. And he basically came in. He was sitting in the boardroom, not actually with Jesse, but he came in to visit me. And it would be very easy to say to somebody like that we didn't have a relationship. We had one interaction to say, f you. No chance after you treated me that way. And I said, please, by all means, I'd love for you to visit. And he came in, and his classic gray suit. He's sitting across in my hot pink chair, my hot pink boardroom. And he says, cindy, take a look at this. And he reaches down, lifts up, like, his pant leg to show me he's wearing hot pink socks.

Oh, my God.

And he's, you know, in his 60s. Like, there was this moment, like, I will not make that mistake again. And by not holding onto it and letting him come was to say, this is how we change. People aren't intentionally, consciously, maliciously against you. They just have blind spots. And your challenge is, how do you open their eyes?

Oh, my God. I didn't expect to cry this much on this one. It's so powerful. That's why it's a new concept taking root. It's new possibility for women, which opens up. I mean. I mean, it opens up everything. It really does. It's a whole other world of opportunity. And that is exciting. That is so exciting. It's things that we didn't even know we were good at that we can not only be good at, but we can just thrive and help other people find their zone of genius. Because there's nothing worse than feeling unfulfilled or not knowing your purpose. And a lot of it is because our purpose is buried underneath these things that we're supposed to be doing. But stories are old stories and patterns and beliefs need to be broken first. You're absolutely doing that. And, you know, in terms of that story, I think that's such beautiful perspective. Because my husband, a lot of times, like, I'll be irritated or super upset on his behalf. Maybe a guy treated him a certain way, or maybe something's going on in some of his friendships where there's also business going on. And, you know, I'll be like, oh, my God, like, aren't you mad? Isn't he, like, burning bridges? And he's like, he's like, no, I see his little brother, boy, and he literally says that. He's like, it's just. I know.

I just.

I see his little boy. Like, he's gotta be seen. He needs to be. He's throwing a temper tantrum right now. And he's like, he literally is like, I think I'm here just to like, you know, show him how you, like, you can pull. Like, it doesn't need to be that way. Like, you can do business different. And I'm always like, oh, my God. And he just keeps. Keeps his relationships and gives everyone a second chance. And that's been one of the biggest things for me is like, yeah, he gets irritated and takes that as like, maybe some fuel or different things. But it's just like that, Cindy, what you just shared, like, not closing off those people. And yes, you can be upset, but using that for fuel in a powerful way and knowing that you were his greatest lesson, like in that moment when you're feeling that maybe so much anger towards that person, maybe in a moment or whatever, it is like to know that you also get to be that person's biggest eye opening, beautiful lesson. And there could be like, that's what I'm gonna picture. I'm gonna picture those moments where I get to go have wine with those people later and have been like a great, you know, A great con later.

So.

Absolutely.

So fun. Well, I could literally talk to you all day long. Is there anything on your heart that's coming up that you want to share?

I just think, you know, we've had such an emotional conversation. I'm so appreciative of that. I think this is what it's all about, is us authentically sharing these stories, sharing the lessons learned with one another, and basically saying to each other, like, whatever the story is that you're telling yourself, are you sure that's not a story that is laden with misconception, laden with some kind of societal narrative? Because you actually know, I think in your heart that you've got everything that it takes to see this all the way through. Will everything go the way that you plan? Absolutely not. But. But you can see it to, like, its final conclusion, win or lose. And you should have absolute pride in doing that.

So good. Cindy, where can we find you? Follow you get the little pink pill, all the things.

So first of all, talk to your doctor. Really, if you have an interest with your or having any issues and frustrated by your low libido, talk to your doctor Phil's called Addy. You can find out more information, including at safety information on addy.com I hope you'll follow me. IndyPinkCEO and if you have a great idea disruptive first for women and pitch us at thepinkubator so you can find us@thepinkubator.com I love it so much, you guys.

One of the greatest gifts that we can do for our guests is to give her a shout out. Go follow her and then let her know when you upload the story of the podcast, let her know what your biggest takeaway was from the podcast. So the impact that she made, maybe it was something she said. Maybe like me, you cried four separate occasions. And it felt so good to feel like anything is possible after this. So you guys definitely, right now, stop what you're doing, go give her a follow because truly you're. It will impact your life. So, Cindy, thank you so much for being here and you guys, we will see you next time.

Bye Bye. Thank you.

Lori.

Don't.