The Confab Podcast

Pepperidge Farm is one of the most well-known baked goods companies in the world, and it all began with a Connecticut housewife named Margaret Rudkin. In the midst of the Great Depression, Rudkin turned a loaf of bread into a booming business.  Inspired by her youngest son's health impediments, Rudkin set out to provide a healthy alternative to the over-processed breads that dominated grocery store shelves, and then she kept going. She went from baking thousands of loaves out of a barn in her backyard to building her own factory, was a prodigious product developer (think Goldfish and Pepperidge Farm Stuffing), sold her company to the Campbell Soup Company for what would be 237 million in today's dollars, and became the first woman on its board of directors.  Our guest, historian Edie Sparks, is the Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education at the University of the Pacific and the author of Boss Lady: How Three Women Entrepreneurs Built Successful Big Businesses in the Mid-Twentieth Century.

NPR has long been known as a hotbed for female journalists in a male-dominated industry. By 2012, women made up just 18 percent of all radio news directors, but at NPR, women held the top editorial position at five of the seven news programs. This was just one legacy of NPR's Founding Mothers, who played a defining role in a revolutionary media when public radio began in the 1960s. They created the template for a new conversational way of telling the news and an expanded definition of what news is.  Our guest Lisa Napoli covered media and technology for the New York Times at the dawn of the web, was the internet correspondent for MSNBC, and reported for the public radio show Marketplace. She joins us to talk about her latest book: Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR . 

Check the Apple Cider Vinegar label in your pantry and you will find an illustration of Patricia Bragg, positively beaming and wearing a large white cowboy hat with a circle of pink flowers. Patricia grew Bragg Live Foods into an iconic global brand —  turning health food store specialty products into grocery store staples. Patricia is now 91 (“I am ageless,” she likes to say) and sharing her wisdom @patriciabragg on Instagram. Her partner for the last 20 years and Co-CEO, Lesley Tippitt, joins us to recount the saga of an enduring brand that has remained true to its mission for more than 100 years.

The $13billion cannabis industry is estimated to grow to $30billion in the US by 2025. Our first guest April Pride is known as the godmother of the women in weed movement and host of the podcast How to Do the Pot. She'll tell us how women business owners have lost marketshare, how women consumers have been ignored, and how she's trying to change that. Our second guest Laura Eisman will tell us how her company Her Highness NYC is packaging up cannabis in solution-specific products including remedies for sleep, sex, and stress.  

Over 90% of venture capital dollars are controlled by men. Until that number changes, women looking for VC money need to play the game. Guest Leslie Feinzaig wants to teach you the rules. Her company, the Female Founder's Alliance, helps women entrepreneurs “communicate their story in a way that investors can rally behind.” She talks with Nancy about pitching to men, common pitfalls to avoid, and why women need to talk to each other about hot deals.

38 million women are going through menopause at any one time.  Talk about a sizeable market with high need to know.  And yet, you will hear in this interview about the barriers to entry Jill Angelo had to jump to begin her company: Male investors who go ick, women who don't want to talk about it (it means I'm getting old), gynecologists who have little training or interest in it.  With all those challenges, Jill is trying to bring menopause out of hiding and women out of silent suffering.      

In 1977, Gale Epstein gave her friend Lida Orzeck a bra and panty set, handcrafted out of embroidered handkerchiefs. From there, a business idea was born. Today, Hanky Panky is a 50-million-dollar business, selling an average of one thong per second. In this episode, Gale and Lida discuss how to start, run, and enjoy a business without outside investment. Hanky Panky has refused all offers of a buyout. Instead, the company is employee-owned, proof that it is possible to stay small while being big.

Journalist Mary Pilon, in her page-turning book The Monopolists, hunts down the true story of the woman who invented the most popular board game in the world. Monopoly inventor and forgotten feminist Lizzie Magie died in 1948, thinking she was a failure, having received a total of $500 for the rights to her game. We hear about Magie's vision and mission for the game, as well as her futile fight to defend her work and legacy, which Pilon resolutely revives from the sidelines of history. 

Hattie Carthan is the mother of the urban environmental movement in America that she single-handedly kicked off when she got fed up with watching her Brooklyn neighborhood deteriorate. Her mantra was: Save a Tree, Save a Neighborhood, and she pursued it relentlessly -- leading a grassroots movement well into her 70s. Marlon Rice, Executive Director of the Magnolia Tree Earth Center, the non-profit dedicated to environmental education that Hattie started, talks to us about her work and legacy.

Twenty years ago, Heidi Reimer Epp and her mom started a company by hand-making paper in their basement. Today they run a seven-figure business operating out of an 11,000 square foot manufacturing plant of their own. They've expanded to 36 countries, and Botanical Paperworks is now a world-leading maker of seed paper – actual, plantable paper that grows into flowers, herbs, or vegetables. Heidi talks about scaling, manufacturing, creating new product lines and finding new markets.

When Keita Williams turned her biggest rock bottom into an ah-ha moment, the Success Bully was born. Keita became an accountability evangelist and expert in motivating even the worst procrastinators to get sh*t done. In this episode, she describes common roadblocks that too often keep women entrepreneurs stuck, and gives solutions that will get you to the next step of your journey. Hint: Perfectionism is procrastination. Procrastination is fear.

In two years of business, Jessie Taige has built a cult following of nutty cup lovers. With distribution listings in Whole Foods and Murray's Cheese Shop, a booming Cup-of-the-Month Club, and a growing list of corporate and institutional clients, Jessie's ready to take her business to the next level. So, how does she get there? Raise money? Staff up? Successful food entrepreneur Hillary Graves, Founder of Little Dish — the leading food brand for children in the UK that recently launched in the US — joins us for a Confab Mentor Session to help Jessie figure out the right move to get her where she wants to go.

In our inaugural episode we sit down with A'Lelia Bundles, the great-great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) and author of the biography Self Made (previously published as On Her Own Ground). Born in Louisiana after the Civil War, orphaned at seven, married at 14, widowed at 20, working as a washerwoman, Walker went on to become not only one of the most successful female founders in history, but also a social activist, great philanthropist, and visionary firebrand for black women's economic empowerment.