The Biggest Pivots Chris and I Have Navigated in Business and How We Came Out on Top (+ a BIG Frello Update)

Even though the numbers that Chris and I are talking about may seem really big to some people, losing a million dollars or having $3 million sunk into something that you have to switch, those are small lessons compared to what could come down the road if you continue. We know we're meant for really big things, and I don't believe that you can get those things or get prepped for them without these.

Foreign.

Welcome back to the Earn your happy podcast. I am sitting down for another episode with my husband, Chris Harder. And you guys know that he does the he said, she said episodes. But this is long form because you and I were on a walk.

Yeah.

And we knew that we wanted to talk about pivoting.

Pivoting. We have both had some major pivots.

We have had some major pivots. And when we talk about pivoting, this can be a major business pivot. This can be small. This can be a transition in your life.

Yeah.

But what we wanted to go through is how to know when to pivot, what a pivot is, some of the big pivots and lessons that we have learned from our giant pivots that both happened to us in the last couple of years. And so we are going to bring you through all of those fun lessons. So let's get started. So, babe, today we are diving into some of the most nerve wracking, yet transformative points of a business, and that is pivots. Yeah, that's transitions. And a lot of people listening have either gone through a pivot or they're about to go through a pivot, or they're afraid to go through a pivot, because maybe they are defining it as something that's not successful. But you and I have gone through our own pivots, and through this journey, we have learned that there is so much power in a pivot. So how. How would you describe what a pivot even is?

It's where you think that your company is going to be one thing. And because of some sort of significant factor, your company has to quickly take a left turn or a right turn or a U turn and turn into something totally different, or at least a very different evolution of where you thought you were going. And what's funny is people think a pivot is a bad thing. But if you look throughout history, almost every great company you know has started as one thing, but pivoted into being something else. Do you want me give you a couple examples?

Yeah.

All right. Twitter actually started as a podcast platform, helping people listen to podcasts. And clearly now they're the furthest thing from a podcast platform. Instagram started as a location app where you'd share your location with friends. And you could also, like, do geolocation for. For big games. Starbucks. Everyone thinks they started with that one little shop in Seattle. No, they started selling coffee beans and coffee roasters wholesale and, like, retail and never even had coffee shops on the business plan at all. But each one of those companies, along with our companies, along with many other companies that you enjoy today, they all, because of external factors, thought they were going down one road and ended up going down a totally different road that usually ends up being the better road all along. You know, I've got a tattoo on my arm that says, live as though the universe conspires in your favor. I really believe in that. I really believe that if you're open to taking the journey where the journey is trying to push you, that you're going to end up in a better place than you even thought you were going in the first place. And we're going to offer evidence of that.

When people hear the word pivot, there's a negative connotation to it. There can be a negative feeling to it. Yeah, I want to replace the word pivot with evolution, because a pivot really is an evolution in your business for better alignment with your goals. Yeah, Better alignment for market fit.

Fit. Yeah.

Better alignment for what your skill set potentially is. And you don't know these things until you get started in the business, and that's why a pivot happens. So I believe that the initial ideas of business are just the carrot to get you started on what you're really meant to do.

It's the kindling. It's the original fuel. I did a podcast a while back, a solo episode on this, and a lot of people were kind of retweeting and resharing something I said in there, and it was this. Your first idea is just the fire starter. Your first idea is just what gets you up and out of bed and excited enough to do something crazy like raise money or claim that you're building this business or tell the world, look out, world, here's what I'm going to create. And you wouldn't do that without that first exciting idea. But the first idea is really just something meant to guide you down the path to what the real idea is supposed to be all along. And you don't know that until you start taking the journey.

So when do we know when it's time to pivot? What are some things that are coming up in your life, in your business, what should we be looking for?

Sometimes it's a forced pivot. And believe it or not, those feel the worst. But I think they're the easiest ones to do.

Agree.

So let me use my example. Frello was starting as a peer to peer lending app. Some new regulatory headwinds popped up in early summer that rendered the direction we were going useless. And we had to pivot into what is now a peer to peer giving app like GoFundMe, but also gives reward points to all of the givers. So the more you give, the more you get. And you can redeem those points for things such as travel and local dining and gift certificates and all that really cool stuff. So we're incentivizing generosity. And by making that pivot, Lori, we got rid of. I don't know if people know this, but lending is like the craziest, most regulated industry you can be in, right? Or one of the top ones. We got rid of all of that regulation. We got rid of over 60% of our overhead. We got rid of all these crazy things, proving that this is the direction we should have gone in the first place. We are disrupting the GoFundMe space that no one has disrupted in 13 years. And everybody, when I explain the pivot, they're out of their minds, excited. So that's an example of a forced pivot. Regulatory things popped up and said, sorry, you can't go this way anymore. Go find a new direction. And I know I sound excited about it right now. It was hell. It was horrible. And we'll get into that later in the show. But I want to talk about the types of pivots because you said, how do you know when to. So that's the first one. Sometimes you're just forced to. I think the tougher pivot is the one where you're not forced, but it's like you're slowly bleeding out.

Something's not working.

Something's not working. A lot of things aren't working. No matter what you're trying, you can't get traction. No matter what you're doing, you just can't get to market or you can't get sales to take off. And it's this slow bleed where you have to quickly zoom out, right? Get. Get 30,000ft looking in on your business and say, if I continue down this journey, is it sustainable? If I continue down this journey, what's how, you know, what does it look like when I played the movie to the end. And if I continue down this journey, Am I even going to be able to make it? Am I even going to be able to sustain this? And if the answer, when you take that 30,000 foot view of this, if the answer is, I don't think I can sustain this, then you're obligated to do a self implemented pivot where you say, okay, this is not working. I need to find something that will work. No matter what I've told the world, no matter what I've told my friends, no matter what I've told myself, if there's no end to this struggle, let's go find an easier way.

And this is long after a large pivot is long after you've looked at, does my message need to pivot? Do I just need to tweak, you know, the sales copy a little bit? Do I need to get a different team in place? It's after exploring all of those things, you don't want to just burn everything down because you feel like something's not working. But you haven't really explored the data and you haven't had somebody come in and look at your business.

Yeah. We're talking one to two years into making all the tweaks and it's still not taking off.

Yes.

This is not like, oh, my first launch didn't go well, I'm going to pivot. No, this is like really trying, tweaking, trying again, tweaking again, trying again, tweaking again, still not working. One to two years in, it's time for a pivot.

What are your thoughts about if someone's just not passionate about it anymore and they can't seem to reignite it?

I would encourage them to take a look at what part they're not passionate about.

Interesting.

Because here's the thing, we're always excited about the original idea. Right. Who isn't excited about starting a revolutionary, cool new business? But the real thing that grows a business, the real thing that makes a business successful is the tough stuff, is the monotonous stuff, is the boring stuff done over and over and over again. And a lot of people think, oh, I've lost my passion for my business, I should pivot. No, you, you've lost the initial excitement, like, you know, the first several weeks when you're dating in a relationship. But what makes a great relationship is mastering the quality mundane things over and over again and choosing to love them.

Something for me with that, and I love that answer. Something for me that has come up because I have this beautiful company that I'm so excited about, but I can get really not excited when I get stuck in things I'm not good at. And while being the founder and being in the first year, I am fully aware that I'm going to have to be in a lot of those things. But my sights are set on how I can get back into my zone of genius and skillset so that I can get back into the excitement in the next year or two. And so that's another huge thing where some people might be like, oh, my God, I started this, but I hate it. You don't hate it. I still fricking love the vision and what we're doing with Gloce and you know how we're helping women understand that they're able to do anything that they want in business, but you have to get yourself out of the things that are draining you in order to get re excited.

Yeah. And I want to use your story as an example, if you wouldn't mind sharing. We talked about a forced pivot, which is what I had because of regulatory issues. You had an elective pivot. You had to choose to pivot from something that was going to be a lot more painful into something that was a lot more doable. So why don't you kind of explain how did you know when you had to pivot?

Well, it wasn't totally elective towards the end. It became a lot more of a forced choice because of legal things. And it would have been just spending so much money and raising way more money and it wasn't looking very promising to have success even after all of that at all. So I actually wish it would have been elective sooner, which is why I love that we're having this conversation. And I say that I wish it would have been elective sooner because. Because my skillset and the audience that I had in the way that I knew how to market and the things that are the most powerful for me to be able to do as a first year founder to really get the company off the ground would have not been able to be used in what started as light pink, which was a light wine rose spritzer, and it was also a non alcoholic rose spritz. And I wasn't able to do the type of marketing that I'm so good at, which is, you know, online marketing, word of mouth, getting women together. Like, I wasn't able to go the route that I had hoped to use this, like, amazing skill set that I have. And we would have started from behind.

Yeah. Can I just point something out though? You said it wasn't elective it still is a form of an elective pivot. Here's why I want people to understand the difference. With mine, the government said, you can't do that. That's forced. No matter how much more money I raised. In your case, it was would have been really hard, but you still could have gone out and raised tons more money. Right. The experts had raised 10 more million dollars. Get the legal experts do all this stuff. It just was a better idea to not do that. So that's what I mean by elective.

I could have bought out the investors who weren't willing to sign to get their fingerprints. So there was a way, but it would have bled money, and it would have been a terrible idea.

And that's why I want understand that it's still elective, even though it feels like a pretty big hurdle or almost impassable wall sometimes. Does that make sense?

Yes. So those are the three reasons we've got the forced elective and passion pivot. The next thing that I want to get into is normalizing the feelings around a pivot. So you know that I've gone through a massive pivot. I know that you just went through a massive pivot, and you just told this beautiful story about, you know, the new direction your app, and you made it sound very exciting, and you're so happy about it. But let's actually go back to the moment when you're realizing this is not possible anymore. I want to know how you feel. Where's your confidence at? Like, what's going on every single day of your life? How are you compartmentalizing five months of.

Hell, the worst five months of my life. I would define it as fear because you asked about feelings. Fear of what will the investors say? Will I even find another direction? Will I have just burnt all of this money and all this time and have nowhere to go? Is this the end? Right? So fear, for sure. Shame. Like, I should have seen this coming. I should have been able to predict this. I should have, should have, should have, should have, should have. Right? So you could just kind of should yourself to death and you then that brings on shame. Frustration is a feeling. Anger is a feeling. And all of these things manifest in different ways. In my case, it zapped me of energy, and then it stopped. I stopped sleeping. I'm like a championship sleeper, you guys.

He was waking up in the morning. We'd be on our walks, and you guys know we walk every morning. We do the power nine. And then the walk, he'd say, well, I was up from, you know, Three until five in the morning last night. And he'd be so tired, I'm like, hey, what were you thinking about last night?

Yep. And that's when I started abusing the caffeine and the stimulants and testosterone and all that stuff. And that's when I had this optic nerve stroke, you know, gave it to myself by doing all that because of.

The stress of the thought of a.

Because of the stress that kept me up, that caused me to make all those bad choices. So when I say the worst five months of my life, a pivot can really make you feel like hell, like you don't have options. But here's the difference between the entrepreneurs that make it and the entrepreneurs that don't. And this is very important. As a matter of fact, when you invest in companies, the first thing you look at is always the entrepreneur. Are they a winner? Do they always find a way? And the difference is this. Most other people would have given up there. Most other people would have rightfully so closed up shop. Matt and I are built different. Matt's my business partner. Matt and I said, there's always a way. Let's see what we can come up with. And we hired the best attorneys in the world, and we hired the best mentors in the fintech space, men that have built and sold these companies for billions of dollars and are super connected. We hired the best consultants. Like, we emptied all barrels. Getting outside perspective, outside advice, outside counsel. And that didn't make it feel better, but it made it turn out better. Does that make sense? Because still, for five months, it was endless calls of calls with regulators, calls with government calls with attorneys, calls with mentors. And every time, like, we got an idea $80,000 illegal later. No, you don't. We got a new idea a hundred thousand dollars illegal later. No, you don't. And there's sometimes there's just no good way of working through it, except for working through it. Does that make sense? The key is that you don't give up, because we wouldn't have found this new, awesome, disruptive idea that's even better than the first one. If we would have given up in month one, if we would have given up in month two, if we would have given up in month three, four, or five.

That's why I believe pivot should be evolution, because you're in your head at night saying, oh, my God, I have to tell the investors about pivot. Am I going to find one? Am I going to find a new opportunity? Instead? If we would go at it with, okay, what is the. What's better than this? What could. Now, from everything I've learned, what could actually be better? Where could be an even better market fit? What about for my audience? What about for the people I'm going to raise money from? What would they be even more excited about sharing? What are they talking about that they're excited about? And pivots can feel really isolating. And that's why I love that you shared everybody that you talk to around how you're going to pivot. So that's my next question is, who do you surround yourself with in the beginning phases of this? And how does that first news kind of look when you're breaking it to people? Like, do you break it to all your investors right away? Do you break it to your audience? Like, how should a pivot process?

You have to be very careful with your messaging because you think you have a direction, and often you don't need. Think you have another one. I'll say to and you don't want to create confusion. You don't want to be the boy that cried wolf. Right? So, number one, you got to slow down your messaging and speed up your experiments. That's the first thing you got to do. Second thing you got to do, you've got to take care of yourself. I didn't do that. You got to take. Start meditating, visualizing, you know, get support from the best people that you have around you. That's number two. Number three is, I guess, kind of part of number two, seek expert counsel. Just because you can't see the forest through the trees doesn't mean somebody else can't. They can look at what you've already built and say, hey, you're really close to this other idea over here. Or they can take a look at what your original passion was and say, hey, you could still help those people by doing this over here. And so go find other people that are going to have outside professional perspective that have already danced this dance before. You remember when you and I took dance lessons for three years, Arthur Murray, the instructors told us they're always just like, two years ahead of us. They're. It's just we thought they were like, totally.

They were only two years ahead of us. And we're like, what?

Yep. They're like, hey, we're just one to two years ahead of you. But it was just enough to show us where we should go and in what order we should go there in. The same thing happens when you got to make your pivot, go find those people that are a couple of years ahead of you so they can tell you what dance steps to take.

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Love that.

So now what about your messaging for your investors or your audience? What does that look like now that you have the idea? You've taught me so much around how to keep it exciting, how to repitch, how to make it a positive thing rather than telling a really negative story around it and focusing on the negative story. Because a lot of people want to focus.

There's a. Yeah, well, you got to realize you always want to control the narrative. That's number one. If you leave a vacuum of information, people are going to fill their own information in their own assumptions in yes. Number two, enthusiasm should be a core trait of what you're doing all the time. So when you have a message, be enthusiastic about that message. When you have your new direction, show enthusiasm about your new direction. Now, hopefully it's natural enthusiasm or you're probably going the wrong direction. But when it comes to messaging, I don't care if it's to your audience, I don't care if it's social media, I don't care if it's to your investors, I don't care if it's to your customers. You have to show enthusiasm or why would they be excited about it? You know, it's like acting. Actors have to be a 12 out of 10 just for it to come across a 9 out of 10 on the other end of the screen or the stage. It's the same thing when you're messaging your new direction, when you're messaging what your new product's going to be, I would bounce that same thing back to you. When you had to announce your pivot to your investors, to the world, you know, everyone thought you were coming out with an alcoholic drink. All of a sudden you weren't. How did you handle that messaging? What were your best tips?

I went and I found people to help me tell the story. You were actually one of the first people because I knew that you were all about controlling the narrative. And I was like, how can I powerfully share. Share this with my investors of why it's better. So that's where I started, was why this was just such a better fit for them, for their lifestyles, for the current market, how so many people had stopped drinking, what had changed in the market, and why we were going to be way more powerfully positioned to share glossy out in the world over an alcoholic drink where a lot of my investors had stopped drinking, a lot of the world had stopped drinking. It was really challenging to market the alcohol. It was really gray how to market the alcohol. It costed a ton of money to market the alcohol to a product that was a perfect fit for my investors. Something that they wanted, something that they were using. A skin routine that you can drink. You Know, a daily beauty supplement, something that hydrates their skin, that makes them feel good. That's amazing. For gut health. I'm like, this is everyone's jam. Like, this is going to be so easy for you to share because you're already wanting these things. You're already not only wanting these things, they were already doing these habits. So it was an easy habit swap. And telling them and showing them how this was such an easy thing to share got them really excited.

You just reminded me too, I want to make sure we clarify this, get your data in order before you start communicating. What I mean by that is I'll give you examples. When we pivoted to a peer to peer giving platform to have a peer to peer lending platform, right away, GoFundMe became like the model, right? So what data did I get in order? GoFundMe has had $30 billion of donations shared across their platform between 150 million people. That's insane. And that's without incentivizing the givers. That's without incentivizing generosity. More data. There's a company out there called Built Rewards. And Built Rewards said, hey, if you're paying rent already, you should get rewards for paying your rent on time. And they said, pay us instead of your landlord and we'll pay your landlord. And in return, we're going to give you points that you can redeem for different things like local dining or more rent credits, et cetera, if you pay it through us. That company started in 2021, first time anyone ever did that. And three years later, their valuation is $3.25 billion. Wow, that's insane. And so you have to get your data in order to say, hey, this is the Love Child between GoFundMe, $30 billion of donations between 150 million people and built rewards $3.25 billion valuation. Because when you reward people for what they're already doing, they're going to go your direction instead of the direction they were going. And then you have to get other data involved. We went through our financials, we scoured those, we were able to figure out, oh, my God, we literally get rid of 61% of our overhead that we were going to have to incur when we were a lending company. Now we don't have to. We got rid of 90% of the risk. So you got to get your data in line for your messaging. Otherwise people are going to, they're going to fill in their own questions and you got to answer their questions before they even have the question.

So it's really about the storytelling, remembering to connect them to the why behind the company, even why it even started. And we get so stuck on the product, and we think that it's about the thing. It's about the exact app. No, it's about the mission that was behind it. The why that was behind it. And with Glossy, the same mission and why is behind the daily beauty supplement that was behind the alcohol. So it was never about the product. And I really love your story so much. Would you share how the initial story is actually in better alignment with what you just pivoted into and share the story for us?

I absolutely will. Because this, this will be proof for everybody that sometimes. No, all the time, your pivot will bring you closer to the reason you started to begin with. And that was our case. So let me back up in late 2020. You know, I've got a podcast, a platform where generosity is kind of the core focus in people's success stories. And that causes a lot of listeners and a lot of people on social media to DM me, saying, here's my hardship. Could I have 500 bucks? Here's my hardship. Could I have a thousand dollars? And, I mean, I get a lot of these. And so you and I just kind of made a personal policy that we're not going to give into DMs because we don't know what's real. But despite having that personal policy, I just got a feeling one day when I was scrolling Instagram, open this message and answer it. So I did, and it was a landscaper. And he said, hey, Chris, I listen to your show. I'm grateful for everything that you put out there. I'm really embarrassed to be sending this, but I'm two payments behind on my landscape truck. And if I don't find $680 like yesterday, then not only am I going to lose my business when they repo this truck, but I've got two great guys that work for me that are going to lose their jobs as well. So is there any way that you would lend me $680? And I said to him, just following this feeling, I said, hey, stranger, I won't lend you the money. I'll give you the money. All I ask is that you work really hard to put yourself in position to do this for somebody else one day. I believe in you. And that's it. And I thought I would never hear from this guy again. So I PayPal this stranger, 680 bucks, think I'll never hear from him again. But two months later, he slides back into my DMs and says, Hey, I just want to let you know what you did for me that day. I took the money, I got current on my truck, and those guys kept their jobs. That's great. But something else happened when you said all you wanted in return was for me to work hard and put myself in position to do this for somebody else. One day said that lit a fire in me like I have never felt before. To the point where I have gotten so many new landscape accounts that I'm buying a second truck and hiring two more guys. And Lori, I was like, seriously, $680. Not to belittle the amount, but $680 was the small difference between a company going out of business and cutting jobs from the economy or catching fire and adding jobs to the economy. $680. So I became obsessed, as you know, with how do I solve that at scale? And for some reason I was stuck on lending. I thought, eh, how are we going to get people to want to give, et cetera? I know we'll make it profitable, so we'll do short term loans and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I had thought that we had cracked the code in peer to peer lending for small personal emergency loans totally. And we had until regulation changed this summer by the cfpb. And so when that hit and when I had to make this pivot, you know, I already told you five months of hell million ideas that didn't work. But when it hit us that this could be a peer to peer giving platform for small emergency and disaster amounts, and that we could incentivize the givers through this built rewards similar type of system that became the new disruptive GoFundMe that is faster, more instant, more relevant to people's immediate needs that should have been built all along. And it's closer to the origin story. That's the punchline where I gave the guy 680 bucks. I said, hey, just keep it. Just work hard to put yourself in a better position to do this for somebody else one day by making it a donation platform. It is now exactly what the story should have been all along.

I know you're still in it, but what are some of the lessons you're already extracting of? Can you kind of feel or see why this is, you know, happening for you? Why this pain, why this pivot? Why the five months of struggle? Like, do you feel like that's for a reason?

I don't know the answer to that yet, but I can Tell you a couple lessons I've extracted from it.

Okay.

Number one, surround yourself with good creative people. This pivot came when I was on my guy's golf trip. The same few guys I go with every year. And one of the guys, Kyle, said, you know, we're talking about the disasters that happened in North Carolina. And he said, man, it's too bad he can't just turn on the app that you already built and let people just send donations to people in North Carolina. And I was like, oh my God, we could. And then that led to. But how would we incentivize people to do it? And here's lesson number two. Always be reading about your industry. Always be learning. I had just read articles on Built Rewards latest fundraise where they raised $150 million at a $3.25 billion valuation a couple months ago. And that was right after raising another $200 million before that at a $3.1 billion valuation. And back to back raises at evaluation like that are almost unheard of. They are on fire in their third year. And the only reason I knew that is because I'm always studying companies in my industry. Who's working, what's working, what's popping off right now. And so when you combine outside perspective of good people that you surround yourself with and self study of your industry, you must be an expert of your industry. You can't just skate by those two things come together and deliver your answer. And I believe that anyone else that's going through a pivot, same thing. Get some ideas from some really good smart people and be a master of your industry and know what's trending in your industry, combine those two, you're going to find your new direction.

You know, I feel like some of the lessons that I extracted or if I can go back and look at why it happened, is because in the beginning there's a lot less at risk to really learn what questions you should be asking when you make big decisions in your company later on. And even though the numbers that Chris and I are talking about may seem really big to some people, losing a million dollars or having $3 million sunk into something that you have to switch, those are small lessons compared to what could come down the road if you continue. And I will say that the, the value of the money that was in those lessons you learn.

Yes.

Like if there's one thing you and I have learned is we have learned about the importance of surrounding yourself with people. We've learned about how to raise money even when you think there's no money left. We've learned that there's a lot of, you know, risk, but also a lot of reward in these things. We've learned how to deal with insane pressure. And I believe that those are all prepping you. If you believe that you want a big business like you and I believe we want. And I know, you know, when we sit and when we're on walks or have these conversations, we know we're meant for really big things. And I don't believe that you can get those things or get prepped for them without these lessons.

I've learned we're stronger than we think.

Oh, God.

And when I say we, I mean you and me, but we the listeners too. And I've learned there's always a way, even when you can't see.

Always.

And that really is the definition of faith. People think faith is like when you can see something you believe in. No, faith is when you literally can't see an outcome. You can't see something that you have faith in, but you still have faith that it's there. And I've learned, sure enough, it's always there. And I've learned that we're resilient, even like post stroke resilient in terms of, yeah, you can heal, but, yeah, you can make the changes that you gotta make, right? You can quit these things cold turkey and do all this stuff. And I've learned that nothing is ever as bad as you think it is. We all, as humans tend to make a mountain out of a molehill. We tend to exaggerate the extremeness of, you know, situations. And that's both good and bad. Meaning we think things are better than they are when they're good and we think things are worse than they are when they're bad. And the truth is, the, you know, the answer lies somewhere in the middle of that when I can now look back because this won't be the last hurdle and this won't be your last hurdle in building closely into the size business that you're building. We're going to be able to borrow from these lessons and these new, I call it, armor that we can put back on and go to battle. And we didn't have this armor before going to. So it's almost like your business is training you, your business is arming you. Your business is. Is your personal training giving you new muscles that you're going to need down the road anyways. And that's how you accumulate that armor, is by going through these really tough times, by going through the Pivot. What is new armor? What's a new skill set? What's a new belief you have that you took away from going through the light pink to glossy pivot?

Exactly what you just said. I know that in order to have the business that I want, I was going to need thicker skin, I was going to need a backbone. I was going to need to know how to think really clearly and logically when things felt like they were on fire. And also, you know, as a founder, that I always need to learn how to repitch the story in a positive way and how to raise money and how to get people re excited, even when you feel like everything is falling apart in the background. And that's what that taught me, is that even though things might feel like they're falling apart, how can you get re excited about something? And really, it taught me how to compartmentalize, because even though these horrible things feel like they're happening, you still have stuff to do that day. You have a team meeting to run. You have things to research. You have things to figure out. You have emails to answer. You still have to be a leader. And so it taught me how to be a leader in the chaos and how to put things in perspective. Yeah, because like you said, nothing is ever as big as you think, especially when you go and talk to people who have been in your shoes before. And that is one of the key takeaways that I want people to have from this podcast, is I hope that this normalizes the feelings that you're having and that, you know, you know, you might think that losing fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, a million is a lot, until I went and asked people who had lost 5 million or 20 million, and there's like, here's how to reframe it. Here's what you can look at. This happens every single day. Look at these 10 people I just pointed out to you, who lost all this money, who failed these three companies, and then they won on the fourth one. And you need people around you to normalize the horrible experience you're going through. If you don't have that, you're never going to make it.

And you need people around you, not just normalize it, but to help tell you it's going to be okay and to tell you what to say. I remember I sat down with Bill Glaser. You know, he's raised $350 million for companies and throughout his life. And I said, how do I communicate with my investors? When do I communicate with my investors? What form do I communicate with my Investor, like, how do I navigate this? And what seemed daunting to me, he was able to lay out clearly, oh, this is easy. Here's what you do, here's how you say it, here's when you say it. And all of a sudden, it felt like it was going to be okay. Who was somebody when you were making your pivot that you relied on? Like, who helped you through that pivot?

You helped me so much through that pivot. But also, I have an amazing friend, Tara Hannaford, who had been in the alcohol industry. She had worked with Casamigos to exit, and she just knew so much about the industry and is so upfront and straightforward forward. And she's not going to be the person who's going to sugarcoat things for me. And trust me, at the time, I did not need sugarcoating. Like, as much as it kind of hurt to hear some of the things and the realities of the industry and where I was at and how much money we had, I didn't have time for sugarcoating. It was like, here's what you would need to do. Here's your options, and here's what I actually think your skill set is better used at and why you should pivot. And that was, you know, that particular type of friendship was the most important friendship at that time for me.

That makes me think of another tip. When you're facing a pivot, be open to the messages you don't want to hear.

Oh, God, yes.

You know how many people go down with a ship? You know how many people. They're not open to the tough message that they don't want to hear?

Yes.

So they see it through the wrong set of lenses, like, well, hey, expert, who's done this 10 times? Here's why I think you're wrong this one time. Right. Be okay with getting the bad news.

Explore it.

Yeah. Be open to it.

Yes. Because when. When she first told me some of my options, I did not like it.

No, you're pissed.

I was pissed. I was like, she doesn't know me. She doesn't know that. You know, I think I could pull this through and make this happen.

But she was right.

And she was so right, especially as I started to learn more and more. And it wasn't that I was closed off, it's that it really hurt. And I kept thinking about it, and here's what I wish I would have asked myself sooner. If that were true, what else could I do?

Yeah.

Like, how could I actually ask her? Okay, well, that's interesting. You think I should pivot into that. Why? Why do you think that could be successful? Why do you think that could be better? And instead of closing it down. So if you guys are getting even info, you know, info from your partner or a best friend, and you're just like, they don't know they're not in it, explore why, like, ask them more about it. Be a little more inquisitive instead of shutting. Shutting them down and you shutting down yourself.

These are all traits of a great entrepreneur. I look at the companies that we invest in, Lori, and the alcohol company that pivoted, this vegan snack foods company that pivoted, the tech company that pivoted the right. Almost every single company that we've invested, 22 or 23 of them now, the bulk majority have had radical pivots. And it's thanks to the entrepreneur behind it. Being willing to take the hard news, being willing to pivot, being willing to find the way. That's why you always invest in the person first, idea second. Because whatever idea you think you're investing in, it's not going to be the idea that actually ends up being the winning one.

So a lot of people, because we're in entrepreneurial rooms, in our masterminds at my event, girlfriends in business, whether I'm speaking at a friend's event, one of the big questions that I always get is, okay, you know, I'm doing this thing right now. I have this corporate job, or maybe they started this brick and mortar business and they want to pivot into something that to them seems totally different. Like it's in a completely different field. It's something different than maybe they have their, you know, educational background in. They're worried about their family, they're worried about their friends, they're worried about what their audience will think. They think they're going to look flighty, that it's totally different. They don't even know why they're doing it. And so the question is always, you know, how do I put this out into the world? Like, I'm doing this big pivot. And the answer for me, because if you look at the trajectory of my life and career, it went from fitness to personal development, you know, network marketing to alcohol business, alcohol business to product. And while some people are like, that feels so all over the place to me. There is a through line through all of it. And so it's about finding the story in the through line and not just deciding, okay, I'm gonna pivot, I'm gonna work behind the SC on this thing. Not tell anyone. And then 10 days before I'm going to say there's a launch, there's a pivot. Ten days until my huge pivot. And you haven't told them anything. You haven't told them why. You haven't told them the reasoning behind it. So it's to bring people along the whole time on the journey. If you're thinking about a pivot, fricking turn your camera on, turn around and say, you know, I've been thinking of a pivot. And something that I'm worried about is that this pivot seems so different than what I'm doing. But here's why it's not that different. It's an interest of mine. You know, it's been an interest my whole life. Like, let's say you have a brick and mortar and you have an insurance business, and you want to go into beauty business, a beauty business, and you're like, you know, beauty's really been, like an interest my entire life. It's been something that I've, you know, I've always bought these products. I invest this much every single month. Women constantly ask me, what am I doing with my skin? And I just noticed that I started to get really excited whenever I would be helping people in my DMs about that. I just realized how much information I actually have when people ask me about moisturizer or serums or I love doing the research on it. It's what I'm so interested in. And just take them on the journey of why this is becoming an interest for you, and maybe that you're going to start talking about it more. And so that gives you the permission. Because all you're asking, when women ask this and when men ask this in these entrepreneurial rooms, they're just asking me for permission of how do I do this? Like, how do I start telling people? You have to give yourself permission to start that way.

Yeah, you got to give yourself permission to know that you see the whole story, even if you don't quite know how to tell it yet. You got to give yourself permission that the responsibility lies on you to take everybody on the journey, even if they're not sure they're signed up for the journey yet. There's always somebody who's first to go. Right? Steve Jobs was first to go down the whole smartphone path. Mark Zuckerberg was first to go down the whole social media path. There's always someone who's going to be first to go. If you know that you're called to be the first to go, even if it's not attached to what you're doing before then, damn it. Use enthusiasm, use messaging, use data to support your vision and take people along.

The most important thing in a pivot is, you know, we said who you surround yourself with. The next thing is story. If you don't know your story yet there's one there, trust that there is one there. I promise you, someone can extract this story, work with a storyteller, work with somebody who knows how to tell these stories. And again, you may be like, I don't even know who that could be. I promise you, now that you know what you're looking for, it's going to come into your year round. Because I just did this for me, Chris, because I was like, I need to get really clear on my key stories for Glossy, when I'm going on podcasts, when I'm talking from a stage and I know all of the stories, but they can get really jumbled up, they can get really long winded. I know that's shocking, but I want somebody who can really teach me how to hone in on the main stories and then how it's going to help me sell my product. And so the second that I got clear with my question of what I needed, I saw all of these posts on Instagram. I'm a part of this entrepreneistas group, and someone, like, wrote in there, like, hey, here's something I do. I help people do X, Y and Z with storytelling and help them learn how to monetize, like, you know, their whole story and their brand. And I was like, there it is. Okay, I'm getting on the phone with these people and figuring out who's going to be the best fit for me. And all you have to do, if you're just not sure right now is get, like, your three main questions around your pivot and start putting them out there, start putting them online, start looking for what you need, start putting them on social media, ask your network, join a mastermind. These are huge things that you can do to support yourself through the pivot.

I think the best thing you can do because you're talking about storytelling, is this. Learn how to land the plane and then learn three or four different routes to get to the same destination every time. Does that make sense? Like, landing the plane is the punchline as to why your new pivot, why your business is going to be awesome. But then depending what situation you're in, are you talking to a customer? Are you talking to an investor? Are you talking On a stage? Are you talking on a podcast? That's what I mean by learn three or four different routes to get to that same destination. You master that in storytelling. You're not, you're never going to find yourself in a situation where you're not going to be able to rally the troops and get people enthusiastic about supporting your new direction.

So if you're considering a pivot, you can know that it is a sign of strength and not a weakness, and that the most powerful people in business adapt and do pivots. And the biggest thing about a pivot is that it also opens up massive opportunities.

Sure does.

And I know that you have an opportunity with your pivot right now.

Yeah. So here's what happened. We were originally going to raise $5 million. And then because we're pretty good at entrepreneurship, we figured out how to, what we thought, launch our peer to peer lending app on only 3 million. So we only raised 3 to the 5 million. Now that we're pivoting and we've got some tech to rebuild, and we got to rebuild the marketing coffers and backfill a whole bunch of legal expenses, we've decided we're going to reopen that last $2 million that we weren't going to allow people to participate in. On top of that, we only took strategic investors first. You know, I already have permission to share Dean Graciosi, Brendan Burchard, Bretton, Chalene Johnson, Pete Vargas, Jen Gottlieb, like incredible strategic investors where they had a very big audience to share Frello when we went to launch, that's what made them a strategic investor. But now for this last $2 million, we're gonna let anybody in who just has a passion for helping people out of a jam. If you want to get in on the ground floor as an investor, right, that means you own a little tiny part of the company of something that could be that next multi billion dollar disruptor, the next GoFundMe, the next built rewards, the next whatever. This is your chance to do that. When most of the time people don't invite you into this type of circle. Most of the time people don't invite you into this type of opportunity. So if you want to invest in this last piece of the seed round the ground floor in Frello, this is your last chance. And you can do so by going to frelloapp.com invest, fill out the query, you and I will chat. But now there's a caveat here. You have to be an accredited investor. That means you've earned $200,000 as an individual for the last two years, or it means you've earned $300,000 as a married couple for the last two years, or it means that you have a million dollars liquid, not counting the equity in your home. Either one of those two things makes you an accredited investor. That's not my rules. That's the SEC's rules. Sorry if that excludes anybody that's excited to be a part of this. I can't change what the SEC says. But if that's you, if you're an accredited investor, this is your chance to be a part of a round that really incredible people are a part of the ground floor. So go to Frello app, that's F R E L L O app, froapp.com forward/invest. Fill out the investor form, and you and I'll have a chat to see if it's a great fit.

Well, this was so exciting, so awesome. I'm so glad that we're helping people just make a pivot be something that is actually a huge opportunity for growth, a huge opportunity for an even better direction and a better idea. And I don't believe that we went through the pivots that we went through just because I really do believe it's because we are here to help people through those really tough transitions. Because without our friends and our mentors, I don't know where I'd be. I think I would have lost my confidence along the way. I think I would have kind of shut down and maybe hidden away for a very, very long time. And it's just not necessary because you're most powerful years and idea and next version of you is literally on the other side of this extreme challenge that you're going through.

Yeah. And I want to add one more thing. I want to thank you for going first in your pivot. I'm not kidding. Because I was able to borrow from your example that it can turn out great. Borrow from your example that everything's going to be fine. Borrow from your example that you end up even closer to why you started this than the first original idea. And I can't express to you how important that was, to be able to borrow that faith from your example when I was going through the thick of it. Right. And so that's why we share this episode. So other people can now borrow from our example when they face the same thing.

I mean, you may have cried a little less than me, but maybe not. I'm not sure. So. All right. Well, I'm glad that I could go first. And you guys, if you are, you know, feeling like you. You have a friend that could really use this and is in a pivot or in a private pivot, send them this episode. Let them know that this can really help them. And we're so grateful for you guys, and we will see you next week.

Thanks for listening.