From $200K to $60M: Lessons in Building Scalable Brands with Alison Wyatt

These amazing exits are happening, and they are huge. And the numbers keep hitting records as these founders exit, because women are predominantly the consumers out there. Right. That are making the decision. So if you have a woman who is speaking to female desires and problems and challenges, and it's just. It's going to work.

Allie, welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Yes. You guys, we were sharing a brain today because she walked in with the blazer I was going to wear, and I was like, this is great that I have all the outfits to change into, but I'm just so excited to be here in person with you. Last time I got to be in person with you was at one of your events. Yes, yes. The Female founder Collective. Where was that? It was this beautiful.

Like, it was our retreat.

Yes, Your retreat.

Maddie's Tavern. Oh, Maddie's Tavern.

I couldn't remember the.

Which is now, like, popped off.

It is so cute now. I see it online everywhere, and I'm.

Like, I was there.

It was the best event. It was so great. Aw. Yeah. You're just. You're someone who is such a cheerleader for women, and that's really what I want to get into today. So I'm really excited to talk about Female founder collective, how that all started, the 10th house, all the things that you're doing amazing. But I. I want to go back to where you started because you've worked for a lot of really big companies.

Yeah.

You've worked for goop, refinery 29, the knot. Tell me about those experiences. And just at what point did you start Female founder Collective?

So I would say I wanted to be in media. I didn't actually know I wanted to be in media until I was even rewinding before that. I started off in fashion. I thought fashion was going to be the thing for me. I realized very quickly that it wasn't as sort of creative and strategic of an industry as I thought.

What kind of fashion? We need to know. Were you designing? Were you?

No.

What did you want to do?

That was probably part of the problem too. Like, let's, like, it was, like, fashion light. I thought fashion, retail was really cool. I was actually at Liz Claiborne Corp, which, like most gen zers listening might be like, that's so not cool at the time.

It was at the time, you guys. So cool.

It was really cool. It was like the place to be coming out of college. It was like the job to get. And that's the job that I got, and it was. They had, like, Juicy Tour at the time again, dating myself.

And so cool.

And so cool. So cool. Like, every. I mean, now it's cool again.

I know, right? Like, the car. It's so cute.

Really cool again. So it was. It had, like, Juicy Couture. We had Sigrid Olsen, which is a label that very few people know. There was a number of different brands that was, like, they licensed. And so we were basically. My group was in charge of multiple brands within the umbrella. And so I was really excited to get to work on, like, all different types of products for different demographics. And I was in merchandising, which I thought was going to be so awesome. We were going to get to pick everything that was going to be sold on the floors at places like Bloomingdale's and Saks and Macy's and all the different major retailers, when at the end of the day, we actually just were backing into numbers. It was all a formula. And so there was actually almost no creativity to it or no strategy to it. It was just entering style numbers and formulas into a computer system. So I got very bored very quickly. Yeah. And I'd done an internship in college at Time Inc. Which Time Inc. Was the umbrella company for InStyle magazine. We had Time magazine, obviously, People. And I worked in the law department, which was really cool because I got to see all these contracts being done, which sounds sort of boring as well. But it was actually very interesting because you're. We were dealing with talent. So it was like, what could they put on the COVID of specific magazines? And, you know, what were the rights and usages behind all of those things? And so we were actually talking to talent and their attorneys and negotiating those deals. So it was a very fun.

Well, you got to learn a lot.

Yeah, I learned a ton. A ton. And also, like, with media, there's a lot of rules and regulations. And so, you know, when there would be a major story done or major shoot that was done, I was doing some research around, like, how could we use those things? And just to make sure that none of the titles got in trouble. Long story short with that, loved that experience. But I just so happened to be super bored in my fashion job. And I'm. Or my fashion job, merchandising. And I'm walking down the street and I ran into an old boss who I worked for at Time Inc. And he was like, I think that you would love media. And I was like, but that was never my plan. You know, it's not something I necessarily wanted to do. I ended up going and meeting with somebody that he recommended I meet with, that worked at InStyle magazine and the rest was history. I fell in love with her. And so I always look back to that moment and as you're sort of coming out of college or if you're at a point in your life where you're like, I'm not sure what's next. What was helpful for me is that I wanted the person I was working for. I wanted her job. Right. And I think just looking at the person you're working with, if, or at a. If you're at a company, if you don't want that person's job who's ahead of you, or you don't like the work that you're doing, then you're not gonna wanna stay there. Right. So that started my trajectory into media. I was in print as digital was born. And so it sort of like when AI came around, I happened to be the young person on the desk. And so I learned a ton about it. And cut to InStyle magazine. It was a year in, I was an assistant. And after a year you typically moved on. And I decided I wanted to go some that was really on the cutting edge of digital media as well as print media. So I went to the knot. They had this really robust digital platform. They were doing life stage marketing, which I thought was super smart. And I was there for a few months. And then a friend of mine called me and was at Elle magazine. And I really didn't love the bridal industry. It's its own animal. And I ended up going over there and actually leading the launch of their digital properties, which again, it was like all in the span of a year. All of a sudden I was this digital wizard.

So you like, just had learned it?

Yeah. But you were ahead.

This is so cool though. But because you were still ahead of like what everyone else knew when you go in, like this professional, like, I'm really just a year ahead of you guys.

Yeah, literally. And I think it's also because if you looked at the sort of split of revenue between digital media and print media, print was still like 99.9% and it was just digital people were starting to ask about. It's like again, right now where we are with AI and then it happened really fast that all of a sudden digital became the much more important thing and I just happened to be in the right position. So I'm. I'm at Elle and I ended up like getting the entire L group, which was like Elder Core, and then it was at this company called Hachette. Philippaki Media is what owned it at the time. And so I started getting all these other titles where they were like, oh, we want you to be in charge of digital for the whole corporation. And I was like, 25 guys.

How are you feeling at that moment? Are you like, this is awesome, or this is overwhelming, or what am I doing?

I don't. I don't know what in me thought that I was capable of doing this, but I had, like, the opposite of imposter syndrome.

It's funny.

It's like, I've gotten older, I get more imposter syndrome. But I was like, you know, totally. I got this, like, great. Give me all the things, and I'm gonna do amazing with it. Like, I wish I had that kind of confidence now.

There's something so powerful about not having a lot to lose when you're young, though. Like, I felt kind of that same way. I was just like, well, yeah, here we go.

Yeah, here we go. Like, why not try? You know, it's like I'm living in a cardboard box of an apartment where, like, you could blow the wall over. Yeah. With one breath. But it's like, why not? I was making no money, and I. And I. And I also was hungry to make more money.

Yeah.

Right. Is like, I was at the bottom, so why not take on more and see if I could do it? And I don't know why. I just really believed that I could. But it was also because no one else around me, I genuinely believed, and I genuinely did have more knowledge than the people around me. Just because I was the only person paying attention to digital media at the time. Me and my other colleagues that were also, like, 25 and 26, we were like, look, this is so cool. And so we ended up in charge of this massive P and L at a very young age. And we took L basically as far as it could go. And the funny thing is, at that point in time, like, this is how little was known about digital media at the time. And maybe not everybody listening will understand this, but I met with the CFO of the corporation, and he was this French guy from, literally and from France, like, running the US market. And this was, again, it was a major corporation. Right. We had multiple floors of a building in midtown Manhattan. Just to give a sense, I'm meeting with him. Here I am again, like, 25, and he's like, I know that you have doubled revenue year over year. I need you to do it again. But I Need you to do it in six months. And I'm like, we're sold out. And he's like, what do you mean you're sold out? Because with a print magazine, if you notice, like in a September issue of Vogue, the book is really thick, right? Because they just keep adding ad pages, and that's how you get up a ton of revenue for that timeframe. With digital media, your only inventory are the eyeballs that are coming to your site. So if you don't have enough people coming, you can't sell anymore.

Ah.

So we're sitting there and we're like, we're selling all of these spaces. And we had totally sold out of all of our space. And I was like, I can't possibly do that. So he's like, sorry, like, too bad. Like, you're gonna have to figure it out. So I'm given this huge sort of ultimatum by my boss's boss's boss, and I'm sitting there trying to figure it out, and I realized that I was gonna have to build a network, which at the time, like, was not necessarily a thing, but glam.com, i don't know if you remember them, they owned a bunch of different blog sites, so they were rolling up sites. So that's what we decided we would do, is we'd create this network of sites. And one of. And this is kind of like a long story, but it's sort of the evolution of media. One of the sites that we decided to roll up was Refinery 29. And so I got to know the founders, and as I'm getting to know the founders, I'm like, you have an incredible opportunity from a business perspective that is still untapped. So I'm like, I don't want to roll you up. I want to come work with you guys. And so I left Elle to go as the first non founding employee. It was a really big time.

Wow. Yeah.

To go run revenue at Refinery 29, when they were all in a basement. There were four founders, they were in a basement. And those still were sort of the most fun days. And ultimately we built that business. This is a big sort of shortcut. But from at the time when I joined, it was 200k to 60 million when I left. And then I got pulled to the west coast because my husband was living out here and I was pregnant. I waited till seven months pregnant, and then I came out here and took a CRO job with goop. And that was when GOOP was starting, when Gwyneth had brought the business From London to Los Angeles. And that was the new, the new evolution of that. What was cool about Refinery was that we weren't reliant on ad inventory. We kind of created this hybrid between an agency model where we were creating whole marketing campaigns and multimedia programs and experiential on behalf of clients instead of just selling media. Interesting. So we were trying to get them to hire us for multi million dollar deals in order to be like their, their marketing engine to the millennial consumer.

Can you explain what that would look like? Quick, like I'm someone who comes to you for that. Just explain that to me.

Yeah. So it would depend on the goals that they had as a marketing org. But instead of just meeting with their media teams, we would meet with a CMO of the company and we would try to understand, okay, are you trying to drive sales? Do you need more consumers that are between this age and this age? What are the sort of psychographics? And then we would help them come up with a program that delivered on media through the Refinery29 channels. We would then take a bunch of. At the time it was bloggers, right? Not social media influencers, although it started to a little bit at the end of my time there. But we would aggregate a number of bloggers to be these more sort of influencer voices on their behalf to develop content both in store, if they had stores. So we'd have those influencers come to the store, then we'd have them, you know, do end caps and styling for the store. We would do microsites on their website that were these sort of curated collections from these influencers and also from Refinery29 editors. And then we would do full scale, like very big events, either that were standalone or they would be in the stores themselves if they actually had a brick and mortar. So we were thinking about wherever the person was, how they consume media, how they consume content in general, and then also how they consume products and like, what are their needs and their pain points and how do we make a much more deep relationship happen between a specific brand and, and the consumer?

So was Refinery29 the last place you worked before going off and starting Female Founder Collective?

I actually did Girl Boss with Sophia Amoruso. Okay. And that started because when I was, I left goop, I started consulting for a number of different companies. And what I found is there were so many female founders out there starting businesses. And I started to look into the data and I was like, wow, there's actually more women starting businesses than men on a daily basis in the United States. But in addition to that, they're starting 2,000 businesses a day. Wow. Like, women had had enough with working for somebody else. Right. And having somebody dictate their schedule. And when I went to Girlboss, it was because I was consulting for them. And we were like, let's just try to do this event. A girl boss rally is what we called it. Let's try and see what this event does. And we sold out of tickets in two weeks. This was. I'm pregnant with my second child and about to give birth, and I'm like, I'm going to come on full time because we sold out of this thing. And then we had all these brands that wanted to work with us too. And it was sort of like this opportunity to. And it was at the time, too, where the political environment was getting very sensitive for women, and women were feeling really left out of the conversation. So that was sort of the zeitgeist. And we were really making women feel seen and heard, but also educating them at Girlboss. Ultimately, I left Girlboss because I saw the founder is really where you can make a deep impact on gender equality. That was. That was my sort of takeaway and hypothesis because there were all these women starting businesses. As mentioned, over 2,000 women a day in the United States. And that was only that, by the way, grew during COVID as people walked out of their jobs that didn't work for them anymore, and they didn't have the tools they needed to succeed. So they were really smart. They were doing really well at their job. Maybe they were capped, and they were not making quite the income that they wanted to make. But then at the end of the day, they had the talent, they had the willpower, they had the perseverance that's needed and the resilience needed to be a founder. They just didn't have the connections, they didn't have the capital resources, and they didn't have the general resources that you need when you become a founder. And you need them very quickly. Right. So we wanted to be that ecosystem that would catch them and really be a springboard as well.

So you were seeing. Because it was. It was attracting all of these women who were like, oh, my God, raising their hand. I have a business. I'm starting a business. But, yeah, but not having the network or the tools or the resources. I mean, when I went into my first race for what prior was not glossy, it was called light pink. We did a big pivot, but I looked around and I was like, I don't know where the women are like, I literally did not know where to look, where to have help. So I went to my husband and I'm like, tell me any of your friends we can go to dinner with who have sold companies so who have raised money so that I can navigate Because I'm asking my girlfriends. And the thing, Ellie, like, at the time I had amazing girlfriends too who were doing multiple seven figures and so many different things, but no one had been. They were all feeling like they had a bit of a ceiling in the digital space and in the coaching space and in the speaking space. And they were like, we don't know what to do next. Like, we don't because we don't have a skill set in products or selling a company or looking at it, you know, in a completely different way. So I'm so glad that you created what you created because it's so needed. So let's talk about what that is that you decided to create.

Yeah, so we tried a few things out initially because we're like, what is that sort of silver bullet? And there's no silver bullet, to be honest. But we found out there is not one. What's the closest thing to that that we can create? And we had a Slack group initially and so we were watching what are people talking about? What are they? What are the things that they need the most?

And who was in it? Just like new found it was, you.

Went through an application process and if you owned at least the majority of your business or if you had VC funding and you had majority rights and sort of veto power and control, then you were able to become a part of it. From an industry perspective is honestly all over the map. Like, we saw tech founders coming in, we saw product founders coming in, we saw service based founders coming in almost in identically equal increments. So what we ended up doing is we started splitting people out by cohort, which were specific to industry.

Okay.

And the reason why we did industry is because when you're thinking about glossy, you're sitting there and you're like, okay, so I need a co packer or I need. Which is like a term that somebody who is in fashion isn't even going to know what you're talking about. Right, Right. Or maybe somebody who has a SaaS business is like, what? I don't, I don't know what a co packer is. Or a consumer business needs a 3 PL, whereas a SaaS business or a media business, like, we don't. That was actually a term that I heard for the first time. Honestly, in female founder collective, right. Because we just, I never needed one before. So there's all these very specific resources that you will need as a founder that everybody is trying to find and they're trying to find the best possible one. The idea behind what we ultimately created, which is 10th House, is that community is at the foundation. And it's sort of like a ways for your founder journey. Right. When you are driving and there's crazy traffic, you have to look to the other drivers to give you the shortcuts. It's the same thing with being a founder and it's almost honestly, for those of you who are listening, who are parents, same thing as a parent. Like, you have to very quickly figure out there's so much on the line, you have to very quickly become an expert, because failure is big. It might mean that there goes all of your lifelong earnings and nobody obviously wants to be in that space. So how do you find vetted resources? And then a lot of things are conversational too, right? So you might want to talk through a scenario with somebody you probably found when you started glosi, and you're asking your friends who are specifically speakers or coaches about certain scenarios they don't know. Just because you don't have the context and it doesn't mean you're not smart and you're not experienced and you don't have tremendous expertise. It's just not expertise in that.

Right.

And I like to use the example of, I have an amazing group of CEOs and C suite women that I went to when we had our first person going on maternity leave. Because I was like, I need to come up with a real. I want it to be really fair. I want them to feel like they can really unplug and there's flexibility. But at the same time, I'm small business, right? And everybody's like, no, no, no, no, no. Table stakes these days is six months. And these are people that are coming from corporate. I'm like, the reality is you have to be able to marry it with the context and sort of the, the set of resources that you have. And I'm like, that would bankrupt us. Like, we could never have somebody out. Especially we had like one. It was like our one full time employee. I'm like, can't have her out for six months and then hire somebody that's going to be, you know, doing her job for her.

I just went through this. Yeah.

You know, it's, it's a lot. And so it's those types of things where context really matters. And that was really at the core of why we wanted to create the community first. And then we layer in education and then access to experts because those are the other pieces that are really important. I believe that we want to give people access to investors. We don't guarantee intros to investors, I want to be super clear on that. But we want to give them the tools to give themselves success and also understand the process of approaching investors so that they can ultimately transact in a, in a way that they feel really good about. But a lot of times I'll see that they're barking up the wrong tree or they're not investor ready when they are going out to raise funding. What might that mean? It might mean that your business isn't going to be a billion dollar business as you've scoped it out currently. Now, could it be? Maybe, but you're not going to. No investor is going to listen to you initially if you don't believe and you don't have a map for how you can be a billion dollar plus business from a VC best perspective. Because that's how their model just doesn't support that.

Right.

And so we talk a lot about that. Right. How do you get ready for venture investing or even how do you get angel investors to come on board? What does that process with communicating with an angel investor look like? What are the best practices? How do you make sure that you continue to show up? And even if they know the first time around, but they're your sort of dream investor, they come on board later when the time is right for them. But also how do you get in touch with your dream investors? You know, what does that outreach look like? What is, how do you demonstrate the value of the business that you're building and ultimately what it can do for them from a return perspective. So we talk a lot about some core principles in our programming inside of our membership so that people really can start to understand and they can jump in and out as they wish. Okay, I'm having this pain point in my business. I can talk to fellow founders or maybe I just really need to hear from an expert and I need to learn about it first. I can go and watch from over 300 hours of programming or maybe there's something that is upcoming shortly that's virtual or in person that I can be part of so that I can solve my problem very quickly. But the idea is that it's. You can kind of map your own journey and you can connect with the people you need to connect with and then the Third piece of it is really the access that I was talking about. Yes, we have people coming in and guiding workshops, but we also give you office hours access to all these different mentors and advisors that are in different industries. So you can search people by different industry and then you can book time with them that is paid. Which, by the way, I'm like, I can't tell you how many times I would do that. I'm like, I wish that I had this in the beginning of building things to prevent the mistakes that I made that are so much more costly than like a $300 session with somebody who, you know, is vetted, you know, knows what they're talking about. And it's going to give you the right advice and the right answers. So that's sort of the ecosystem that we've built. And it's really been for founders that are just starting out on their journey. And then now we're sort of gonna go to founders that are further along and sort of reaching a ceiling.

So I just asked you what you were excited about before we hit record on this. So I wanna get the full scope of everything you're doing, and then we're gonna kind of dig into, you know, what you see is common themes of how women are holding themselves back, all of that fun stuff. But let's talk about. So you, I asked you what you were most excited about and you said, well, we're going into this whole other venture of really helping more women to exit. So let's talk about what you're doing.

Yeah, so what we found is that we had founders come in and this was in 2019, 2018, that we launched Female Founder Collective. There's a lot of founders who have grown since then. Obviously it's through the passage of time. And now they're at multi millions in revenue.

Like, who have been in your program.

Who have been in our program. But then they've maybe rolled out because they're like, okay, I have my, I have my foundation. I know what I'm doing now. Now I need to hit scale. And they're at a point in their scale where I'm starting to see. And it's really, it's really sad, but it's sort of binary. There's either those founders like Alison from Poppy who just exited, Andrea from Touchland who just exited. You have the Seattle Veronica from CT Foods just exited. Like these amazing exits are happening and they are huge. And the numbers keep hitting records as these, these founders exit. Because when women build a business that uses the best practices it really works. But also, women are predominantly the consumers out there. Right. That are making the decision. So if you can, you have a woman who is speaking to female desires and problems and challenges, and it's just. It's going to work at any rate. You're also on the flip side of that, very sadly, seeing, especially in the consumer side of things, founders who have amazing businesses are falling off cliff because they start. They start seeing a wall when it comes to capital. Right. And they might need just a little bit more capital to sort of reach that next level in their business, or they didn't bring in the right resources at the right time to get them to that place where they can exit and have a really meaningful piece of the business still, where it creates generational wealth. Or maybe they don't want to exit. Maybe they want to always stay with their business because they love what they're doing, but they still need to make a good living doing that. And so maybe they want multiple bites of the apple, or maybe they want to figure out how can I structure it so that I'm making enough money in my company and there's enough cash flow in the business where I'm totally comfortable to keep doing this as long as I want to do it.

Yeah.

So we wanted to bring together those founders because there's so. There's literally so many of them. We're having these conversations, and we wanted to start bringing people into the room that they haven't yet started to meet with because there's sort of that. There's that imposter syndrome piece where you're like, I'm not at a place where I could be, like, exiting yet. But it's not too soon to start having those conversations. In fact, you should really be thinking about it early because you don't want to give away too much of the business. You don't want to set terms with outside investors that come in that ultimately are going to dilute the integrity of what you're building as well as what you're going to ultimately take home. And so we really wanted to educate founders around. Here are the terms and the types of things you're going to see come up on term sheets or in negotiations that you should start thinking about on the private wealth side of things. Here are some ways that you can start structuring things so that you're setting your business up in the future for success. Right. Like qualified small business stock is something that a private wealth individual talked to me about recently, and I was like, you know, what is that? Yeah, and she's like, did you know that? And I'm gonna get the total number wrong when I quote this. But it's something like you make 30% more or more than that if you structure your business as an INC versus an llc. You know, so it's like starting to think about those things for your business. But you have to have it structured that way for at least four or five years. So you need to be in position to be in position. So we're creating a community really for the scale up founders to start backing into what's at the end of the road for you, right? What is your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. And for everybody it's going to be different. But we can create a custom journey for you and we can equip you with the right tools, the teams you need. Right. Like who do you need to even be talking to? I think a lot of times there's a lack of knowledge of like, who should I be connected to?

Totally.

Are they bankers? Like, am I big enough to talk to a banker yet? At what point do I start talking to a banker or should I be talking to somebody in private wealth? I'm not rich, right? You're thinking in your head, like, I'm not big enough to be doing that. When the reality is talking to them earlier is so much better because then you can start to plot out, you start to create these relationships, you start to understand these nuances that are gonna come up later so that when you do come to that sort of fork in the road, you understand which direction to take and you're not as confused and it's, you're not making a decision out of fear and urgency.

I believe in what you're doing so much. I mean, I've done so much of that throughout my whole career. And I think a lot of that is like the only reason I've been successful because. And I've also still failed a lot. But if I compiled the other failures that would have happened without help from people who've gone ahead of me, I think I would have like, I would have stopped a long time ago. Cause it would have put me, it would have put me down, like would have put me under or lost so much money. Because you're so right when you're playing at that level. Like the risk is just so much bigger to be able to talk to people, to navigate with. So that's going to be so awesome. Are you so excited about that one because you get to also expand in that container?

Yeah, it's already you learn so much. Every single conversation. Because we also bring in people that have exited. Right. And they talk with such. I think I'm so proud of. And I'm so grateful for the women who have come before and they have exited and they are willing to be raw and vulnerable about the lessons they learned along the way. Because it's just. That's the sort of thing you need to hear as a founder is like, oh, you know, I made this deal with my private equity firm and it actually cost me seven years of my business. Or like, I had a much lower valuation because I ended up having to structure the business in a certain way. And it's just like these nuances that you don't know until you're there what it could look like.

Totally.

You don't know until you know. Yeah. So it's just. I couldn't be more excited.

I'm excited for you. I'm excited for me to get there as well. I'm like, great, you keep building that out so that I have some.

I can go already where you are. It's like you're in year one, but you can start thinking about these things. Right? For sure.

For sure. That's what I. I try to listen to a lot of podcasts of people who have exited to tell me the stories back of what they would not do or what they.

Yeah. What they would have started with when they took an investment versus not and like, what they bootstrapped and the types of loans that they did. And it's just all. It all matters. It.

It all matters. Yeah. My mind is blown out. Even a lot of the conversations I get to sit in, I'm like, yeah, okay, I'm not there yet, but thank God that's on my. On my radar. Do you see? Because you work with all. Give me the range of women that you work with.

So starting from you are just launching your business, and we actually next year want to introduce a launch program as well. But generally, when people come to us, they've already launched their business, they have one, and now they are at a point where they're trying to figure out, okay, how do I grow this thing? Right? You know, do I get investment? If I do get investment, how do I allocate those dollars? Do I hire people who are my first hires and what are the job specs look like for those things? So. So those individuals that are early stage and then now with our retreats, as well as this new program that we're launching, which literally coming out next week. So we're right on the edge of it, which is called the cabinet. Because the whole idea is that you're going to have this cabinet of women. Yeah. Who are your advisors? You know, and they're unbiased, they're not on your cap table. Maybe some of them are, but most likely not. They're not on your cap table and they can give you tried and true non biased advice. But those individuals are 5 million plus. And the reason why 5 is because we found that tends to be the marker where you know what your product market fit is, you know what your business is. Now it's a matter of like what does scale look like. Generally have more than one employee at that, at that stage you're investing money in your growth. It's about fuel rather than about putting this together.

Yeah. Just trying to figure it out.

Yeah.

That's so exciting.

Yeah.

Okay, so what do you see a lot when, when women come to you? What is like the first place that you feel like you're like, okay, here's all the low hanging fruit. Here's the main things that they are confused about or working on.

So, so I've been very surprised that a lot of women don't have KPIs or goals. So KPIs are key performance indicators. But basically they'll come and they don't have like a forecast yet. They don't know what their budget is. So I'm like, how, how can you know where you're gonna go without at least it's all fake to be honest. When you're initially putting together your numbers, like it's total bs.

This took me a while to grasp. Like when I was first raising money.

I'm like, it's so weird.

You're like, so I just make up a number and we.

To get it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, yeah. And then you figure it out from there. Like then the real numbers come.

Yeah. It's like you have to set an anchor of like, okay, this is what I'm going to try to reach because then that's going to tell you how much money you can spend. It's going to tell you how much you can invest. Right. It's going to give you everything. So it's like, and I've been fortunate to be in every company that I've been in. We've only grown, we've, we've never been in a place where we're like, oh my God, we're gonna go out of business.

Yeah.

And we've only exceeded goals. The reason for that is because before we do anything, we put together our numbers. Right. And if you think about it, what's so empowering about it is at the end of the day it's just math. Right. It's like, it's like a diet. It's like calories in, calories out. Yeah, same thing. It's like money in, money out of your business. You have to have more money coming in than is going out. Especially in this environment where it's so much harder to raise capital. I just encourage you to put together a model where how can you be profitable? Because that's also the way that you will have so much more control over your business. You're not going to have to make decisions that really pain you.

Because it wasn't always like that for a little while, right. Like people were just trying to grow.

It was like for growth sake. Yeah, yeah. And it was just like the model was I'm going to go raise capital and then I'm going to just try to grow as much as possible with that money and I'm burning cash. Like they're, I'm not actually making anything right until the next raise.

Yeah, it's not a sustainable, it's not sustainable.

And the fact of the matter is, is if you can, and it's really hard to do this with certain industries like tech and biotech, like all the sort of life sciences as well. But if you can bootstrap. The really wonderful thing about that is that you are going to own so much more of the business. You can actually build a smaller business and still make a lot of money if you sold it because you own most of it, right?

Totally.

It's better to be like that than own 1% of any business.

I'm just hearing so many stories like that where they exit, but they, and they spent their whole, you know, 7, 10, 15 years doing it and they're just so long to get there, not getting hardly anything.

And it takes so long to get to the place with a V6C backed company where you're big enough, where an exit feels good for investors and you. But at that point you're so diluted.

So do you tell a lot of women like if you can avoid VC at most costs unless you're a certain type of business or.

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely recommend that I would avoid VC until I always say think of VC backing as fuel or any investment should be fuel. What do I mean by that? I mean you should know where you're going and you should know you can get there. It's just, it's a matter of okay, I just need this cash because I'm going to get to this next benchmark. Right. Instead of like we're going to see what happens with it. Now if again if you're in tech, like it's almost impossible to do that. But even with tech, like with AI now the ability to iterate on your product, like finding your product market fit is I think so essential before you're going out and really raising a lot of money because you need to know what your business model is. And the fact of the matter is with tech you don't really know until you like launch something. The integrity of what you're building as well as what you're going to ultimately take home. And so we really wanted to educate founders around are your advisors, you know, and they're unbiased, they're not on your cap table. Maybe some of them are, but most likely not. They're not on your cap table and they can give you tried and true non biased advice. But Those individuals are 5 million-plus. Here are the terms and the types of things you're going to see come up on and the reason why 5 is because we found that tends to be the marker where you know what your product market fit is, you know what your business is. Now it's a matter of like what does scale look like. You generally have more than one employee at that, at that stage you're investing money in your growth. It's about fuel rather than about putting pieces together.

Yeah. Just trying to figure it out. Yeah, that's so exciting.

Yeah.

Okay, so what do you see a lot when, when women come to you? What is like the first place that you feel like you're like okay, here's all the low hanging fruit, here's the main things that they are confused about or working on.

So I've been very surprised that a lot of women don't have KPIs or goals. So KPIs are key performance indicators. But basically they'll come and they don't have like a forecast yet. They don't know what their budget is. So I'm like how, how can you know where you're gonna go, term sheets or in negotiations that you should start thinking about on the press without at least it's all fake to be honest. When you're initially putting together your numbers, like it's total bs.

This took me a while to grasp.

Like when I was first, private wealth side of things. Here are some ways that you can start structuring things so that you're setting your business up in the future for success. Right. Like, qualified small business stock is something that a private wealth. Raising money is so weird.

You're like, so I just make up a number and we try to get it.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, yeah. And then you figure it out from there. Like, then the real numbers come.

Yeah. It's like you have to set an anchor of like, okay, this is what I'm going to try to reach because then that's going to tell how much money you can spend. It's going to tell you how much you can invest. Right. It's going to give you everything. So it's like, and I've been fortunate to be in every company that I've been in. We've only grown. We've. We've never been in a place where we're like, oh my God, we're going to go out of business.

Yeah.

And we've only exceeded goals. The reason for that is because before we do anything, we put together our numbers. Right. And if you think about it, what's so empowering about it is at the end of the day, it's just math. Right. It's like, it's like a diet. It's like calories in, calories out. Yeah, same thing. It's like money in. Money out of your business. You have to have more money coming in than is going out. Especially in this environment where it's so much harder to raise capital. Individual talked to me about recently and I was like, you know, what is that?

Yeah.

I just encourage you to put together a model where how can you be profitable? Because that's also the way that you will have so much more control over your business. You're not going to have to make decisions that really pain you.

Because it wasn't always like that for a little while.

And she's like, did you know that? And I'm going to get the total number wrong when I quote this. But it's something like you make 30%, right.

Like, people were just trying to grow.

It was like for growth stake. Yeah, yeah. And it was just like the model was, I'm going to go raise capital and then I'm going to just try to grow as much as possible with that money. And I'm burning cash. Like, I'm not actually making any.

Right.

Until the next raise.

Yeah. It's not a sustainable.

It's not sustainable. And the fact of the matter is, is if you can. And it's really hard to do this with certain industries. More or more than that, if you structure Your business like tech and biotech, like all the sort of life sciences as well. But if you can bootstrap, the really wonderful thing about that is that you are gonna own so much more of the business. You can actually build a smaller business and still make a lot of money if you sold it because you own most of it, right?

Totally.

It's better to be like that than own 1% of any business.

I'm just hearing so many stories like that where they exit and they spent their whole 7, 10, 15 years doing it and it took so long to.

Get as an INC versus an llc, you know. So it's like starting to think hardly anything and it takes so long to get to the place with a VC backed company where you're big enough, where an exit feels good for investors and about those things for your business. But you have to have it structured that way for at least four or five years. So you need to be in position to be in position. So we're crew but at that point you're so diluted.

So do you tell a lot of women like if you can avoid VC at most costs unless you're a certain type of business or.

Yeah, yeah I would definitely recommend that. I would avoid VC until I always say think of VC backing as fuel or any investment should be fuel. What do I mean by that? I mean you should needing a community really for the scale up founders to start backing in. Know where you're going and you should know you can get there. It's just, it's a matter of okay, I just need this cash because I'm going to get to this next benchmark right. Instead of like we're going to see what happens with it. Now if again if you're in tech like it's almost impossible to do that. But even with tech like with AI now the ability to iterate on your product like finding your product market fit to what's at the end of the road for you, right? What is your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for everybody it's going to be is I think so essential before you're going out and really raising a lot of money because you need to know what your business model is. And the fact of the matter is with tech you don't really know until you like launch something different. But we can create a custom journey for you and we can equip you with the right tools, the teams you need. Right. Like who do you need to even thing. And historically it's cost so much money to launch something.

Okay, so for women, we've found that they don't have their KPIs and they don't have their goals. What's another one that you see in kind of those earlier stages?

So I would say they do not delegate. They don't want to. They don't be talking to. I think a lot of times there's a lack of knowledge of feel like they deserve to hire anybody else or they don't want to send the money. They're like, I can't afford. I can't afford is such a big phrase. And I'm like, you can't afford not to because you're not going to get anywhere if you're doing everything. I think you can do everything for a little while maybe. And then once you start to see something is working, then invest in that and realize very early what your superpowers are. And don't try to do stuff that you're so slow at. Like, there's certain things I'm like, I know I can do everything pretty much in the business. I mean, I'm horrible at a lot of the things when I say I can do everything. But, like, there are certain, like, who should I be connected to? Like, are they bankers? Like, am I big enough to areas where I know I have a superpower? So that's the other piece. So don't try to do everything and figure out what your superpowers are very early so that you can do everything you can to clear the field to make sure you can just focus on that one thing that you're really good at, because that's how the business is going to get as far as possible. Talk to a banker yet? At what point do I start talking to a banker? Or should I be talking to somebody in private wealth? I'm not rich, right? You know, you're thinking in your head, like, I'm not. As if you're clear. Like, for me, I love doing partnerships, doing business development, like, like figuring out how to make money. That's where I want to spend my time. It's not on the operational processes. It's not on the tech stack. It's not on the, like, how the org chart is going to flow. I want to focus on making money. And if I can, and when I have cleared space to do that, the business has grown and thrived for that reason. So it's like, just figure that out as early as possible. And if you don't know, then ask the people that you've worked with in the past around you. Like, what am I best At. Because you have to figure that out. I'm not big enough to be doing that.

Right.

When the reality is quickly.

So to somebody who's like, okay, I would love to do that because I feel like I could make more money doing that. But they don't want to spend the money. Where do you. What do you kind of tell them when they feel stuck? Because I know I've even felt that way this first year. Like, I'm like. But I feel stuck. I know that I'm going slow as molasses in this thing because it's crushing my soul and I don't know how to do it.

Yeah.

But I'm also like, don't necessarily have the funds to hire somebody in that specific arena. What do you typically say to someone like that?

So we're in the same place. Talking to them earlier is so much better because then you can start to plot out you. We've bootstrapped this business in previous businesses. I. We've had VC capital. I've been like, okay, I'm gonna go hire this person. I know they're gonna be able to generate at least this much revenue. Start to create these relationships. You start to understand these nuances that are gonna come up later, which is a lovely place to be. And it's a lot easier to make a decision that way. That being said, so that when you do come to that sort of fork in the road, you understand, know that you're going to grow much more slowly. But I always say, now hire fractional, at least initially, and talk to that person, see what they want in the long term. You want somebody that maybe potentially would want to come on full time. Right. Who's very aligned with your values, who is going to put in that extra effort. Because I think it is hard with fractional if they're not really bought in on the mission, if they're not like in love with the company and what you're doing, it's really difficult to have them be motivated to put in the kind of work you need. Right. To which direction to take. And you're not as confused. And it's. You're not making a decision out of outperformance the market. Right.

Right.

Because that's what you need to do as a small company that's starting up is you need to like be more efficient than most. So I would say start with. I go after super talented and very like the more senior folks to hire that are fractional fear and urgency.

I, I believe in, in what you're.

Doing so much rather than hiring a full time person who doesn't know what they're doing. Right. Because what you don't have is you do not have time to coach people in those early days. It's just, it's not, it's not realistic. And I, I remember I had somebody in the past who was like again, a manager at another bigger corporation. She's like, oh.

I mean, I've done so much of that throughout my whole career and I think a lot of that is like the only reason I've been successful because we've. And I've also still failed a lot.

I see. You don't, you don't like to manage, you don't like to coach. I'm like, it's not that I. There's just not like it's, it's not realistic at. Yeah. This point in time.

And if you want to grow, you literally need to be hiring people who can either learn a lot less or who can already know and they can go and, and you can get back to what you're doing. Otherwise, it's just more of. It's like a sabotaging cycle almost especially for women. I think, like, just because you can do it and you can help people and maybe that's making you feel good that you can help people. Like, it's not helping your bottom line at all.

No. Yeah. And even if you have to hire one person. But yeah.

If I compiled the other failures that would have happened without help from people versus like four. Yeah.

At the same price. Hire the one person who can get a lot of stuff done.

Yeah, totally.

And run themselves and be totally independent.

Especially in the beginning. You need someone like that who can just do a ton of different things because, you know, things are changing so fast in the beginning that you're like, okay, we're trying. Who've gone ahead of me. I think I would have, like, I would have stopped a long time ago because it would have put me. It would have put me down something new today.

Yeah. The only thing you're positive about is change.

Exactly. It sound like would have put me under or lost so much money. Because you're so right when you're playing at that level. Like, the risk is just so much bigger to be able to talk to people. So true. What are you finding are the insecurities that women walk into those rooms with? I know for me, you know, I've walked into so many different masterminds and retreats and I know when I walked into, you know, the retreat that I spent with you guys.

Yeah.

It's just like all. It doesn't matter how many times I've done it. All of these different emotions come up, like, am I good enough? Should I be here? Like, these women are so much smarter than me. What do you see when they actually get vulnerable? What do they tell you?

It's that honestly, it's the imposter syndrome. It's like I have this incredible human being of a friend and person that's been part of our network for such.

A long time, able to navigate with. So that's going to be so awesome. Are you so excited about that one.

Boo had a hundred million dollar revenue plus company who she's the CEO of. She's built it from scratch and she had imposter syndrome. I'm like, what? Like it's just something where it blows people's mind around them because you're like, you're so accomplished. So I think it's, it's the confidence gap, right. It's the, it's the lack of.

Because you get to also expand in that container.

Yeah. It's our feeling of I deserve this or I'm good enough. And so you learn so much every single conversation. Because we also bring in people that have. So yeah, I would say that that's the most common thing unfortunately that I see. But what's amazing is the second they're able to go through the work to remove that the step function that they have and they're bidded. Right. And they talk with such. I think I'm so proud of. And I'm sniss is insane. And it's like everybody around them sees it and feels it. That's a really cool thing.

So tell me about like the process of somebody coming in. They're gonna. Are they gonna come in and is it like a monthly thing? Is it. Are they going to retreats? Tell me how that all works.

So for the, for the 10th house level they come in which is the more like startup phase. Earlier stage businesses, you come in so grateful for the women who have come before and they have exited and they. And you launch with your cohort, which is your industry. And historically we have it so that we have an orientation and we show you all the ways that you can use it and it's a total choose your own adventure. So we have programming happening every single week that changes. We have it focused on that industry for the first month of a cohort launching and then we have in person events that happen either LA or New York where we'll interview and spend time like three Hours of time with a total expert in their field. And it gives you the chance are willing to be raw and vulnerable about the lessons they learned along the way. Because it's just. That's the sort of thing you need to hear as a founder. Also ask these really intimate questions in a setting of like 40 people. That's for members only, where you come in and you can ask them any question you want to ask them. Right. We just did one with a VC a couple weeks ago where we just got really raw about, like, tell me, really, what numbers are you looking at? Like, what are your benchmarks? And when a founder. Founder is like, oh, you know, I made this deal with my private equity firm, and it comes in and presents you X or, yeah, what are you really thinking? Yeah, right, Totally. And then we also have recorded sessions that you can access from the. From the past. So it's like over 300 hours of content where you can search by topic. And those are really past workshops and actually cost me seven years of my business or like, I had a much lower value format. So they're very much designed to help guide you through education. And then we also have our office hours where you get to meet with. And that's mostly virtually these experts that we've rounded up for each part of our cohort. And then that takes you sort of through the year. Now we're going to be adding in a course to teach some fundamentals at the top of each year, but also so that when you're with a cohort, you're going through that process of identifying your evaluation, because I ended up having to structure the business in a certain way, and it's just like these nuanced goals together so that at a year's time, you're getting back together and you're actually identifying. How have we tracked with those goals? Did I says that you don't know until you're there? Reach them. Why did I not reach them? And then what can we do to continue to accelerate the growth of your business?

I love that. So for you right now, building this.

Out, this is kind of what it could look like.

Totally.

You don't know until you know.

Yeah.

So it's just. I couldn't be more excited.

Like, you're. This is kind of like, is this your life's vision? Like, building this all out?

No, I would say that. I don't know if I would say I feel like I have a lot of life vision.

Yeah.

Like, there's a lot of, like, things I feel you do. And this is this is one of the core things where it's just like, I can't help but want to do it.

Yeah.

You have so much knowledge, so much opportunity, too, though. Like, it's like you see these women, you start to see this incredible. Excited. Mm.

I'm excited for you. I'm excited for me to get there as well.

I'm like, great progress. Like, the progress that we're seeing, all these women coming out and selling businesses for record numbers, I think that that shows that we're making progress. Right. Because the more women that do that, they're going to put that back into the system.

Are you. What are you guys personally struggling with? With growing this movement as well? Like, what are you finding that you guys are working on right now for you personally?

Like, where are you?

Like, this is what I want to break through. This is what I want to get to.

Yeah. So I think for us, you keep.

Building that out so that I have.

Something that I can go already where you are. It's like you're in year one. It's packaging of the community itself. And like, how do we package it in a way where it can help the most possible founders, but it's also super clear for them. A lot of times we're. We'll hear founders like, I can't afford this. Yeah. Or. But you can start thinking about these things. Right. For sure.

For sure. That's what I. I try to list.

Or I don't have it in my budget right now. Or I don't like it. I don't think that this is valuable.

Right.

But it's like, because do a lot.

Of podcasts of people who have exited to tell me the stories back of what they would not.

The challenge is that it requires for them to get anything out. They need to put a lot in. Yep. And a founder is probably the busiest person on the planet. Right. So it's really difficult to make the time to do that and also convince women how important networking is, because all the women that we've spoken to that are in the scale up, but also in the process of selling their companies especially, they're like, the most important thing I had was my network. And you know this so well. Right.

Every time in everyone I interview, it's like, when I dig in, they're like, oh, I.