The Founders Sandbox

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with David Hirschfeld, owner of 18 year old business Tekyz, that boasts a hyperexceptional development team building high “ticket” products in the B2B space. They speak about ways in which AI is a gamechanger, how Tekyz backs their work for clients with relentless pursuit of quality, and how Tekyz practices ruthless compassion,to protect the company and enable it to grow Having collaborated with over 90 startups, he developed the Launch 1st Method—a systematic approach that minimizes risks and accelerates software company success with reduced reliance on investor funding, after observing that many companies launch a product first and then fail at a later stage – With Tekyz approach of Launch 1st exceptional founders are in love with the problem not the product.   David's expertise bridges cutting-edge AI technologies, workflow optimization, and startup ecosystem dynamics. When not transforming business strategies, he enjoys woodworking, golfing, and drawing leadership insights from his experience raising four successful sons. You can find out more about David and Tekyz at: https://sites.google.com/tekyz.com/david-hirschfeld?usp=sharing https://tekyz.podbean.com/ - Scaling Smarter Episodes. www.scalingsmarter.net - Schedule an interview https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://x.com/tekyzinc https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://www.facebook.com/dmhirschfeld       transcription:  00:04 Welcome  back to the Founders Sandbox.  I am Brenda McCabe, the host here on this monthly podcast, now in its third season. This podcast reaches entrepreneurs, business owners that are scaling. 00:31 professional service providers that provide services to these  entrepreneurs, and corporate board directors who, like me, are building resilient, purpose-driven, and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. My guests to this podcast are business owners themselves, professional service providers, and corporate directors who, like me, want to  use the power of the private company to build a better 01:01 world through storytelling with each of my guests in the sandbox. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. So today I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, David Hirschfeld. David is the owner and CEO of Techies, 17 or 18 year old business now that boasts 01:29 a hyper exceptional development team that are building high ticket products in the B2B space.  Welcome David to the Founder Sandbox. Hi Brenda and thanks for having me. Great. So I'm delighted that we  actually did a dry run in February.  We've known each other for some time  and AI, we're going to be touching on AI.  And I think that the world of AI 01:58 particularly in software development,  has changed significantly since we last spoke in February. So we're going to be getting into  some, I think, novel concepts for  the listeners of the Founder Sandbox. So I wanted to, you I always talk about how I like to work with  growth stage companies  that  typically are bootstrapped  and 02:26 It's only at a later stage do they seek institutional investment  by building great corporate governance  and reducing the reliance on investor funding  until such a time that they choose the right type of investors that can help them scale. So when I found out what you do at Techies with Launch First  and the type of work you do in B2B businesses, I absolutely wanted to have you here  on the  founder sandbox. 02:56 So let's jump right in, right? I think I'm eager to learn more about how to scale your bespoke development at Techies, right? To scale my own business? Okay. So there's a lot of different aspects to scaling my business and I bootstrapped for the last 18 years. 03:25 I've never taken any investment  with techies.  And I've  done that very specifically because  it gives me a lot of freedom. I don't have  a reporting structure that I have to worry about. That doesn't mean that I can be lazy with my team.  To grow my team, I have a philosophy 03:52 that I only hire people that are smarter than I am.  And the  ones that are in a position to hire, they can only hire people that are smarter than them. And by  really sticking to this philosophy, even though sometimes it makes us grow a little slower than we would like, it means that when we bring in people, those people  contribute immediately and contribute in a way 04:21 that it's our job to get the impediments out of their way and to facilitate them  so that they can contribute and  help us grow the company. So I call it  the ball rolls uphill  here because  my job is to support everybody that is above me, which is everybody. And then the people that I support directly, their job is to support the people that are above them. 04:51 Because if we're hiring correctly, then  people that we bring in can contribute in the area that we're bringing them in way more than the person that's hiring them. Okay. Thank you for that. So before you launched Techies, you had a career in companies like,  I  believe, Computer Associates, right? Texas Experiments and TelaMotorola. 05:19 There was a period of time between your  experience in these large corporations before your launch tech is where you actually had your own startup  and  you sold it in 2000, right? And I believe you also learned perhaps with the second startup about how hard it is to find product market fit. Can you talk to that for my listeners, please? 05:46 I don't know that it's that hard to find product market fit. It depends if that's your focus or not. If your focus is to nail down product market fit, then  it's not that hard to determine whether you can achieve that or not fairly quickly.  You can do that by  selling your product to potential customers.  That sounds strange. Of course, we all want to sell our products, but 06:14 What I'm suggesting is you start selling your product before you have a product, before you have a  full product. And I don't mean an MVP, but a design prototype. You go out to the market and you start to sell it. If you have product market fit and you've identified the early adopter in your market and you know that they have a very high  need from a perception perspective  and there's a big cost to the problem that you're solving. 06:45 then you can offer them a big enough value upfront that they'll buy your product early and you can prove that there's a market for your product and they'll buy it in enough numbers that you  can achieve a measurable  metric, which I kind of call the golden ratio, which is three to one in terms of what is the lifetime value of a customer versus what does it cost to acquire that customer? And you can get to that three to one ratio. 07:13 in a prelaunch sale model before you ever started developing your product as a way of proving product market fit. Or you pivot quickly and cheaply because you're not having to rebuild a product that you've built in the wrong way. Or you  fail fast and cheap. And every entrepreneur's first goal should be to fail fast and cheap. know that sounds backwards, but that should be your goal is that you can fail fast and cheap or if you 07:42 If you fail to fail fast and cheap, that means you've found a path to revenue  and  product market fit. And now you know you have a viable business. making the investment to build the product  is a no brainer.  And you came upon this methodology, right? Yes.  because you did yourself when you had your first company, you did not understand the funding part, right?  Can you talk? 08:12 a bit about your specific example and then how that's informed now 17 years of techies and over 90 projects with startups. Okay. So my first company was Bootstrap. Okay.  And that one was successful and we grew it despite  me, it was me and a partner. And  despite ourselves, we grew it  over eight years. 08:39 where he ended up with 800 customers in 22 countries and sold it to a publicly traded firm out of Toronto. That was in the product food, snack food distribution business because that was what our product was focused on. So I started another company about five years later, not realizing the things that I did the first time. 09:08 that made it  so successful,  which really fit the launch first model to a large degree.  But the second time I built a product that would have been successful had I followed my first model,  but I didn't. So I went the route of building an MVP and getting customers on a free version of it, and then going out and trying to raise money, which is the very classic approach that the SaaS products 09:38 take now.  And the problem is with that approach is that you end up digging a really deep hole  in terms of the investment that you make to build the product with enough functionality that you can convince people it's worth putting an investment in and you're not generating any revenue at the time. And I should have just started selling the product and generating subscription revenue right from the beginning. First of all, I would have been able to  raise money much more easily. 10:08 Secondly, I would have not needed to raise money as much if I'd focused on sales. The problem with a lot of founders is they fall in love with their product. They believe that people will buy it at enough numbers and that investors will see the potential. they're afraid of sales. I've fallen into this trap before too. I've done it both ways. And I can tell you selling early 10:38 and staying focused on the customer and the problem are the way to be successful. So founders who I find are consistently successful, they are focused on the problem, they love the problem. The product is just the natural conclusion to solving the problem, not something to be in love with. They spend their time talking to customers about the problems.  So how does a potential customer find you and work with you? 11:08 Oh, they can find me at Techies or they can find me at LaunchFirst, was spelled launch1st.com. And they can find me on LinkedIn. And then to work with me, it's just give me a call, send me an email, we'll set up a Zoom. I'll start to learn about what you're trying to accomplish and what your requirements are. And I'll typically spend quite a bit of time with any potential clients. 11:39 in  one to usually multiple calls or Zooms, learning and  creating estimates and doing a lot of work in advance with the idea that there'll be a natural conclusion at the end of this that they'll wanna start working with me in a paid fashion. So there's a lot of value that my clients get from me whether they end up contracting me or not.  And how, again, back to,  thank you for that and that. 12:08 how to contact you will be in the show notes. But what types of sectors do you work in?  You know, in your introduction, I talk about high ticket B2B, right?  who are the,  so  what founder that's has some idea today?  What would be  their call to action to find techies? And what would you, is it launch first before you go down? 12:35 No, it's not necessarily. It may be an existing company that  is trying to implement AI or implement workflow automation, or they have a project and they don't have the IT team or capacity to handle it.  We love those types of projects. It might be an existing startup that is struggling with their software development team and they're not 13:04 getting  to the end goal that they're expecting and the product's buggy, it's taking too long,  there's constant delays, they're way over budget  and they  need to get this thing done. And  I call those recovery projects,  they're probably my favorite because people  recognize very quickly  the difference  that we bring. 13:33 and they really, really appreciate us.  As far as what sectors,  business sectors,  healthcare, law enforcement,  prop tech, real estate, finance,  entertainment, I mean, we work in  many, many different sectors over the last 18 years.  So  regardless in  B2B, B2B2C,  not so much e-commerce unless there's some 14:03 complex workflow associated with your particular e-commerce, but there's lots of really good solutions for e-commerce that  don't require developers to be involved.  But  mobile, web, IoT,  definitely everything is AI now. Absolutely. And in fact, when we last spoke,  I'd like to say that you started to drink your own Kool-Aid at Techies. 14:33 you're starting to actually use AI automation for internal functions as well as projects at Techies. So can you walk my listeners through how you're using  AI automation  and what's the latest with agentic AI?  So let's do the first.  Yeah,  okay.  So there are a bunch of questions there. So  let me start with 15:02 that we're building products internally  at Techies to help us with our own workflows.  These products though  are  applicable to almost any development company or any company with a development team.  Some of them are, and some of them are applicable to companies that are, well, so one product  is  putting voice capability in front of project management tool. 15:32 and we use JIRA and JIRA is an incredibly technical tool for project managers and development teams to use to  their projects, requirements, their  track bugs, all of that.  And so your relationship with what I call relationship with project management is very technical one. If you're a client, some clients are willing to  go through the learning curve so that they can enter their own... 15:59 bugs and feature requests and things like that directly into JIRA. Most don't.  They  want to send us emails, which is fine,  and just give us a list of what's going on and the problems that they're finding or the things that they need  for a future version and the planning and the documentation, everything else. This is a real technical thing. We're going to make it a very natural personal relationship by  adding voice in front of all this so that you can 16:29 be sharing your screen with your little voice app and say, just found a problem on the screen.  And  the voice app can see the screen. It knows your project. It knows your requirements. And it can identify problems on the screen that you may not have even noticed.  And it can also prevent you from reporting bugs that have already been reported and tell you when they're planned to be built.  And all of this just with a verbal discussion with the app. 16:58 that basically knows your project.  Kind of like talking to a project manager in real time, but they don't have to write down notes and  they can instantly  look up anything about your project in terms of what's been reported in terms of bugs or feature requests  and update them or create new ones for you or just report them to you and tell you when things are planned to be built and released or. 17:24 where they've already been released and maybe you need to clear your cache so you can see the change, whatever.  Yeah. So it be like an  avatar, but it's trained and it's  specific to Jira  in your case?  In the first version, it's actually being built architected so that we'll be able to add other project management tools to it besides Jira in the future.  to begin with, because we use Jira,  it's going to work directly with Jira to start. 17:54 And this, by the way, you asked about agentic workflows,  right? So we're  building an agentic workflow  in this tool where we have more  different agents  that work together to resolve these issues.  so we have an agent that reads and writes documentation to JIRA.  We have an agent that communicates with  the user and the user might be the programmer 18:23 might be a person in QA, it might be a client for a lot of different things. And we have an analyst agent that when the person talks, the voice agent says to the analyst agent, here's what I understand. Here's the information I just got. Go do your work and come back and get me the answer. And it'll speak to the JIRA agent to get the information. It will also speak directly to us. 18:52 a vector database, which is a database where all the documentation from that project  is ingested into our own  separate AI model so that the context of all the communication is about their project and doesn't go off into other directions.  And then can  get back. So this is an agentic workflow.  The idea of 19:20 agents is like everybody keeps talking about agents. Not everybody is really clear on what that even means. Can you define  that?  an agent is an AI  model  that you can interact with that is focused on  one specific area of expertise.  So if it's a travel agent, the word agent fits very well there, then their expertise would be on everything related to 19:49 travel and booking travel and looking up  options and comparing prices. And  that would be an AI  travel agent.  So that's very different from an AI project management agent, very different from an AI financial analyst agent.  So each agent specializes in its own area of expertise and may draw from specific 20:18 repositories of information that are  specific to that particular agent's area of expertise.  And they actually look from the perspective of that type of person, if it was a person. So,  and so they'll respond in a way that is consistent with how somebody who is a project manager would respond to you when you're talking to them, asking you questions about your requirements, knows what 20:46 information it needs to be able to assess it properly, things like that.  wouldn't be very good about travel because that's  not its area of expertise. Right.  So is it  common to have companies that are creating with their own large language model, right? Or their workflow processes internally to the company to create their own agent AI? 21:14 Or is there a marketplace now where you can say, want this type of agent to get in. This is a very basic question, but  do build it? Right. Or do you buy it? Or is it something in between? It's something in between.  So there are tools that allow you to  basically collect agents out there.  And there's a difference between an agent and a context.  Cause you hear a lot about model context switching and things like, don't know. 21:44 if your audience knows these things.  Or model context protocol. A context is not an agent, but it has some agent capabilities because it's kind of specializing your model in a certain area. But you would use this, but you're not, if it's a true agent, then  it's probably tied to its own vector database. 22:12 that gets trained with specific information. It might be company's information. It might be information, let's say if I'm a security agent, then I'm going to be trained on the entire NIST system as well as all of my security architecture that's currently in place. And that so that it could monitor and 22:41 assess instantly whether there's  security vulnerabilities, which you wouldn't ask Chet GPT to do that. No. Right? Because it couldn't. Because it doesn't know  anything about your organization or environment. And  it  really also doesn't know how to prioritize  what matters and what doesn't at any given moment. Whereas a  security agent, that would be what it does. 23:10 I don't know if I answered that question. Oh, bad thing about building or buying.  there are- Or something in between,  Yeah. So there are tools that you can use to build workflows  and  bring in different agents that already exist. And  you can use something like OpenAI or Claude  and  use it to create an agent and give it some intelligence and- 23:37 give it a specific, in this case, you're giving it a specific context.  You could even  tie a special machine learning database to it  and make it even more agentic in that way.  And then  build these workflows where you're  like, let's say a marketing workflow,  where you're saying you first go out and research all the people who are your  ideal customer profile. 24:07 I was going to say ICP, but I'm trying not to use acronyms because not everybody knows every acronym.  Ideal customer profile.  And then it finds all these people that fit your ideal customer profile. Then it says, well, which of these people  are  in the countries that I do business? And then it illuminates the ones that aren't. then which ones, and it may be using  the same agent or different agents to do this.  Then once it's nailed it down to the very discrete 24:37 set of customers. Now  the next step in the workflow is, okay, now  enrich their data  of these people to find their email and other ways of contacting them as well as other information about them so that I have a really full picture of what kind of activity are they active  socially? they speak? Do they post? What are they speaking about? What are they posting about? What events are they going to? Things like that. 25:07 So that would be the next step and that'd be an agent that's doing all the enriching.  And then after that, the next step would be to call basically call a writing agent to go do, am I writing an email? Am I writing a LinkedIn connection post? Am I doing both?  Set up a drip campaign and start reaching out to these people one at a time  with very customized specific language, right? That  is in your voice. 25:34 It doesn't sound like it's written by a typical AI outreach thing. All right, so these would be  steps in a workflow that you could use with several different tools to build the workflows and then calling these different agents. 25:48 Let's go back to the launched first. What would be a typical engagement with a company? you know, they, um, the founders that have the greatest success in your experiences are the ones that love the problem space and not the product. All right. So walk my listeners through. 26:17 What a typical engagement. it's staff augmentation. it  full out  outsourcing? it tech?  because it's very complex. I can touch so many. can touch high  tech and high ticket B2B products,  sector agnostic. what,  put some legs on this for my listeners, please. Sure, sure. We're not. 26:46 so much a staff augmentation company, although we'll do that if asked to, but that's not  the kind of business that we  look for.  We look for project type work. So a typical engagement for launch first would be  somebody wants to launch a product, they're in the concept phase. We help refine the concept and we build out,  help that we do the design and then we build a high fidelity prototype, which is a design prototype. 27:16 When I demo a design prototype to somebody, they think that they're looking at a finished product,  but  it's not. It doesn't actually do anything. It just looks like it  does everything.  So it's very animated set of mock-ups is another way to look at it.  And it's important because you can build out the big vision of the product this way in a couple of months, whereas 27:46 it takes instead of, you so you're looking at the two year roadmap when we're done of the product. If we were to build an MVP, then you're going to see a very limited view of the product and it's going to cost a lot more to build that MVP than it takes to build this design prototype. Now we're in the process of doing this. We're also nailing down who that early adopter is. And there's a, there's a very, 28:14 metrics driven methodology for doing this.  your launch first. Within launch first, right. Okay. All right. And then  we'll help the client build a marketing funnel and help them start to generate sales.  We're not doing the selling, they're doing the selling. And it's important that founders do the selling because they need to hear what customers are saying about the thing they're demoing, why they want it, why they don't. 28:43 So that  if we need to pivot, which we can do easily and quickly with a design prototype,  then we can  pivot and then go and test the model again, two or three or four times in the space of a couple of months.  And we'll either find a path to revenue or accept the fact that this probably isn't the right product for the right time.  But in the process of doing this, you're learning a lot about the market and about the potential customer. 29:13 I want to be clear about something. Almost every founder that comes to  that I meet with, they love the product, not the problem. They started out with a problem that they realized they had a good solution for and they forgot all about the problem at that point. And so I spend a lot of time with founders  reminding them why the  problem is all that matters  and what that means and how to approach customers, potential customers so that 29:41 you're syncing with their problems, not telling them about this product that you're building because nobody cares about your product. All they care about is what they're struggling with.  And if they believe that you really understand that, then they  care about whether you can solve that problem for them or 30:01 And can  I be  audacious and ask you what a typical engagement duration is like? So this would be for launch first. Yes. If it's a,  and our hope is that they'll  find a path to revenue and start building the product and engage us for the development. Cause that's really our business is building the products.  So, but it's not a requirement.  And,  and our typical engagement with our clients are several years. 30:32 Not all of them, but most of them, would say. Once they start working with us, they just continue to work with us until they decide to bring in their own in-house team  or they fail eventually, which many of our clients do, which is why I  created Launch First. Right. You often talk about your hyper exceptional team at Techies. What is it that's so highly exceptional? Talk to me about your team. Where are they? Yeah. 31:02 And if you go to my website, which is tekyz.com,  you'll see at the very top of it  in the header above the fold, it says hyper exceptional development team. And I don't expect people to believe me  because I write that down or I tell them that I expect them to ask me, well, what does that mean? Do you have evidence? And  that's the question I want to get because I do.  Because when you work in an exceptional manner, 31:31 as a natural consequence of working that way, you produce certain artifacts  that the typical development teams don't produce. And I'm not saying there aren't other exceptional teams, but they're really few and far between. And what makes a team exceptional is a constant need to  improve their ability to deliver  and the level of quality that they deliver as well and the speed at which they develop. It's all of these things. 31:59 So,  and, you know, after 18 years, we've done a lot of improving and a lot of automation internally,  because  that allows our team to work in a really disciplined protocol manner without having to feel like they're under the strict  discipline and protocol of,  you  know, a difficult environment to work in.  And so we  create automation everywhere we can. The voice... 32:27 tool is one of those automations.  The way we  do status reports, it's very clear at the level of detail that we provide every week  to every client in terms of status reports  where we're showing here's what we estimated, here's the actual, here's our percent variance  on how much time we spent and how much it's costing.  We want to always be within 10 % above or below. 32:56 Either  being above or below is not,  know,  the fact that we're ahead of that doesn't necessarily mean that's a good thing, right? So we want to be accurate with our estimates.  And we are typically within 10%. In fact, our largest customer last year, we did a retrospective and we were within six and a half percent of what our estimates were for the whole year.  and that's a,  we're pretty happy with that number. 33:24 I think most teams are looking at many, many times that in terms of variance.  it's not that uncommon for teams to be double or triple what they're or even higher what the actual estimate was. So  when we do invoicing, we invoice for each person at their rate. 33:50 based on their level of expertise, which is all part of our agreement upfront. So the client is very transparent every month for the hours that they work. And we attach the daily time sheets to every invoice. I'm the only company I know of right now that does that. I know there are others. I've seen monthly, but I've never seen daily. Yeah. Yeah. Because for me, if I could ask, well, 34:18 why did this person ask a work that many hours that last month? What did they do? I hate that feeling that I get when somebody asks that question. I know they're only asking because they have to justify it to somebody else or whatever the reason, but I don't like the way it feels because it feels like my integrity is being questioned. I don't get upset at people for asking me that. I just feel like I'm not giving them enough information if they have to ask me that question. So we started about eight years ago. 34:47 providing the daily time sheets because I don't like that question. And we never get questioned on our  invoices ever anymore. I bet you it's informed you  as well in  future  projects,  maybe on  including workflow automation in your own internal processes, right? When you see people's time sheets, right? And you've gone over budget. So it informs you internally. So it's not only for the client. 35:16 I suspect, right? No, it's not. Right. And we use it ourselves to also, because it also helps us looking at our overhead costs because not everything gets built to the client. And so we track all our own times, you know, what we're spending doing what. And we don't get to, it's not like a developer has to spend a lot of time or a QA person or whatever, putting in a lot of detail. We just need a couple of bullets, you know, every day in the time sheet with the, whatever they spend. 35:45 If they spent four hours on one thing and three on another, they'll just break it into two entries just to make it easy.  And that's important for us, or they may be working on two different projects and each project. So when we do the timesheets also every month, we give our clients a breakdown by project. So if we're working on four different projects  for a client  or even one project, but it has four different really 36:15 functional elements that are very clearly different. Like let's say a mobile app and a web app  and a  particular client implementation. Each one of those gets assigned its own project and we break down summaries of the time spent on each of those every month and who spent the time on those, along with the daily time sheets, along with the invoice.  And nobody else does that because it takes a lot of discipline and protocol and you have to have lot of systems in place 36:45 to do that without  literally getting everybody to quit, right? That works for you. And nobody minds doing it because it's easy because of all the systems we put in place to do that.  That's the whole point, right? Right. were  not particularly happy of getting asked that question oftentimes. So eight years ago, you set out to  provide the information on a daily basis, which is incredible.  We started that with blended rates like a lot of companies do. 37:14 And then I didn't like that because at the end of a project when most of it's QA, people would start to get frustrated that they're still getting billed the same blended rate, even though for the more expensive period at the beginning of the project,  I thought, okay, forget this. Well, just bill based on individual.  And then I didn't get those questions anymore, but then I would get questions about individuals on the month. And that's when I started doing the time sheets. 37:43 And like I said, I'm sure there's other companies that do it, but I haven't run into  one or somebody that works with one. So  that's an exceptional thing that we do. But it also allows us to do  really, really good reporting to the client on status on what we've spent our time on, what we're expecting to spend our time on  next week, what we just spent our time on this week, where we are. 38:12 in terms of our plan for the month, things like that.  So let's switch gears, David.  Yeah. Back to  actually the podcast and  some of my guests and listeners  are corporate board directors. So they're sitting on either advisory boards or fiduciary corporate boards.  And with all the hype around AI. 38:39 it's not uncommon for them to be asking, what are we doing, right? For existing companies, right? And  I'd like you to walk my listeners through while it's in the, you know,  in the imaginary realm, what is it? I think any founder today that's actually scaling, right? Has to have some AI element. At least I've even heard you need to have it. 39:08 an AI officer in the company. So what's your take on that? What would you respond to either to your board of advisors, your advisory board, or your board of directors?  So,  and of course, a lot of it depends on the type of company you are. Absolutely. Right. If  you're making  alternative material I-beams, for example,  for skyscraper construction, then 39:37 AI, other than maybe in the design process of these specialized materials,  AI may not be as big a critical factor, although for invoice reconciliation and  distribution and  scheduling and all that, AI could be a huge value to you if you don't have super efficient systems already.  For most everybody else though, if you have not embraced the need to 40:06 leverage AI and everything you're doing,  then you're way behind already.  That doesn't mean you have to be in a race to do this. just, because  I'm  of the belief that  you have to slow down to speed up. But you do need to make it a priority.  And in a lot of different ways. Number one is, 40:36 The most obvious is workflow automation. You should be probably tackling  workflow automation as just a part of your constant improvement program  to become more efficient, whether it's with AI or not.  But AI is particularly good at workflow automation  because it can tackle steps in that workflow that couldn't be tackled without AI.  So the  first thing 41:06 the companies should be doing if they're not doing it is documenting all of their processes,  all of their tribal knowledge into playbooks. So when you have somebody who's an expert in something in your company and they're the person who's the only one that knows how to do it and so we can't live without them, that's a bottleneck for scaling. Because if you bring somebody else in to expand their capacity, they're going to... 41:32 put a big dependency on that person with all the expertise, which is going to cause problems.  So  anybody in a position like that should be documenting all of their  procedures and protocols and especially all the nuances and all the edge cases into playbooks.  And there should be some centralized playbook repository for the company. And this becomes part of your intellectual property and part of your value if you ever 42:02 you're trying to raise money or you're trying to sell your company. So it increases your value. So you do that, then AI,  you start to look at automating those workflows because now they're documented. So now what can be automated in them from just a workflow automation perspective. And then how much can you implement AI in there? Because now AI can learn to make the same kinds of decisions that this person is making. 42:31 And this is like the low hanging fruit that I'm talking about right now. Right. Exactly. Right. Because the bigger stuff is if we implement AI in here, what workflows would we totally  throw away and start from scratch?  Because we can think of way more sophisticated ways of addressing this now that we have intelligence involved in all these steps.  But that's later. 42:57 worry about that once you get your arms around implementing AI,  automated workflows and then- So workflow automation. So playbooks, workflows and AI in your automated workflows. That's sort of the stepped wise process. Excellent. You heard it here  on the founder sandbox. Thank you, David.  And if you're not sure how to do all that, 43:25 ask AI, okay, here's my company. What should I be focusing on if I wanna implement playbooks, workflow automation and AI? And AI will help you figure this all out. Right. That's a jewel here. So what'd you do? Chat GBT, co-pilot, what's your complexity? Where would you go to? All right. Well, it just depends on the flavor of the day. Right now. 43:53 I was using chat GPT primarily for this stuff just because it was a first and I'm very comfortable with the apps. have them everywhere. And Claude's recently come out with a  new version and it's in some ways I'm just finding the output way more organized and smarter. And so I've been using Claude more in the last couple of weeks, but that'll change in another week or two.  Any one of them will do a pretty decent job. 44:21 I'm  not using perplexity because it's built on top of the other ones.  But perplexity is a great tool if you're newer with this because it makes some of the... It's a little bit more accessible for somebody who doesn't know how to use AI.  Gemini is also  really good, but that's  more of a technical... And there's so many things you can do. 44:49 with AI that you wouldn't even think about. And I'll give you an example, more as a brain opening exercise for everybody than anything else. Because this is something I did about seven weeks ago.  I,  chat GPT had just come out a week or two before with their vision capability in the mobile app. And for  those of you who don't know it,  with chat GPT, there's a talk 45:19 button. It's not  the microphone. It's the one that looks like a sound wave  in the mobile app. You tap that, and now you have a voice conversation with chat, which I use this constantly. Even when I'm working with,  I've got some contractors at my house whose English isn't very good, so I ask it to do real-time translation for me. And it does matter the language.  And I start talking, and it translates to their language. And they respond 45:49 in their language and it translates to English and it's doing it perfectly. And so I can have a very natural conversation with anybody just holding my phone up in front of them now.  Right?  But it has this vision capability  where when you go into that voice mode, you tap the camera next to it, and now it's looking out the front of your screen while you're talking to it. And so I'll give you a couple of examples where I've used it  six weeks ago and again, like 46:18 weeks later and I now used it many times like this.  I was in  Lowe's, which is a  store for home improvement.  And  for some project I was on, my wife calls me and says, I need fertilizer for a hibiscus. And I say, well, what do I get? She says, anything that says hibiscus on it, it'll be fine. I said, okay, fine. And if anybody that knows these big box stores, there's like hundreds of bags of fertilizer of different brands. 46:48 And I couldn't find one that said hibiscus. This is a typical thing with my wife. Oh, just look for this. And of course, there isn't that. So I asked Chess GPT, okay, I'm in  Lowe's  and I'm looking for a fertilizer for hibiscus.  What would you suggest? And it said, oh, there's a number of brands that are high acid.  And I said, we'll recommend a brand. Tonal is a really good brand. And I said, okay. So I'm looking and I can't find it. 47:18 So I walked 30 feet back and I'm talking, right? I'm having this, know, people are looking at me like, what the hell is he doing? And I walked 30 feet back because there's many, many shelves, you know, columns of shelves with fertilizer. I walked back and I turned on the vision and I say, okay, there's all the fertilizers. And I'm moving my phone across all these shelves. say, do you see tonal here? And it says, yes, look for the one in the red and white bag. 47:48 And  I see it on the shelf. So I walk straight forward. see a red and white bag. That's not tonal. said, this isn't it. And she, cause it's a woman's voice that I have, she says,  it's two shelves to the left, second from the top.  I walk over there and it's right where she said it was. Crazy. And you're not a beta user. So this is available today. This is available. It's been available for a couple of months. And then 48:18 My daughter-in-law asked me to get something from the pharmacy, from CVS, another  big box pharmacy store, right? And this is something I don't even know if I'm in the right aisle because it's something I've never bought. So I ask it, I say, I'm looking for this brand  and I'm not sure if I'm in the right aisle or not, but I'm going to walk down the aisle and tell me if you see it. As I'm walking down the aisle, holding it straight forward so it can see both sides.  And it says, well, 48:45 Yes, I'm familiar with the brand. You should look for it in a green and white box. then she goes like this. Oh, I see it. It's down there on the right on the bottom shelf. And I turn and I look and it's right by my right foot. 48:58 You heard it here. This is crazy. think it's a bit creepy.  How many times have you been looking for something on a shelf? You know, and you're like, oh, how long, how many hours is this going to take me to spot it?  Good internet connection and all that. So, oh my goodness. It's creepy and it's wonderful. So  same time.  the same time. Yeah. Yeah. For quality of life and even for,  um, yeah.  So 49:25 That's a mind opening thing is all the reason I bring that up. Excellent. Hey, let's go. Let's continue on in the founder sandbox. I'd like to ask each of my guests to  share with me.  I'm all about working with resilient, purpose driven and scalable companies in the growth phase. So what does resilience mean to you? You can either answer, you know, what's the first thing that comes out of your, you cannot use chat, GBT. I'm not fancy. No hands. 49:55 No hands, and I don't have the voice version going because you'd hear it. Podcast we could do it.  And we are real. We're not. Yeah, we are real. We're not. So I think that's, I don't think that's a difficult question to answer. Resilience means opportunity. So no matter what happens, even if it seems terrible, what  opportunity does that create? Excellent. If you ask that. 50:22 keep reframing everything from that perspective,  it creates resilience. Right. Thank you. What about purpose-driven?  Purpose-driven  means having  a clear  long-term path and goal  and  asking yourself if the things you're doing keep you on purpose to that. 50:56 Scalable. What's scalable mean for you? Scalable for me means  eliminating tribal knowledge or not eliminating it, but documenting tribal knowledge.  First of all, figuring out how you generate revenue and then how you expand your ability to generate revenue, which means growing your 51:25 growing your team, growing your capacity  and identifying the bottlenecks and focusing all your energy on the bottlenecks. And usually the bottlenecks have to do  with tribal knowledge or with  lack of workflow automation. Wow, you know, it's easier said than done though, that tribal knowledge, it is resistant, right? Oh yeah,  because it's  career,  what's the word I'm trying to think of? 51:55 It  keeps you in your job forever if you're the only one that knows how to do the thing. Absolutely. That's for another podcast, David. My  final question today is,  did you have fun in the Founder Sandbox? Oh, yes.  I had a lot of fun. Thanks. That's a great question too. Thank you, Brenda. Did you have fun? 52:20 Did you? I had had fun. And particularly in this last part, right? Cause we're talking about some heavy duty, you know, uses of, um, agentic AI, right. And scalable, you know, LTV, CAC and all that. And then we get to hear these real life, you know, kind of creepy, um, uh, uses of, um, on our phones today with, um, with AI, which is, which is quite amazing. But I also know that in your world of techies, 52:50 your team, which is distributed, have a lot of fun events too. So you probably- have one more thing on the whole scalable thing. You have to be compassionately ruthless or ruthlessly compassionate, however you want to say it. Okay. So that the people, every, and the ruthless is anything that's going to get in the way of you growing your company, which benefits everybody in the company. 53:19 it needs to be addressed in a ruthless way. But if you build a culture of ruthlessly compassionate, then all the people that work for you feel that same level of ruthlessness to protect the company and make it grow. And you practice what you preach, I suspect, at Techies. Yes. Yes. It took me a while, but if we accidentally hire the wrong person, either because 53:45 we made a mistake in the process or they faked us out and we recognize they're not smart enough. Literally, that's usually the problem. They're not smart enough to carry their weight. We fire them immediately. We don't try to bring them along because you can't improve somebody's IQ. You can improve any other aspect, but their IQ is their IQ.  And  that will be a bottleneck forever. 54:13 in our team and it'll require other people to carry that person. And it sends the wrong message to the team that I don't value them enough to make sure that we only surround them with people that are going to inspire them and help them grow. Excellent. And I suspect they are not fungible by AI, your employees, not techies. I mean, we've gotten better and better. 54:40 at not making those mistakes over the years. So that doesn't typically happen. takes us, we're much more careful about how we hire.  AI gives us the ability to recruit faster, more broadly,  along with workflow automation. But  what I mean by real, this is the compassionate. Once my team understood this, now they embody that and  they will get rid of somebody if they made a mistake. I don't have to force the issue ever anymore because 55:10 they recognize how much, important it is to protect their teams. So to my listeners, if you liked this episode today with the CEO and founder of Techies, sign up for the monthly release of founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers who provide their examples of how they're building companies or consulting with companies  to make them more resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven. 55:40 to make profits for good.  Signing off for today. See you next month in the Founder Sandbox. Thank you.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Alexa Steinberg – a corporate and transactional attorney for middle-market companies and entrepreneurs. Acting as outside general counsel, Alexa represents privately held companies in a wide range of general corporate and transactional matters, including entity formation, structuring, and commercial transactions. With a focus on mergers and acquisitions, she offers clients guidance on structuring deals and ensuring compliance with relevant laws and regulations. Brenda and Alexa discuss her journey from working at a small, all-female law firm to joining a full-service firm to better support her clients. Alexa shares how her parents—both deeply involved in business and community service—shaped her values around financial literacy, record-keeping, and the importance of building generational wealth. They speak about family-owned businesses and best practices in family governance, such as setting clear roles, regular meetings, and involving independent board members. Alexa also emphasizes the importance of building trust with clients and maintaining a purpose-driven, relational legal practice. Brenda and Alexa explore what "purpose-driven," "resilience," and "scalable" mean within the context of business and legal practice. You can find out more about Alexa at: https://www.greenbergglusker.com/alexa-steinberg/         episode transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25 % off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:18 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host of this monthly podcast where I have guests that are either founders, professional service providers, corporate  board directors  that actually share a mission with me, which is bringing change to the world through great corporate governance, but building resilient, scalable and purpose-driven companies.  On a monthly basis,  my guests are going to tell their origin stories and kind of how I've met them. 01:48 through the work they do.  And I've recreated a fun sandbox environment in which we do storytelling. And ultimately we will touch upon resilience, purpose-driven  and  scalable or sustainable growth in the  businesses that they are  working in or owners of.  02:17 l I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest today, Alexa Steinberg, Alexa is counsel  at Greenberg, Glasgow.  And before that, she was actually practicing in a smaller law firm and where her story today is going to kind of have some some 02:47 lessons learned on  why she chose to leave the firm and move into Greenberg, the Greenberg Lasker. But more importantly, you and I go back a couple years. are part of an informal group of women. We call ourselves Women and Wealth.  We meet periodically to really refer business to each other for those women business owners that 03:16 are seeking perhaps an exit in the next three to five years.  And through our skillset, some of us are CPAs, strategy advisors, yourself as counsel. A lot of these businesses are family owned. And so you and I and another, know, seven other ladies  get to meet each other over lunch and discuss these opportunities. And we're all very passionate about helping women business owners. Aren't we, 03:44 We are Brenda, thank you so much for having me on the Founder's Sandbox.  I am an avid listener, so I'm very excited that I get to be a guest. Thank you, thank you.  you know,  we've had many, conversations, obviously,  but I wanted for my listeners  to really dive into  what you do today, right? Which is really  purpose. 04:12 driven and it's preserving family wealth, right?  And I know that you actually come from a background where your father owned his business. So tell us  a bit, us down memory lane and that first story that you told me.  Well, you know, growing up, I watched both of my parents. My mother was a career woman.  My father, a financial planner. 04:38 running his  own book.  My mother,  a buyer and then in fashion and then into real estate.  I watched they were both very involved in the community. My mother sat on  the Studio City Council,  the Neighborhood Council. She was on many boards involved with the temple. My father as well  sat on many boards involved with the 05:07 Boys and Girls Club,  and  involved with the Jewish Federation. So I watched as my parents  really instilled the importance of being involved in  community, being involved in family, being involved  in the greater good and in purposeful and meaningful  organizations.  And I... 05:35 sort of learned a lot about that watching them both in their respective arenas being involved. And you know, they've, they've truly inspired me,  not only in my career path, but in  how I treat my clients  in the arenas that I've become involved in.  There's a specific story that I think I've shared with you, Brenda, about my father and how he sort of taught me 06:05 the value of wealth, the value of money, because as his career, that was what he did. He focused mainly on planning for retirement and financially setting yourself up and your family up to have generational wealth and what that looked like and how you could prepare for it when you were 10, 15, 20, 25 years old, preparing for family, preparing for children. 06:35 So when I turned 16, my father went into our QuickBooks. We had a family QuickBooks.  Oh, wow. That was before it was actually.  It was probably  a hard disk, right? Not even on the internet. Oh, yeah. It was like a hard disk. had a full set up, massive computers, the whole thing,  in our family office.  And he went into his QuickBooks. And he took. 07:03 what he spent on me in a year.  And he divided it by 12. And this  included insurance. Mind you, I just turned 16. So my car insurance, my car lease,  medical, entertainment,  my tennis lessons, all of these things that  were spent on me, what it cost  for me to function.  Children are expensive, you know. 07:32 I was very expensive because I will tell you that check was large  that he cut me every month.  And he laid out, these are the things that are monthly expenses for you that you need to pay with this money. And the rest you can use on entertainment,  gifts,  shopping, which I loved.  But I had to learn to balance my checkbook and balance 08:01 this amount of money, because I wasn't able to get any more until the next month.  And  that really taught me how that  money  was never something that was readily expendable to me. even if I went to Starbucks and I bought a drink with my father's credit card, he'd ask me for the receipt. He'd want to know where the receipt was, always. 08:28 I was very meticulous in his record keeping which I am now very much meticulous in my record keeping  and  I enforce with my clients and  make sure that record keeping is so important in your business as well.  You know and so when I when I graduated high school my father said to me okay the checks are done.  And you need to go get a job in college. 08:56 And what I will do is I will subsidize the paycheck that you bring home. So if you bring home $600, I will pay you 50 cents on the dollar for what you bring home, but only up to $300. So I could get a max of $300 every paycheck that he would subsidize. And then that was  how  I had money to live and to function. my parents,  I was lucky enough that my parents would pay for my college. 09:24 in my housing, in my dorms,  but  it was still really teaching me the value  of money.  And my father required that a certain portion of those funds get put away in savings and invested. And he would tell me how to do that.  And he would guide me.  because my father was a financial planner,  he would call me like a client and say, listen, 09:53 You're 70 % stocks, 30 % cash. I think you need to swap it. Let's talk about what that means. And of course, I'm like, you're my dad. Just do it. Why are we having this conversation? But it was so valuable because he wanted me to understand what he was doing and why he was doing it and how it really functioned. that I've also taken into how I guide and advise my clients. 10:22 I don't just do for them. understand, I want them to understand  how we're doing it, why we're doing it, what the alternatives  are and what it means if we do it this way or that way.  You know, a lot of my discussions with my clients are about strategy and about structure and  so they can make an informed decision.  You know, I think that that's extremely important, especially in a family business.  Working with your family is tough. So, 10:52 The way that you can make it that much easier is communication and understanding and knowledge. And I try to arm my clients with that. And that's something that my father really taught me.  my mother as well,  because my father managed our money and my mother  would bring it home and hand my father a check and be like, here, I don't know what you do with it, but do something with it. 11:21 She also  would, he would say, hold on a second. Like, I know you just sold a house and here's your commission check, but let me show you what we do with this and how we create generational wealth and how we invest it and what the best benefit for these funds are and how to use debt to our advantage.  Um, you know, and that's all of these things were such a value add that  I 11:51 I obtained understanding about and that I've now turned this value add to my clients  and how they run their business.  I'm not a financial advisor, I'm not a tax attorney. These are just really sort of  general  understandings and general guidance points for my clients to go out and  have knowledgeable conversations with the appropriate 12:21 guidance, appropriate people,  and the appropriate service providers that are going to help them accomplish those things. really,  this is very loaded, but I really like  the methods your father used. very, well, first of all, intentional  and bespoke. And that's really, and he did communicate to your mother, right? To instill also in her an understanding 12:52 of although she's bringing the check home because many, many women business owners today oftentimes do not own a majority of their companies. Right. And that is a shocking  statistic that I run into time and time again that women actually don't know how much  equity they have in their own business. Right. So just the informing and,  and you've translated that bespoke, you know, communicating 13:22 helping your clients understand,  pardon me, and  providing options as well as access to other professional service providers as  your own bespoke  offering to your clients. But it wasn't always like, yeah, go. That's sort of the benefit of the group that you and I met in and all of the networking opportunities that I've been involved in.  Of course,  networking is about building 13:51 um, your brand and your book and,  um, but a majority of it and the real value there  is  meeting and learning and understanding, um, and really coming to know people that can help your clients  where you can't,  um, and having  trustworthy referral sources to do that, because I'm not just going to tell my client, Oh, 14:18 this individual can help you with wealth management, call them without knowing how this person functions, without knowing  how they run their clientele,  how they do business. Those are really important things and to have trustworthy referral sources  is really important. And that's sort of what our group is  all about. That's right.  And it wasn't always like this. 14:46 Right, you graduated from law school  and started with a small, it was a, I think  a female-led law firm.  all female attorneys. Yeah, so what was your, this is right out of college, what were you doing  and what then informed your decision at a very tender age to leave?  So  right out of law school, 15:17 had worked my way through law school. I worked in family law for about five or six years. during the day, I was at a law firm. And in the evening, I took classes from 5 to 10 PM, four days a week for four years. took me four years to get through law school. And when I graduated, unfortunately, I wasn't afforded 15:47 All of the opportunities in law school  that most law students take advantage of, externships,  fellowships, things like that, because I was working my way through. I  had already been financially independent and I  wanted to stay that way. So I didn't want to quit my job  to go to school. I  wanted to be able to do it all. 16:15 So as a result, I really didn't have  the summer clerkships  that turn into job offers.  And I was a little lost because I had taken the bar exam and I was like, OK,  I'm not an attorney yet. But in three months, if I pass the bar exam, I could be.  Am I applying for law clerk positions? Am I applying for associate positions? Like, know, I was so lost.  And I went on Craigslist.  Oh my goodness. 16:44 And I found law firms that were hiring because I figured those people, you know, they're they're looking to hire somebody now, which is what I'm looking for. and hopefully those people, you know, will transition me into an associate role. If I pass the bar exam in a few months. And that was that was like my first sort of in. And I joined a very boutique law firm in West Hollywood. It was 17:13 By the time I left, we were three female attorneys. were  all female  for my entire tenure there. I was there for six and a half years.  And it was  in  late 2019,  early 2020 that I really decided I wanted more for my career and for my book of business. And I wanted to be able to  provide my clients  with a well-rounded 17:43 advice and guidance. I can't do it all, nor should I. I'm pretty sure my malpractice of insurance wouldn't like that. Not at all. But more and more, had clients that were asking me to help with litigation matters or employment matters. And those are arenas that I know just enough about to be dangerous. But I'm not going to run a full litigation. 18:13 I can't willfully and knowledgeably advise on employment matters.  You know, especially to  do justice by my client, do well by them.  I'd like to be able to  have somebody for them that they can speak to and trust and get the advice and counsel that they need.  And that really stemmed  my yearning to  branch out. 18:42 and go to a firm where I had all of those resources at my fingertips. I wanted more for my career, but my biggest drive was I wanted more for my clients.  I wanted really to be able to provide them with well-rounded, multidisciplinary  counsel.  And so I sought out  full-service law firms. 19:11 I found my home at Greenberg Gloucester, which  is a fantastic place to be.  I'm very happy there and everybody is so fantastic and  everybody is so good at what they do.  We've got employment and tax and  IP and litigation,  environmental, entertainment,  you name it.  And it's been such a benefit not only to my career, 19:41 to my clients, but I've learned  so much.  And is it true?  How would you characterize the typical clients without revealing, you know, confidential matters? Is it  also a firm that's  very oriented towards family owned businesses? Would you say that? Yeah, I would. You know, I'm  a counsel in the corporate and tax department. 20:08 And you we don't have a ton of institutional clients.  A lot of our clients are family owned businesses, mostly held entities,  you know, which I love on a daily basis. I am working with  two sisters that own a business together or a multi-generational company where, you know, senior is working with G2 and  G3  or 20:37 were actually this morning I was working on  assigning interests and reorganizing and restructuring a bunch of entities that own a bunch of real estate for clients.  And that's also  the kind of benefit that I get that I get to be pulled into  real estate matters with my corporate expertise to help a family office restructure their ownership. 21:04 You know, and I  love that stuff. We're extremely,  the way that Greenberg  provides advice and counsel  is on a very personal level. The way that  the firm  and myself, especially, we're a lifestyle firm.  You know, we understand that attorneys are people outside of 21:33 the walls of the office and that we all have lives.  And we, you know, I translate that to my clients. My clients have lives. My clients have other things going on than their business.  And especially when you deal with family offices and family businesses, there's a whole different dynamic  of  family interaction. Yes. You know, and, and I have now experienced that  not only with my clients  and sometimes I become 22:03 therapist in that regard, although I'm a very expensive therapist. I'm sure there people that are less per hour.  But  I'm experiencing it firsthand because my husband  has his own business with his brother  and I have  become  advice and counsel for them  as well. And so I'm  seeing it sort of from a different angle too, but I think that my clients truly appreciate 22:32 that when I talk to them, I talk to them as a person. It's not just as a business owner. It's not just as  I'm guiding you with this  legal advice.  It has to make sense.  And it has to  be actually applicable.  And sometimes what my advice and guidance would be  in sort of this like legal  box  is not the best. 23:00 for my client and how their business is operating.  And you've got to be  sort of fluid with that. And bespoke.  Yeah, so it's really beyond, it's not a transactional relationship. It is a trustworthy relationship based on the values of the family businesses that and their goals in preserving wealth  or continuing to generate family wealth. Yeah, absolutely. This is a great segue because you know, I also 23:29 passionate and have often guests that are sitting on corporate boards.  As counsel, have you observed any best practices and family governance structure? You talk about G1,  G2, G3, Have you observed any  best practices? We don't have to talk about bad practices, right? But any best practices that you would like to share here?  Yeah, you know,  I think that  I've observed that 23:59 Some of the most effective family governance structures prioritize clear communication,  well-defined roles,  professionalized decision-making.  I use this in a very loose  sense of the word, but you could establish a family constitution. Creating a board of advisors is always really important. 24:28 having independent members  in your board of advisors  is so incredibly valuable to have a knowledgeable, independent  person that can help through disputes. business disputes are one thing, but when you include a family dynamic in these disputes,  emotions can get high and heated. And so having  an independent third board 24:57 Third party board is extremely valuable. Somebody that can guide you, something that your family trusts. Those are some big things that I've seen as best practices. And I think that lastly, holding dedicated, regular meetings. 25:23 You'll talk about business, you know, at the dinner table or, you know, out and about you're at a kid, one of your niece's birthday parties and everyone's there and you're like, Hey, did you see that email from XYZ? We got to figure out how to handle that.  But  those are not the time and place and you're not going to have a productive conversation. And so you need to set aside and create boundaries between your family life and your business life  and set aside regular times. 25:53 weekly, bi-weekly, to have an hour conversation about what's going on, any disputes that need to be discussed, any decisions that need to be made.  And that's your time to solely be in your business mode.  Because having these conversation piece meals,  dinner on a Saturday night,  or  a family's birthday party, or  a holiday party, 26:22 It's not effective  for your business. And one of the biggest,  best practices  and the most, one of the most important goals  is to preserve your family relationships. Beautiful. You heard it here on the founder's sandbox to preserve family.  Absolutely.  Cause if you don't have family, do you have? That's right. 26:52 Family first. really important.  It's really important. And sometimes business can get in the middle of family relationships.  And it hurts to see that. It hurts to see  business  tear between  brothers,  tear between  father and son.  And I've seen those things in it.  There needs to be just a second to breathe. Yes. 27:21 and realize that there are bigger things than business  and that they need to be resolved, but they can only be resolved if you have a good relationship with your business partner slash your family.  They're your biggest support. 27:37 This has been immensely  actionable  in terms of  governance, the best practice you've seen in family offices. So thank you. Thank you for that. It's not often that I do have  a  lawyer  that works in this  arena.  Although family businesses just in the LA  ecosystem is 28:05 It's very predominant. very, very, you know, third, actually third and fourth generation now. So very relevant to your business and mine. Let's switch gears. You are, I believe, sitting on the board of directors or one of the committees of the Association of Corporate Growth. Yes. And tell us a bit what why what is the Association of Corporate Growth and what committees do you serve on? 28:35 And how do you further your business there? Thank you. The Association of Corporate Growth or ACG is a national organization  for professionals in the M &A sphere. So  you've got members that are  VCs, investment bankers,  M &A attorneys, wealth managers,  insurance specialists.  You sort of name it. Anybody that's 29:03 has some sort of involvement  in the purchase or sale of a business  or just surround sort of just general business governance that either prepare for an exit. You know,  those are the kind of people that are members of ACG.  And I got involved a few years ago.  And I think three years now, I've been sitting  on the Women's Committee,  which is a 29:31 Fantastic. We schedule and create women-focused programming within the confines of the ACG organization and really promote networking amongst women. More and more, I have had clients that have requested that they only work with women. 29:58 You know, and this sort of goes back to what I was talking about earlier about being able to provide  trustworthy referrals.  And I've met some incredible, incredible women in connection with ACJ. In fact, our group kind of came out of ACJ. This is how I met you, Brenda. And so  it's been a fantastic, fantastic  network to be a part of.  You know, I love planning the programming, our programming. 30:28 ranges everywhere from  talking about the state of the market  to  balancing family and career and what that looks like and  mental health. I think  I hate calling out a distinction that we are women in business  because I think a 30:57 A business person is a business person. I don't think it needs to be defined as such, but there is something to be said about the fact that  women have a different set of challenges in the workplace  than men do.  And a lot of those stem from  family life.  And that needs to be  balanced. And so there's a lot of programming  that the women's committee puts on that sort of 31:26 talks about that and  gears us in that direction  and gives us tools to be successful and to strive  in the face  of everything else that women just have to  deal with and take care of. That's for another episode here. Yes, very much so. Very much so, yes, as we all have balanced our careers and family priorities, right? 31:56 Let's switch gears. How do my  listeners contact you? How's the best way?  Well,  so I'm at again, I'm at Greenberg Gloucester. We're in Century City.  They can email me. It's  a Steinberg at gg firm.com.  And on our Greenberg Gloucester website, if you search people, I've got my whole bio and all of my contact information as well. Excellent. 32:25 Well, that will appear in the show notes. All right. So we're coming into the final  part of this podcast in which I actually  enjoy asking my guests  what the meaning is of certain terms that I actually practice with my clients. I'm working with purpose-driven companies, resilience. We work on resilience tactics  and  scalable business is sustainable. So I  always love the opportunity to hear 32:55 firsthand from my guess. What does purpose-driven mean to you, Purpose-driven means  a mission that goes beyond profit.  It taps into creating meaningful value for your customers,  for your employees,  for the community that  you operate in.  It's sort of about  building a company that 33:25 that stands for something.  And I'm very pleased to say that we have seen so many more companies  start out of a purpose-driven  goal.  There's a bunch of old companies and new companies. There's  a lot of companies that have this sort of one-for-one model. You buy one, we donate one. 33:52 There are socks companies, there are eyeglass companies, there are shoe companies, there are cleaning product companies  that sort of have  this  as their motto. And  then you see  additionally,  know, products and companies that are committed to the environment or sustainability and cleanup efforts. You know, that's really what  purpose-driven 34:21 means to me is that  these companies have a goal.  They want to accomplish something more than what they can show on their balance sheet. consumers of that product are helping them achieve that.  Excellent. Excellent. You've touched on even other aspects like  sustainable growth, right? Yeah. Right. What is resilience? You've been particularly resilient. 34:49 You having a father like your father,  building life skills early. would resilience,  what's the meaning to you? 35:00 Resilience is about  navigating challenges  with adaptability and with determination. It's about learning from your setbacks  instead of being defined by them, having them be a fire to your growth and having them  be the galvanization of your progress forward. 35:30 You know, and in business, it also can be about the ability to  pivot while staying aligned with your long-term goals, about the ability to,  you know, okay, there's a new regulatory,  new regulation that's gonna affect the way we operate. Okay, how are we gonna pivot to continue doing what we do,  but still can  stay in compliance?  You know,  that's really, 35:59 what it's all beyond your toes.  Excellent. And you're scalable. I'd like you to kind of share the meaning within the context of scaling the legal practice. What have you found to be  particularly  challenging or easy to do? Right. And scaling, right. Because it's a very bespoke practice. Is there any important, right? Scaling is absolutely important. Okay. 36:28 In my practice and in my business,  number one  goal  and  the biggest  galvanization point of scaling my practice  are my clients, my current clients. If you do a good job for them, they'll continue to come back. 36:59 and they'll continue to give you more business.  Creating a network. I watched my parents in their, both of their practices. All of our family friends  at this point have at one point or another been a client of my mother's or of my father's.  They've swapped clients,  referred to each other. And these individuals either started as friends and became clients. 37:29 or  became friends because they were clients.  And  that is the way that both of my parents have built their practice and their brands.  And that's how I want to do it too. It's a value add when,  attorneys are scary to begin with.  Nobody wants to talk to an attorney. It's expensive. Half the time you have no idea what they're talking about. It's language. 37:57 You know, but if you create this relationship of trust and of loyalty and friendship  and when you feel like your attorney  sees beyond just you as a dollar figure or you as a business,  it goes such a long way. And that's my main value add to my clients.  And in turn, they help me scale. 38:22 my business, clients continue to come back to me  and I'm able to continue to grow that because I can satisfy all of their needs with the network that I'm creating through places like ACG. You know, so that's, that's what I see is as scalable in my industry. It's extremely important.  And it goes to the heart of how I practice law and how, how I guide and advise my clients. Beautiful. 38:52 Thank you. heard it here on the Founder's Sandbox. Last question, Alexa.  Did you have fun in the sandbox today?  Oh, it was so fun.  Brenda, thank you so much for having me. This was fantastic. Thank you. So to my listeners, if you've enjoyed this monthly episode with Alexa Steinberg, counsel at Greenberg, Greenberg Gloucester, right? Greenberg Gloucester. Yep.  I encourage you to 39:22 sign up, subscribe either on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm on all main podcasts streaming services where my guests talk about how they felt resilient, scalable and purpose driven  practices informed by their origin stories. You can find it here on the founder sandbox. Thank you and signing off for this month.  Thank you, Alexa.  Thank you. This was fantastic.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Dr. Keith Dorsey – Keith is joining to announce the launch of his book on May 6, 2025 “The Boardroom Journey Practical Guidance for Women to Secure a Seat at the Table”. Dr. Keith D. Dorsey is an internationally recognized governance expert and NACD Directorship 100™ honoree who equips senior leaders with proven strategies to secure and excel in board roles. With over 25 years of corporate leadership experience and active board service spanning private, municipal, university, and nonprofit sectors, he delivers engaging presentations that blend research-based insights with actionable guidance. Dr. Dorsey speaks on corporate governance, board effectiveness, and strategic leadership, helping organizations build stronger boards and executives navigate their path to the boardroom. His book, The Boardroom Journey, offers practical guidance for expanding boardroom impact and success. Read more about Keith's experience. You can find out more about Keith and his upcoming book at:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-keith-d-dorsey-798a2681/ https://www.boardroomjourney.com/book       Transcript:  00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25 % off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:20 So welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox.  I am Brenda McCabe, your host and this monthly podcast.  We're now in our third season  and my podcast, the Founder's Sandbox, reaches entrepreneurs, business owners with guests. And these guests  teach us about building resilient, scalable and purpose-driven enterprises,  all with great corporate governance. My mission is simple. 01:49 with this podcast as I really want to assist through my content and my guests, those entrepreneurs and business owners and building the scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses.  And  I like to have in my  guests, corporate directors, primarily to speak about their own experience sitting on corporate boards and building with great corporate governance.  I like to think that we can use the 02:16 power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. And we do some of the storytelling in a fictitious sandbox on the founders or the corporate directors' origin story. I am absolutely delighted that this month I have Dr. Keith Dorsey as my guest. So welcome, Keith. It's great to be here. Thank you, Brenda. Thank you so much. 02:45 While you check many boxes, you're joining today because you have authored a book. It has a launch date of May 6, 2025, so just around the corner. And the title of your book is The Boardroom Journey, Practical Guidance for Women to Secure a Seat at the Table. So kudos to you. Thank you. For, wow, you're a busy person. We'll get to that later. 03:13 you know, where did you find the time and the courage to  publish a book, launch it  in today's  environment? And we'll get to those questions later. So for my guest, Dr. Keith  Dorsey and I go back  many years,  actually prior to you being a doctor, right?  You check many boxes  as a guest. You are a seasoned board member, executive advisor, 03:44 informal coach,  and researcher. I love that.  And it was in preparing your doctoral dissertation that you discovered that, I'm going to quote here, I was reading a compelling study on the effects of gender diversity on corporate governance.  And you basically repurposed your original dissertation to provide actionable guidance  on increasing boardroom diversity. 04:14 And when you switched your dissertation, that topic that you had to defend, otherwise you wouldn't be a doctor today, right?  Was the idea for the book that is launching on May 6th. So again, welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining me.  So we chose as a, my guests know, we chose a title because I at Next Act Advisors am about building purpose, purpose driven companies.  The title 04:43 that Keith and I came up with is, you know, bridging gaps for better governance. So Keith,  share with us kind of your origin story. Go back all the way, although I'm gonna encourage my listeners to purchase your book, but go back to your origin story.  You nailed it in like one page in the book, but tell us where your origins and what was your, not only your boardroom journey, but your journey to where you are today. 05:12 Thank you. I often tell people, Brenda, that this is my third chapter. You know, the first chapter was the US military. actually enlisted in the military in between my junior year of high school that summer and my senior year of high school. I knew before I started my first day of my senior year of high school when I was leaving for basic training in the Air Force. so my first 05:38 chapter was the Air Force for a number of years. was stationed  in Florida, the Republic of Panama, and the United Kingdom  for a number of years. And then I got impatient and decided I wanted to get out. I had a successful early career in the Air Force.  And I said, if I can be this successful in the US Air Force, which is like a large corporation,  imagine what I can do  in an actual corporation. 06:05 I set out on this journey to  explore sales. And that led me to my  second chapter, which was corporate America. And I worked for almost 30 years in corporate America,  primarily  as a turnaround specialist in the area of sales. I would take over the toughest sales  organizations within these large companies and really  lift the hood up  and figure out 06:35 were they having a people product or process problem within the organization and then begin to tweak the areas. And I worked for two large companies, Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000 for almost 17 years and then a Fortune 500 for almost 12 years. And I was just a strategic growth expert. I turn around teams and I would also start teams within the organization. 07:04 to  come up with ways for double digit growth and oftentimes triple digit growth.  And so that's what I did for almost 30 years. And then in January of 2019, I entered my third chapter, which was supposed to be  semi-retirement in this portfolio career.  unfortunately, I failed miserably at retirement and what I've been doing for the past six years in this  almost seven years and this 07:33 portfolio environment as executive advisory work. I also  started serving on boards in which today I served on five boards, two private,  one  municipality, one university, and one nonprofit. And then  I  decided to go back to school to get my doctorate. And so I went back to  school at the University of Southern California and 08:01 pursued my doctorate in organizational change and leadership. all my research was in  the,  you know, at this point,  at that point, all my research  was in the lack of gender and ethnic diversity on corporate boards.  And so-  So, and that's fascinating that you chose your doctoral kind of dissertation and then focus around organizational- 08:31 strategy, right? Yes. Was that based at all  on your 30 years of sales strategy? Were there any analogs? I wonder. There was.  Part of what I would do whenever I would take over a situation that required  me to turn it around,  like I said before, was to really look at the organization.  To look at  many components of the organization, people, product, processes. 09:00 artifacts that are going on, the subcultures, the cultures. And  so I've always been fascinated about it.  And I did things innately and I wanted to learn the science behind  many of the things that I innately did.  And after  really diving into research and studies around organizational change and leadership,  I wish I would have known many of those things that I figured out the science behind back when I was. 09:28 and an actual executive doing it. But nevertheless, by  learning it now and using that in my governance roles, I still have the opportunity to put the science  behind  what I'm doing  as a board member.  And I tell people, whether it's as a board member or my researcher or my writing roles that I have today, that I'm bilingual.  I speak business. 09:56 And I speak academia.  And boardroom lingo, right? Which combines a bit of the two.  I like how you use the word science. You know,  we were chatting  before actually  getting on  air today.  We've known each other primarily because we're both members of the National Association of Group Directors, right?  And  I've been a member since, I don't know,  2016. 10:26 I don't know how long you've been a member,  I, your book is truly a kind of a North star. wish I would have had it when  I began my board journey. I actually started my board journey while in Europe and I got onto public board and I went, Holy cow, I better get trained  and went to the local equivalent  of the NACD in Spain called Instituto de Consejeros Administradores, ICA. 10:56 So for my listeners, I do want to do a shout out  if you are intentional and want to learn more about  what the journey is to getting on  first or subsequent boards.  The  book that Keith has authored is launching on the sixth.  And there is a third section.  And specifically, it's around your capital that you need to 11:25 kind of package. It's called commitment capital. It's trademarked. We're going to get into that but it's truly unique because I've read a lot of board books over my 12, 13 years and I have not seen anything as unique as this. So shout out to you. Thank you. Okay. I wanted to also, you know, ask you what made you 11:53 decide to turn that dissertation into a book? What was the, because writing a book is not for the faint of heart. So it was not on my bucket list. So what happened? You know, this is kind of inspirational for me. You know, what made you go, all right, I've got to get a book out there. Well, I, this has been a serendipitous journey, you know, just even going to  get my doctorate was something that I kind of stumbled into. 12:23 I was dealing with a tiny bit of imposter syndrome  and in dealing with that,  I  assigned something to myself to get rid of my  imposter syndrome. And I said, it's hard to get into  a doctorate program. I just want to see what I, if I can even get in. And so in Keith Dorsey fashion, I probably went a little overboard and I applied to seven different universities and eight different doctoral programs.  And 12:53 But I didn't realize in filling out all those applications,  which was crazy,  was that I needed  a lot of former executives that I worked with and other CEOs and,  like I said, other executives to serve as a reference for me. So I collected 15 people that  I would use for all those applications,  two or three at a time.  And they wrote. 13:22 I guess great things about me because I got into all seven universities, all eight programs, but I really just wanted to boost my ego. I didn't really want to go back to get my doctorate. I needed to solve  for my little bit of imposter syndrome that I was dealing with. And, but when I did enough for were 15 accountability partners saying, which one are you getting in?  Which one are you going to choose? I wrote you a great reference. hope you choose the one that I wrote the reference for. 13:52 And I said, oh no, now what? I gotta get in. Now I really have to do it.  have to get my doctorate. So I really didn't have a strong enough why  to do this to begin with.  But what made me, once I got in and  I chose this problem of practice, which was my second problem of practice. My first was  around shareholder primacy on corporate boards.  And  I stumbled into 14:21 this problem of practice, which was around the lack of gender and ethnic diversity on corporate boards. But I ended up going down this path of corporate board diversity. And I just told you this wonderful story and forgot your question. But you know what made you decide to publish a book? So as I was going through this program, 14:50 and right beginning all this research and I really got into my research probably a little too much  and I was sitting with my dissertation chair and she said, Keith, there's something you need to know. I said, what's that? She said, a good dissertation is a done dissertation. And my friend, you have way too much research out there and you've written so much, you have to narrow your focus. 15:19 And I said, give me some examples. She said, you know, pick an industry, pick an ethnicity group, pick a gender, do something. You have to narrow this down.  And I really pushed back a lot. And one of the sayings at the University of Southern California  in this program, organizational change and leadership doctoral program was trust the process. And so she said, Keith, I know you're pushing back. I know you believe in all this research you  uncovered. 15:49 but you have to trust the process. You have to narrow it down.  I said, okay, if I narrow it down, what do I do with all this research over here  and all this research over there? She said, write a book. And that's how I ended up getting to this point where I actually wrote a book  with all this rich research before my dissertation.  And then I successfully completed my dissertation. had all this information. 16:17 And I did something most people wouldn't do immediately after getting my doctorate. I dove into more research studies. You're kidding. interviewed formally and informally  hundreds of women directors  who have made  that career shift into corporate,  into being an independent director.  And I got so much rich, even more information on their barriers, their enablers, their career. 16:47 and how they were  able to make that shift and  successfully get on corporate boards. And many of these women have been on boards for decades.  that's  how I ended up where I am today with this rich data.  And  I would ask you  to describe the four characters  that are in your book. 17:14 and their names and where were they in the career, right? I wanted to share. I wanted to take a unique approach,  know, any books out there and many  board readiness programs out there that will share  a lot of theory with you a lot of information that is rich that we need to know if you're going to be a student of your profession.  As you mentioned before, I highly recommend  everyone interested in being a board director  to 17:43 go to some sort of board readiness organization and get your education  and then get your certification if you can as well.  And so in  really diving into  all the  women that have successfully made this transition and  the hundreds of interviews, informal and both  formal interviews that I conducted,  I started to see themes. 18:12 in their career at certain ages and certain sections of their careers. And I took a lot of that data and I created these four fictitious women that I would use and talk about as a part of a case study and examples so that when you read a chapter and all this theory and all this information, you could then listen to how they took the information from that chapter and executed on it. And so 18:42 The four women that I created, the first one is Lauren. She's 25 and she's a brand new manager in a corporation. She's actually  been with the corporation for three years as a sales executive and got promoted into our very first sales management position, entry level sales management position. That's Lauren.  Then I have Denise, who is a brand new senior manager in a firm. 19:10 And then I have Michelle who, and Denise is 40 and a brand new senior manager. And then I have Michelle who's a 55 year old executive in a fortune 500 corporation. And, and she has said that she wants to retire in the next three to five years. And then lastly, I have Sharon who is a 62 year old CEO of 19:39 her family business and it's a set. She's the second generation of the family business. She's been the CEO for the past 12 years and she's going to turn the business over to her much younger brother and who will take over as the CEO. All four women said at some point they're going to want to serve on a private or a public corporate board. So what should the 25, 40 year old, 55 year old and 62 year old 20:08 do  at this point of their career  to best prepare themselves for board service? How should a 25-year-old really execute her career? And instead of taking, like many of us have done,  a promotion for the sake of a promotion because they want me and because it pays more,  instead of just doing that but really looking at 20:34 beginning with the end in mind. I ultimately want to be an independent director.  So how should I orchestrate my career? How should the 40 year old make a few more tweaks before she  is at that level where she wants to serve as an independent director?  And then this person who is actually thinking about retiring in the next three to five years,  what tweaks? 20:58 Should she make over the next three to five years the be most attractive and most prepared and known  in the industry to be an independent  director? And lastly, someone who has served on her own board as an executive director and CEO for the past 12 years, but never has been an independent director.  What are the things she should be doing right before she turns the business over? 21:27 to  really show up perfectly as an independent director versus an executive director moving forward.  Thank you.  While the characters are women  and the book  has a tagline,  what is that again?  The  guidance?  The guidance for women to secure a seat at the table by no means is this a book that solely can be read by women. 21:56 I think it speaks to the other gender.  And what I found really unique is that you  had characters at different times  and  moments and section moments and their careers and how to really be intentional.  My favorite chapter, I will tell you, is chapter three. Why?  Find your why. That's the name of the chapter. 22:24 Yes. And it is in alignment with the work I do with  business owners and founders. It's like, what is your North Star? Oftentimes they created the business, they're purpose driven, but articulating the why, you know, why did you go out and, you know, work these hours and put your, you know,  re-mortgage your house  to build this business. Finding that chapter, you know, find your why. And then you're probably the research you did with the over a hundred interviews. 22:54 You ideated this, but I'd love to for you to share. And I think it's very important of all your chapters. This is for me. I think if I were an aspiring  director, independent director, this would be the one that most resonates with me. Find your way. Tell me a bit more about that chapter.  It did for me, Brenda, as well for two reasons. One, because of the research that I uncovered and  the qualitative interviews that I conducted. 23:22 I found out that those that were successful  at making that transition from being an executive or a high-powered government official  to  actually being a board member,  they did find their why. And I also,  you know, in this chapter, this third chapter that I'm in,  I became a managing partner and a practice leader of CEO and board services at a global executive search firm. 23:50 And I would have  meetings with many executives who will actually say, Keith, I want to serve on corporate boards. And I will ask them why. And they really couldn't answer.  And I would ask them specific questions about what type of board, private or public.  And  they would say, Keith, I don't care. Just get me on a paid board.  And that's not going to work. And it doesn't work. 24:16 And so I  dedicated a whole chapter to finding your why,  because  as aspiring board members  or board members seeking their second or third board,  and they kind of found their first board because someone tapped them on the shoulders  and said, we want you,  but they don't know how to replicate getting on their next board because no one's tapping them on their shoulders right now.  I found that by  getting people to reflect  on 24:46 Number one, what brings them joy? What brings them joy in this world? Life's too short. And when you're interviewing for a board role, when you're interviewing for something that brings you joy versus the person who is equally as qualified as interviewing against you for that role, when you show up for something that brings you joy, you light up the room. 25:16 And that energy, that person interviewing you picks up on it and you end up having this banter  and they understand that, you know, this seems to be more important to this person versus that executive.  You all are exceptional executives. Your CVs are outstanding, but sometimes just the fact that you're interviewing some for something that brings you joy could be the differentiator. The other thing is the reflect  on 25:44 on your why and when you are successful, understanding why you're successful. When you do fail and you feel miserable, understanding why you failed and why you felt miserable. And by spending that time reflecting on that, you'll begin to figure out your secret sauce. You'll begin to figure out your superpowers.  You'll begin to figure out 26:10 the value that you actually bring to organizations because you uncover  when you are successful, why you're successful, and when you fail, why you fail, and when you feel miserable, why you feel miserable.  Most people don't take the time to reflect. And then as executives, we have conducted  many  of these vision, mission, and value exercises for our companies. We've met them, we've written them. 26:38 And we've done all these things for our companies, but how often do we actually bring that home and transfer those skills to figure out our own personal vision, mission, and values? And when you take the time to do that in this find your why period of time, you can begin  to figure that out and run  every single situation through those funnels. And that will help you  really find your sweet spot. 27:08 And then you're only interviewing in areas where you can truly bring value.  And so that's why I wrote this section. Wow. It sounds like a lot of work. All right. So your book, think, almost it's a guidebook.  So again, we have the four characters. You can pick up the book and read chapters that don't need to be read from the  sequencer order.  Talk to me. 27:36 I think was really unique about  commitment capital. There are five types you've identified.  And I never read or thought of a concept like this  when kind of packaging my board credentials or others. Speak to me about the commitment capital. Thanks. You don't mind, Brenna. I'll touch briefly on the other four, you know, and then I'll spend more time on commitment capital. But 28:01 The two capitals that you typically hear about when you go through any board readiness program,  as  one is human capital and that talks about your education, your expertise,  your experience throughout  your career. That's the human capital side of things. And then you'll, we talk often about the social capital. That's your network, the people you know  that,  and boards are interested in your human capital and your social capital. 28:29 The social capital side,  they want your contacts. They want your connections. They want your help with the M &A  and finding funding and different things like that, finding the right talent.  Your social capital is a big part of it. And your social capital can help you get on a board as well.  But those are the two that you often hear about. The other three that I wrote about,  one is director capital. 28:58 You don't hear much about that one. And that's similar to human capital. All these skills that you accumulated in education, you accumulated throughout your career that helped you along your career. Director capital is more narrow.  And what are the experiences and education like board readiness training that you need specifically to become a director? And so that's director capital. 29:25 Then I dove into cultural capital, which you don't hear much about. And cultural capital really looks at  from the back when you were five years old in  elementary school, middle school, high school, college,  and the experiences and the people you were surrounded by that you mirrored, you emulated, and the obstacles that you innately had to overcome back in those early years. 29:54 that you called upon either innately or on purpose intentionally  throughout your career to get you through some rough times  through your education period and through your career.  People that can  call back and understand their cultural capital can use that to get on boards.  That's cultural capital. And then the fifth capital was the missing link.  And that's about commitment. 30:21 the ability to do the things you need to do in order to get something done  and  call upon that. And I can give you an example.  I have two different groups  of  women  and directors and  executives that  have  very similar outstanding CVs. 30:44 And they  all have gone through a board readiness program and they all have completed some sort of certification. This group found their way on corporate boards. This group have been  really trying to get on boards for up to five years to no avail. But when you look at them on paper, education experience and success wise, they look similar. 31:11 And the missing ingredient that I found via research  was  those who got on boards did something differently than those who didn't. And the majority of the ones who haven't found their way on boards, when they completed their programs, they were proud of themselves. They took copious notes throughout the program. And they said, done. Let those board positions begin to come my direction. 31:39 And those who actually ended up getting on boards,  who also took copious notes, they were  studious throughout the process, but then they went back home and they executed. They started to make trade-offs in their lives and they started to do things differently.  Some of them gave up TV on Wednesday nights and they no longer watch the three Chicago shows. 32:03 You know,  traded that in so they could begin to do things differently and find the time to do that reflection work  and find the time to network differently and find the time. And so they started to hold themselves accountable via their commitment capital to get things done. To this date, I still have people that will say, Keith, I want to get on a private or a public board. 32:32 And I would look at their background and I said, you know what you really need right now? You really need to serve on a nonprofit board to get some human capital experience while surrounding yourself with some incredible social capital that will see you in action. And they said, Keith, I don't have time for a nonprofit board. Now, the NACD says the average board member, independent director, spends 250 hours a year on each board. 33:01 You're telling me you want me  to  help you find a private or public board  and you don't have time to serve on a nonprofit. Let me tell you, you don't have time to be on a for-profit board and you need to find your commitment capital to make the necessary trade-offs so you do have the times to dot your I's and cross your T's. That's what commitment capital is all about. And that was the missing ingredient.  I love it. So you coin it the missing link. 33:31 the analog with business owners and founders is grit. Yes.  Right. Thunder, but I get I get it. So I, I encourage those that are aspiring  for a  first or subsequent board positions to take a look at that. Now, I'm going to ask a question that  potentially has  in the current climate. And again, this is April of 34:01 2025.  There's been  a lot of backlash in our current administration to remove anything  with the acronym DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion,  remove it from  position, hiring, anything that actually is receiving federal funding.  I'm curious, you also have in your book coined  a term called 34:30 optimal diversity. while I think you had this  term  in all the research, right, in your original writing of this book, could optimal diversity be that analog to the downfall of DEI? I think so. And unfortunately, what's going on in today's society,  mostly in the US, but even  several other places in the world, 34:59 is that organizations, in my opinion, have confused the confused.  And they are saying we need to move away from diversity  and move towards meritocracy. And that we need to get away from checking the box  and move to bringing merit back. And the unfortunate part is diversity, equity, and 35:28 has always  had merit  as the  prerequisite.  It's never been about checking the box or just bringing in an unqualified individual  so that we can  look  from an observable diversity standpoint differently.  It's really been about  one, the  prerequisite and the  table stakes. 35:58 is merit.  And then two, to be able to fish in different ponds, to bring in different people.  So ultimately, we can have that cognitive diversity or diversity of thought brought into the room.  And unfortunately, because of this reason for bringing parody  and  make certain that  your boards and your C suites and your companies 36:26 resembled the stakeholders that you were going after for all obvious reasons.  Unfortunately,  the message has gotten lost as to why we want to do this.  And it's really about mitigating risk, disruption,  finding blue oceans,  and you mitigate your risk by having a representation of that diversity of thought to protect your business and to understand all the stakeholders that you're trying to serve. 36:56 And, the prerequisite was always merit. And so I share with people that meritocracy and diversity truly can and does coexist, do coexist.  And so optimal diversity is the combination  of observable or demographic diversity coupled with diversity of thought is optimal diversity. And that applies to every human being. 37:26 when they begin to reflect and to peel back their cultural, human,  social, all those capitals I mentioned before, they can begin to present themselves in such a way that they can  demonstrate their optimal diversity.  As a managing partner  and a practice leader, a CEO in board services, I will spend time with executives one-on-one from all walks of life and coach them. 37:55 And I remember when I typically would sit down with a white male executive during this period of time,  and I would tell them my story and what my background was on  and my research around my doctorate. They will start off because they're now interviewing with  a  search professional that can help them get on boards. And they will start to interview off like this.  And then as I begin to tell them my background and my research, 38:23 they would end up like this and angry. And then I would talk to them about optimal diversity and they would start to loosen up and then they go right back to this. And I remember in one of my conversations with a Fortune 500 executive, a white male, and I talked to him about optimal diversity and he said, wait a second. He said, Keith, I grew up on a farm and I went to this sort of school and he jumped out of the car. 38:53 like that. he said, I do bring diversity to the table. And I said, yes, you do. But I've never had to present myself that way before. And what you just did was you taught me to reach into myself and figure out how I differentiate myself from any other type of executive. And I never had to do that before. And that's optimal diversity. 39:20 Absolutely. So if you heard it here on the founder sandbox, optional diversity refers to ensuring that observable demographic diversity is coupled with diversity of thought. And meritocracy and diversity are not opposing  aims, but instead are symbiotic and share a common goal. So thank you, Keith, for developing the concept of optimal diversity.  And I must read. 39:50 coming out on May 6.  I would like you to have  your time on air to provide my listeners with how they may contact you because not only are you launching your book  on May 6,  the boardroom journey.  I do believe you have one on one coaching  as well as you do  speaking opportunities. 40:19 Keith, how's it best to contact you? Well, you can find me  on my website, is boardroomjourney.com. Okay.  And my email is keith at boardroomjourney.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn under Dr. Keith D. Dorsey. And so  those are,  you know, several different ways you could find me. And when you go to boardroomjourney.com, 40:47 I'm really attacking this  approach  of making certain that we take board governance very seriously  and helping to equip individuals at various stages of their career to be best prepared for board service.  I  want  everyone, as I mentioned before, to go through some sort of board readiness program with the many different type of board readiness programs out there. 41:16 But then once you've done that, I focus on three areas.  One is with, I'm sorry, Brenda, you want to ask me a question? No, that's okay, one.  One is with  the boards themselves. I'm gonna challenge via their consulting offerings,  challenge boards to really take a look at their board members they have today.  And really,  many boards will have skilled matrices. 41:42 Yes. And so they will look at the skills matrix and maybe highlight 12 different functional skills. And then they want to outline their board members and how they rate those different skills. And then they stop there. And I consider the skills matrix to be the top 10 % of a iceberg. OK. And that's the part you can see. The bottom 90 % below the surface is around their competencies. 42:12 And in our consulting,  I challenge boards to actually measure the  competencies  of their board members as well.  And those are the things below the surface, their behavioral traits and things like that, because you wanna have the right mix  of independent directors on your board.  And then  look at where they have a redundancy  of experiences in their  functional areas, skill sets, as well as competencies. 42:41 and think about their strategy moving forward and where do they have gaps?  And so that's one half of what, you know, Boardroom Journey does. The other part  is with individuals.  And what I have uncovered is that many people will go through a program, but they don't execute, as I mentioned before, a commitment capital.  So one of the offerings we have is you get an accountability partner.  And with the... 43:10 the accountability side of things,  the accountability partner will meet up with you and have 30 minute one-on-ones with you,  almost unlimited one-on-ones throughout the year,  the numbers so high. But you cannot get the next meeting with your accountability partner until you have proven you've done the things that we talked about in the prior meeting. And so that's an offering.  And then the other offering, 43:40 is six months  of one-on-one coaching, two times  for one hour each time, twice a month.  And that one-on-one coaching is taking a lot of the principles and action items from the book, The Boardroom Journey.  And instead of doing it in asynchronous sort of fashion, we're going through it together one-on-one  to make certain that you begin to do the things 44:06 differently to get different results. The saying is successful people do what unsuccessful people don't do. And the goal there with the one-on-one coaching is to have you do the things that you need to do in order to get to where you would like to go. And so that's what the boardroom journey as a company and a practice actually does for individuals. Thank you for sharing that. This will be in the show notes, And I'm very excited to. 44:35 provide some exposure and my listeners, particularly those that are considering  your own boardroom journey. I'm going to switch gears back to the founder sandbox. I am  passionate about  resilience,  purpose-driven and scalable growth. And I love to do a round the round with my guests and what does that meaning of resilience mean to you? Each of my guests has a different... 45:04 Yeah. So please. me, resilience comes down to when you truly have a true north and you believe in your true north, having the intestinal fortitude to do things that you need to do in order to get it done  and  not giving up right when you're at that point where things can actually turn around. That's to me what resilience is about. But you first got to know your true north. 45:33 have the intestinal fortitude, encourage  to stick with it until you hit them. Thank you. How about purpose driven? The title of your episode is purpose, Yes.  Bridging gaps for better governance. But beyond that, what is purpose driven? What has made you be so purposeful? That's a great question, Brenda. I would have to say 46:00 right back to that true north, know, finding your why and  really spending the time to think about where are there  unmet needs  in the marketplace.  And, you know, I've worked with some incredible organizations and sometimes we  are too insular and we come up with some great things. 46:25 that we created that we think the market should be interested in.  And the market says, you know what, that was cute, but no. And so  I feel when you start with from the client's perspective and you uncover where there are unmet needs, then and only then can you truly be purposeful  in meeting those unmet needs. And that feels good here  and you're solving something that's needed in the 46:55 I get  it. You heard it here. Q. Dorsey's definition of purposefulness. Scalable. So I think that what you have done here  by publishing what was originally your dissertation and then building  consulting a practice around is actually scalable. What's scalable for you?  You know, something  that can have a process. 47:24 Okay, repeatable process around it.  I've watched businesses  succeed and then fail because they built something  that was needed for in the marketplace, but they allowed themselves  to  get off the beaten track because they're trying to be all things for everybody.  And  for me, 47:52 when a business is truly scalable, they found something, they met an unmet need  and they know their sweet spot and they stay in their sweet spot.  Now, do they disrupt themselves  to stay ahead on the bell shaped curve? Absolutely.  But they build something that has a repeatable process and they can keep their margins down because they're not just being there for everybody. To me, that's what scalable is all about. Find in their sweet spot and execute it. 48:22 Excellent. 48:25 Fantastic. question. Did you have fun in the sandbox today, Keith? I actually did. The problem here, Brenda, is I just enjoy having conversations with you. so  we did that via podcast. We did what we normally do,  but via podcast.  That's  excellent. So I had a blast. Thank you. And what about you? I always have fun.  I love the fact that my guests 48:55 can tell their stories.  They're very authentic. You're very authentic.  You live your purpose.  actually, that's why  my guests come to me, right? And say, is  the podcast right now, a growing channel.  And I do have a large fellowship now. You can also follow me on YouTube.  to my guests, I hope you enjoyed this month's. 49:24 podcast. Actually, this month is a lot I published a lot about corporate governance the month of April. So if you like this episode with Dr. Keith Dorsey, sign up for the monthly release  of this podcast, the founder sandbox where my guests are founders, business owners, corporate board directors, authors.  And you'll learn about how to build strong governance for resilient, scalable and purpose driven companies to make profits for good. 49:54 So thank you for joining me again, Keith. It was a pleasure. Thank you.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Shivani Honwad – founder of her own law firm, who specializes in immigration and business law for the creative industries.  Shivani is a business and immigration lawyer, and trailblazer in supporting the Freelance and Free Act, as well as a professor at NYU LA campus teaching Entrepreneurship for creatives.  “I could not keep hearing it and not do anything about it” Shivani says, speaking about immigration as a major issue for freelance fashion workers.  Shivani set out to get smarter. Ten 10 years later, The Law Firm of Shivani Honwad, LLC, focuses primarily on immigration and business law for companies in the fashion, tech, beauty and entertainment realms. You can find out more about Shivani at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivani-honwad- http://www.shivanilaw.com Find some of my guest's content here : Laws “the freelance and free act” https://www.nyc.gov/site/dca/about/freelance-isnt-free-act.page     Transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:18 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This is a monthly podcast in which I reach entrepreneurs, business owners, who are going to learn about building resilient, purpose-driven, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. 01:38 I like to assist the entrepreneurs in building these scalable, well-governed and resilient business. And what I do with my guests is they tell their origin story about how they've built their own practices. And we'll get to the origin story of my guest this month, Shivani Honwad. Shivani and I have known each other for many years. She was bi-coastal in New York and Los Angeles. We met actually in the Los Angeles. 02:06 Los Angeles Venture Association, LAVA. It has a women affinity group. And she was eagerly contributing to some of the material and programs that we put on for women business owners, actually startups in the LA ecosystem. So I wanna thank you Shivani for joining me this month and the founder Sandbox. Thank you, Brenda. Thank you. So. 02:35 You own your own law firm, the law firm of Shivani Honwad. And it was originally based in New York. I don't know whether you operate nationally, but I'd love you to kind of repeat your origin story when I met you the first time in one of the women in lava. It was a small gathering. And it struck me your story was fascinating, because you were 03:04 working for a law firm in New York, but it was in your social life. You were, you know, out for drinks in the evenings and you would often be approached by women who were in the fashion industry, so models, and inevitably over a drink or maybe not a drink, they would end up using some of your free services. What was that? What were they asking your advice on, Shivani? And with that, we're going to get started on your origin story. 03:32 Thank you. Yeah, sure. So, you know, I was in my twenties in New York City and as one does in New York City, I would often go out. So I, at the time, was working in criminal law with a firm and civil litigation. But so I would go out with my friends. You know, I went to NYU, so I had a lot of friends in the city. And, you know, these models kept approaching me and they were like, hey, I heard you're a lawyer. I need help. 04:00 And I was like, oh, did you get arrested or did something happen like that? And they were like, no. And I kept hearing stories of how they were working for these modeling agencies. Most of the people that approached me were international models and their passports or their visas or something like their paperwork was being withheld so that they didn't really have freedom to travel and then not only that, they wouldn't be paid out. So. 04:25 they would model for days, weeks, sometimes months at a time, and be paid $0. And the agencies were just, there was just a lot of abuse in the industry. And so they kept asking for help. And at the time, I didn't really understand enough about the industry to know how pervasive this was. But I started looking into it because it wasn't just one model approaching me. It was like dozens of models over the course of a few weeks, if not maybe a few months. 04:54 that kept asking me for help. And it got to a point. I imagine your name got around, right? Well, because I wasn't doing anything yet. It was just that I was the only lawyer at all of these events, right? And I mean, this is also pre-Me too. So the other part of it was, is the lawyers they were going to, some of the male lawyers unfortunately, were also taking advantage of them and being like, hey, I'll help you, but you have to be my date to this event like Saturday night. 05:20 So they would see me in my 20s and a woman and woman of color, and they would just be like, oh, OK, so she won't sexually harass me or she won't threaten me in any way. So I think I was seen as a safer space for that. So I think that's why people approach me at parties. And then it got to a point where I just I couldn't really keep hearing it and not do anything about it. 05:46 And so I did some research into it. And then I found lawyers. I knew some in my network that knew how to help them. And the biggest issue, it seemed, was the immigration part, where it was like, if models come into the US under what's called an O-1 visa, and typically it's tied to whoever their agent or employer is if they come in under that route. But if they do it, there's other ways they can do it to have a little more freedom, or they can get their green cards so they have freedom. And that's the EB1A route. 06:16 And so I figured out an attorney who did that and he had agreed to like train me in how to do that. So eventually like I started my own law firm focusing on that. And it was just to help these models get some freedom. And then, you know, I expanded from there to doing some IP and contracts because once I helped them and get got them more stable, they were like, okay, well now I'm doing these ventures and I want you to negotiate these contracts and I want you to be my lawyer for this. Like you were great. So that's how my law firm kind of came to be. 06:44 And it was just 10 years actually, since I've opened it this past August. Oh my goodness. Yeah. It was just, it started out at this crazy need of just people needing help and to be in a safe space. And the irony of it is that I originally went to law school to kind of work on human trafficking issues. Oh my goodness. And I never thought I would see it. Like I never thought I'd work in fashion, but I mean, the work I was doing was tied to that because a lot of the models were essentially held in debt bondage. 07:14 of being tied to these agencies not being paid out and saying like, you owe us this much money so we're not gonna pay you or what have you. So I think that's how it's still, I got to do what I went to law school for, but in a different way than I had initially thought. Like I thought I would work for the UN or something like, but it was so hard to get into the UN. I applied nonstop originally, but like I got to do this. And like we changed some laws around in this space. Like, 07:43 The Boston Globe did like the Spotlight team did a piece on this and like some of my clients that I was also interviewed for. And then, you know, we met with officials in city hall. And so the freelances and free act, which got passed in New York also applies to models. So if an agency, you know, gets payment from a client to the agency and they don't pay the model within 30 days, the state of New York will actually fine the agency. 08:10 So the models now have recourse to collect payment faster. Excellent. So I would ask you later to give me this law, and we'll put it in the show notes. Because this is amazing. You have been a trailblazer in a serendipitous way. You started out, or while you're studying law, you thought you would work in sexual traffic, and you did not, or human trafficking. And you were doing criminal law. 08:38 ended up actually representing fashion models, immigration issues, as well as eventually venturing into assisting them in their contract management and IP. So amazing story. And I loved one thing that you did say. You said, I couldn't not do anything, right? I researched it and I just could not just let this go. So. 09:08 Very, very resilient, Shivani. How did that experience or others inform you to actually move all the way out here to Los Angeles and set up practice? And tell us a little bit about that. So I don't think you and I have actually talked about this before. But originally, what brought me out to LA was some of the work that I did here for the models. I was recruited by some organizations in the e-sports area. 09:38 Um, you know, e-sports is actually pretty big out here in California. And, um, there was some e-sports organizations that wanted me to help implement essentially policies and basic human rights for the gamers, because, um, kind of what we had done for the models in New York, um, there was really no regulations a couple of years ago. It's still pretty bare minimum, but. 10:02 for the e-sports gamers. And you have all these essentially mostly teenage boys, there are female gamers as well, but in the e-sports tournaments, and they were just taking a ton of speed or drinking nonstop Monster Energy drinks, and they were just dying, quite frankly, they were under all this pressure to perform. And again, there was really no regulation around it. And their contracts were devoid of like... 10:28 just basic human rights of like, okay, you can get a bathroom break, you get time to eat, you get time to sleep. So originally I was recruited out here to kind of work on those issues. And I will say, if you've never been to an e-sports tournament and like in a stadium, I advise going, it's an experience. Wow. This is like a trillion dollar industry and it like traverses all socioeconomic, like really like it. 10:56 It just transcends all lines. It's just an incredible scene to experience, just the fandom of it all. So I was in that space for a little bit originally and it just, it was a very chaotic environment that I just didn't really want to be in anymore. Right. And then, yeah, I just- And you were doing this from 11:26 from your own practice? At that time, you'd set up your practice, so you just recently celebrated 10 years of your law firm, Shivani Hanwad. Yeah. You were actually serving the e-sports from your law firm. Yeah, so I was doing some contract stuff. I was doing visas for the gamers, things like that. So I was getting more familiar with it. But it was because the issues paralleled. 11:53 basically what was happening with models in New York with the sports gamers in California. So that's kind of how the whole thing started. And then, like I said, it wasn't really for me, but then I had made some inroads here. I got connected to Lava and some other organizations. And then I got offered the position to teach at NYU's LA campus. So that's kind of anchored me here in Los Angeles now. But yeah, so I still do kind of the same stuff and I work. 12:22 you know, same. The thing with immigration law is it's federal. So my clients are all over the world and a lot of my clients also in the fashion, creative industries, their contracts are mostly like for New York and California based things. And like I'm admitted to practice law in both New York and California. So they just email me, like we do Zooms or, you know, calls and stuff and go through stuff. So yeah, I serve clients all over the world basically. 12:51 position you have with New York Stern's LA campus? It's not Stern. So it's New York University. Okay. I went to Stern undergrad. Yes. And then, but New York University's Los Angeles campus is just a general campus. It's not a specific school. Okay. So we serve students from all schools. And actually we have multiple global campuses. So we have two other degree granting campuses. One is NYU Abu Dhabi. 13:21 and one is NYU Shanghai. So this is what come to our LA program. It's an undergrad study abroad only program. So it's one semester and they come mainly from our New York campus. Some are, we also do have a lot of students that come from our Abu Dhabi campus and our Shanghai campus. And then they might be as part of other programs too. And so they come out here, they spend a semester, they, we work on getting them internships. 13:48 And they just kind of see, like most of them want to go into the entertainment industries in, you know, whether it's media, like screenwriting, directing, producing, or music. So they're just trying to see if they like the LA environment, make some inroads for if they want to like pursue their career in LA or New York or what's better for them. So that's the program that we have out here right now. And like we're growing actively because the campus opened in fall of 2019. 14:15 closed promptly in spring of 2020. And then just reopened fully again last year. All right. And do you teach a specific subject? Well, yeah. So the course that I teach, it's basically structured around like entrepreneurship or creatives. So I bring in kind of my business and my legal backgrounds. My, the director of the NYU LA program is amazing. And she gave me carte blanche to kind of design a course. 14:44 She was like, think of them as your future clients. What do you wish they knew? So that's kind of what we designed. So we like include like how to pitch, how to develop a deck and then how to pitch that deck. I also do a negotiation simulation because oftentimes these students have never like negotiated a deal before. So I go over, you know, what are basic deal terms that you should at least understand and if nothing else have these in a contract. And then I design a whole simulation and like put them in groups. 15:13 and give them mock contracts and they have to negotiate it out. And it's really fun because every single time we do it, they all start with the same contract, the same roles, and everything. And then they all present at the end of class what their deal terms were. And no group has ever had the same deal terms. And the reason for that is because it's also to show them that you all come in with your own biases and preferences and experiences and values. 15:41 Yes. It doesn't really matter what the other people are doing. It's just like, what makes sense to you? What do you feel comfortable with? Because if you feel comfortable with the deal and you're okay performing for this rate or with these terms or whatever, then you're going to be fine. And so, because then I always ask them, did you want someone else's deal? And they might say that they wanted parts of it. They're like, oh, I didn't know I could add that. Sometimes if we're doing an artist contract negotiation, 16:10 my female students will always be like, they'll add in hair and makeup budget. And then the male students didn't know like, oh, that's a thing or like, how much is hair and mica? And like women know that it should be expensive. So they're like, oh, I could do that. So like, it's things like that that come up cause I'm like, you can add in, if it's not written there, you can add stuff in. Like I give you flexibility. And they're like, okay, I'll think about that next time. But because they negotiated out, they felt heard. 16:40 So they're comfortable with the deal that they agreed to because they felt like they were heard, they felt valued. And so they were fine with their deal overall. So again, although they may have picked up some things that they would like for next time, no one's really been outright like, my deal was terrible. Like everyone's kind of felt like kind of comfortable because they get time to talk it through. And I think that's like the biggest takeaway is like, as long as like the other side feels heard, 17:09 you can agree to a situation where all parties kind of essentially win and can work together well. And thank you, this is fascinating. So you have an entrepreneurship program at the New York University's Los Angeles campus. There's another campus in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. And so it's a year abroad. So is it cross-cultural mix and what students? Yes, but. 17:38 Sorry, I'm just gonna clarify. So it's not a year abroad for Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. They're actually degree granting campuses. Okay. So the Abu Dhabi campus is actually a really incredible program. It's a four year program. Okay. And it only has like a 2% admission rate cause tuition is free at that campus. So they're completely separate programs but they're all under the NYU umbrella. But I'm just saying that students come to our LA campus for a semester. It's a semester, right? Yeah, for a semester just to kind of do a semester abroad essentially. 18:09 And how many entrepreneurs have gone through your program? So, okay, so let me also clarify, sorry. I teach the Entrepreneurship for Creatives course, but like our entire curriculum here is centered around the entertainment industry. So there's a movie marketing class, there's a screenwriting class, there's pitching your project class, there's a history of film class. So it's all centered around entertainment. There's music courses, there's stuff like that. 18:38 The entrepreneur part is just kind of what I do because like, that's my background. And also like if you're a creative, you are an entrepreneur in the industry, like you are your brand. So mine's the only one, my course is the only one focused on that. So it's not that we have entrepreneurs here. They all want to be in the entertainment industry, but it's part of being in the entertainment industry, you are an entrepreneur. So just to clarify that a little bit, that it's not a separate program. Excellent. And thank you for that, you know, clarifying. 19:08 And I would like you to speak about your own new venture. So not only do you have your own law practice, you have recently started an initiative that is the South Asian Creator Collective. Tell us a little bit more about this. Yeah, so we launched that out of the NYU LA campus. Okay. Because I just found out like that my South Asian students 19:38 They, you know, we have only a few, usually every semester, but they just didn't have the community that some of the other creative communities had because typically South Asian families, your parents want you to be a doctor or an engineer and not really like, okay, you can have a music hobby or be a dancer as a hobby, but not have that as a career. So there was a lot of lack of support. And then I represent some South Asian artists. 20:06 whether they're writers or dancers or creators, producers, things like that in New York and LA. And so they also obviously would say the same thing. So I kind of wanted to bring everyone together to not only create a community for like my clients, my friends who are in the industry, but also to help build that bridge for my South Asian students to have like, you know, mentors in the industry. So we had our first meeting earlier this, a couple of months ago. 20:32 What came out of that was really cool that I brought together my friends and clients. They've already started collabing together on stuff. And then Brenda through you and Ty, I met people who are possibly interested in investing in South Asian creators projects. So we're looking at doing a possible pitch event in the spring to have our creators pitch projects and then to have investors possibly invest in them. So I like the idea of just bringing people together to kind of create this community 21:01 and to help each other kind of, you know, use everyone's skill sets just to create a better whole together. I love it. And I was absolutely thrilled that you were at the Thai So Cal's recent event with the preview and a screening of Show Her the Money, as well as we had our final. 21:22 competition for five women-owned businesses. So thank you for joining us there. We did that at the Noah House in Hollywood, of which I'm a member, and look forward to hearing more about the PitchFest that is probably gonna be in the spring of next year. Hopefully. Noah's crazy though about that, show her the money screening. I didn't realize how many people I knew in the film. Like I knew... 21:48 Liz, like from this organization that we were part of in New York, Dreamers and Doors, were like mainly female entrepreneurs. Like I knew her when she was starting Sogal. And so it was so crazy to see how far they've come. And then like I knew so many other people in the film. And I was like, wait, I knew them back then. I didn't know they were in this film. And like Naseem was in there. Like there was just so many people that I was saw in the film that I was like, wait, I know these people personally. So it was just a really cool screening to see. And to see so many. 22:18 people that I've known over the years, just in how far they've come over the years too. Was really cool. Yeah, initially it's a movement now. So initially Show Her the Money was gonna be shown in 50 US cities. It's gone viral. I think we're up in to the 200s and yeah, it's a movement. So thank you for being, and it's a small world, right? Oh, completely. We all end up, yes, there are no borders. So yeah, thank you. 22:45 And I look forward to that launch and I would be happy to promote it here in the founder sandbox as well as on my YouTube channel. You know, this switch gears. I want to I initially I've known you for years, but I really wanted you to come on to the founder sandbox because not only your story of not resiliency, but to the move across from the from LA to from New York to LA. But 23:14 you're passionate clearly about resilience. And I am also passionate. And it's the type of work I do with with founders as they're scaling their businesses just working on this resiliency, I say muscles. You recently hosted during LA's tech week, about two weeks back, a session on resiliency. Tell us a little bit about it and why you wanted to spearhead that. 23:42 Um, so I did my first LA tech week event last year, and that was a great learning experience. We did it all about pivoting and we had like 400 RSVPs for like 75 spots because I did at NYU's LA campus and we're small. So we had a fire martial capacity of 75. So it was just like overwhelming. But the original reason I launched that event was because 24:09 Um, when I looked at the original LA tech week calendar, all I saw were men on that calendar. And I only, if I saw a panel with a woman, it was like one woman and like five men. And I was like, I have so many incredible friends and clients that are women doing incredible things in the tech space and they never get the platform to talk about this. So I wanted a female forward event. Um, so I did that one and then that one went really well. So then everyone was like, 24:37 Okay, what are you doing for tech week this year? So that's how I was like, okay, so everyone really liked the pivoting one because they said they learned something from it and it was something everyone could relate to. So then, you know, as we're coming out of COVID, a lot of people have felt burnout and have felt the need to kind of just like reinvent themselves or just kind of rise from the ashes to a degree. So then this year's theme, I was like, I feel like I wanna do something around resilience. 25:04 because it's about like weathering the storm and coming out and like, you know, thriving again. And so again, I did it female forward. But what was really incredible is a lot of my male clients and friends also came and like others that I didn't know. And like all of them just like loved the event. And they're like, this has been the most informative event I've ever been to. And I said that at the beginning of my event, I was like, you know, this is like, yes, I, you know, my panel is all women, but 25:33 we can't change the ratio of where only 2% of women receive VC funding if we don't have men in the room, because you need everyone at the table to help change that statistic. And so by sharing the stories of like, again, they were my clients and friends, but they all run like incredible organizations. Like Steph Rizal was one of our speakers. She's an incredible singer songwriter. She just wrote a book for creatives and self-care. 26:00 I had Jazzy Collins, who's the first black person to win an Emmy for casting. And she has a production house called Force Perspective. I had Mickey Reynolds, who used to be the CEO, co-founder of Grid 110, and is now head of programs at Slosnikov, a VC fund. And then I had May Muna, who is amazing. She's a refugee. And she started two organizations, one called the Tia Foundation to help refugees in the US. And then she started this... 26:28 restaurant called Flavors From Afar where refugee chefs essentially have their menus every month featured at the restaurant. So like I got to feature these incredible stories and founders and you know, just how they like, May Muna, her Flavors From Afar restaurant is now Michelin like rated, but she was fired from a Carl's Jr. That's like her story. She's like, yeah, I was fired from Carl's Jr. and now I have a Michelin restaurant. 26:54 So where you start and kind of what happens, it's like you just have to keep going. And all of them kind of had stories like that of being like, you know, dismissed somewhere early in their career and just like, keep like, just keep going. And like, Jazzy too, like, you know, she was just like dismissed for being usually the only black female in any room. And now she's the first black person to win an Emmy earlier this year. And it's just like how, you know, yes, in casting, sorry. But yeah, and how that like just 27:23 those stories of how that rises. And I think a lot of people learn from that because a lot of them were just like, you just have to keep trying, or you just have to try something. And if it doesn't work, you know, go a different direction, but fail faster was kind of the message that they were putting out there that like you'll still figure it out and you just have to like have a really supportive community around you. And as long as you have that, like you can just like find the strength to keep going. 27:50 Tudos to you. This is a podcast that is absolutely filled with lots of nuggets, your own story in New York, coming out to LA, you're teaching your own entrepreneurship journey and your passion with respect to the underrepresented, right? And actually putting on events. 28:16 and Female Forward as well as last year in pivoting is thank you for being part of the ecosystem here in Los Angeles and next year I wonder what you're going to do in LA Tech Week. I know this week was pretty burned out still so we'll see. We have time. So you know I'd like to give you the opportunity to provide how my listeners can contact you or how's it best to contact you. 28:46 Um, yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Instagram. My Instagram is just my name, Shivani Hanwad. Um, my email is just shivani at shivanilaw.com. So I guess any of those are kind of the best ways to find me or connect with me. 29:01 Okay, and we're going to shift gears back to this sandbox. You are a guest here to the founder sandbox. And again, my mission is to build resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven companies. So I always like to ask each of my guests what the word means, resilience, purpose-driven, and scalable, sustainable businesses. Each of my guests has a different meaning. And it's 29:30 actually one of the highlights of my podcast for me. Okay, so am I doing all three? Yes, you will. Okay. You already talked a little bit about resilience, but what does it mean to you? What does resilience mean to you? Shivani Ha. I think resilience just means to me, it's just like to persevere, to keep going. And I think all of us have our own challenges, obstacles and hardships. And I think finding the strength to just kind of get through those. 29:59 Because you don't always get over everything that you kind of maybe get through in your life, but getting through it is, I guess, the way to look at it in my mind. And then just kind of still making stuff happen, even if it's hard, is the way I look at resilience. To persevere, still making it happen. Thank you. Purpose-driven. You're very purpose-driven. How many back? If we were to scale you. 30:28 Well, purpose-driven, I just find it like, you know, just quick tangent, but like what originally drew me into law school and like wanting to work in the human trafficking space was like, you know, I was caught in these monsoon floods in India when I was working in Bollywood. And I learned about human trafficking and that's kind of what I wanted to work on. And I have worked on it in different ways, like, you know, changing that law in Delaware and then my work on the TVPGA as part of the New York State Trafficking Coalition. 30:58 So I have worked on that. And I just think that's always been kind of my, I guess, anchor point in a way of like a lot of the work or the pro bono work even that I do through my law firm. And part of why I've kept my law firm is because now no one tells me how I get to spend my time or money. I wanna work on representing children that have been trafficked and do those cases pro bono. I can do that. No one's like, no, you need more billable hours. Like it's up to me. 31:26 So I have a couple of nonprofits that I work with that I represent kids that have been trafficked to get them either status here or just like to a safer spot. And I really love that work. So the work I do with the creatives and everything, it kind of funds and provides me the ability to do this other work. So I think purpose-driven is just like figuring out what it is that you're passionate about and what your anchor point is. Like, why are you doing this? Like, what is it that's getting you through and what gets you out of bed? 31:55 Like I get really excited to like work on my clients' cases because I think they're doing really incredible things. Yes. So I think purpose-driven is just like that, like finding what you're passionate about and like how you can have a positive impact in the community. I have goosebumps. I had, you went off on a little tangent. That was a very important tangent and as it is your anchor point. So thank you for sharing, Shivani. Sustainable growth. 32:23 Okay, what's sustainable? So this is something I'm working on now. Yes. I think, you know, for me, I was an accidental law firm founder, you know, that like I kept meeting these people and like that needed help and like I, I never really thought I would start my own law firm. And so I think it's been a journey of figuring out how to like run a law firm and grow it and all of this and like. 32:48 I'm getting to that point where it's like, okay, what am I doing? Am I still doing this? Am I merging it with something else or someone else? And I'm very fortunate to have really great partners. I'm really fortunate to have the opportunity to these couple of law firms have offered for me to merge my law firm with theirs, join them, all of that. So it's figuring that part of it out. But I think, you know, to be sustainable or scalable, I think one thing, especially people who are type A like me, 33:17 that we struggle with is delegating. And that like finding, you know, you're not good at everything. You're not like, the first thing I did was hire a tax guy. Cause I was like, I don't do this. Like I don't know how to do anything tax wise, but it's just like figuring out like, you know, what you're good at and what you're not good at instead of trying to learn everything, figuring out how to delegate or finding team members to help you with the stuff you're not good at. Because I think a lot of people, especially founders try and hold on to everything. 33:46 And that's kind of what leads to burnout because if you're trying to do stuff that you're just not great at, you just always are gonna feel defeated. But if you have other people that are good at that stuff, supporting you in that, and you get to focus on the stuff you're really good at, then that's gonna energize you because then you're being more successful because you're doing the things you're great at. And then you're being supported still by other people. So you have that mental bandwidth to keep doing and keep running in the right direction. 34:14 what the stuff that you're passionate about, you're good at, what you're trying to grow. So I think to be sustainable or scalable, learning how to delegate is a really important skillset that it takes some time and emotional bandwidth to be able to be okay with letting go of something. Cause like most founders, like their companies are their babies. Like they're growing it. And you know, it's just so hard. It's like saying like, 34:44 It's like you're finding a nanny for your child. Like, okay, I'm okay with letting this person do this part of my business. So. Excellent analogy. And it also probably has to do with your own awareness, right? And the maturity of recognizing there are certain things that I just don't wanna do, but I don't like it or I'm not good at it. And the maturity and awareness that it's better done by someone else, right? 35:13 Yes. And I'm also self-employed and, you know, pushing through. And I have also delegated many things. I'm having a fantastic team, the producer of my podcast, and I let them do and tell, I follow their orders to tell you the truth. But you need that sometimes. Sometimes it's easier if someone just tells you what you need to do and then they're just handling the rest. 35:42 Um, and thank you for joining me in the, the, um, founder sandbox podcast this month, you know, um, to my listeners, if you liked this episode with Shivani Han what sign up for the monthly release, um, where founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers provide their own origin stories. And they tell their stories about resilience purpose driven and scalable. 36:11 Thank you again. You can listen to these episodes on any major podcast streaming service. Signing off for this month. Thank you. Thanks, Brenda.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Chasity Lourde Wright. Chasity is inventor and founder of Infiltron  Software Suite LLC. Infiltron operates in the cybersecurity space; a Service disabled-Veteran owned and women-owned small business. Infiltron offers quantum-resistant cybersecurity solutions for decentralized digital identity, digital assets, and AI governance, utilizing proprietary post-secure encryption. Its patented technology integrates AI, blockchain, and quantum-resistant encryption to provide advanced cyber resilience, compliance enforcement, and real-time threat mitigation across multiple industries, including aerospace & defense, fintech, smart cities, and EVs.   Chasity, as inventor, speaks about her team and how creativity in the work place is necessary for  enhancing innovation on really tough problems like Cybersecurity. As the CEO of Infiltron, Chasity Lourde Wright is also a former USAF Aerospace Engineer, Intel Officer, and Cybersecurity Instructor with extensive experience in cybersecurity, AI governance, and national security. She was part of the team that developed reconfiguration capabilities for the USAF C-130 and contributed to the creation of the CMMC framework since its inception in 2019. Additionally, she has engaged in high-level cybersecurity and AI governance initiatives, including industry collaborations, government advisory roles, and proprietary innovations in quantum-resistant encryption, AI security, and blockchain-based compliance solutions. Her expertise extends beyond participating in NIST challenges, encompassing leading-edge cybersecurity development, policy influence, and defense sector innovations. You can find out more about Chasity and Infiltron at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/infiltronsoftwaresuite/ https://infiltron.net/     Transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:19 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host of this monthly podcast in which I bring entrepreneurs, founders, corporate directors, and professional service providers who, like me, want to effectuate change in the world by building resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven companies. I like to recreate a fun sandbox environment with my guests. And we will touch on not only their purpose, 01:47 and what has driven them to create their own businesses. But also we're going to touch upon topics such as resilience, purpose-driven, and scalable sustainable growth. Today, I am absolutely delighted to have as my guest Chasity Wright. Welcome, Chasity. Hey. Thank you for having me. 02:13 Super excited to talk about how Infiltron has evolved and the lessons learned and how we're preparing to relaunch in 2025. Excellent. And it's perfect timing because I've known you for a couple of years now. Yeah. Right. So Chasity is CEO and founder of Infiltron Software Suite, a company that's headquartered out of Atlanta. 02:40 She is oftentimes in Los Angeles because she's working largely in the defense market and cyber security. So I wanted to have you on my podcast because you have gone further in building your business. So you and I met, I want to say back in 2022, you came out of the Women Founders Network cohort. 03:08 kind of very early stage. One of the events that I was a host of was the Thai So Cal Women's Fund. And you weren't yet ready for investing, but we struck up, I would say a friendship and I admire many things about you as, and we'll get into it in the podcast here, but you touch. 03:35 quite a few or check of quite a few boxes for my podcast. You says, so you are a woman owned veteran and women owned business. You are a veteran of the Air Force. You're in deep tech and you're by park and queer. And so there's many many boxes that you check and it was difficult to kind of hone in on what I really wanted to bring into the podcast today, but we're going to we're going to start from here. 04:05 I always like to ask my guests to start with kind of their origin story. I, when I first met you, right, in private conversations, got to hear your origin story and why you do what you do, what your firsthand experience while on missions, right, that really informed your aha moments to create infiltrant. 04:33 as a cybersecurity company. So tell us a bit about your origin story, Chasity. So, I mean, my origin story has, if you can imagine all of these different paths kind of streamlining into one path. So one of those paths would be a little black girl born in Georgia, still seeing dirt roads and... 05:01 being able to go to the country and work on a farm and, you know, just still having that connection to the past, you know, and not necessarily the past in a bad way. So athletic, played ball in college, went to Clark Atlanta University, you know, the HBCUs are a big hurrah right now, but they've always been one. 05:29 I grew up with one in my backyard, Fort Valley State, which is in Fort Valley, Georgia. So, you know, roughed it with the boys, played in the backyard with the boys, always been a boys girl, cousins, neighbor. We're all still close. We all still play sports when we meet. So it's like an adult play date, so to speak. But also, you know, 05:58 raised religiously, you know, I'm in Southern Baptist Church, two parent household, maybe lower middle class, but middle school was very transformative for me because they decided to mix in everybody. So it was my first time, you know, being in a more diverse population in school. 06:25 And, you know, music is a big thing for me as well. I DJ, I make music. That's the creative part of me. And I found a lot of people in deep tech to do something with music. So, yeah, so, you know, that's my like early years background. And then coming through, I decided to go into the Air Force. I actually took off between my junior and senior year at Clark Atlanta. 06:52 Um, there I was majoring in global leadership and management. Okay. And went in and I was in for eight years. I was an aerospace engineer, uh, got deployed several times, uh, to different places, and that kind of brings us to why Infiltron exists and, um, on one of those deployments, I was a part of a network takedown. 07:21 And it was, whoo. I mean, I don't mean to quote the pitch deck story, but it is what it is. I wrote it because that's the way it felt. It was catastrophic. So just imagine the city of Los Angeles losing power out of nowhere. The rail stops working, Sinai has no power, so all of the medical equipment is no longer working. 07:49 The internet's completely gone and not rebooting like it normally would. Your energy grid is down. That is what I experienced in one of those deployments. And I was a part of Iraqi freedom and Afghanistan. I was a part of both of those wars. And when we came, you know, we got everything back. Thank God we were smart enough to ship. 08:19 brand new equipment. Okay, you know, so you know, we weren't able to get there. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's part of our job. We're engineers. And when you're in the middle of nowhere, there's no calling HP. There's no calling Cisco. Like you got to know how to do what needs to be done. There was there was a lot of makeshifting. I can be I came out of Air Force, I could be a mechanical engineer to 08:45 because we had to figure out how to make components on the fly. It was just so many things. Innovation, right? Like you had to be innovative. You had to be adapt quickly while keeping the mission as a focus. So just imagine something that catastrophic and something similar has happened. I feel like Colonial Pipeline was something that is known now in the US for sure. 09:15 that had similar elements of what we experienced in being deployed. Yeah, and that was two years back. And SolarWinds is another one. I generally refer to those because people generally gasp, even non-technical people, because they know how damaging it was. So we can reuse. Normally, when the equipment goes down, 09:44 Unplug, right? Plug back in. Reboot. Yeah, reboot. But that was not happening. And what we found out in the debrief was that quantum was used. So quantum simplistically is about frequencies in this context. It's about frequencies. And frequencies matter in so many aspects of life, from spirituality all the way through tech like what Infotron has. So... 10:14 What they did was they basically zeroed out the frequencies of our satellite communications. And I believe that they created some frequencies that damaged other equipment. So these are things that again we found out in the debrief. And I wasn't really able to talk to that probably when we met because I wasn't sure if it was unclassified yet. 10:42 But as soon as Biden started talking about quantum initiative, which was back in 2022, when we were in, I was like, everything's hitting it the right time because we were literally in Techstars LA space. And Biden pushed the quantum initiative. And I'm like, see, told you, because a lot of people, a lot of people doubted what I was saying because of the year that I said it had happened. And as. 11:09 we started to grow out our team. There are other veterans on our team from different branches. And of course we war story swap all the time. And those other two people work for like NSA and they did kind of the same thing, telecommunications. And I'm telling the pitch desk story and they're sitting there like, yep, yep. That happened to us too. And I'm like, when? 11:38 And they're saying different years. So at that point, we understood it. It happened more than once. So that's why Infiltronic. So what's Infiltronic? So let's bring it back to, Yeah. So you leave, you leave service after eight years after also experiencing that. I still feel like I'm a part of it because I do consult them still. Right. So it'd be great. So. 12:08 And once in the Air Force forever? Always. Well, I really would have been in Space Force. Yes. Yeah. Well, you heard that here on the Founder Sandbox. The next, yes. So for my listeners, again, you check a lot of boxes. Deep tech, women in STEM. What is it exactly that? 12:37 your suite of services. All right. So Info-Trans software, right, has two patents now. And on your landing page, it says, our patented solutions, solutions utilize adaptive artificial intelligence, advanced quantum encryption and blockchain technology to deliver real-time cybersecurity for a wide array of applications. Later on, we'll get into smart cities, but 13:06 including the internet of things, smart devices, legacy systems, hybrid data, signals and devices. All pretty, pretty understandable, but what is it that Infiltrion software is able to do that others are not? So we're able to create a easier way for businesses to migrate their devices. 13:36 and their software, so their applications that they use, maybe they've developed them themselves, we provide a way for them to easily migrate those entities over into a more quantum-proofed infrastructure. So we created what we've trademarked as quantum encapsulation. So just imagine something being encapsulated. And basically we've created, 14:05 a brand new method of leveraging quantum, the AI, we leverage it for the pro-activeness. So in lieu of just waiting for threats to happen to our clients, we go look for the threat. So we want to go be where the bad guys are and find out and bring that information back and update the solution in real time to provide protection for all of our clients in real time. 14:33 That's how we leverage the AI. The blockchain is kind of leveraged to kind of make sure that people, things like devices, aren't on networks that shouldn't be. So it's kind of, I mean, we use it for what blockchain was pretty much basically developed for, and that's a ledger. So keeping up with the transactions of what's happening. 15:03 in a client's infrastructure. Fantastic. So it's largely a B2B business, yours, right? We do. We have B2B, but we've been approached several times here recently by consumers. Because now, because of the biometric protection aspect of our solution using the quantum encapsulation, we can protect, say, 15:32 Halle Berry from deep fake, being deep faked, or, you know, protecting her likeness from being used without her knowledge in movies, CGI'd into movies. So it's kind of getting a little bit more consumerish as we iterate, right? Yeah, and we were briefly speaking before the podcast recording, Chasity and I, and... 15:59 I've known her for years. She's a very private person, would not allow photographs. So I told my producer, I'm certain Whitney Chastity's not going to be sending us a picture, but you said yes, that you might, because you do have biometric, artificial intelligence, safeguards that can actually discover deep fakes, right? Yes, yes. Yep, if it didn't come from us, if it wasn't checked back from us, 16:29 It wasn't approved by the person. So it's kind of pretty much that simple. Amazing. Well, later on in the show notes, we will have how to contact you at Enfield Tron. So you are in the startup ecosystem. Again, you travel a lot. You're between Washington DC, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and actually the Bay Area. Yeah, the Bay Area. Right. So. 16:58 Revenue can be elusive, right? How? Especially in tech, and especially in these really large markets that I call deep tech. Deep tech and leading edge, bleeding edge, right? People don't know what they're actually buying, right? Or what they don't even, they probably don't even know that they have a need, right? What's been your strategy at Infiltron to keep the revenue flowing while maintaining also a pretty playful, innovative culture? 17:27 You talked about your team and so talk, that's kind of two questions. So how have you kept revenue coming, right? While not going out for dilutive funding yet, but tell us a little bit about how, what's your business model? So the business model in itself is set up for B2B and we also have a licensing element there. So if they, for instance, 17:56 a Fortune 500 company who has a cyber team, right? They have an internal cyber team. If they want to license out the patents that we have and kind of customize it or create or build off of those, use it as a baseline for what they need for their systems, we offer that as well. But let me just put it out there. But back to your question, how do we keep it fun? So the team... 18:25 The original team members, should I say. So we met about seven years ago at a place called the Gathering Spot in Atlanta. So the Gathering Spot is a community and they just opened one in LA and I do go to the one in LA too when I'm there. But it's a community of people, creatives from creative people to deep tech people like myself and everything in between. 18:55 We went to a black tech event at the gathering spot and found ourselves not being able to get into the actual room. So we ended up, because they have a bar and everything at the gathering spot. It's a social club too. It has a club aspect to it too, but you can network there, have meetings there, meet all types of people. I mean known people, I mean it's a great 19:25 great concept, shout out to Ryan. But we found ourselves at the bar, and we're looking at each other. We knew each other because we had been introduced by the Hellbrella person, Tracy. Yes, yes. Because they had done some things for her with a previous startup that she had, development-wise. So we're all sitting at the bar, and we're looking at each other like, but we're the real tech people. 19:55 We do it. It's like we don't really take people. Um, we can't even get in there. We like, we know the organizers and personally and everything. So let's start a company. Well, what we did was we launched, um, what we launched kit labs. And it was literally right down the street from the 20:23 and connect to the community. So we had, it's not far from the AUC and the AUC is where Morris Brown, Morehouse, Spelman and Clark Atlanta are. Got it. So a lot of times you would come in there and find some of the founders, cause this was founded by myself and like six or seven other black tech founders. The ones that were outside. Drinking like, you know. 20:53 That's where we had that conversation. You know, the conversation started at the bar, being outside of that first Black Tech meetup, so to speak, with Joey Womack, who is a part of Goody Nation, who we did get a 50K grant from back in 2020 through Google for Startups. Let me just say this so much. We were so interconnected. I mean, Atlanta is Wakanda. Don't let anybody tell you anything different. 21:21 It's definitely Wakanda. But literally, not even a mile away from the Gathering Spot, we opened up Kit Labs. It's a smart lab where we can tinker with stuff. We're engineers. We're tech people. We need something. We need a makerspace. We don't necessarily need a space that is compared. The Gathering Spot was a little bit more buttoned up. 21:46 And then what we needed, we needed to be able to throw things and make things. We had everything from like 3d printers to, um, VR, AR headsets. I mean, you, anything in tech. Innovative fun. It was in, is in that lab. Um, but that's where around today. So we dissolved it. So it's been dissolved. What one of, one of the founders, he unfortunately transitioned. Um, 22:15 So, you know, and he was kind of like the pillar of it. And it kept going for a while, but it was just a lot of people like myself, it was two female founders, Dr. Nashley Cephas, who herself is from Jackson, Mississippi. I'm shouting out everybody, right? She's from Jackson, Mississippi, and she bought 10 acres in downtown Jackson, Mississippi and started a nonprofit called Bean Pad. And he basically took the concept of what we were doing at Kit Labs and brought it to our hometown. So. 22:44 Um, and it's so funny. She actually founded it on my birthday. So I was like, okay, I can dig that. Um, uh, but, but no, but we're still connected. Everybody still works with each other. You know, if I have to come in and do some things around cyber for a contract or, you know, commercial or whatever client that they have, I do like we, we all kind of still work together on each other's things. So that has allowed you to bring in some revenues, right? 23:14 through its service context. Yeah. Oh, for sure. For sure. Consultant wise, cause they're like, I think people may look at Infotron and think that there's not a human touch piece there, but if you're dealing with me, there's always gonna be a human touch point there because we have to consult the client. We can't assume, you know, we cannot assume. 23:41 what you need, we have to actually have a conversation with our clients throughout the process, even after we possibly have set up the platform for you, trained your people on it, there still needs to be an element of communication, human communication, right? But the team, we've been working together for about seven years. Yes. 24:10 Infiltron has been around for five, going on six years now. So, you know, I mean, respect, mutual respect, we're still kids at heart. I mean, we grew up wanting to be engineers. So, you really can't take the light of innovation out of an engineer unless they're just at the point of not wanting to do it anymore. So we're always, what I've found is most people in any engineering discipline are very, 24:39 curious and forward thinking. So we, and we kind of, we're kind of like a community. We are community and not kind of like, but we are community of folks that contribute to each other's, you know, projects. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And not just, not just business-wise, but personally, like we, I mean, we've been around each other for almost a decade, so. 25:04 there's been kids born and like I just said, one of our founders transitioned, like we've been through some things together that have brought us closer together. And you can, I believe when you have a team like that, and we're all diverse, you know, we have a team like that that cultivates innovation, for sure. You know, I've had a few guests to my podcast and I also write about this, 25:35 Creativity is only possible or it's greatly possible when you create a fun environment and make games out of things and have, right? And set up teams. So I think a shout out to you and what you've set up at Infiltron and in its earlier rendering at Kit Labs, just creating an environment that allows for what ifs, right? Is key. There are a lot of what ifs in cyber. 26:04 I bet you there. So I have a boatload of questions here. One is, before we get into your fundraising path, again, I mentioned earlier you have two patents that have been issued. What is post-quantum encryption technology in layman language? Post. 26:32 Quantum encryption technology. So there is definitely confusion out there that has been addressed. And because there is a difference between post secure quantum and encryption. There's a difference. So. Excellent. 27:02 Post quantum encryption, it is designed to protect data from quantum computers. So. And that's done through the encapsulation? For us, that is how we provide the protection, the encryption. That is the quantum encapsulation is a method of encryption with Involtron. So the current encryption. So you have things like RSA. 27:32 elliptical curve, which elliptical curve is more widely used and kind of being marketed as quantum encryption. It is, it is, it's on the list of quantum protections, right, or quantum methods of encryption protection. So companies like Okta use ECC a lot. But what's happening is that quantum computers are being built now. Yes. Like right now, there's no... Yeah, the cost is going down. 28:02 Yeah, there's no waiting five years from now. Like I urge anyone under the sound of my voice to prepare now for quantum computer attacks. The same thing that I describe happening to us when we were deployed, it's gonna happen. And again, I alluded to feeling like 28:33 situations like Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds were, I feel like they were tests because there were so many different elements of what we saw in the deployment that happened in those two cases. Yeah, because I'm sitting there and think it's like 2020, 2021, 2019 actually, it started. I think this didn't know, but. 28:59 And it's still going like 20, SolarWinds was still going, the last time I checked SolarWinds was still unraveling. Like it's still, still going. But back to the question. So for us, quantum encapsulation for us is breakthrough. So NIST has had these challenges, right? Where they put out bidding for companies, 29:27 researchers, because a lot of people that are in the quantum space, whether it's physics, mechanics, are generally found in academia. They're not at Infiltron. They're not at QED. They're just not there, right? It's very far in between, and we generally have to lure them. Or we have to do something like partner with them on... 29:53 grants, like the STTR grants. Like that's the only way, generally the only way that we can probably connect with the academia or pierce them and have them work with us. And they usually through that take all the funding, but it's, you're still. Exposed, right? You're exposed, but you're also getting the expertise that you possibly need and can't rightly find in the freelancing world. Yeah. So it generally works out in the long run. 30:23 Um, but so our encapsulation is a, is a breakthrough method because I look at it like this, NIST is holding these challenges and nothing against NIST. We're connected. I contribute to NIST and everything, but they are holding these challenges. And basically they're telling the hackers what people are going to the framework. 30:49 what people are gonna have to adhere to when they create their quantum algorithms to protect their devices and data. You know, you're giving away the secret ingredients. So like, even if they don't know specifically your algorithm, they know what you've based it off of. And that gives it like a tiny thread can unravel a whole t-shirt, right? So I look at it like that. So... 31:15 And even before, you know, we were already developing things before NIST put out these challenges. We are in alignment. We can adhere and do it here to the framework that they're putting out because, you know, you have the DOD space who definitely follows their framework, especially when it comes to the risk management framework. So they're going to follow NIST regardless. They're going to follow their framework, whatever they put out about cybersecurity protection. 31:44 The DOD space and all of its agencies are gonna follow that. However, being in the cybersecurity space every day, seeing what is happening and knowing that you've given some clues, some contextual clues to the malicious hackers about what you're using as a baseline to build your algorithms will, guess what? What we have is not that. Like we are... 32:12 One of the things that differentiates us right now, because I'm sure as quantum cybersecurity continues to grow legs, so to speak, people are gonna start using the more, less susceptible to hacks by quantum computers method. So you have things like multivariate hash code. So these are some of the 32:40 quantum properties that you can use that are not generally hackable by a quantum computer. They won't be hackable by a quantum computer. So we leveraged some of that. It was like, if I'm built, I looked at it like this, I've been in cyber, I've been in tech for almost 20 years. I know I don't look it. I get it all the time. You don't have to say it. I've been in tech for almost 20 years. I've been, and when I was in the air force, we call it InfoSec. It's the same thing. And that dates me. 33:08 If I say, if you hear somebody say InfoSec, trust me, they've been in cybersecurity for at least 20 plus years. So, but it's cybersecurity, that's what it is. And I've seen the changes and I've paid my dues too. Like I didn't, when I got out of the Air Force, I was just, side note, like I cut grass and loved it. I would go back and do it if I can make these results. So then like, it's very, it's very fulfilling. Don't let anybody fool you. Like I love, but I like being outside, but. 33:38 Um, my first tech job though, I literally went through the phone book. Cause this is like still, you know, internet was not quite what it is now, of course, but it was like still growing. And I went through the yellow pages and went through the aerospace companies and called all of them and was like, Hey, let's just get out of the air force, look for a job. I don't care if it's an intern or co-op and L3 L3 before they merged with Harris. Uh, 34:08 they created me a co-op. And, but again, still in touch with, cause you know, L3 is a huge government contracting company, right? And in the satellite communication space, cause they're in line with my background. And so I've seen it all. I've seen the changes of InfoSec into cybersecurity. And now we're entering a new frontier with quantum cybersecurity. So I've been here, 34:37 maybe at the latter part of the info set, but definitely through the cybersecurity and here for and to forge some guidelines and pathways in the quantum cybersecurity space with Inflotron. So when you know Inflotron was founded in 2019, I was like, okay, if I'm gonna start 35:03 something new in cyber and we hadn't even gotten to the quantum piece yet. They hadn't even gotten to me yet. Like it started like I was getting downloads. Yeah. Because I'm, I always, I'm a reader. I wake up looking at cyber news and just staying in the know because I need to know what's going on so I can protect my clients, whether that was me in a government contracting position or me as a consultant in my businesses. So. 35:33 I need to know what's going on. And if I'm going to build something new, why am I going to build it with compromised parts? Right. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah. Forget the tech. It didn't make logical sense. If I'm going to build something new, a SaaS product that's going to integrate and be flexible and adaptable and proactive. 36:01 Why would I use RSA encryption when I know what's coming? Got it. That will be one of the snippets that I share in my YouTube channel as well as the podcast. That is excellent. Why build something with compromised parts? Frontier technology, quantum cybersecurity is what Epfiltron is about. 36:30 Next generation. Talk to me a little bit more for us, less tech savvy listeners about the use of Infiltron in a SelleGov's program for smart cities. That kind of brings it more home and more tangible. How is technology used for smart cities? So first, SelleGov through leading cities. Yes. 36:59 It connects companies like ours with municipalities to tackle urban challenges. So for us, it's infrastructure, security, and sustainability. So we were a finalist in leading cities global competition back in 2021. And we've worked through them. You know, we've been able to work with city leaders to secure IOT systems and critical infrastructure. 37:28 And quick shout out to Michael Lake. Okay. He's the founder of Leading Cities, amazing guy. Another keep in touch, answer the email quickly person. He's based in Boston, but he's built a very supportive ecosystem. So shout out to Michael Lake. But as a part of this program, 37:56 We're offering smart cities our enhanced quantum vulnerability assessment. And this is to help the smart city leaders identify areas that need better quantum protections now. We've just had a session on November the 11th, Veterans Day. And the second one is coming up December the 5th. So you. 38:24 If you're a smart city leader or see so small, medium, large enterprise, no matter what market you in, you're in, definitely tap in. You can register for it on the leading city's website or on our website at Infotron.net. Yeah, that's on December 9, 2024 at 1pm. Is that Eastern? December 5th. December 5th? No, it's the 9th, because I have it here. And that's my cousin's birthday. So yeah, it's December 9th. 38:53 Did you get to influence those dates? Yeah. So let's jump into your startup. You've taken in very little dilutive funding. How much money have you raised to date? And how have you, what is the next phase, right? In terms of outreach for fundraising. So we've raised 120K and that was through Techstars, LA Space. 39:23 Still counting. I do not take a salary. I could take one, but I'm just, it's the long game for me. And I still consult. Don't let these people tell you not to quit your job and be an entrepreneur. Don't let people do that. Especially if you have a family. Don't let these people, don't let these people try to guilt you or shame you because you still have a job while you're building your startup. Don't let, don't do it. 39:53 Because I do have a company that I started called Right Tech Solutions and we still, that's why I said I still feel like I'm in the Air Force because I still consult them. So I can, you know, the revenue that we do and we've hit 500K in revenue. So you know, I could easily take a salary, right? But I just, it's the long game for me. It's the global expansion. 40:22 um, you know, more IP and patents, uh, protections, right? Because we do have global count clients. And, um, one of the things that I wanted to make sure of before we even took on the clients was that we had legal backing there. So IP trademarks, um, at least patent, at least the application is pending, but you know, like I want to, I want to, I want it to at least have that. And we have great attorneys. Um, shout out to Malika Tyson. 40:52 and Matthew and Dorian who have, they took over because I had a, I had an attorney, IP attorney that would, had her own boutique firm and then she had to go back, you know, she just couldn't do the entrepreneurship, it's not for everybody, but we still stay in contact as well. But she introduced me to McAndrews, they're based out of Chicago. 41:20 And they are the legal team for Impletron. I always tell them that when we're on calls, like you are the legal team. Like, yeah, anything that I need from them legal, legal wise, they do it. I literally just sent a partnership NDA over to Malekka this morning and she just sent it back to me. So like, that's not IP and trademark, right? But they do, they do it. And I always tell them how much I appreciate them because... 41:49 IP and trademarks are not free and they're not inexpensive. So, and then imagine, you know, we have one pending now in Japan. We just got one in Canada. So yeah, like it's expensive, you know, it's expensive. So a lot of the funding that we get now is going to be allocated to pay them, you know, even though they work with us. But it's going to be paying them. 42:18 doing some iterations, we have a partnership where there's some hardware that's gonna be involved. We're definitely tapping into the hardware. So we'll be forging our way there because people like things they can touch. SaaS isn't necessarily something that you can touch, although put it into a platform makes it a little bit more tangible for people, visual at least. So in the- 42:48 Yeah, I mean, hardware has always been a part of the vision. FBGAs, we have another colleague of mine, he has developed a cryptocurrency mining machine, and it leverages quantum. So it's mining at exponential speeds, right? Because generally what quantum does is speeds things up. It speeds exactly, in simplified terms. 43:18 Definitely still going after Sivers traditional government contracts globally. We participated in Fintech down in the Bahamas last October. Cause we are in the Fintech space and there's a lot of similarities between Fintech and Space Tech. Because when you're talking about fault zeros and being able to detect anomalies. 43:46 both of those markets need that and they need it quick. So we've been able to, yeah, like we've been able to leverage some of the things that we're learning in both of those for each other. So we've been able to participate in some conferences. We actually getting ready to go to Barbados in January for Fintech Islands, I'll be speaking about 44:14 the kind of the intersection of the quantum age and what's coming in respect to the fintech space, cryptocurrency, web three, traditional finance and AI, because we do leverage AI. And we've been in the AI space, Impletron has been in the AI space from the beginning. One of our advisors is an AI evangelist at AWS. I did say her name earlier on this podcast, but. 44:42 She's amazing. She's a Georgia Tech grad. We do have a few Georgia Tech people on the team, but she's amazing. And I'm able to tap her. I've been able to tap her because she was one of the Kit founders. So I've been able to tap her about AI and machine learning very early on. So all of the LLMs and the SLMs that everybody's kind of talking about, we've been doing. 45:11 Like even as small as we are, we've been. 45:16 Yeah, so, Chasity, how can my listeners contact or get information about Infotron? So, yeah, of course the website. So, infiltron.net. You can follow us on all of our socials at Infotron Software Suite. It might be, I think on Twitter is Infotron app. We wanted to keep it short. 45:41 And then, or you can email us at mfultronapp at gmail.com. And I know people are gonna be like, why you use Gmail? That's another filter. And that's an email that everybody on the team can look at and not be bombarded with, cause spam and it's just, everybody has their own email address, but. So you probably, it's a test environment for all of you. 46:09 beautiful quantum encryption that you're working on. Yes. And that's it all. One better way to start. Yeah, Gmail, right? Google knows a lot more about us than we'd like them to. Oh, Google knows everything. That's tough. Even when you turn location off. Oh, Instagram. I just posted something about Instagram. So Instagram's new. They just updated their policy maybe a month ago, maybe. 46:38 Okay. Whether you want to or not, they now have access to your photos, your GPS location, everything even if you say no, even if you turn it off, they still contract. 47:00 Just putting it out there guys. Yeah. So if you do platform. So there's cause to the platform. Right? Yes. Thank you. All right. We're coming down to the section of the podcast where I like to ask each of my guests what the following three words mean to you. Because this is what I do with my consulting business. 47:24 In addition to my podcast, I work with founders that are really building resilient, purpose-driven and scalable businesses. What's resilience mean to you, Chasity? Man, that's a word that I use. Uh, I mean, I'm, I mean, you gotta think about it. I'm black trying to raise money. It's hard for black people to raise money on top of that. I've been, you know, um, I've come face to face with people that didn't believe that I wrote my own patents. Like. 47:53 you know, as if black people didn't invent a lot of things, like that we still use today. Like, come on. I mean, it's just the truth. Resilience. Resilience for me is bending, but never breaking. Bending, but never breaking. Yeah. It's about, you know, adapting to challenges. I just mentioned some and facing them. Like you can't, you can't, and I'm about to sound 48:23 run from the pain, you gotta run towards it. So you can come out stronger on the other side. And it's not necessarily about survival, it's transformation. That's transformation. It's transformation. And that transformation is preparing you for what's next. And you'll be standing taller than you were before. Amazing, thank you. Purpose-driven, what's a purpose-driven? 48:53 Enterprises or? Yeah. I'm a visionary. So like, there's a lot of founders that I've met. If I have the opportunity to get close to them or kind of hear them speak about what they're building to include myself, because I do talk to myself about the things that I'm building. I counsel myself. I'm sure my ancestors are around me. 49:23 Purpose is, it should be intentional. I think that it's kind of interchangeable for me. But in the context of the question that you asked on purpose driven enterprise, so it's the heartbeat in what we build here at Infotron. I can definitely say that. It's creating meaningful solutions that solve real problems. And in solving those real problems, 49:52 you're still staying true to the mission. I still bring the aspect of the military into Infiltron. We are mission focused. We have fun. We do all the fun things, right? Because again, that cultivates innovation too. And it keeps it spicy. You need to let things be spicy because in a regular deglar cybersecurity job, you're probably bored. Like. 50:19 I mean, let's just be real. Like you're probably bored. You're probably looking at Excel spreadsheets and creating a report by hand from that. Like it's boring. Like, but you know, it's also making moves that matter. And it's solving problems that for me leave a legacy and just never losing sight of why we started in the first place. 50:48 So never lives in sight. Excellent. What about scalable? So how does- That's one of those BC's favorite words. That's right. Because that's what they want to see. How will you scale? That's right. I mean, I'm an investor too guys. Don't get it twisted. Like, I think that was a question that I did ask with one of the investors I had. Like, how are you going to get over that challenge? Like, before I give you this money. 51:18 Scalable. So growth, like we can think about growth in so many different ways, like growth, personal growth, because if you embark on the entrepreneur trick, you are going to be, and need to be open to growth. To me, entrepreneurship is a spiritual journey. Beautiful. 51:45 about the Southern Baptist roots, but I'm not spiritual. I'm a yoga, meditating, put my feet in the sand, grass grounding person nowadays, but still bringing that element of praying. And it's all the same to me. They just changed the name of God, right? Just that's my perspective, but growth isn't just about getting. 52:14 bigger. It's about getting better. And me speaking about the personal aspect, that is what growth is. It might not feel good, you know, while it's happening. But, you know, once you get through it and you can get in a reflective mindset and look back with what you just came through and be grateful, like find gratitude in it, you know. 52:43 That's how I look at growth. It's expanding mindfully and staying grounded in your values and making sure that every step that you take going forward strengthens the foundation that you've already built. And it's... 53:11 Like I said, it's moving with intention. And while you're moving with intention, you're also preserving the quality and the vision that define you. Which goes back to purpose-driven. Yes, thank you. Last question, Chasity. Did you have fun in the sandbox? Oh yeah, I mean, it's you. You know, we already have a great rapport. 53:38 I'll say this, one of my favorite memories of you is when you brought Ty to the table to kind of see if they were, could invest in Infiltron and it was too early. But we had to sign an NDA, it was some type of contract, but it was during Mercury retrograde. You said it before I said it, I was like, I wonder if she's onto this type. 54:05 Cause I wasn't going to sign it. I was going to try to delay it as much as possible, but you're like, no, let's wait, let's wait. So after Mercer, that's your great. Well, I was like, oh, these are this. She's my people. And I was like, and I think I responded like, let's wait five days. So it is no, it's like clear. So, um, that's a little fighter for me with you. Oh, I love it. I love it. Generally hear that in business. No, no. 54:32 And the Founder Sandbox again is a pretty eclectic podcast, bringing in deep tech founders like Chasity Wright that are on the frontier, bringing in what the future, will, it's the future's here. It's here. That's right. So to my listeners, if you like this episode with Chasity Wright, CEO and founder of Infiltron, sign up for the monthly release of 55:01 this podcast where founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers share their own experiences on building with strong governance, a resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. So signing off for this month, thank you, Chasity. Thank you, Brenda, so much. I hope to see you soon.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Salvador Badillo Rios. Salvador is Founder and CEO of EquiTech Innovate, a strategic consulting and advisory firm aimed at helping underserved and overlooked founders bring innovative and disruptive technologies to market. He is also Senior Associate and Portfolio Manager at National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC), a component of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), aimed at accelerating early-stage dual-use deep tech startups toward commercialization At DIU and NSIC, Salvador supported 21 early-stage dual-use hardware startups across 12 states with ~$50M over three years leading to over $335M in total follow-on private capital (up to 20X funded amount at up to 11X prior to funding valuation). They speak about Sal's origin story; how despite being from a disadvantaged background, this has not deterred his purposefulness and positivity to make a difference particularly in underrepresented communities. Listen as Sal shares how he eventually settled on an engineering degree after choosing over music and English literature. What he does today as a senior portfolio manager in the DIU defense innovation unit's National security innovation capital is a long way from Rancho Cucamonga.  You can find out more about Sal at: Linked IN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvador-badillo-rios https://equitechinnovate.com/     Transcript: 00:04  Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:19 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host to this monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. Guests to this podcast are founders themselves, professional service providers, corporate board directors and investors. 01:47 who like me want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, and large, to create change for a better world. And I do storytelling with each one of my guests that starts with their origin story. And then we'll get into the contents of the podcast with each of my guests, and we touch upon topics around resilience, scalability, and purpose-driven. 02:15 initiatives or what drives the guest. So thank you for joining me. And I am absolutely delighted this month to have Salvador Badillo Rios, Sal, as my guest. So thank you for joining me, Sal. Thank you, Brenda. I'm very excited to be here. Excellent. So we met not too long ago. I am a member of Angel Capital Association and attended their national 02:44 Summit in Columbus, Ohio. And I'm from Columbus, Ohio. So I kind of killed two birds with one stone. And I was blown away. So I've been a member for three years. And this year they had for the first time a breakout session on deep tech and dual technologies. And Sal, you were one of the panel members. And I myself 03:11 love to work with deep tech companies. So we had a lot of synchronicities. And that's when I asked you to join me eventually here in the podcast. Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, that's where we met. And I think it was an amazing opportunity to really connect with the angel community. I think oftentimes, you know, there's a lot of focus on VCs, but angels really drive that early start to these companies and to these technologies. And so 03:37 I wanted to make an effort to reach out to the angel community, educate, inform, you know, angels about deep tech and a lot of the DOD opportunities that there are for startups and potential collaborations and synergies. So yeah, I'm happy to have met you. So we're going to touch on a couple of those points because you do have a multifaceted career and background and diverse founder yourself of your own. 04:05 strategic consulting and advisory firm. So you are founder and CEO of Equitech Innovate. And it's really working towards serving underserved and overlooked founders that bring innovative and disruptive technologies to market. So kudos to you. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. And another hat you wear, and I don't know where you find the time in the day. Frankly. 04:33 And this was your speaking capacity when I met you earlier this year, your senior associate and portfolio manager at the national security innovation capital, a component of the defense innovation unit, DIU. So lots of acronyms in our department defense. So INSEC and DIU. And I was fascinated because that particular area, what you're involved in is it's accelerating early stage 05:02 dual use later on, you're going to tell us what dual use is. Yeah. Deep tech startups toward commercial commercialization. So, um, again, thank you, um, for joining me. We're going to talk about deep tech. We're going to get into also your own work that you're doing with, um, underserved founders. And I always like to have a title of our episodes. Um, and this one, I really think we're going to talk about scalable businesses. So what you're doing. 05:31 particularly with NSIC and the DIU is scaling, identifying early stage companies that truly have the promise of scaling. So scalable businesses. And you know, in a short period of time, you have scaled and then we'll get into the questions, but I was also very impressed with the focus of the work at the DIU and NSIC, you've used yourself have supported 21 early stage 06:00 dual use hardware, all right, not software, hardware startups across 12 states with over $50 million over the last three years. And that's led on to lead on it investments of 335 million of private capital and up to 20 times funded amount at up to 11 times prior to fund evaluation. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Thank you, yeah. All right. So can you... 06:30 describe for my, let's get into your origin story. Your PhD aerospace engineering, first generation Latino. LGBT, tell me what would be your tagline if anything. What I mean, this mashup of deep, tell me your origin story. How did you know what you're doing today? Yeah, thank you, yeah. 06:55 I mean, yeah, I mean, I was thinking through the tagline and I was like, well, I think maybe one could be, you know, life through punches, but I turned them into power and purpose. And so I think, you know, everyone, I'm sure has their own set of struggles, right? Everyone has dealt a different set of cards, right, in life. And it's really what you make of that, right? That really defines you. So for me, right, I grew up, 07:24 Here in Southern California. So I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, about an hour East of LA without traffic. And so yeah, I grew up, my background is Mexican. So my parents are from Mexico. They met here and I'm the oldest of three. So I have two younger siblings. One is a year younger and then the youngest, seven years younger, but he has 07:53 down syndrome pretty severely. So I grew up in a disadvantaged background in a community where really I didn't know anyone that went to a four-year college, no one that went into any STEM field, right? And so, and my parents also, right, had never gone to college. So a lot of it was just learning and figuring things out along the way. 08:20 But I was lucky to have teachers that believed in me, that saw sort of something in me in school. And they would say, oh, yeah, you need to go to college. Or they would say, oh, you're good at math and science, things like that. And so they would reaffirm those things. But even once I got to high school, I really hadn't really planned for the future. I didn't really have thought about what major I wanted to go into or what college I wanted to go. 08:49 And so it was around being around other students that had thought about that a little bit better or had parents who were engineers or doctors that when they started asking me about it, I was like, oh, I don't know, but let me start thinking about it a little bit more. And so, yeah, so in my classroom, one of my teachers said, oh, the UC applications opened up. And so that's how I found out. 09:17 you know, that I should apply to college. There were several interests that I had, write music, English literature, and then STEM, right? And so I decided to go and try engineering and initially started with civil engineering, transitioned into mechanical and then added aerospace, just as, you know, being in college and taking different courses and being involved in different projects and clubs. 09:47 That's sort of how my interest kind of evolved. But even then, right, I didn't know about what a PhD was, or venture capital, or the field that I'm in now. So a lot of it has been a bit of a learning process. And I'm lucky to have had different organizations along the way geared towards underserved communities in STEM. 10:15 you know, PhD or things like that, that help create awareness for me about the different opportunities. My thing is you can't really go after something that you don't even know exists, right? So the more you're aware about different opportunities, the more you can sort of start to pave your path based on your own interests, so yeah. So you're a lifetime learner, although you're very young still. 10:41 Thank you for the interest in that. It's interesting because yesterday I was on a webinar with the National Association of Corporate Directors. It was about AI and workers, right? And interesting enough, the current generation, the largest generation that composes the workforce in the United States are Gen Xers. No, Gen Zers. 11:11 And the average retention, so the average period of time that they're in is 2.4 years. The next generation is the alpha, right? They're like 13, 14. They will have up to 17 careers, is what they're saying. And so the young, yes. You have so many opportunities. And again, I think people in your early 11:39 childhood, your neighborhood, your school, this professors that saw the, the, the ability for you with STEM related topics, they geared you those opportunities. So yeah, it's amazing the future of workforce and opportunities. So you yourself are going to get into in this podcast. Yeah. Some of that so you get out of college and what is your first gig? What'd you do? 12:08 Yeah, well, again, I went all the way to the PhD route. So one thing that was unique and what plugged me into DOD was, you know, going into my PhD, I had the opportunity to go to UCLA, but having a unique opportunity to work with the Department of Defense. And so whereas most students conduct research on campus, in my case, I had the opportunity to, after I take 12:37 a few of my, you know, some of my course requirements go to Edwards Air Force Research Lab, which is called the Rocket Lab, and really conduct research there. And so one, you get a lot more resources, right? Just because you're within DoD. And so you're able to really run, you know, and create projects and do these things that are at a higher level, right? This research is able to conduct at a higher level, and working on also 13:07 important problems to national security, you know, to the DOD that are more applicable than simply something that's just in a lab, right, that may be cool and interesting, but maybe there's not, you know, a huge focus on the application area. And so, yeah, I got to work alongside other military members and other researchers at DOD and really start to look things from a national security perspective. 13:34 And so how is certain technologies, whether more fundamental, more applied, how is that important to DOD and national security in general? As well as, you know, I got to see a lot of also the issues within traditional DOD and obstacles and sort of inefficiencies as well. And so it gave me sort of this unique perspective that 14:03 I would say most PhD students typically don't get, so I was very fortunate to have that. And so while being there, I also got interested in an entrepreneurship program. I was like, I wanted to get myself out of my comfort zone, out of the box and really interact with people from different backgrounds, not just from the STEM background. And... 14:28 And I loved it. I didn't know that I was going to love it. And I just decided to try it one day. And I just really loved speaking with customers. I got to be part of a student led startup. And so speaking to customers and that customer discovery phase, pitching to VCs, brainstorming with people from different backgrounds. I was like, this is where I want to be at. And so I thought I wanted to go into product development. 14:57 at a startup. And so that's what I was gearing towards. And so taking business courses online. And again, this is when the pandemic started to hit. So taking business courses online, learning more about emerging technologies like quantum and AI, that just interested me. And then DoD found me. And so they were like, okay, you have this unique 15:26 you know, technical background, background with DoD and some knowledge, right, regarding DoD and then interest in this startup and business, you know, business world. And so DoD was really starting, wanted to stand up and say National Security Innovation Capital, which, you know, focuses on early stage hardware technology. So as you may know, a lot of funding tends to go. 15:54 towards VC funding tends to go towards software and not enough towards hardware. And often hardware companies will resort to getting foreign capital, which at times may be considered adversarial and may compromise national security. And so DoD wanted to sort of get a hold of this a bit. And so stand up this program. And so, yeah, a few of my team members and I, we basically were hired on board to really stand up this program. 16:24 And this really involved developing the funding thesis, establishing the processes, eventually me running operations. Then because of my background, right? I got to do a lot more and help source these startups, evaluate these startups and help fund them and then support them. So I think naturally I just like wearing a lot of hats. It was very, it's been a very startup culture. 16:52 in a way just because we're a very small but mighty team. And so it's allowed me to do a lot as well as have a seat at the table and really sort of see things from that perspective. I love the that you were in the early stage of standing up the is it pronounced in sick. We usually refer it to as an insect. So what are 17:21 you know, these will be in the show notes, the we have a kind of infographic on NSIC. What are the I think there's seven key areas of investment within the DOD? Yeah. Yeah. So again, we're a component of the Defense Innovation Unit. And so 17:50 companies that are a little bit more mature that have some VC funding, that have commercial product. And the goal there is for them to find sort of the use cases and sort of pair those gaps with and look for specific solutions to address those gaps and transition that technology into DoD. 18:17 Again, we focus on the earlier stage, pre-seat to seat stage companies. And so, however, our technology areas are aligned with DIU's portfolios. So, you know, our technology areas are autonomy. And then sensors is weaved into that now. So advanced sensing would fall into autonomy. Energy technology. So this can involve energy storage. Advanced battery chemistries is a big thing under that one. 18:47 space technology. And so this is satellite stuff, as well as satellite communications, things like that. Telecommunications, so advanced communications technologies. And again, there's a lot of synergies with these different technologies. And then we have an emerging technologies area, which under that we've we've been edge computing hardware. 19:15 electronics, photonics, as well as hypersonics platforms. 19:25 Interesting. It's fascinating. Yeah. And then within that we have sort of funded as well companies that are in the sort of advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, but they usually align with one of the technology areas that I mentioned. 19:43 So for my listeners, I would absolutely love you to define deep tech and dual technologies, all right? Yeah. Because many, you know, I have quite a large audience now and it's a concept that we don't run into. You don't go to the grocery store and buy. Right, yeah. Yeah, I even had a friend, you know, just a close personal friend that is not in this field at all. 20:11 asked me about that too. So yeah, it's constantly educating, right, the audience, just because it is a crucial part of our society nowadays. So yeah, so I would say I would describe deep tech startups as sort of being distinguished by their intensive focus on sort of cutting edge technologies and scientific achievements. So they operate at the frontier of innovation. And so 20:40 I would say they're characterized by sort of novel solutions that are rooted in scientific breakthroughs or, you know, significant technological or scientific breakthroughs. And you know, I think where a lot of technologies, a lot of conventional startups leverage existing technologies to solve market needs, deep tech startups. 21:06 can often create entirely new markets or radically transform existing ones with their disruptive innovations. And so the reason I think there's probably a name for this set of technologies is because they also face unique challenges in commercializing their innovation. So one characteristic thing and challenge is long development cycles. 21:34 So, you know, they often require years, if not even decades, right, for research and development before you even have some viable prototype, right, that may become a product. High R&D costs, right, so, you know, very capital intensive, you know, and securing funding can be challenging, especially in the early stages for these sets of technologies that 22:01 are often unproven or the market potential is not quite fully understood. And so when it comes to going to market, it may be a little bit more challenging because it's not just a matter of finding product market fit, but it's also about educating potential customers about. 22:28 you know, educating the market right about your technology. Right. And the dual purpose? Yeah, so the dual use purpose really involves having both commercial and defense applications. So defense tech, you know, is sort of a focus on these DOD critical needs for national security to enhance military capabilities. 22:55 And so the dual use aspect means really developing a product or technology that can serve both, civilian and military purposes. And so I will say there are challenges with this though, just because the DOD aspect is mission focused, right? And so you have to worry about finding product mission fit in that sense. Whereas on the commercial side, you have to worry about finding 23:25 product market fit. And so, it can be competing at times, right? Where, the startups and VCs are naturally focused on revenue and increasing sort of their investment and DOD may be focused on the mission, right? And so, it's a matter of really finding where you can overlap both of those missions, right? To really make progress in society. 23:54 And then it's also as you're developing a technology, it's a matter of balancing as well, the different requirements and applications. So, yeah. So the startups that you have been involved with, have they come like a spin out as a technology transfer from a university or not? I mean, where did you? Yeah. 24:22 Where did these companies come from? Their original ideas. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of the companies that we fund, some of the technologies have begun in a university research lab setting. However, they're usually a little bit further along before we see them and we fund them. So we have partnerships with different programs, including National Security Innovation Network, which is a part of DIU. 24:51 that really focuses more on really helping spin out these technologies out of a research setting and finding those DOD use cases. And again, we also look at companies from all over the US. So, our meetings are usually virtual, which makes it easy for companies to reach us. But yeah, they come from all sorts of settings, right? Some of them have spin out from the lab. 25:20 others from another company. But like I mentioned, by the time we see them and we fund them, they've already had some preliminary traction on the DOD side, whether that means some funding spoken to and, you know, DOD users to really develop the requirements, as well as some commercial preliminary traction, like obtaining letters of support and things like that. Yeah. 25:47 So about the time I met you, I'd also been working in deep tech. And I have heard that perhaps private investment VC money had been crowding out the traditional investment of Nandaluda funding that was under either the DOD or SBIR. 26:16 Right. And for like the last 20 years or so. And the Department of Defense, and actually under, I think it was the Obama administration, Ash Carter kind of flipped the model and said that we can actually do dilutive as well as non-dilutive funding in order to attract again, I don't know whether you're losing the game, but to really get back into the pipeline. 26:44 of potential new businesses and new technologies. Is that, and that's kind of what I've, you know, you perceive it. I also saw that SBIR grants, VCs were no longer allowed to participate probably about eight years ago. So what have your observations been on the public versus private investment in the strategic mission-driven 27:13 sectors is, is it true? What I'm saying is that I mean, there's no probably it's not black or white, right? So what is the transition between public and private investment in these strategic sectors evolve? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the way I would see it is, you know, a while back, there was really a lack of communication between sort of these public and private entities. 27:42 And so there wasn't much of a collaboration going on. And so, for example, with the establishment of DIU, the purpose was to really establish those public and private partnerships to really further innovation and especially deep tech innovation. And so that was just the first goal, right? Let's improve and establish these public and private partnerships and show that we can work together to fund companies. 28:11 that was a little bit rocky and figuring out, okay, how does that work and who does what? But I think over time, right, those relationships have really become established in some way and have been fortified. And now, DIU and NSIC and all these other DOD entities, we have strong relationships with different BCs and accelerators and other types of organizations. 28:41 they are aware of us and are interested in really knowing what our priorities are. And we are trying to always better communicate that to them. And we're going on funding companies together. So I would say that was sort of the first phase over time. Then, you know, I think you focused on, OK, let's let's let's see if we can if this model works, right? If we can fund companies. 29:10 using OTAs, for example, these prototype contracts, and helps to transition some of this technology into DoD. And I would say now where we're at is now we're really hyper-focused on the, you know, because we already proved we can do this, so now it's, okay, let's focus on the most impact for an urgent technologies to DoD, especially given 29:39 the current geopolitical climate. And so now we've sort of shifted into really a focus on these high impact, high, you know, at large scale and in high urgency technologies and startups. So it's a journey, right? It's an evolution. It's been a journey, yeah. And then on the hardware side, right, again, it's been a little bit different, but again, similar where, you know, there wasn't a lot of, I would say, 30:06 VC interests to really fund, especially hardware, early stage technologies. VCs were typically repelled by that, right, in some sense. And naturally so, right? But I think with standing up NSIC and these other organizations, there's been actually several VCs now in this pre-seed to seed stage, funding. 30:35 hardware companies. And so I would say now the hurdle is probably as we funded these companies, now they go on to series A, series B and now they need BCs at that stage, right? To really help them along and further their scaling, right? And so I would say more work is probably needed on that end now. Very exciting times. 31:05 Let's switch gears and let's go back to your consulting firm. Equitech innovate. Again, I don't know where you find the time, but I, you know, so can you showcase here what it is that you do in serving the underrepresented founders that are in these disruptive technologies? What was it that made you go out on your own? 31:32 Yeah, yeah, so just being in the deep tech space that I'm at, and, you know, dual use as well, you know, one thing that I started noticing, and it's something that I've noticed even from just my own background, right, in STEM, right, sort of one, a lack of diversity and representation, right, of, you know, different backgrounds, especially my backgrounds, right, whether it's 32:02 And so again, this is naturally found in a lot of the, deep tech spaces, right? Finding leadership and innovators in that space. And that, that's a whole nother conversation, right? But there's a lot of hurdles, just even for people getting to that space, right? And so naturally you find sort of a lack of talent there. 32:31 And then the other thing is, you know, once, you know, you have underserved communities in deep tech, right, then you have less of them that are aware or become deep tech founders, right? And so then once you are a deep tech founder, right, then you have these VC funding gaps, right, that you find, right, where 32:56 out of all the VC funding, 136 billion, only 1% goes to Black founders or even smaller to Latinx or Indigenous or to women. And especially being in the field that I am in, I would see very few, again, founders from understaffed communities even applying to our program. But then unfortunately, even those that did apply, sometimes the quality was just not up to par. 33:25 Okay. And so it does tear me a bit, you know, in the sense that, you know, I have compassion, but at the same time, there's a level of quality that we need to maintain and things like that. And that is because they often lack some of the resources and guidance, right? And so even to get to where they're at now has been such a huge feat. And so that's where I saw the opportunity 33:55 strategic consulting and advisory firm to really help underserved founders and give them a little bit more guidance and really help them get their technologies to market. Bringing in my DOD expertise, my deep tech expertise, and also in working with underserved communities throughout my career with different nonprofits and whatnot. All right. Yeah. 34:24 Yeah, being that person that looks like them, right? In the room, right? And you also have, you're a mentor for the Stanford Latino Business Action Network. And you're serving on the board of directors for Science is Elementary. And tell me, is that also part of kind of mission-driven? Speak to me a bit about those collaborations. Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah. So... 34:52 Again, just because I'm interested in helping underserved founders, you know, I must have gone, I think to an event at Stanford, and then that's how I got plugged in to that nonprofit organization. Okay. Yeah, so I became a mentor, that this was before starting Ecotech Innovate. And so again, that's where I also just got to focus on helping underserved founders and really guiding them, get them through that process. 35:22 And then in terms of the nonprofits that I'm a board of directors for, yeah, so one of them is Science is Elementary. And so that nonprofit, we focus on really providing inspiring, innovative, high quality science experiences to preschool and elementary school children from underserved communities. And. 35:48 you know, that involves, you know, teaching students, right, training teachers as well, to really build sustainable and quality sort of curriculum, and then engaging as well with different scientists and STEM professionals, and some of them may serve as role models and mentors and things like that. So again, I didn't have any sort of exposure to this. I wish I did when I was, you know, a young kid. But, you know, I think providing that 36:17 for the industry communities is very important because that's where it begins, right? Yes, but you get exposed to it. Yeah, you get exposed, so you learn about opportunities. And so you can dream to be a scientist or things like that. And also you get rid of those fears, right? That may intimidate you from going into STEM, right? Because now there's familiar. And then also it's important to know that 36:43 going to STEM doesn't necessarily mean you need to be a scientist, right? I've transitioned into this role, which is more business, right? But my science background, I'm able to leverage that and it's sort of a value add. So in the show notes, I would like to call out different ways by which my listeners can contact you. Can you speak to... 37:10 what you would like to have in the show notes? Is that your LinkedIn profile? Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so yeah, people can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm on there. Also, www.ancik.mil, you can find my LinkedIn there. And also, equi You can find my, you know. 37:37 LinkedIn information there as well as my email, salvador at equi Excellent. So that will be in the show notes as well as the infographic of NSIC. Thank you. So I am gonna move into the part of the podcast that I repeat with every single guest. I have my own consulting firm, NextAct Advisors, and I really work with 38:06 growth stage companies on being purpose driven, scalable and resilient. And I'd like to ask you, I guess, what does purpose driven mean to you? Yeah, I think to me, I've actually always been drawn to purpose driven work. And so for me, it's the so what, right? So there's a lot of cool things you can do, cool technologies. But to me, it's the why, right? And the so what behind it, that really 38:35 pushes me and motivates me to really do the work that I do because I know I'm making a difference in people's lives in one way or another, in a positive way. So whether it's through the nonprofits that I've been involved with, both at a volunteering level and then now on the board leadership or through NSIC and DIU, right? Helping the war fighter and helping with national security. 39:04 or now with my consulting firm and really focusing on helping underserved founders, I think that I'm just drawn to really purpose-driven work that creates a positive impact in people at scale, right? And maybe lead on to your next question, but that does it in a meaningful way. So that moves the needle. I love it. So you've chosen really in alignment with your own 39:33 Origin story. So scalable growth. What does that mean to you? And maybe wearing your INSEC hat or what was scalable? Yeah. So I think, you know, first in terms of like, you know, deep tech startups and going that route, the focus is first on finding product market fit and really getting there. But once you do, 40:02 I think scaling is really about growing, right? Growing not only your team, but expanding your product and really doing it in an impactful way. And I think along with that comes many challenges, right? That you have to make sure your manufacturing processes are in order and that can... 40:28 really accommodate for the volume and speed at which you need to do that. And so I think before scaling needs to come preparedness, right? Being prepared to grow before you do grow because one thing I find often is, you know, sometimes people are focused on growing and then as you're growing, you're really finding all these things that you can't keep up with, right? And then unfortunately, sometimes that's where startups fail, right? 40:55 And so, and it's sad because you've gone so far right along. And so, since you've worked so hard to get there, it's important to just take a beat and really prepare for the growth because I think that will set you up for success. You know, I'm gonna divert a little bit from the third question. I mean, product market fit. Yeah. And software, right? 41:23 Deep tech technologies, it's really about around technology readiness level, TRLs, right? Scaling right to that level where you are scalable, right? Can you for my listeners again, indulge us in technology readiness levels? Yeah. So, yeah. So there are different, you know, technology readiness levels that really describe sort of. 41:52 where your technology is in its development. With NSIC, for example, we have a minimum TRL three. And so that involves at least having sort of analytical and experimental critical function and or characteristic proof of concept. So we don't fund, you know, sort of paper studies or science projects. And so, that's a TRL level that we focus on. 42:21 And as that TRL advances, then you get into the testing phase and in-field environment testing and things like that. So then you can further refine your technology until it's really ready for a proper use case. And then I would say one thing we focus on now is also 42:48 just on the level of advancement in that TRL, right? So, you know, the more you can advance with the funding, the better and so that involves really having a very strong product development plan, right, in place. So that you get more bang for your buck in a way. Right, right. So the product roadmap. Yeah. Thank you. Let's get back to the sandbox and its resilience. 43:17 What does resilience mean to you? Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it's one thing that someone told me, you know, they said, you're very resilient. And I was like, oh, really? Thank you. And so, yeah, reflecting back in my life, right? Again, as I mentioned before, you know, you'll be dealt different cards in life, you know, punches, right? And sometimes that will be things that you have no control over. And sometimes there'll be consequences because, you know, you're human and you're young and you make mistakes. And... 43:46 you're stubborn at times or things like that. And so I think resilience is, for me it involves a few things. One is not allowing that to define you. And so it means getting back up, but it also means getting back up stronger and wiser, at least for me, right? There's, I think something you can learn about yourself. 44:11 and about the situation and about others, right? In whatever circumstance you're in. And so it's really making sure you learn the most you can about that particular situation so that when you do stand up and move forward, you're able to do so in a more intentional and successful way, hopefully. Thank you. So last question, did you have fun in the sandbox today? Oh, I had a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. 44:41 It's been a unique experience. And so, I had a great time speaking to you when we first met and so today as well. So thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you, Sal. To my listeners, if you liked this episode with Sal Badiyurios, CEO and founder of Equitech Innovate, as well as advisor with Insic of the DIU, that's the Defense Innovation Unit. Please. 45:11 sign up for the Founder's Sandbox. It's released monthly. And business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers are my guests and they help us learn about how to build with strong governance, resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven companies to make profits for good. So signing off for this month, thank you. And again, Sal, thank you for joining me. Thank you.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Jane Zhang, CEO and Founder of Remmie Health about Scalable AI in Pediatrics. Jane progressed through her professional career as Biomedical Engineer, PhD Adjunct Professor, Big Pharma and it was upon living a very personal situation that she wanted be become a “builder": entrepreneurship was calling her.  Listen to Jane's podcast, as she shares where this whole idea of building something for the people at home to be able to examine, share, and, in the future - get assistance in identifying ENT diseases- became very important to her. Jane shares how she has built a product and services for at home examinations of the ear, nose, and throat and her real experience of developing a FDA approved Class 1 device, now in clinical trials.  Remmie 3 is a FDA-registered and CE Marked next generation intelligent otoscope designed for patients of all ages. You can find out more about Jane and Remmie Health at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/janeyzhang https://medium.com/@janeyqz/my-experience-with-my-sons-recurring-ear-infections-a-3-part-story-fdbc4ea0016e https://remmiehealth.com/   https://www.linkedin.com/company/remmiehealth/ Remmie was present at MEDICA 2024, the most important international fair dedicated to medicine and hospital technology. The event will took place in Düsseldorf, Germany, from 11 to 14 November 2024. https://www.ca-mi.eu/en/germany/01/2024/medica-dusseldorf-11-14-november-2024/ and at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association 2024 ASHA Convention from December 5-7 in Seattle, Washington. https://convention.asha.org/       Transcript:  00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:18 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This is a monthly podcast in which I reach entrepreneurs, business owners, and I have as my guest, entrepreneurs and business owners, professional service providers, and corporate board directors who bring their own stories about building resilient, purpose-driven, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. 01:47 I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And by bringing my guests to the podcast, they too want to use the power of the enterprise, small, medium and large to create change for a better world. We're going to tell stories in this podcast today. And my guest is Jane Zhang. She's CEO of Remmie and she's joining us here from the state of Washington. 02:17 Jane and I go back almost, I don't know, four or five years now. Jane was at the UCLA MedTech competition. She had just founded Remmie in 2018 and then actually put some bones around it and financing into 2020 was actually seeking external investment dilutive type. And I couldn't help. 02:46 but remember Jane's origin story of why she started Remmie. And we're gonna start with that. So Jane, I would love for you to walk down memory lane with me and go back to when we met in the campus at the UCLA MedTech. And what was your origin story? Yeah, Brenda, I really appreciate this opportunity and thank you for the great intro. It was. 03:14 It was unforgettable why I, every day I'm reminded of why I'm on this mission because my own son, who was a preschooler back then, had recurring ear, nose and throat issues, especially ear infections. It was basically nonstop. A lot of the weekends, my colleagues would ask me, what are you doing on the weekend? I'd be like, 03:43 My son is having a fever I'm taking next week off. So it happened four times. In the first year he went to childcare. And one of the times he had a high fever, we went to the ER and it took us four hours sitting there nonstop with his crying and screaming. And the other times we were referred to an ENT specialist who was about to put in ear tubes in his ears. And other times we were 04:12 misdiagnosed because he had air nose and hands with mouse disease where we were given antibiotics. I give him 10 days and he's still spiking a fever. It keeps on coming back. And the doctor said there was a it was a moment of revelation where this physician, my pediatrician told me, come, come take a look by yourself. I was like, what? Why? And he said the throat or the back of his throat was all white blisters. So this was not an air infection. 04:43 um who gave you antibiotics that was the question he asked me he said you should be able to look by yourself and why weren't you doing that i was like what really i'm a bio medical engineer by training by the way um especially in low resource setting diagnostics or like basically home home diagnostic kits um he asked me why aren't you looking by yourself i was like what am i supposed to look uh and with what 05:11 So that's where this whole idea of building something for the people at home to be able to examine, share, and in the future getting assistance in identifying ENT diseases became very important to me. Wow. So you had at that time been working 05:36 for a large pharmaceutical company. As you said, you are a biomedical engineer by training, and you just completed your executive MBA, I think at UCLA. So what made you make the jump? One thing is going to the emergency room with your child time and time again. You talked about your aha moment and how can I in a low resource, right? At home. 06:03 be able to actually diagnose and actually treat my child. What happened that made you want to actually become an entrepreneur, Jane? One thing is working on the research side, but becoming an entrepreneur, what made you do that? It was very, so it was like everything kind of lined up in a way, and it just, my background, I was an engineer by training. 06:32 I worked as a scientist, you know, like in all the way up to postdoctoral level research. And then I took a turn into getting more into product development, business development, and commercial operations, because I thought that was really going to help me broaden my vision of the my view of how things work, you know, that I'm basically a curiosity driven person. 06:57 And at that point, while I was working in a big corporate, in a pharmaceutical company, I was sort of getting more experienced in a commercial side of things. I figured I had two choices, probably one, two, actually three choices I was considering, right? Like one is to go back to research and become a faculty member. In fact, I did, you know, that was kind of my way of rethinking my whole, reorienting my whole career path. 07:25 Um, the other one was going to become an investor. Um, the third was to fund my own company and just go on this path of building things. Um, I, I thought, uh, this issue of my child's problem just really was hitting at home that this is, because it's after I talked to many people, I was not alone. I'm not the only person who's going through this. Everyone I talked to said, Oh my gosh, that was me. Um, 07:54 I was like, this is a big deal. It not only impacts your child's health, it impacts your productivity at the prime time of your life when you just had the child. And it was just like really hitting a home. I had to do this after a couple of years of hiatus in academics, in academia, as a faculty member of engineering in University of Washington. After completing my MBA, in the meantime, I decided being a builder. 08:24 an entrepreneur is the calling for me. Is the path, is the path to shift. Amazing. Talk to me about the number of ENT cases that you are addressing with Remy today. Talk to me about that. I guess a striking number was 70 million in the US, both adults and children. A year, right? And it's really fast. A year. Yeah. 08:53 suffering from some ENT diseases. And this is not just specialty disease that I'm talking about, it's every day. Like anything that you have when you have a sore throat, a painful nose or ear infection or cold and flu, it impacts these organs. The first line organs being impacted are your ENT, but it doesn't stop there, right? For children, it is very highly occurring. Like if you look at the number of children who go see ENT issues, ear infections alone is... 09:22 about 24 million a year, that's 80% of any children before the age of eight or three, they've already had one ear infection, not to mention 30% have more than three a year. And adults, like when you're thinking about, sinusitis, sore throat, strapped throat, how all these impact the overall population quite a bit. So what is the solution at that? 09:50 Remy provides. You're going to walk us through kind of the, it's AI powered ENT, so ear, nose and throat health platform. It has many components. What's the patient experience today that you're attacking and how is it going to look in the future? Walk us through the product, please. Yeah. I love that way of thinking and thinking as a patient or a user of any anything that we are providing. 10:20 So you already kind of heard my journey of nonstop sort of rotation in like a spinning wheel among pediatrics office, urgent care, ENT's office, and ER, right? And then over again for another episode, if it's recurring or chronic. The experience that we're trying to provide is along the line of how the disease progresses and how physicians examine. 10:50 a quadrant or like a progression lifetime along that line. What I mean is when you first have a pain or some sort of discomfort, you would want to, you know, a doctor when they examine you, they would check, they would look, they would look with a, right now they look with an otoscope, which is a glorified flashlight plus magnifier, obviously very, very high fidelity. 11:20 That's the first step. They look, they examine. And then the second thing they do is, well, obviously you have to be in person first with the physician, right? So there's no sharing per se, which we're trying to build towards is you can look, you know, if a doctor is using an otoscope, why can't the patient be taught how to use it? It's very similar to a thermometer in a way, except it's a camera. So, you know, if a physician is looking with their eye. 11:48 we can make it digitized as a camera for patients to use at home. And if you have to be in person today, you should be able to transmit this, whatever you're looking at or collecting over the internet in terms of sharing. And then the third step of the whole diagnosis journey is basically analyze. The physician kind of asks you how you feel, they aggregate a lot of information about you, who you are, what you're going through and your physical presentation of the symptoms. 12:19 that should also be partly supported by AI. So that's kind of what I'm working towards is, it's like a million doctors supporting every single physician, every, you know, one doctor being supported by a million in terms of the insights that's used to go into their diagnosis. And did I mention that the misdiagnosis rate is about 40% on any day? Misdiagnosis meaning either, you know, 12:49 you're prescribed antibiotics where you're not, you should not have been, or you're referred to a specialist where you should not have been, or you went to the ER, because you did not receive the care in time. I guess that's a broader sense of misdiagnosis, which means you missed the opportunity for diagnosis in the proper setting. So, but that's very prevalent in terms of misdiagnosis. So we like to support anyone who's 13:17 first examining the condition with AI tools, being a patient or a primary care physician. Before we get into the AI question that I have for you, talk to me about some of the communities that can benefit from the use of an AI-powered ENT device. Yeah. I. 13:46 The first thing that comes to my mind is home users, any general lay person at home who may not have the resources to see a physician in person. It could be someone who's lack of access in a way that they are in a remote area, lack of resources to pay for healthcare, or even lack of time. Someone who is working, who has a job but just doesn't have the time to. 14:15 to see a doctor. So I would think under underserved communities, population who are at lack of resources such as time, money, or you know, driving. You know, driving is a hassle for a lot of families and just anywhere at home. Anyone who is, you know, even I was talking to a bunch of undergrad, you know, college students are like, we're so used to just sitting on our couch and see a doctor. 14:45 That's possible. And that was really the key moment when I was sitting as a judge. The first time I actually was exposed to you, Jane, met you and heard about Remy, it was the possibility that digital health, right? I'm not having to go into a doctor's office. And the digital health to use preventatively, right? To prevent disease. 15:13 diseases to progress. I think, and then, you know, AI is just an added layer on top, so that truly was a moment when I thought everybody, well, at least there's 70 million cases a year of ear, nose, and throat, what this platform may offer for other disease areas where we don't have necessarily to go into the doctor's office. So it was fascinating. That's what brought us into this relationship. 15:41 So talk to me about, we've talked about the platform, where you're going, how it's offered. What has been your founder experience? All right, you decided you took a head issue and went back to the academic world. You really wanted to become an entrepreneur, started the company. You won a competition out of UCLA, I think business case. That's about the time I met you, right? Talk to me about how the journey has been in terms of 16:10 resources, the resources that you have received, non-dilutive funding, where are you on that path, and how many healthcare systems are currently either testing or looking into the use of Remy? That's a loaded question. So talk to me about the journey of financing and where the product is being used today. Absolutely. The journey is long and very, 16:40 full of support, you know, like that's, that's a very upfront, you know, support from my very early days where my MBA classmates kind of joined force on this project, you know, as in its infancy, the UCLA, which, you know, venture accelerator, which was my, you know, first founder, basically, we, we came out of the incubator, equipped to talk to the world about our business case. And we got 17:09 $33,000 overnight from the business plan competition, NAP business plan competition, and the early UCLA founders who just showing overwhelming support. And we, in fact, we sold our product, first 25 units of our, you know, the digital otoscope in the early days before we graduated and gotten our first 100K of investor check before we graduated. So, 17:39 That was when we had to fund the company because we need to find a place to park the money as students part-time. So this was all full-time working, you know, professionals part-time on a weekend going to MBA. And then I, the past just went really interesting because of the pandemic. There was an overwhelming uptake of virtual care. 18:07 telehealth services, institutions who are looking at this new modality of care. And all of a sudden it was like, there were like 800 telehealth companies in the US at some point and they were all of our potential customers. We started co-calling them and we're getting quite a bit of feedback. In fact, many of them were working today. We are working with Rocket Doctor, for example. They've gotten, they've taken over half a million costs in the past couple of years. 18:35 in terms of virtual care services. They have sites at pharmacies and enabled stations of remote care for people who are not accessing an office in person. We are working with five school districts in five different states and these are school districts which leverage Remy for all of their nursing rooms and introducing it to their students and parents. And we are working 19:05 So we got very strong non-dilutive funding. Actually early days we had seed funding from Platinum Play, we have seed funding from United Healthcare Accelerator powered by Techstars. We had in-kind support from CTIP, which is consortium for technology and innovation in pediatrics, which is a large innovation, hospital innovation consortia of, I would say that's growing, you know, 19:34 at least children's hospitals in the West and Midwest. They are providing enormous support, including clinical collaborations, partnerships, granting services, regulatory guardrail, they're FDA-funded. So now we're working with them in terms of a clinical study site in Lowery Children's in Chicago, which is one of our primary sites 20:04 testing out not only REMI, Otoscopes, but REMI-AI, funded by the NIH, which is National Institute of Health under the Small Business Innovation and Research Grant at 3.5 million so far. So overall, there was overwhelming support also from my state, I'm from Washington. So the Life Science Institute of Washington also kind of invested. And last but not least, 20:32 I have to mention TIE, T-I-E, which is an angel funding investor group that has given us enormous support in terms of networking, in terms of fine tuning the business plans, mentorship sessions. It just goes on. There are a few other investors that we've been working with and overall we've raised about... 20:56 4.75 million in non-delutive funding, non-delutive, and then about another a million in the deletive. So this has gone into a clinical study phase where we're looking at success outcomes in terms of technology readiness, validation of performance of AI clearance through FDA as a class two device in a couple of years. And then commercially. 21:22 being able to facilitate telehealth services already. In addition to allowing the patients to see and examine, we're enabling physicians remotely examine and prescribe. And in the future, assisting both the physician and the patients in terms of prescription and receiving the accurate diagnosis. I'm looking at the, heading the all, I guess, 21:52 health care or the goals of health care today, the five aims, I believe, at least, you know, cutting costs, improving quality, increasing access. Yeah, all of that. Amazing. And as of today, so you've raised about 4.75 non dilutive, you're no longer raising dilutive funding until you get through the clinical trials. When will that be happening? 22:22 The study with Children's Hospital, Lurie Children's is happening now actually, so it's underway. And we are looking at in a year that we will have some tangible, really good results in terms of both the patient satisfaction, physicians demand and performance of the technology. 22:50 And what is the desired outcome? Because I got really excited too, because this will be maybe not the first, but one of the earliest FDA approved Class II devices jointly with AI, correct? 23:08 Yes, that's a very hot topic right now in terms of the use of AI, the governance of AI, who benefits from it and who pays for it. Ultimately, the AI that we are developing would be augmenting the physician's decision making. 23:33 in the meantime, directly benefiting the patients because they can potentially receive pre-screening alerts and results faster and earlier before they go or even while they're waiting for the physician's appointments. So I would say that the outcome, first and foremost, is the satisfaction of the patient and the physicians. We would like to work alongside with, you know, really 24:00 key influencer in the medical field, medically validating the performance and understanding the bias of the data. What would it be if we manipulate bias at one way or the other in terms of the algorithm development, right? Whether or not we're collecting comprehensive population-based data, have we looked at cases of 24:28 one way or the other, you know, like in general, understanding the algorithm development and the AI readout. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about AI these days, right? People generalize it to be generative. But AI has been a concept that is, you know, it was a different name back then. It was data analysis, it was imaging analysis, it was big data. For a while, the algorithm is evolving, the capability is evolving. 24:57 Um, the, I guess before one investor was asking me, what, how do you handle data hallucination or AI hallucination, which basically means the AI is starting to give out fake results, um, based on ungrounded, um, facts or cheating or lying to you. Um, and there's also another different kind of AI, which was data driven or validated. Uh, it won't tell you anything that you don't tell it. 25:27 to, you know, it's kind of limited or confined to a set of outcomes. For us, it is the former at this point, it's less generative. We understand the ins and outs of the data that's going in and we know why it's, you know, spinning out the results while we are the other on the outcome, on the output side. I would say generative has got a lot of potential, but within health, healthcare, we just need to catch up a lot. 25:56 a lot faster for it to be widely applicable. Currently, is it fair to say that Remy does have the largest database of imaging within ENT? 26:11 We are one of the top in the world. The data size as the use case grows, as the user base grows would be growing. The data are aggregating and being applicable to algorithm training in an aggregation basis or the identified anonymized. 26:39 It's an interesting part about the platform we're building is the users can benefit and they know what their, they benefit early, you know, rather than just being, benefiting from AI telling them what to do or assisting them. They're benefiting from non-AI capabilities of the technology, facilitating their visits, shortening their distance from their pain to a prescription, for example, or diagnosis. 27:09 already, early on. So we sort of de-risk the path to AI. And AI becomes more of a later phase. But it is definitely going to augment and assist the human journey all in all. Excellent. And so while sticking with the actual platform, and one of the third elements that I was particularly interested in when 27:37 we did invest from the Thai fund was the lack of the shortage of primary care physicians, and specifically even pediatricians in the United States at this time. Talk to me a bit about how as the tech, that platform of Remy builds out, will this enable doctors will it substitute doctors? What's the what's the how will this address this? 28:06 actually, it's tsunami that is now on us of this shortage of doctors in such a common disease area. Yeah, yeah. I definitely think that it is a tsunami coming at us just from my experience of having to book out. My wild child checkup is like four months out. I was like, by the time I get my son's appointment for his 11 years old checkup, he's 12. Yeah, so just to give you. 28:36 idea and then I got a letter from my in the mail saying that I'm quitting, you know, my physician is quitting real life, right. So I basically think that the AI will be enabling the physicians to free up their time, you know, from some non acute or issues that they so in the meantime, providing the quality of care that patients need not to sacrifice the quality. 29:06 to free up their time and become more efficient in a way. Especially I can think about ER avoidance, right? As a big use case for Remy and referral pre-screening, right? Specialty referral pre-screening, both of those, you know, are gonna free up quite a bit of our, you know, healthcare resources in terms of leaving them for those acute cases and really needing, you know, attention of the physicians. Yeah. 29:35 ER avoidance, basically you go, before you go to the ER, while you're waiting in the ER, you can perform a test or some sort of a visit with Remy using the Remy technology and specialties per screening. Per screening could be like, while you're waiting for the specialist appointments, which might be three, four months out, you can get the insights that you need already. So both use cases, I think, will free up quite a bit of our time. 30:04 both from pediatricians, nurses, mid-level providers, and specialists, EV doctors and specialists. Oh, Remy. Can you, for my listeners, talk about where they can find Remy today? 30:22 Yeah, we are, we're in, on Amazon, if you search Remy, we are website, remyhouse.com. We have a very convenient e-commerce, shipping and handling protocols. So you should be able to order on Friday, receive on Monday, for example, or even faster than that. And then we are, we are at your clinic. We're maybe at your clinic, maybe at your school district, we are working with a few of these. 30:52 physicians, clinics, there are logos on our website. If you're one of the patients of the clinics, you will get these at a discount, easily accessible rate. And if you visit us at the exhibits, in terms of commercial and marketing exposures, we are gonna be at Medica in Germany. That is next week, November 11th to 14th. 31:20 in Dusseldorf in Germany, we are part of the Washington State Pavilion to exhibit there. And then we are publishing, you know, academically we are collaborating with United, sorry, University of Southern California, USC in the speech and speech hearing and language pathologist community, especially in collaboration with USC. 31:50 We are publishing a poster there that's going to be December 5 to 7 in Seattle, Washington. Excellent. Let's switch to the founder sandbox. I'm passionate about working with company owners on their purpose, their scalability and their resilience. And I have a founder here in the sandbox with me today. 32:18 You're into what your sixth year of being a CEO. Tell me, what does resilience mean to you? Jane. 32:31 Oh my gosh, there are so many places you just have to hold on to. Hold on to the idea. I think first and foremost, it's something that you believe. There is some belief that this is there. You know, like it's worth your time. It's worth the effort. It's worth. Keep going. Right. So if you give up, it's it's probably you don't believe in it enough. Right. At some point, because of, you know, all the failures and problems that comes up. 33:02 Yeah, don't get me started. And then the belief is there. I think this is the future, the calling. It's historically inevitable, right? If it's Remy or someone else, it should be done, right? So that's my belief. And it's driven me every day when I wake up. And then when I think about resilience, I also think about when I'm fundraising, talking to investors, I get... 33:31 99% knows, right? And then 1%, yes. But does that mean that I'm not a good company, a good founder? No, it just means we're not good fit, right? Like investors have their own thesis, their goals to fill, their speed, stage of company, check sizes, everything has to meet perfectly. And even personality wise, those investors are gonna be with you for a while. You trust each other. 34:00 So that's fundraising. And then just keep going at it. And product wise, people say no to my product. Oftentimes for various reasons, customers are always right. Again, does that mean that I'm not a good product or services? No, the more I talk to them, the more nos I get, the more yes I will get as well. So again, that's sort of on the market research or understanding the general 34:30 target, you know, like as you're looking for the product market fit, you know, again, the keyword here is fit. And then the third piece is, is just just interpersonal, you know, like, people, oftentimes, I mean, like or dislike each other for a reason. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, knowing 34:56 knowing more getting more so I have a very big mentor mentor community I reach out to them every time I need an answer and they're just all willing to help that really helps with the mentality the the resilience as well you know I know I'm being supported I know I know people love me like my products are being loved my services are needed and my mentors really support me so that's that's what really helps with the positivity yeah excellent thank you for those four nuggets 35:26 your own words about what resilience means to you. Thank you for talking about your product and believing in the future of telehealth with Remy or not. It's very, very humble. And I loved, so the key word is fit, right? Fit with your investor, fit with your customers, what they're wanting, fit with the belief. Take that to the next. 35:55 question, fit or purpose driven? Are you fit for purpose? What is purpose driven enterprise? All right, so this this goes beyond the resilience to enterprise. Purpose driven, what's that mean to you? 36:09 I think I started the journey caring about sort of mental house of women, you know, that's like, you know, besides children's health, health, right. So, and I spent my whole journey, whole research doing underserved community health diagnostics, right. So I've been working on, you know, the 36:36 the worst diseases you can think about HIV, tuberculosis, these pathology pathogens, right? I was kind of in a class three bio lab, working while I was pregnant, tuberculosis. So you name it, right? Like any sort of crazy things that happen to people, I have really strong sort of desire to 37:05 help them or address it. Also something that's probably rooted in my family. You know, like I don't talk about that a whole lot, but my dad came out of sort of this pure poverty, right? Like he, my grandpa was a shepherd and he sort of, I guess long story short, my dad was also kind of a, would be a beneficiary of Remy. He had a perforated eardrum because he listened to 37:34 English radios too much before he came to UK for study, you know, as a first generation college student from his family. So nowadays he still has a deaf ear, right, like perforated eardrums. So I'm still thinking, you know, is there something I can do for him? But overall, I felt as a, like, just to echo where I started in the beginning, you know, as a woman in the prime years of, you know, career. 38:04 you know, where I wanted to be, you know, I was earning good money, I was having a good corporate job, I was caring for my child, you know, which really kind of pampered my productivity at work. I think that's kind of an issue that nobody really talks about because everybody wants top performers, you know, like you need to be working when your child is sick or something like that. But, you know, overall, it's kind of 38:30 issue that's there and near to my heart as women and children's health, especially for underserved communities. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. 38:41 Wow. Scalable growth. Take that resilience plus your purposefulness and scale it. Is it truly what the platform will become scalable? What does scalable mean to you? 39:11 how, you know, help the physicians in a way. You will, I will scale really well if I can, you know, bring benefits to ease their work, ease their stress at work. There are patients coming in, they're getting text messages from the patient, hey, what's going on with me if I can see this image? I was like, that's crazy. Like, how do you respond to that, right? Like in a way that polite and shows that you're a human, you care, but if you get 300 of those a day, how do you... 39:40 How do you do that? And then they say, oh, they send them to my charts. Again, that's losing or like the patient just waiting. How do you address this mismatch of having physicians providing care at top quality and efficiency while being a human to the patients and then the patients are satisfied and getting the needs met. I'm trying to make my story. 40:10 or resonating with physicians that they can be, just to give you an example, right? A physician mentioned that 50% of my, this was a specialist who said 50% of the patients who came to me should not have been in my office because I wanted to help those who can, they need me for a procedure most of the time. If they come to me for diagnostics confirmation, I could have done that. 40:40 with their information gathered in front of me already, before they come. So that's kind of the point. And it's almost like whenever they're open or free, aggregating physicians time across all these physicians who have time, whenever they have time to care for patients aggregated across all these issues, whenever they have an issue, we're trying to build sort of a bridge 41:11 the aggregation would really help address the problem of mismatch of asynchronous visits or waiting and not getting the answers. I don't know if that's too abstract. No, I get it. And you know what? Kind of along the lines of purpose, your purpose, caring about mental health for mothers, you also by the adoption of Remy Health in settings with the patients using it from home. 41:41 or being screened early on, you're clearly affecting the mental health of our caregivers, our physicians. And we do know that tsunamis here, there's a high level of attrition. Doctors actually just quitting. And if through tech enabled or AI powered, intelligent aggregation of data informs the decisions to reduce number of visits. 42:10 or have them more productive while in the setting, the clinical setting can move the needle, so be it. So thank you, Jane. This has been absolutely an amazing interview. I have one last question. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Yes. 42:33 Absolutely, Randa. I really, really appreciate the opportunity. It's wonderful to every time I talk to you, it's wonderful, but especially interesting when we're like in this setting and you know, podcasting to more to a greater audience and really appreciate what you do for the community. Thank you. Thank you. So to my listeners, if you'd like this episode with Jane Tseng, CEO of Remy, 43:03 resilience and scalable and purpose-driven life story, as well as the origin story, as well as the product. Remy, sign up for the monthly release where founders and business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers provide their own stories on how to build with strong governance, a resilient, scalable and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. 43:32 Sign off for this month. Thank you for joining us.    

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Tammy Alvarez, founder and CEO of Career Winners Circle. Tammy is also an author, professional keynote speaker, inspirational coach, trainer, and epic storyteller. After experiencing firsthand burn out in a corporate career she struck out and intentionally created a work /life balance that resulted in  creating Career Winners Circle, a company offering career coaching, helping individuals figure out what you do that you love and organizations that want to ignite their employees. They speak about Tammy leaving corporate life in New York, and how to “weather through”  seasonality in your business and your career to come back to your "Why?" You can find out more about Tammy and her writing at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammyalvarez https://careerwinnerscircle.com/ “Escaping the Career Trap: Transform Your Apathy Into Ambition and Never Hate Mondays Again;” and the book Tammy mentions in this episode: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/scale-or-fail-allison-maslan/1128886160 You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription.   transcript:  00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:20 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host in this monthly podcast. We're now into our third season. The monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, 01:49 themselves who want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests that are going to touch upon resilience, purpose-driven enterprise, and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide in a fun environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time the skills to build a better world through great corporate governance. 02:20 Today, my guest is Tammy Alvarez. Tammy is joining the podcast as founder and CEO of Career Winners Circle. She also is an author, professional keynote speaker, inspirational coach, trainer, and epic storyteller. So welcome, Tammy, to the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you, Brenda. It is such a pleasure to be here today. I do feel a bit intimidated. You know, you're an epic storyteller, and I thought... 02:49 So we have two storytellers in the sandbox today. Should be good. Excellent. So in prior conversations with you, Tammy, and I did take some time to listen to some other podcasts where you've been featured. You, like me, share a mission. And you're very mission-driven. And you've experienced firsthand burnout in the corporate world. And you intentionally created. 03:18 a work life balance, which we're going to learn about more today that resulted in creating career winners circle. And it's a company that's offering coaching, career coaching, helping individuals figure out what you do that you love. Every guest and I we choose a title for the podcast, our title for this podcast with Tammy Alvarez, CEO of career 03:46 is purpose pivoting careers. So Tammy, you are joining us from Mexico City. I am. But your journey actually started years ago in New York and Wall Street. And then you took a little jaunt over to Belize. And I found some commonalities, my own work. 04:13 is informed by a major life change that I made back over 20, actually 15 years now, I moved back to the US after 25 years in Europe. And I work with companies, not necessarily individuals, to be fit for purpose, poised for growth, and made for resilience. What made you leave the Manhattan, Wall Street life and go offshore before it became fashionable? 04:41 in the post-COVID world? It was an interesting culmination of activities, if you will. I grew up in and around Wall Street. So my whole career was really around financial services and I loved the corporate career. Throughout my corporate career, I made 11 different changes in terms of the jobs that I had, everything from sales to audit and everything in between. 05:09 in five different industries and around Wall Street, because I had this mindset that if you don't like it, change it. And that's kind of how I navigated through my career. And I remember this one day, here I am, top of my career, managing director, the height of my career is managing like over 2000 people in 35 countries, like all these big girl things that are going on. And I remember sitting in a boardroom, we had missed earnings again. 05:39 And we were just waiting for the bloodletting to begin, right? So our boss comes in and every quarter it would turn into a game of hot potato. Of whose fault was it? Like, it's not my fault. It's sales fault. It's operations. It's this, it's that. And it just was actually, you know, became comical. And then we'd all go out for a few beers after the meeting was over. And so this time was particularly brutal in terms of how difficult the analyst call was. And I remember having this. 06:07 out of body experience it felt like in the movies. You know, when you're floating over the table and you're associated to it, but you're not really there. And I didn't realize it at the time, but my career had received its death sentence because I developed this disease that I call I don't give a shititis. And so, you know, six months later, I had found myself, I had cashed out of Wall Street. 06:32 I had moved to a tropical island off the coast of Belize in Central America and started this business, which was by far the most terrifying thing I've ever done. And I just really needed that reset because I had stopped learning. And it felt like I had just seen everything and to go to another company would have been the same, you know, the same thing with a different shade of lipstick. And I needed to reignite my desire to actually learn. 07:00 fail successfully and move my business forward. Say that again, you wanted to reignite. I needed to reignite my desire, my ability to learn, but also how to fail successfully. Okay. And continue to start a new chapter. Right, right. And we did speak about some of your intentional choices. All right, you leave, you had it. 07:28 What would you call that? You had a disease? Oh, yeah. I don't give a shititis, right? So yes. I think a lot of us have that disease, and we just don't realize it's, you know. Right. Well, by speaking your truth, which is what I'm hearing, and my listeners will as well. I was struck, though, Tammy, because you landed in that tropical island, but you really didn't yet know what you were about to do, right? I had no idea. 07:58 you age out of Wall Street, you just do. And so part of my plan, soft plan, the extent of my business plan, Brenda, was I'm gonna coach someday and sit on a few boards and do some academic work. That was the extent of my business plan. So when I pulled the plug, I think I've made every mistake an entrepreneur could possibly make, probably twice, because I'm a slow learner. And so I just fumbled my way through in the dark and just. 08:24 kept trying things and kept failing at things until I finally figured out the secret sauce, but it took several years for me to get to that point. And it was terrifying, right? In terms of feeling like I had lost the skill to learn, I'm like, oh, this is taking a lot longer than it used to because I purposefully stayed at a corporate. I did not wanna have a business to business company because I knew I was still addicted to the work. Yep. 08:51 And if I'd gone right back in, I'd just be in the same rat race under my own flag. And so I purposely sent myself to serve consumers and I didn't know anything about mailing lists or drip campaigns or marketing funnels. I knew none of this stuff. And so that, that journey was absolutely one of the most frustrating and rewarding journeys I think I've had. And, and you know, did you, um, you're six years into 09:17 this almost seven now. Yeah, exactly. auspicious number. Do you really believe that you've removed the golden handcuffs of a corporate life or and you are the best operator to actually be working with people that are leaving corporate life in Wall Street? Yes. And yes. Excellent. You know, since the day I started the firm, I've never worked more than 30 hours a week. 09:45 Right. We would go scuba diving a couple of days a week before work. Just as a way to start our day. What better way than to go play with the fish and get salty. And it was interesting. So I had how to coach when I, when I finally realized that I can't do this on my own. And I probably should actually get some help with somebody who's done this before. I was not looking at the finances in my business the way I was supposed to. And she kept asking me, you know, every time we met, where are we with the numbers? Where are we with the forecast? 10:15 And I would just, I didn't do what I didn't do it. And so she finally asked me, she goes, what are you afraid of? And of course I bristled, cause I'm like, I'm not afraid of anything. And she let it go because she knew she hit a nerve. And so I let that marinate for a little bit. And after a session or two, what it turned out Brenda, is that I was afraid of success. Okay. 10:38 I didn't know it at the time consciously, but I was afraid that I was gonna end up tethered to my desk just like I was in corporate. And so I was abandoning all the good practices and the things that I had learned in corporate because when I cut the cord, I cut everything. I didn't keep the good stuff. And so once I started to realize that some of these routines will actually help me scale without compromising my lifestyle, then that's when things really started to turn around for me. 11:05 Now we've got six coaches. We're serving individuals and businesses worldwide. And I'm still, I don't work on Fridays. And those boundaries are so important to me because I just gave up on those for my entire adult life. You said a few things here, too, that really caught my attention. So you intentionally did set out to want to make a difference in other people's lives. So you started with your own. 11:35 You work no more than 30 hours a week. You've built your work life, your work around the work-life balance. Yes. And you kept the good stuff that matter from that corporate life. I'm curious, is this a type of consulting that you do with the individuals that you coach? Yes, we do. Because a lot of the mid-assessors 12:04 mid to senior level leaders that we coach, start their own businesses. And so we helped them on that journey. And so the business found me initially, because one of the biggest mistakes I made is that I created a bunch of amazing programs that no one would buy. So I was like, okay, this is a terrible idea. Because I was a transformation expert on Wall Street. So we, every time the building was burning, my team and I were running in while everyone else was running out. I loved it. 12:31 But when I was in corporate, I realized that most people suck at this. Okay. And so I'm like, let me teach people how to be really strong transformational leaders, which was a great idea, but that didn't work with a business to consumer model because they wouldn't pay for it because they didn't see that as a gating factor to their success. That's right. And as I was talking to potential clients, it's like, yeah, yeah, I don't care about that, but I want to know how you did what you did. I was like, Oh, you do. And like, you know, cause they. 13:00 Most of our clients when we started were mid to senior level leaders, single career, multiple companies usually, but single career, and now they're miserable and they feel stuck and they know they don't like this, but they don't know what they did like. And there's a lot of shame that comes with that. And so I deconstructed the things that I did naturally over the past 20 years in terms of making all these moves. I'm like, how do I help others do this? And so the business actually found me. 13:29 And that's really how we started. But then as our customers' journeys evolved and they started to go into smaller companies and become C-suite executives for mid-size organizations or start their own firms or begin their own nonprofits, then we continue to serve them on that journey because those are new challenges and new opportunities for them to need a wingman or a win-win-win for. And so now we really work with 13:57 business leaders and individual executives within companies, if you don't wake up and love Monday every Monday, you're doing it wrong. Exactly. It's not a pipe dream. And that's really where we step in and add that value and make that difference. That's a great segue to the title of your book that you recently authored, The First Quarter of 2024. How did you? 14:26 Make the time Tammy, while running your business, attending to your clients, working with building your own team. So for my listeners, Tammy is author of Escaping the Career Trap, Transform Your Apathy into Ambition and Never Hate Mondays Again. So applause. Thank you. So you are an author. How did you find the time? 14:53 um, to write this and how, who was your target audience? Um, and how has that influenced the type of work you're doing today? Yeah, the book, um, has been in the making since I started the company. And I had a really good mentor because that was the first thing I wanted to do was write a book. And so he sat me down. He lived in Belize as well. And so he and I were, you know, having a cocktail on the terrace, looking over the ocean. He's like, Tammy, you don't need a book. 15:23 you need customers. And he's like, without customers, you don't have a business. And so this idea of a book kept going on my vision board year after year after year. And so the timing turned out to be perfect because we were moving from Belize to Mexico City. I had no friends in Mexico City yet, and I didn't speak the language very well. And so this was a really good time for me just to hunker in. 15:52 and really finally get this passion project of mine over the finish line. And obviously it takes a village, right? So I had a great coach and even better editor. You know, I'm a thought leader, I'm not an author by trade. And so there was a lot of heavy lifting in terms of making this readable for our audience. And the book surprised me actually, because originally it was written for the disenfranchised worker. Like if you hate Mondays, you need to read the book. And it's a coaching book. 16:21 where you absolutely know step by step exactly what you need to do. But then what surprised me is that organizations started to pay me to come in and deliver this message to their teens. Oh my gosh. I was like, you do realize I talk in the first two chapters about how messed up everything is. And they're like, yes, but this is the message. Cause in the message, the so what to this is that I think everyone needs to become that CEO. 16:50 of you incorporated. And when you start to treat your career like a business, whether you are a corporate person or whether you actually have your own business, because a lot of us haven't promoted ourselves into that CEO spot yet. But when you start to think about things in terms of running a business and apply those to how you manage your career, everything changes. And it's good for the individual, it's good for the business, it's good for everyone. 17:16 And so, you know, with the book now, we are working with companies who are really struggling with the majority of their employees who also have, I don't give a shit, itis. Okay. And like, how do you wake them up? Because there's this, especially in the middle market space, there's this concept of this, you know, global talent shortage crisis is what they're calling it. And so I'm here with all the layoffs, how can there be a talent shortage crisis anywhere? 17:43 But what I strongly believe, and what we're starting to prove out with our clients now, is that businesses have everything they need right under their nose. They just don't know how to activate it. Right, right. And so we've created a, you know, literally a three month like adrenaline rush process to reactivate the ambition and get people to start to lean in and care about what they do again. And it's made amazing results and differences for our clients. 18:12 So at the end of the day, we're all about loving Mondays in every way possible. And whether that's helping organizations or individuals find their path, there's a way forward for everyone. Right, I love the comment you made around the first three chapters when you were surprised that corporates were asking you to come in and speak is that everyone needs to become a CEO within their business, right? The business line, right? 18:40 Did I quote you correctly? Because I mean, you know, so when you treat your career like a business, yeah, and you become the CEO of you incorporated, then that's when the magic starts to happen. 18:55 I can't wait to read it because I will be honest, I have not read your book, but I loved the catchy title, Escaping the Career Trap. Transform your apathy into ambition and never hate Mondays again. And those golden handcuffs are there, right? Right on the cover. And I think for entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and new business owners, we feel trapped too sometimes and we become a victim of the monster we've created, either a victim of our own success. 19:24 or we're not seeing the growth that we expected and things are harder than we planned for. And so much of what's in the book and also what we coach on really helps you break through that and find your way to the other side. Because I think all of our careers have what I call seasonality, right? And we all know success isn't linear. And so when you start to embrace that seasonality in your business, 19:50 and in your career and realize, okay, how can I show up better for me first? Because when I do that, then the downstream impacts are gonna show up in my business. 20:04 seasonality and how can I show up better? All right. Let's switch gears. Tammy, we've talked about how you from created your business over the last seven years, walk my listeners through a typical is the, is the word engagement. Is it one-on-one? Um, do you consult as well for the executive team of the midsize companies? Walk my listeners through that experience. 20:29 Yeah, absolutely. And so we do work privately and we have group, you know, we have group programs that we use. And then we also do business advisory work. And so a typical engagement in any of those scenarios is really not only getting clear on what good looks like, but why? Oh, because so many times we were like, I want to do this, you know, a business is like we want to expand, you know, an individual is like, I want to get promoted or, you know. 20:57 in group settings, we do a lot of women in leadership type work. You know, it's like, I want whatever. And then the next question is why? Why? And if those answers ring hollow, then it's time to go back and take a look at that to figure out what you really do want. Because so often we're on autopilot, we do something because it's what's expected next. 21:23 We do something because well, that's what all the books and the magazines and the podcasts I'm supposed to do. And all of these things, it's like, no, let's lean back in and figure out what do you want? And I think a really good example is I had this summer, I had a summer of flow is what I called it. And we had hired all these coaches last year. We launched the book in January. We had a great book launch party in New York City in April. And everybody's like, what's next? And I'm like, I'm tired. 21:49 Nothing is next. Right, and so I promised we're gonna run the business, but I was just gonna not make any big decisions or start anything new for the whole summer. Nice. Now the summer flow is led into a raging river, but I needed that time to assess what I wanted. And as I was doing this, I read this book called Scalar Fail. Scalar Fail. And so one of the exercises is that, you know, you put your big hairy goal out there from a revenue perspective and you triple it. 22:17 And so I did that and I'm like, well, this is exciting and all that kind of fun stuff. But then I started to back into what the operational and personal expense would be in terms of lifestyle to do that. I'm like, I don't wanna work that hard. It's not for me. Right? And so I think checking in and asking ourselves why, because if you find that you've achieved something that you wanted and you get there, and suddenly you look around and you're like, 22:46 is this all there is, then you've been running the wrong race. And so we don't check in enough to make sure that the race we're running is going to give us the finish line that is truly where we need to be. So that's the really first part of the engagement, because once that's clear, then from an execution perspective and building that path forward through coaching and through skill building and through advisory work, that stuff becomes a lot easier. 23:14 because when you know Simon Sinek is great with that whole start with why, because when you're really connected to that, that is where you get your resilience. Okay. You know, I have found there's been several times in my life where I want to give up. Okay. And things got too hard. Do I really want this? Like, you know, it was just easier to just play it safe, do nothing, all the things. But when I connected to my, you know, my true why, like. 23:42 what is going on with me personally, then that's where I found my grit to keep going. Like when I was younger in my career, you know, quick story, but long story short, my parents split up when I was a teenager, my mom, my sister and I ended up homeless. And I saw how much she struggled. And I swore that that would never be me. And so for the beginning part of my career, my ambition was fueled by fear. Yes. 24:07 Um, and so, but that's what kept me going. It's like, I don't want this, like, you know, and so, so that was really what allowed me to find that internal fortitude to do the things that just seemed impossible. Now, when I started this business, I started to have second thoughts again. I'm like, this is so irresponsible. 24:25 It's like, you are a grown adult and you've left the job everybody wants. You're living on a tropical island. You have no idea where your first paycheck is coming from, let alone the second and third. It's like, what are you doing? And I was afraid, because at that time, my parents were aging and they had no money separately. And so my sister and I were supporting them financially. And I'm like, I have one daughter. I'm like, I don't want to be a burden on her because I'm off playing around the world. And so when I realized that, okay, now my... 24:54 you know, my big reason for doing what I do and for wanting what I want is so that way I'm never a burden on her, but I can still have the life that I want for me. Then the days where I wake up and I'm like, I'll be like doing this. I still get up and do it anyway. Right. So yeah. Thank you for sharing that personal story. And I feel honored that you shared that here on the Founder Sandbox. 25:24 So I'm good on how my listeners can use your services. So it's either individuals or mid-size companies. Yep, yep. Entrepreneurs, mid-size companies, that kind of stuff. Yes. So at Next Act Advisors, I work a lot with scaling companies. So it's normally the CEO and the founding team. I'm all about building scalable and resilient companies. 25:54 and the management of risk is very important. Can you, and you have a lot of clients that come from the Wall Street world, right? Do you have any specific highlights or experiences with executives who have pivoted their careers while working with you and are actually working in the risk and compliance functions? I mean, I'd love to hear some real life stories. Yeah, when I was in corporate, you know, 26:24 three of those 11 roles that I had, one was operational risk for a client defense, one was internal audit, so the very last stop, and then a major role in compliance, in terms of international banking and during the financial crisis. And so I think having a sales background, which is how I started my career, moving into middle office and operations, and then ultimately leading some risk functions, 26:51 There's a few things that I think if you're sitting in a risk function today, that make a difference between being adequate at your job and being an amazing business partner. And it's so easy to just hide behind the word no. Okay. It's safe. Like you can't do that. Like Dr. No. Right? You can't do that. You can't do this. You can't do these things. Whereas there's a true risk part. 27:18 is going to be able to help guide a business executive on how to get to yes, safe, and in a safe way. And very few, I think, risk partners actually do that. And so knowing I had a quota that I had carried in my life and frontline with clients when they're irritated because it takes so long to get them onboarded, or they have to fill out this form 700 times or whatever it is, it's like as a risk partner, it's your job to help. 27:47 the business safely get to yes and grow. And I think it's just too easy to hide behind the checklist, hide behind that this is what the regulators said. I mean, we need to listen to the regulators. They are there for everyone's safety. But there's so many ways to not have to have that contentious or that myopic relationship. And so I think from a risk partner perspective, really understanding how the business works. 28:15 really understanding where the risks are. So let's face it, you know, if you are going to be completely risk adverse, you would never open up your front door on a rainy day with marble floors. Because the chance of somebody slipping and falling is too high, but we open our doors every day. So there's at some level an assumed acceptance of risk. And like, how do we do this in a way that business people understand? You know, cause you've got your. 28:43 RCS says you've got your risk assessments. You've got all these things. The end of the day, they're just spreadsheets. No one cares about, right? You've got to and so to bring this alive, I'm like, OK, here's what we need to do. Let's find a way to do that. And with the business partners with you hand in hand, it's just an amazing combination to be able to get things done in a good way. I like that. I love how you've really brought it back to how a risk professional could tell their story and a more 29:13 coming CEO of your own career, all right? Let's go to another question related to 2025. So you took the summer off, you were in flow, now we're in a raging river. We are definitely in a raging river now, that's for sure. The team is like, hope you enjoyed the rest. You have something in store for 2025 that is related to your service offering with CEOs and management teams. Tell us a little bit more about that. 29:41 upcoming launch. Yeah, so excited about this. And this is going to be an absolute game changer for so many businesses. And really started with that aha moment I had when companies wanted me to start talking about the messages in the book. And so what we've done is we've cracked the code on how to reignite a workforce that no longer cares. In ways that actually move the dime. 30:11 Okay. And revenue, profitability, quality, customer satisfaction, key talent retention. And so it's called Amplify 360. And what we do is we take this three pronged approach to work with a company for three months. I think most leaders have kind of fallen out of love with a long term culture play. 30:35 Right, you bring consultants in, you bring organizational design people in, you bring in employee engagement surveys, you do all these things and nothing works. So what do you do? And so what we do is we take three months, basically it's an adrenaline shot to get the company started and kind of pivoted onto the right track. But we work with three different constituents. We work with the employees and teach them how to become that CEO of their career. Okay. 31:03 we work with the leadership team to teach them how to not screw that up. Okay. Right? Cause that's a press like, oh, I got a stick. I don't like this. It makes me uncomfortable. And then we work with the executive team and the board to make sure that their policies, their procedures, the things that they're recognizing and moving people forward in terms of behavior are taking the organization in the right direction of travel. Okay. 31:29 Because one of those three pieces, when one of them breaks, the whole thing breaks. Okay. And so we spend the first month doing baseline work and seeing where the company's at. The second month is skill building and training and coaching and those types of things. The third month is operationalizing this so they can be self-sufficient. Wow. And so it is fast, it is high energy. It layers in with, 31:59 You still have to run a business, so we don't have to shut down for three months to do this. And what we've found in some of our preliminary pilots is that the entire dynamic starts to change. And all of a sudden, the people who didn't have much to say are engaged and connected. And one of the biggest core foundational things that we work on is we work on connecting an individual's personal 32:28 um, ambition, you know, they're the things that get them, that get them up at night or aspirations rather. So we take their aspirations and connect them to the company's biggest goals. I love it. See, we don't tap into aspiration because you can't measure it. Right. But there's a reason all of us get out of bed in the morning, regardless of what we do for a living. So what is that? And when you figure out what that is, 32:56 And then you start applying that to the company's, you know, biggest objectives. Now, all of a sudden everyone is winning because typically the things that you have the biggest aspirations about are also the things you're most skilled in. Now you have more people spending time playing to their strengths. They're doing things that they personally care about and the business is winning too. So would you say that your secret sauce in this amplify 360 degree approach 33:26 is aligning the individual's personal aspiration with the corporate goals. Yes, that is absolutely step one, right? And it's something no one's doing, right? Everyone's talking employee engagement. I'm telling you to think about aspirations. Absolutely. Wow. And Tammy, just for clarification, are you focusing this new service offering on 33:56 it's sector agnostic. People are people, right? Our area of strong expertise are middle market companies that are in STEM and in hypergrowth, right? That's really where this has the best opportunity for an ROI fast. But we serve all clients in terms of if you need that kind of support and you're willing to do the things that you need to within your organization. But middle market STEM, that's really our sweet spot. Excellent. 34:26 Well, it's now your time to share with my listeners how to contact you, Tammy Alvarez, or your company. What would you, there'll be show notes for this episode and we'll be providing material to give some some information on how. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so the one thing I love to ask all of our listeners to do is connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message. Let me know you heard the podcast, what you thought, you know, what you agreed with, what you didn't. I love to hear your stories. 34:55 But you can also reach us at care We are offering a complimentary strategy assessment for companies who might need the Amplify 360 solution, where we can see, are you ready for this and where's your best opportunity? So really between the website and LinkedIn, those are the best ways to get ahold of us right now. Well, thank you, Tammy. We're gonna go back to the founder sandbox and I love to ask each of my guests. 35:24 The meaning of three words, which is the areas of work where I engage with my clients. And it's on building resilient businesses, purpose-driven businesses and scalable growth. What does resilience mean to you? Resilience to me is being able to find joy no matter what life throws at you. Wow. 35:50 What about purpose-driven businesses? From a business perspective, I think having a purpose-driven business is about having that unifying force within your organization that everyone can get behind. Goes much further than a vision, mission, value statement. But again, it's the organizational aspiration. What is the reason we are getting out of bed in the morning, like a career winner circle? Our purpose? 36:20 is to make sure that everyone loves Mondays again, right? And to eradicate the apathetic haze that has taken over in organizations. And that is our purpose. It's big and everyone's behind that. And so that's where I think the value of having a purpose-driven company comes into play. Thank you. Scalable growth. Scalable growth kind of ties to me into resilience, right? In terms of the rate of change that individuals and businesses are experiencing right now is significant. 36:50 And so one of the things, especially through Amplify 360 that we focus on is making sure that the entire organization's ecosystem is future-proofed. And so, you can focus on your own shop, but if all your suppliers, your vendors, or your customers are changing tack and you don't know, then you can do all the things right for all the wrong outcomes. And so it's for me, that scalability, a big piece of that is you look at all the things that are involved 37:20 ecosystem internally and externally and make sure that everything is as feature-proofed as it can possibly be. Like amazing nuggets there. Thank you. Last and final question, Tammy, did you have fun in the sandbox today? I love playing in the sandbox, right? So I did, Britta. Thank you so much for the invite. And hopefully some of the things that we talked about today resonate with the listeners where you can start to take action on some of these things right away. Well, thank you. 37:49 My listeners, if you like this episode with Tammy Alvarez, sign up for the monthly release where founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers learn about how to build with strong governance, resilience, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. Signing off for this month, thank you very much.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Martin Tobias.  Managing Partner of Incisive Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in the first institutional round of technology companies that reduce friction at scale. Martin is a 3X venture-funded CEO raising over $500M as CEO with two IPOs who has also invested in hundreds of companies and is a limited partner in over a dozen VC funds. They speak about Resilience: Why starting a company today is awesome. You can find out more about Martin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martintobias/ https://incisive.vc/  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Eli Farhood, Chief Executive Officer at Katsh Digital ID. Hailing from Greece, Eli is a prior financial services executive and, with Katsh, a second time Founder. After experiencing fraud first hand, he pivoted a business in the making to create Katsh; separating one's device from the need for authentication. Katsh aspires to democratize identify protection. For the month of October, they speak about cybersecurity and how to structure resilience into your company. You can find out more about Eli at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/efarhood/ https://www.buzzsprout.com/2228414/episodes/15385106-stop-using-insecure-passwords-with-eli-farhood https://missionmatters.com/defending-digital-frontiers-meet-the-hosts/ You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription.   Transcription:  00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:22 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am your host, Brenda McCabe. We're now into our third season and over 38 episodes. This monthly podcast, it reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who like building and learning about resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance undergirding them. At the Founder's Sandbox and in my work, 01:52 I have a very simple mission, and I want to help build the scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests that come to the podcast are founders, business owners, corporate board directors, investors and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of the enterprise, small, medium or large, to effect change for a better world. 02:17 Through storytelling with each of my guests, we're gonna touch on topics on their own journey that includes resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth. And my goal is to provide a fun environment in a sandbox where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Eli Farhoud. Eli is joining the podcast today. 02:47 in many roles, but primarily he is chief executive officer of Catch Digital ID. This is his second company that he's founded. And he also is an immigrant. So we're gonna touch on several of his stories while we go into this podcast. So thank you, Eli, for joining me today. Hi, Brenda, thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here. Excellent. 03:13 So again, to my guest, you know, you can find this podcast on any major platform. And I do like to choose jointly with my guest a title. And Eli and I settled upon resilience. And it's gonna be about his team, the company, and the resiliency that's necessary when you're building a company. And we're specifically gonna go into what Catch Digital ID does, cybersecurity. 03:42 and democratizing. So I want to go back to my own journey before I get to your tagline, Eli. My work at Next Act Advisors, which is my consulting arm, and the Founder Sandbox is yet another channel to get to my guest and my clients, I was undeniably influenced by a major life change and moving back to the United States after living 25 years or more in Europe. 04:12 And I talk about being really purpose-driven, scalable, and resiliency in my own journey. So what would your tagline, Eli, be? I share that tagline with you. Resilience is everything. If we don't have resilience, we give up quickly. We don't keep pushing. We don't stay on foot. We don't build the foundation that will help us get there. Resilience is, in my view, I put it under, 04:42 know, being tenacious, having that tenacious and being tenacious and not giving up. And yeah, resilience is very, very important, not just in business. I think on a personal level, resilience brings success to your life. And with respect to the current company that you are leading, Catch Digital ID, does it also have a tagline? 05:10 Yeah, I would say resilience also matches. We're purpose-driven, but resilience definitely matches because most of our team members have had fraud in some shape or form in their life. And that was giving us the energy to keep pushing. For example, our marketing manager had her social accounts hacked multiple times. I was a victim for fraud twice, financial fraud. So... 05:36 My team members also, you know, they're coming from multinationals like IBM and the Raytheon and Symantec. And, you know, they've dealt with, you know, all the identity security, and they know the market very well. So they also understand how to be secure, you have to be very careful about yourself, about your information. And they've seen it over and over in those businesses, you know. 06:03 I mean, IBM sells identity products, semantic cells, and a virus, right? And Raytheon also does great weapons and other stuff, but basically they were working on the security, they've seen it all. And so resilience definitely, you know, is, it has to be, every one of us is an entrepreneur, let's put it this way, and you have to be resilient. That really is a great segue to, you touched on the resiliency of the teammates that, you 06:33 come with very large logos where they've served. They've also been as yourself victims of fraud. So what was your mission when you actually established the company Catch? So we want to really democratize access for everyone. This is basically the goal. We want to have Catch IT in the hands of most people for free. Okay. 07:02 the end user, the consumer. And the reason why is, well, A, we're able to do that. And B, that's how you provide or democratize access. If everyone has a digital ID that can protect their sensitive information from abuse, then you're onto a thriving digital economy. And you're able to unlock a lot of value there where people can exchange goods. 07:31 services, send money to each other, share payments, they can do a lot of things. And some of the things that today we have to do in person, because we're concerned that it's not secure to do that online. So how about if we're able to bring that security to the online world, you would think, like we once tried to imagine how people can use our product and it was so many like venues there. 08:01 You know, we're going to get to how you're raising funds right now. And I can't ask you, you want to not only democratize, but actually provide this for free. So we're going to get into this a little bit later. But there are a lot of cybersecurity products out there. Why is your solution different? And is it enterprise grade, or is it really for individuals, right, citizens? And that's that. 08:30 that leads to how you're raising money. Talk to me about how your solution is different. That's a great question. When we first built Catch, it wasn't Catch. Catch became Catch after I fell victim for fraud. But it was an identity solution to the military. So we wanted to build something military-grade, that the military community can use, can rely on, a reliable product. 09:01 And when we looked at biometrics out there today, all the biometric systems that are available, we noticed that the most reliable ones are dependent on a device, like clear at the airport, for example, your face ID on your iPhone, perhaps Amazon one at the Whole Foods and maybe other brands that I maybe don't know of. And that was the handicap, if you want, of biometric technologies. 09:29 is that requirement that hardware need, right? Yes. If you need a special hardware to operate a biometric system, then it's only convenient where the hardware is available. Got it. And not just that, you would still need to have to use passwords. And when I fell victim to fraud, the big lesson I learned is that fraudsters today can leverage data breaches. 09:59 use that information to their advantage, they can hack our devices, they can hack our identities and hack our accounts. So, and history also has shown, you know, when you see the likes of Microsoft being compromised, you know, hundreds of millions of accounts, AT&T just a few weeks ago, 70 million accounts, 3 billion social security numbers. We were talking about large numbers here. It's not a joke. 10:27 when you see those data breaches and cannot be stopped even by Microsoft, then what can the average Joe do here to protect themselves, right? These are 20 dollar companies who keep pockets, they have teams of engineers, I mean, they have all the resources they want and they're still getting compromised. So we came to that conclusion, like it's really hard. Once information is available on the public domain, it cannot be protected. 10:54 one way or another one day, it's going to be compromised. And so our solution was to eliminate credentials from the security equation. Can you say that again? So it's you're eliminating credentials? We are eliminating credentials from the security of our identities so that hackers have nothing to compromise or to steal anymore. Is that the same as in HIPAA where it is sanitized or it's 11:22 that the private data is disassociated from the health record? No, it's not. Because you're eliminating a credential that existed, and now it no longer exists. We're placing that credential with a hand biometric, but a strong security hand biometric. I can't emphasize enough on strong security, because if you ask people to replace their passwords 11:52 it has to provide a better security than password. You know, the beauty about password is that if it's compromised, I can change it. But can you change your biometric? No. You cannot. And accordingly, it has to be really strong security so that people can trust that technology or that product and use it. And this is really the genesis of cache is that we wanna provide that convenience on any device 12:21 using your hand or we call it palm, right? And it's a strong technology because it involves a lot of technicalities, we can discuss that later, but basically it's a very strong technology that even if a copy of your hand, a picture of your hand, or even a video of your hand has been compromised, that won't affect you or affect your identity security. And this is our promise to our consumers. And it's probably your secret sauce. 12:50 It is a process, but we can go over that quickly. Yeah. Yes, we can get into that. I like that it's independent of device, right? So device agnostic, right? And you eliminate the credentials. So it's fascinating. Fascinating. Got lots of ideas to explore. Because we know credentials are a pain. Absolutely. Right? Who doesn't manage hundreds of passwords? Yeah. That's on an individual level. Let's see in the enterprise world. 13:19 they even have a stronger pain there. As an employee, you have to keep changing those credentials, take care of this, they keep them in a secure place. Enterprise are spending hundreds of millions of dollars just to store that credentials and keep it away from the hackers. So this is a strong pain and it's not efficient. They go back to the sustainability, it's not sustainable. So if we were to go back up a little bit. 13:48 What have been the shortfalls or continue to be the shortfalls of cybersecurity? That's a great question. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big one, right? We know that 80% of fraud globally stems from stolen ID credentials. That's a whopping big number. I've been a victim. That's a big number. Right. And then they send you, you know, 14:16 crawl or experience and for a year it's free, but then you get another hack like that of Microsoft or Blue Shield, all right? So what have been the shortfalls of cybersecurity and perhaps we'll continue to have shortfalls that that catch can eliminate? Yeah, the shortfall like this big headline is that 80% of fraud globally stems from stolen credentials and. 14:42 That's how we came about this approach. Like, how do you solve this? Okay, we need to eliminate credentials. This is not sustainable. It can just keep rolling like this. The biggest shortfall is that we're aren't able to protect our data. I remember maybe eight, nine years ago, I hear of a data breach maybe once a year. Right. Maybe every other year. Now every other week, I hear of a data breach. 15:12 And this is not a surprise to, it's not surprising to us because we know that back in the days also fraudsters and scammers didn't have the technology on hand to conduct those preaches. Now they have access to the latest technologies as we do as well. And so they have access to AI, they have access to that automation that can make their job really efficient. You know, scamming or being a fraudster is a business. It is. 15:42 it is a business. And so they actually study, they do an economic study, like, how much are we going to spend to hack that database and how much we're going to make money out of the database. And the moment you make it extremely expensive for them to hack a database, this is where you're starting, you know, your, your, your, your goal to reach your goal of getting some security. The problem is that history shows, like I said earlier, 16:12 we couldn't just stop these data breaches. And now they're becoming more often, more often than ever. I can give you something a little scary. Like sometimes you can input ideas in a chat bot and it can give you a solution on how you hack a network. Think of just like a fraudster that has a lot of experience. He's asking AI how to hack a network. And I know AI will sometimes respond, I don't do this, like this is not ethical. But there's a way to actually rephrase the question. 16:42 and get the answer. And so now they have that artificial brain that is helping them, automating things for them. And now we can see it, you know, it's around us. And this is really the shortfall. We're not able to stop data breaches and they're providing access to fraudsters to our account. And that's why we need to do something. So can you walk us through 17:12 How you, I wanna download CatchID. How do I do this? Is it available in the market today? Where are you? Because it sounds like it can potentially be ubiquitous or is it you need to do the crowdfunding first? Walk me through some of the features and some of the data that you have already because I'm certain you have beta testing done, please. 17:40 Yeah, so we're made a testing right now with some clients. It is not available to the public, unfortunately. We're trying to get that availability in 2025. At this point, we're trying to validate also if there's any psychological barrier from an end user point of view. You know, sometimes users can be paranoid of biometric technologies. That's right. And that could be a barrier for market entry. So... 18:08 The reason why we launched the crowdfunding is that we wanted to validate. Do people want to choose convenience over passwords, which is already not providing the security that it's aimed for, the stuff they're trying to. Because the fact, the matter of fact is that in cybersecurity, if you ask anyone in the community, they will tell you that if your device is compromised, nothing can save you. Face ID can be bypassed. 18:38 One-time codes can be caught there. Google Authenticator can be accessed. So basically, if your device is compromised, which is a very common thing, by the way, a lot of people do not realize that their device is already compromised and someone has a back door and is able to track every move they do on those devices. I'm not trying to freak people out, but this is a fact. And I have to say things as they are. And so... 19:04 Once that scammer gathers enough information about you, or they need a piece of the puzzle, they can also visit the dark web and get the complete set of data from your social security to your email, to your phone number, and then what? They have that puzzle available now, and they have a fully-fledged identity that they can use to create an account. So I also get this question a lot, and I'm happy to share that with your audience. 19:34 Some people tell me, well, I'm not Elon Musk or like I have $0 in my bank account. I don't care if someone takes my private information. Guess what? Most fraudsters don't want to steal money from you. In fact, they want to use your name to create a fake account and funnel illicit activities using your name. That's the big goal. Some of them obviously they want to steal money but others... 20:03 They want to just use your name. And the thing is when they fall, you're falling, not them. You're basically, they're piggy-bagging on your identity. Identity, right? Right. So that's in the financial world, in the medical world, I mean, our healthcare system, sometimes you can just know that someone conducted a surgery using your account. When you get the co-payment, you didn't know about it, but you learned then. 20:32 Taxi then also. Oh yeah absolutely. Absolutely. And so that brings you back to the core reasons on like why we approached finding a solution. Today you're using password, you think you can't change it, but then hey you're at risk, you're vulnerable. We recommend you try something else. If you're not convinced with our concept, that's perfectly fine. But try something else. Maybe you want to use two-factor authentication or three-factor authentication. 21:02 It can be really complicated at this point, right? You just hear stuff, but it's something you should do. Just don't rely on passwords. That's our advice. All right, so you are currently crowdfunding, as well you're testing also, beta testing with different user groups for a 2025 launch. How is the crowdfunding going? Are you doing on Kickstarter? Where are you doing the crowdfunding? 21:32 Another question is how has that fundraising journey been? Because today there is no longer a stigma associated to crowdfunding. Whereas 10 years back, I was like, ah, didn't want it to go that way. But more and more, there are more and more crowdfunding platforms that are truly enabling, particularly in the past two years, it's been incredibly hard to raise early stage money. 21:58 Can you, I know that's a loaded question. That's two questions. So what is your experience with crowdfunding and how soon will that get catched to the market to have it in our hands? No pun intended. Yeah, I mean crowdfunding, yeah, it did transform over several years in the past. So it had this bad connotation, but no, actually I've seen great products, growing and starting with crowdfunding. 22:28 And we've taken that course because we were interested in that aspect, validating that consumers want that. Um, we, we didn't, we didn't find problems selling this to businesses, to be honest, because there's a strong pain for them there, especially on an employee level, right? Because employees are our first market, to be honest with the enterprise, not the end user. But when they come to sell it to their end users, we wanted to make sure that 22:57 and users also want that, right? At the end of the day, I was offered voice verification at my bank. I refused it, right? Like many, the reason why, we've heard it before, right? How AI can synthesize your voice and someone can maybe use my synthetic voice to access my account, so I wouldn't do it. And so again, banks cannot force you to use one technology, they can offer it for you. 23:23 And if you're not convinced, you're not going to use it. So we wanted to validate both ends of the market. So far it's going well. We raised about $30,000 in the first six weeks. And now we're extending our campaign to raise more to get more validation there. But again, our customers now are not, like I said, end users. Our customers are enterprise and they're employees. 23:49 which is something they can enforce. If I'm an employee working for an enterprise and they tell me, well, you have to use your hand, no more passwords, I'll have to do it. I don't have that choice of saying no. And this is where now we're focusing on our niche, to be honest. So it will be enterprise grade, right? And it will be the employees will be substituting. That is the first. 24:17 uh strong pain that we're trying to resolve. And um you've raised 30 000 are you going to continue to do crowd funding through the end of 2024 Eli? Yes it's going to end by November. Okay all right and do you have information that I can provide my listeners later in the show notes in terms of the crowdfunding platform? 24:42 Yeah, we're crowdfunding on net capital. So it's not a Kickstarter just to differentiate. So people who put money in our project, they're investing. So they're capitalizing on this amazing opportunity. They're capitalizing on a strong market. It's an $80 billion market. This market is growing at 17% compounded annual growth rate. So by 2030, this market will turn into a $200 billion market. 25:09 So this is something really important for retail investors or consumers to capitalize on and invest with us, back us. Because by backing us, they're doing two things. A, they're saying, yes, we want to get rid of password. We don't want this vulnerability in our life anymore. So they're giving us validation and we thank them so much. Also, they're capitalizing on that by investing in us and getting shares in our company. So yeah, Kickstarter is different because Kickstarter sells products. We're not selling your product here. You actually... 25:38 buying shares of the company and investing in exactly. Excellent. Right. So let's switch gears. Let's switch to your immigrant founder story. Do you believe that it's even more arduous as a founder to raise money or open those doors that if you were not an immigrant? 26:07 would open more easily. Talk to me about your own journey coming to the United States and working in the finance industry. Yeah, of course. My background is in finance. I worked for more than 20 years in financial services. Before I stopped working in finance, I was a portfolio manager. So I was running portfolios for my clients. We were managing those portfolios in equities, commodities, 26:35 option markets. But again, so as an immigrant, I think that it tends to be equally, you know, I think money is equally available to immigrant as much as if you're local or born in the United States. My first startup, for example, was in Cyprus and I was able to raise money. I wasn't okay. I wasn't in a really good way. So I have a Greek roots. 27:02 But I mean, Cyprus is considered a very kind, so I'm not sure if it falls under. But I wasn't born there. I just started there. So I've been Cyprus is amazing. And it's a beautiful place. And so I raised money there. I didn't face problems. So I'm not sure if you can consider that being an immigrant there. But no, I don't think I don't think immigrants have a better edge unless they have been, you know, obviously, if you have done. 27:29 multiple access in the past, if you've been a serial entrepreneur or you have a lot of success stories, raising money would be definitely much easier than being a second founder or perhaps a first founder. First founders definitely struggle and I've seen it over and over. They struggle to raise money, whether they're immigrants or not. I don't think it's really related, but for some reason I've learned from investors that they like immigrants slightly more. 27:57 And it's for a fact maybe because these people are coming to America and they have a lot of excitement about the move to the land of opportunities. You know, America is called the land of opportunities and it's, it's, I think it's in the heads of every immigrant. Like I want to go to America. I want to take that opportunity and be able to make success. And they're not really 28:26 by money, they're driven more by their story, driven more by their mission, they're driven more by that energy they have. I wanna have a successful story, I wanna change people's life, I wanna make a difference. I think they're driven by that. Why, maybe if I was locally grown here, I was raised here, I might be in a different mindset. I'm just saying, again, I can be in the other person's too, but that's my humble, you know? 28:56 Thank you. So the land of opportunity, right? And perhaps even a bit, a greater degree of resiliency. And tenacity. Yes, that's true. That's true. Excellent. So I'd like to give you an opportunity, Eli, to provide to my guests where they may find information about yourself, Eli Farhoud. And is it your LinkedIn and your website? How else can listeners that want to contact you get in touch? 29:25 contact with you. Sure. I'm happy to connect with anyone who wants to learn more about the patch. So they can definitely visit our website, where all the links are available there. So that would be k-a-t-s-h-i-d.com. So it's a k-a-t-s-h-i-d.com. If you visit our website, there's an Invest button. 29:54 If they click on that, it takes them to our crowdfunding page. They can learn more about our story, how we started this, about our mission and vision, what are we trying to achieve there. If they can learn about the opportunity, the market, our team, they're mostly veterans in their space. And so we're very excited actually. I'm actually very fortunate that I have a strong team, a team that has a lot of experience on hand. 30:22 And they're really helping me so much to get catch to the market and commercialize market. That's why I'm very excited about the stage we're in now. Right. And when did you actually form the company? What year was that? We started, so the company was incorporated in 2016. We were building actually a social platform back then. 30:47 I'll tell you quickly about it. That was really cool experience. So we were building a social platform that solves the problem of fake accounts. And the concept we had in mind was very simple. How about if people start connecting through a live video? That was basically it. Very simple, you know? No texting, no anything, no attachments, no images. Just connect through a live video. That's the first mean of communication. 31:16 And we thought, okay, that would be cool. You know, if people can connect through live video, it's obviously not a scammer, right? It's the same way they show in the picture and we can eliminate fake accounts. Now that doesn't work today because they can use AI to create deep pics, unfortunately, right? So just to show you the fortunes of how technology is a gateway to opportunity, the same way, if you can't reinvent yourself, you will end up, you know, 31:47 not doing any achievements there. So unfortunately back then though the broadband availability was very limited. We're talking in 2012. That's when we started this company. And we kept growing it until 2015 where we faced that problem that the user experience was really bad. Yeah. 32:16 limited availability of broadband, the user experience was not good, the video footage was not also very satisfying. And obviously people were turned off by that and we started dwindling down and our company failed big time. We learned that timing is so important. Yes, underline technology, yeah, that's available. Absolutely, you can have the best technology in the world, but if it does not align with a pain point or with time 32:46 If there's no need at this point, the strong need for it, and you're not able to provide that value, it's probably going to fail. And so that's why we're excited also about Catch because we think that timing is right now for biometrics to replace this credential problem we have, all the data breaches that are happening that will not season our view, that will keep growing and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Actually, I no longer try to say to my... 33:15 for my personal information from harm, because I know they're already there. Everyone know it, like it's on the dark web, it's probably on someone's drive now. And I just got an email this morning from my bank that my credentials were compromised. So just to give you an idea that I already like took all the precautions on a personal level because I felt obliged to victim, I don't wanna fall a third time. And so, yeah. And then... 33:42 To go back to your question, we started Catch in 2019, 2020. After I have fallen victim, we conducted a lot of market research. We looked at so many competing technologies in the biometric space. We tried to hack those technologies in our lab tests to learn, you know, what is their strength? What are their weaknesses? And that helped us a lot to shape up the product and to create the solution we have today. 34:13 So do you have white hackers on board? We do, actually, yes. Yes, I imagine so. If you started military, great. And the pandemic happened, right? So everybody went, worked from home. We had, again, a lot of data breaches that way. A lot of enterprises were not ready. So there's a lot of data. I mean, the numbers tell you, Brenda, $1 trillion were stolen from that $5 trillion were printed during COVID, or fortune. 34:43 So one trillion or about that was stolen. So what happened then? Right? What happened is that a lot of scammers took advantage. They created fake companies, fake identities, and they started claiming through those programs. Yes, I want this program. I want funds. I want loans. I want... It's insane, right? Knowing that how much money we've paid and lost during COVID. And COVID like also... 35:12 in a way reshaped our mindset and business, to be honest. Like who would meet virtually pre-COVID? Very few people, right? Now it's the norm and people are asking for remote. Who would go to the bank now? Actually, if you go to the banks, most of their branches are like ghost towns. Yes. So that also tells you that COVID has changed a lot of things and that actually why we believe 35:42 know, the time is right also for a product like catch. And it's quite unique. I can't say that I've encountered a biometric that uses your palm, right? Your hand, the immutable, unique, biometric measure, right? Yeah. Well, interesting. Interesting. All right. I wish you further resilience as you come into the last quarter. 36:11 of 2024 and a launch in 2025 with enterprise companies and their employees that can bring this new solution into credential management, right? Absolutely. We're very excited to it. That's very exciting. I always like to take my guests back to the sandbox and ask a round of. 36:38 questions, which is around what the type of work that I do. And they the words resilience, purpose driven enterprise, and sustainable growth, what resiliency you've talked to me about it, what's the meaning your tenacity? Do you want to add anything else to that? What's that, you know, meaning to you? Perhaps as founder, immigrant? You like please? Yeah, you know, 37:07 You want to have a lot of ethics as well. You want to make sure that you're being very transparent with your clients, especially with your clients, because they're your success story. They're the ones who are going to become the beacon for you. They're going to talk about you. I remember back in the days, this is just a great example, how my friend convinced me on using an iPhone where I was stuck with my... 37:34 physical keyboard and I was like no way I am not using an iPhone and he was literally an ambassador for Apple. Even though he never worked for them. Just because he was excited. Like the product was so amazing for him. It was so easy to use. It provided so much value and he was like, you know, you have to use this. Like you have to just give it a try. If you don't like it, just give it a try. And the first time I put my hand on the phone, I loved it. 38:04 So this again tells you a lot about being transparent with your clients, being very ethical, make sure that you're providing value on a long-term basis. Yes. The only way to do that is not just to be of course transparent and ethical, but also to provide sustainable products that can work for the long run. And of course, we have to be obviously, you know, making money and profitable because sustainability is part of that, right? Right. 38:34 But having a success story for the long term requires that ethical part and being very honest with your clients. I remember like I've been sold a lot of products that were very deceptive. And I know how I'm sure a lot of people did too, right? But that deception feeling you get when you're sold something, it's so harming to that brand, to that product. And actually it's harming also for the good guys. 39:03 It makes you just on anything else. No, I'm not going to try this anymore. I've been there. No, I've seen this before. Right. That's these we're trying to be that person that not just cause harm to their own brand, but also cause harm to other people that are trying to make a difference in the ecosystem. What about purpose driven enterprise? You began catch out of your own mission. Right. But what is purpose driven in general? Right. Mean to you. 39:33 Eli. I'm driven by my experience with fraud. Identity for me is very personal. It's very personal. And I'm not going to allow it to happen again. Right. So you're out on a small story. Yes. You're doing something about it. Exactly. I'm doing something about it. And I'm very happy that many of our team members also are purpose-driven on the same problem they face, like I did, in different ways, of course. 40:02 Identity theft can take several shapes and forms. Sometimes it's as simple as an unauthorized transaction on your credit card, which is something maybe you can absorb and manage and deal with, which happened to me last year, actually, and it can be sometimes something very big where someone accesses your checking account and now you're kind of like going through a two or three year process to clean your records. 40:32 move your innocence and you become a risk to everyone. No one wants to do business with you because you've had an identity theft. It's just not a joke. And, you know, now it's probably gonna happen more often than ever, unless products, not just cash, but anything like cash can help us secure our credentials. And, you know, it's also about taking back control. 40:59 This is very important. Maybe we didn't focus on that so much, but I wanna mention this. We wanna take back control over our information so that a third party can just use it behind our backs. 41:14 very important and therefore democratization, right? Right, right. We wanna bring that to the market, democratize access and allow people to decide who can use their information, when they can use it and why they're using it. Because this is very important today, identity or personal identifying information is used all over the world. This information represents who you are. And now, 41:44 that information and other information about us, our lives, are being sold day and night from enterprise to, I mean, we've all heard it about how Facebook or other firms were selling our information, they're making money off our information. We don't wanna change that. We want to bring that control back to you. You own your own information and you decide who can use it and who, and no one can send it. The access. Yes. 42:12 That's really important in our view. And that's what we're trying to achieve. Very exciting. Finally, sustainable. What does sustainable growth mean to you? Sustainable growth is the growth actually that just can be a normal, I would call it a normal mathematical equation. I'm making being full of philosophic here, but it's really when... 42:38 when you're growing organically because people see the value, this is a sustainable growth. It's also sustainable because you're not harming others, you're not harming the environment when you do this. You're not harming, or sometimes business requires that someone is using for you to gain. And that's not sustainable. We don't want that sustainability. We want a sustainability where it's a win-win situation. 43:05 And that's what we're trying to achieve at Catch. Of course, I can't tell you enough about the environment. Like if you think about just plastic cards we use for our credit cards, they are piling somewhere every year, all those cards that are being stolen and thrown in a dumpster. Or if you think about like digital identities can have a strong effect on the environment as well. Because... 43:33 If you're able to do things more remotely, virtually, instead of spending time, gas, miles, or using plastic cards, which I think plastic is toxic, it should be out of our life totally, especially in the food chain. That's a separate discussion. But yeah, technologies like these can have a very positive impact on the environment and sustainability itself as well. 44:00 I like the philosophical approach and very global, how you're thinking about removing the carbon footprint, right? Right. Lack of reducing the use of plastic. Right. Yeah, that's very, very beautiful. Thank you, Eli. The last and final question. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? 44:29 Did you have fun in the sandbox today, Eli? I loved it. And thank you for all your very meaningful questions. I mean, they were, you're trying to hit on most important aspects of what we do. And I think we did a great job here. So again, thank you so much for having me. And it was such a fun conversation. And I hope we were able to tell your audience something new. They learned something new about identity security. 44:58 Absolutely. To my listeners, if you like this episode with Eli Farhoud, sign up for the monthly release where founders, business owners, directors, and professional service providers share and also learn how to build with strong governance, sustainable, resilient, and purpose-driven companies to make profits for good. Signing off, talk to you next month. Thank you very much.    

On this episode, Brenda speaks about purpose with Allison Byers, founder of Scroobious,  a tech company  driving innovation to equitable capital access by removing barriers to partnership among diverse founders, investors, and service providers. Scroobious is a platform that is working toward equitable capital access: In Allison's words “ fair representation of all segments with the exclusion of none”  - now into its fourth year –  having served over 900 founders.  “Finding the funding and the people are critical to early stage success of a company.“ Listen to Allison's personal story of Scroobius and how her  relationships that go back 20 years ago and an introduction to the newly appointed President and COO of Scroobiuos.    You can find out more about Allison, Scroobious, and other resources mentioned in this podcast at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-byers/ https://www.scroobious.com/ For founders working on a pitch: Scroobious is dedicated to empowering founders for successful fundraising. Our platform provides invaluable resources including online learning modules featuring investor-vetted content, personalized pitch feedback, tailored pitch practice sessions, access to a vibrant community of hundreds of diverse founders, and connections with investors. Click here to apply for a sponsored (free!) account. You can also join our Lite plan for just $1 to access our community, events, and curated resources immediately. For early-stage investors: Scroobious connects you to a network of brilliant and diverse founders solving important problems. These founders have worked with us to clarify their story, showcasing comprehensive pitch material and coachability. Click here for a quick platform demo. Visit this website, register, and then use promo code EARLYINV for a free 6-month trial at the Stripe checkout page. After the trial, it's $10 per month (cancel anytime). Complete brief onboarding questions to enter the portal and start messaging founders! https://www.newswire.com/news/scroobious-scales-up-to-meet-the-urgent-call-to-support-diverse-22415543 additional content here : https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/SB-54-SIGN-MSG.pdf   Transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:19 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. I'm delighted that we're now into the third season of this monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs, business owners, and corporate board directors, and VCs. All interested in building resilient, scalable, purpose-driven businesses with an undergirding aspect of great corporate governance. 01:45 I admission, my mission at NextAct Advisors, which is my consulting firm, is really simple. It's just building the scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. My guests to the podcast are themselves founders, business owners, corporate directors, professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, small, medium or large to make change for a better world. With each of my guests, we go through some storytelling. 02:13 about their origin stories. And we will touch on topics around resiliency, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth. And again, my goal is to provide a fun environment in this sandbox where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Alison Byers. I'm absolutely delighted that she's joining me all the way from Boston. 02:41 Allison is joining and she wears many hats, but she is going to talk a lot today about her founder journey of Scroobius. And it is a very unique platform that unlike other platforms in the ecosystem used by startups, this is one that has a purpose to improve equitable capital access by providing pitch education for founders while making connections with investors. 03:11 to put unused capital to work. And we're gonna hear more as we get into the podcast. I like to have guests that are also very mission-driven as mission-driven as I. And you are, Alison, unequivocally mission-driven in your purpose after you yourself encountered gender bias firsthand while you were fundraising. So I think it'd be appropriate 03:40 story to start telling now. So thank you for joining me, Allison. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me, Brenda. And absolutely love being so aligned in our missions and being able to talk about how we can use business elements to accomplish the mission-driven motives that we have. So. 04:02 Yeah, I'm happy to share my origin story for Scroobious. And we're a four-year-old company, so I incorporated in January of 2020, which maybe we'll hit on later what it means to incorporate right before a global pandemic. The initiative started after I, as you said, experienced pretty extreme gender bias myself. 04:26 So before Scroobious, I joined scientific co-founders and launched a medical device company out of MIT in a hospital system here in Boston. And I was the business one on the team and did all the things from incorporation through our fundraising. And we did raise almost $10 million at that company going through a series A prime. And then I really struggled to raise our series B. So we ended up going to early acquisition. And 04:52 I didn't know any of the things that I know now. I was not in this space before then. And Medical  device is a pretty specific industry with pretty specific investors. So you're kind of in that world. But we were acquired in an asset sale. The people that acquired us were men. And not too long after, raised $55 million. And not. Yes. 05:21 Every time I share that, there's eyes open. A multiple of what? 10? Yeah. And it was very clear to me that the one thing I could point to that was different was my gender. And I was co-running the company with another woman. So we were two women out there doing this, and one more woman involved in the company. But it's. 05:48 it set me on a path of trying to understand what happened. And so that's when I researched the field of capital allocation and investing in pitching first just to understand how I could have failed so badly. That's the internalization that many founders have when they're unable to raise the capital your company needs. And very quickly found all the data that I know you're very familiar with. But for those who are listening who maybe aren't, 06:17 Nationally, 1.8% of venture dollars go to women-founded companies. And in my state of Massachusetts, that number is 0.9%. We're also ranked one of the worst states, 47th, for supporting women-owned businesses. And once you learn that, as devastating as it is, it also releases that internalization of failure. Because you say, oh, I didn't actually fail. I just did not know. 06:45 that I was operating in a system that's designed to keep me marginalized. I was not likely to raise that money regardless of how well we were operating the company or how strong our fundraising pitch was. Okay. So that's my origin story for wanting to dedicate my professional career to working toward more equitable access to business capital. And it's not solely focused on women owned companies, is it? Exactly. 07:15 Yeah. So tell us a bit more about Scroobious and starting a company. And right when the pandemic, you know, set in here in the United States and we locked it went into lockdown. So, right. Yes. So I did at least a year of research before deciding. 07:33 what I wanted to do was meant to be a for-profit company structure. I didn't rush into it. That's not my nature. Did my full market analysis and primary and secondary research, thought about our own capitalization plan, then decided to incorporate in January of 2020. So, impeccable timing. But I know we'll talk about that a little later too in terms of how do you handle what 08:02 startups throw at you and building without the ability to predict how your business might fluctuate or how the macro economy might fluctuate around you. But no, we don't focus only on women. That's of course my lived experience. But when I researched it, pretty much any segment where founders identify as underrepresented in some way, receives incredibly inequitable distribution of. 08:31 business and growth capital. If you look at it by gender or race, that's true. If you look at it by geography or by sexual orientation or military veteran status, neurodiversity, there's a lot of different ways that people can identify as underrepresented. And we don't define that for somebody. Nor do we exclude anyone from our platform because we're really working toward equitable distribution which means 09:00 true representation of all segments to the exclusion of none. So, yeah. I love it. Can you say that again? That's a great tagline. So you're working towards? So we're working toward equitable distribution, which means fair representation of all segments to the exclusion of none. Fantastic. Yeah. So we've got white dudes in there too, right? Like we're not turning people away. 09:27 But our own go to market strategy was to and is still to partner with organizations that are diversity first as well, so that we're building the community that represents what should be equitably represented based on our population. 09:45 So let's go into the actual platform itself. It is a platform, right? Yeah. You've got founders on one side receiving pitch education and you have more, and you have investors on the other side. So how does a founder experience Scroobius? Yes, great question. And we are definitely a platform and we actually have three key stakeholders. So there's some marketplace elements with the founders and investors on two sides, 10:15 What we've come to discover, and this is part of the building and pivoting and resiliency of a startup, is that true understanding of how important relationships are in accessing resources and capital. This is not a transactional industry. And so the third key stakeholder here are service providers and program partners. They are very underutilized. 10:44 in this space and they are key connection nodes. And so we are a true platform with all three at the center there. But for founders, to answer your question, yes, we're a scalable platform. We were designed intentionally to scale because with all three of those stakeholder groups, they number in the millions. This is a huge market. And so 11:08 Founders enter our platform and immediately they can access our flagship program called the Pitch It Plan, which is full of micro lessons online, asynchronous access, about everything to do with fundraising strategy and pitching and building those relationships with investors because that type of quality education written from an authentic perspective of understanding that it is different. 11:37 for underrepresented groups and making it accessible and understandable for everyone is not easy to access. It's not freely out there. So your labor of love, for lack of another word, you've curated that and probably through your professional service providers, how did you curate that specifically for underrepresented? So it's all... 12:03 created by us. This is proprietary education, and we do work with providers. In addition to our custom material that we add to all the time based on the needs of our community, we also host workshops twice a month with industry experts on all kinds of topics related to early startup building. Apologies, I do have a cold today, so I'm going to lose my voice every so often. Yes, just. 12:31 But it's based on hundreds of interviews with investors, hundreds of interviews with founders, and personal experience of myself and others on the team to really create different material that speaks to the heart of what founders want to know. So for an example, we have a lesson on how do you give a 10-minute pitch? How do you give a five-minute pitch? How do you give a three-minute 12:57 What if you have a one minute pitch? What exactly goes in there? And we provide the insight into why it is important to an investor. So they get both the lesson and the understanding of why does this matter to do it this way. So they have access to that. And alongside it, they can upload draft material and get personalized feedback from our trained reviewers. So it's a combination of online learning 13:27 Again, that asynchronous scalable human delivered feedback that founders really do need to feel comfortable and confident. Once they have worked through our program, they have the ability to share their pitch and their profile with the investors, right? So that they can get in front of our network of... 13:50 vetted and active angel investors who are specifically looking to diversify how they find opportunities so they can put their capital toward the founders they're looking for, even if they are not in their geography or not in their known network or affinity groups. Is it national? United States actually? We're actually international now. We have founders all over the place. Yes, our community has grown. We've worked with over 900 founders now in basically four years. 14:19 Yeah. Wow. Excellent. And how does the investor then experience it? So are they actually contacted by the founder? Or can they just peruse Scroobius platform, identify opportunities that fit within their investment thesis? How does that work? Yeah. So it's a great question. And again, we've built a differentiated platform by listening to what. 14:48 investors want and we focus on angel investors. We're pretty specifically finding those who are more likely to write checks to our founder base to underrepresented founders and angel investors represent an enormous untapped opportunity. So when they join our platform they do give us some information when they on board about their thesis and what they're looking for and then. 15:11 They can see all of the founders who have uploaded their material, which includes both a comprehensive deck, because we QA what goes up there, and a short video introduction. So they can see the human behind the deck. And that is really core to how we curate for investors what they see. We are measuring variables both about the business and about the founder. 15:36 and constantly learning from the investors as they engage with different pitches, what are they actually drawn to? So that's the AI behind this is building an engine that's a little bit like Netflix, where it's constantly learning based on what you watch and suggesting other things you might like, right? Based on your behaviors, we're incorporating that based on your behaviors. Here are other founders that you might like. 16:05 And so you can log in and get a very customized experience. We also heard pretty loud and clear from angel investors that there's a variety of reasons why they might like to keep their anonymity and not be on a list or have founders reaching out to them constantly. And so they do. They make the first outreach to the founder and they can make that outreach anonymously if they want. 16:29 So they can open a founder's pitch material and ask questions within it, either with their name attached or anonymously, the founder still needs that feedback, still needs that connection. And then they can choose to reveal their name later on. If this seems like someone you want to get to know better. So that's in the investors control. Yeah, totally in the investors control. Interesting, interesting. And it's asynchronous. So if the investor were to ask any questions, then the 16:57 founder does see those and can answer. Yep. Everyone gets an email. They can answer in the platform. They can answer via email. You can have a whole conversation about a slide in a pitch deck in that slide to, again, make efficient use of everybody's time and decide, is this worth a 45-minute call after you can get through some of that conversation? Excellent. So you did share. I wanted to get into some of the metrics that there have been. 17:26 900 founders already experiencing Scroobiouss. What about investors? Because I had an interview just some time back. It dropped this month with Marsha Dawood. Oh, yeah. And she has her podcast, The Angel Next Door, and her new book has just released. I asked her, how many angel investors are actually in presently United States? There's only 300,000. I mean, if you think about that, we are a small group of. 17:55 angels and her mission with the book is to increase the number of people that become angel investors. So like back to you and there are funds of course. Yeah. Yeah. I know I was just with Marsha the past two days contributing to the Angel Capital Association Women Investors Forum and I got her book yesterday. I'm very excited to read it. So yes, and that I will 18:24 representative of the potential for angels that could be actively investing. And it's also very difficult to measure. There is not a good comprehensive set of data on angel investing activity because it does not have to be reported. So you can't scrape it. So personally, I believe that number to be much higher in reality. 18:52 And there also is, I think it's $32 billion in unallocated capital based on inactivity of angel group members. Wow. There are members who are part of that group, but not investing through the group. And that was pretty key in my research as well. To put this capital to work, it means they're not finding the people they want to put their money behind. So 32 billion in dry powder would be the word, right? Yeah, basically. Yeah, that we know of. 19:21 That's of angel group members and not every angel is a member of a group. Right. Right. So, yeah. So in terms of our own investor platform, we launched it last year in twenty twenty three and we've been working on a somewhat invitation basis. Although we do make it open to anybody to join. But we're really looking to have people who actively write checks to those who identify as underrepresented as part of our platform or those who are. 19:49 active investors in looking to start establishing those relationships. Again, we're not transactional. We don't affect the investment through our platform, but we are looking to make more of those connections. We're the infrastructure that allows investors and founders to find each other. I think it's around 40 or 45 active angels in there. We have... 20:15 multiple financings that have happened by discovery on our platform. And it really hasn't been that long a period of time. I know. And in a tough market, very tough market. Yeah, in a tough market. Although again, an angel is an entirely different investor than a fund manager. And where fund managers might go stagnant, angels don't necessarily do that. Excellent. And in the show notes, there will be links, Alison, to Scroobius. 20:45 as well as some other materials you've provided. In addition to your day job, right? You're now into your fourth year of running Scroobius. You also have been a catalyst for change and you have co-authored the California Senate Bill 54 that was signed into law in October, 2023. What's this bill about, Allison? 21:13 I got excited last year when I saw this and I got a lot of phone calls from VCs saying I need women. I need underrepresented found companies. Well, I'm very glad it already catalyzed calls to you and awareness of this. But no, I'm extremely proud to have participated in this and Scroobius is my company and we're making demonstrable change and growing quickly. But yes, I do also a number of other advocacy efforts. 21:42 Again, it's dedicating myself toward working to equitable access. And policy is something my own company needs and other companies in my space because this is unregulated territory for the most part when it comes to trying to move the numbers on at least venture allocation of capital. Again, different than angels. So the bill deals with venture allocation. 22:08 But it will require venture funds to publicly report diversity metrics about their prior year's investments. It is a California bill, but California is responsible for over 30% of investing activity and this will have a global, was it 30 or 60? I might have mixed up that stat. I'm so sorry. But... 22:32 It will have a global impact because it is about having a nexus in California, which could mean you invested in a company with a nexus in California, but your fund is located elsewhere. You will still need to report. And so nexus is defined in the bill. I've actually read it. And it comes into effect in 2027, or is it immediate? 22:53 So reporting requirements. Yeah, they're working through the implementation of it now. It was signed into law in the last year, and there's a whole lot of things that need to happen before this is implemented and enforced. But there are a number of efforts, especially in the private industry, that are already helping funds figure out how to make this the most efficient that they can. And it's information they're collecting anyway. 23:21 This is a data collection bill. It's to establish that baseline of where are the dollars going? So we have accurate data and they have it, they're just not reporting it. So now it will be available to anybody who wants to go see and have an enormous positive impact on future policy, but also on entrepreneurs and how they spend their time because it is not 23:46 transparent to any entrepreneur now, unless they're going to scour every website of every fund and then look up the leadership to know, does a fund write checks to women? Is it worth my time to go do that? So this is not telling anyone where they must invest their money. It isn't dictating that at all. It's just saying, we need a baseline of accurate quality data. 24:12 Because to date, all those numbers we cite, even the ones that I quote, they're from private companies. They're from Pitchbook and Crunchbase. And there's data flaws with their collection as well. Absolutely. And did you pick off California, start with California because of the sheer presence in the ecosystem? Because you're also championing initiatives in other states. 24:41 like the Massachusetts Senate Bill 978 and New York Senate Bill 809786. Yes, there were a lot of strategic reasons for California to start, although it's interesting. 24:59 work on Massachusetts legislation in this space predated the work in California. And we started by working with what we have been pursuing and are still pursuing in Massachusetts over there, over in California. It shifted to a different type of bill for a variety of reasons. I have learned a whole lot about this process in co-authoring that bill. But there's so much that goes with getting policy. 25:27 A lot of it again is people oriented, relationship oriented. California was a, we were there at the right time in the right place with the right people to push that through. I love it. We're going to switch gears a little bit here. And you made an important announcement in the past couple of days. Congratulations on the appointment of president and COO Ralph Gross III. 25:57 Thank you. He's joined you at Scroobius. And if you see the announcement on LinkedIn, it goes into detail about how relationships are important. So you've mentioned, you've touched on relationships several times, right? When you're an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur, you founded Scroobius, right? Can you share how relationships matter when building your business? That's the 26:27 And now that you have a COO and president, how's your day job gonna change? All right? Thank you. Yes. Well, I mean, we're now really the perfect example of why a platform like Scroobious and ours in particular needs to exist because it is relationship driven. And people will say everything in business is relationship driven, but there's plenty of transactions that happen and finding the funding. 26:56 And the people are critical to early stage success of a company. It's very different at the early stage. And for our story, I was introduced to Ralph three years ago by a woman who's on our advisory board, who I had actually met nearly 20 years ago when I won a scholarship from her as an MBA student. And he became one of our very first investors. He has an 27:24 exceptional career in large financial institutions and investment banks. But earlier on, he did attempt to start his own company. And it was very similar to what Robin Hood ended up being. But as a black man, he really couldn't raise the funds that he needed. So he experienced that bias as well when he was attempting to go the entrepreneurship route. And it's always stuck deep with him. Right. So he has a 27:51 very strong resonance with what we're building and our mission and firsthand experience, right? That authentic lived experience is something you cannot replicate and the connection with your stakeholders. We both have them. We both have them from the entrepreneur's perspective. And we both have them from an investor perspective. I'm an angel investor as well. And clearly, so is he. But we've developed our relationship over the three years of him being 28:18 of our team as an investor on my cap table. And very recently, he made the intentional decision to leave that corporate career and join us as our as leadership as our president and COO. So we'll be working very closely together as CEO and COO. And it accompanied a $500,000 investment into the company. So we have capital we need to really grow. This is a game changer. 28:48 for the trajectory of Scroobious, both from a capital perspective and a leadership perspective. Amazing, amazing. So I wanted to bring us back to the Founders sandbox and my guest. And again, you're very mission-driven, Allison. And I always like to ask my guests what the meaning is of three. 29:17 kind of terms that I use when I'm working with my clients. And those are resilience, purpose-driven, and scalable slash sustainable. But what does resilience mean to you? Please. So resilience is somewhat similar to me when people talk about grit. It's the quality of taking. 29:44 an unexpected circumstance and figuring out how you utilize that and move forward. And so for me, an easy example is that a month into my company building, we were in a global pandemic. I have two young children who all of a sudden had no school to go to, and all the things that life throws at you. I immediately had to decide, do I close the company down right away? 30:14 Or do I figure out a way to keep doing this? And so when I think about being resilient, there's a lot of elements to that. But that for me was, OK, I'm going to take it, and I'm just going to modify how I build this company. Because it's too important to just close it, and I'm too dedicated to it. And it really did impact our own growth. I was going to go raise a big round. That was my plan. Go do what I did before and start raising. I'm building a scalable venture backable company. 30:43 And immediately I had to say, nope, that's not what I can do anymore. So what do I do? How do I build slower? How do I make this a reality based on the circumstances that have been dealt to me? And we really turned it into a positive for how we've grown. And you did the data gathering. And also really just I love that 31:11 My guests share a personal experience, but personal slash professional, right? And that is an exceptional example of starting a company, incorporating it in the pandemic after experiencing the gender bias in your own previously venture-backed company. So amazing, amazing. What about purpose-driven enterprise? What does that mean to you? 31:40 Each guest has a different, this is kind of my favorite part other than your origin stories. I love it. It's really interesting. The word purpose to me is very interesting because I do a lot of speaking about social entrepreneurship and impact entrepreneurship, but purpose is a little bit different for me. It doesn't have to mean that you're an impact oriented company, but it reminded me of 32:11 guidance that we give our founders is something you need to be attuned to is as you're talking about your company and as you're pitching for the thousand and eighty second time, if you don't naturally get very excited about what you're talking about, that's a warning signal for yourself that you might have lost some of your purpose. Okay. It doesn't really matter what you're building, but as the founder, 32:40 you have to have a direct tie to the purpose of why you're building what you're building or your company is at risk of crumbling because as the leader, if you lose that, where is the North Star for everybody else? Excellent. And you often mentioned the word authenticity during this podcast today. And I think that, forgive me for 33:07 putting words in your mouth, but if a founder is authentic in sharing what that purpose was when creating the company, is don't lose that North Star. Thank you. Absolutely. You know, there's too many stories of companies receiving large amounts of funding and burning it and having to close. And there's too many founders that just want to be a successful founder, which is not. 33:34 it doesn't have that authenticity that you're talking about. And right, the other side of that is having the lived experience to be authentic with those who you are servicing with your company. And I mentioned it before, but again, that's when investors talk about a moat, which some of that lingo is so annoying to founders, but that's a moat, you can't replicate that. 34:00 You can't replicate someone's lived experience. And we're seeing that right now with some backlash in FemTech funding, where more FemTech funding is going to men than to women. They can never have that lived experience. It doesn't matter how close to a woman they are. They can't. And that is not ever going to be as authentically received by customers as somebody who shares that lived experience. Amen, sister. 34:29 Yes, I am co-leading with the TiE SoCal chapter. It's an entrepreneurial membership organization, a competition of women-led companies. We're in our third year, very large cohort, that's in semi finals and independent judges, male and female. It's amazing the energy. And we've talked about nails. We talked about an air purifying machine. The gamut of 34:59 you know, feminine or women-led companies was amazing. And just, we have a second session today. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's something that I talk a lot about and I try to get this message through because it's not something that people always communicate, but you know, the lack of funding to women, to black founders, to any, to take your pick of underepresentation.  For women, it is not just a women's problem. 35:28 We're not just building companies only for women. This is an everybody problem. We are building companies addressing enormous societal needs. And without our contributions to that innovation and to that problem solving, every single person is suffering, not just women. Thank you, Allison. Other term, scalable growth. What's that mean to you? Scalable. 35:58 Um, so scalable means that you are building something that is intentionally designed to reach many, many people and that you are doing it in a way where you can effectively sustain that growth, sustain that scale. Right. 36:21 and there are businesses that are made to be scalable. Scroobious is made to be scalable and there are businesses that are not and both are completely needed and fine, but there is a distinction. And if you are not building something scalable, you're probably not right for the venture capital funding model of how you capitalize your business, but you still might be right for angel investing or loans or debt. 36:49 whatever other type of capital you can add to your stack. But that isn't a very important thing to know. And again, something we educate in our platform for founders, it's not always clear to founders what is the right path or how to understand the venture capital business model and why it requires scalability to be viable. Exactly. And I love that you are all encompassing at Scroobious,  right? It's equitable capital access. 37:18 So not all businesses are venture capital, subject to venture capital. All right, so that's amazing. My last question, did you have fun in the sandbox today? Absolutely. I do love that question. We build humor into everything we do. I think humor is just a critical element of building. And if you're not having fun, what are you doing? 37:46 You have to be able to have fun. So yes, thank you for making a fun podcast experience. Thank you, Allison. So to my listeners, if you liked this episode with Allison Byers, CEO and founder of Scroobius, sign up for a monthly release of the Founders Sandbox where founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service firms provide stories on how to build with strong governance a resilient, scalable. 38:14 and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. Thank you for joining me, Allison, and until next month. Thank you so much, Brenda. That was fun.  

On todays episode, Brenda speaks with Marcia Dawood. Marcia is a passionate advocate for positive change in empowering and educating everyone on how to invest. Her book "Do Good While Doing Well – Invest For Change, Reap Financial Rewards and Increase Your Happiness", is due out in September 2024 and this episode provides previews to our listeners.  Brenda and Marcia speak about Purpose: Doing Good While Doing Well. How Marcia lives her purpose is as an author, host of the podcast The Angel Next Door, Chair Emeritus of (ACA)Angel Capital Association, the global professional society for angel investors, and on the board of Stella, a non-profit that supports female entrepreneurs. She is also a Venture partner at Mindshift Capital, and she currently serves on the SEC Securities and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee.  You can find out more about Marcia at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marciadawood/ marcia@marciadawood.com Watch her Tedx Talk here Order her Book here Interview with Catherine Gray host of She Angels Series- Invest in Her: You can subscribe to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription.   Transcript: 00:04 We're standing on the edge of something big. We're going to make some changes. Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:18 So welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, host of this monthly podcast now in its third season. This monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilience, scalable and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And by way of 01:47 inviting guests to the podcast who are themselves founders, business owners, corporate directors, investors, and professional service providers who also share my mission, which is using the power of the private enterprise, be that small meeting at large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests on topics that are going to include resilience, purpose-driven, and sustainable growth, 02:16 My goal through this podcast is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. I'm absolutely delighted today. My guest is Marsha Dalwood. She's joining the podcast. She checks a lot of boxes, but she's today joining as a passionate advocate for positive change by empowering and educating 02:45 everyone on how to invest. So when I met Marcia back in February through one of our events with Ty So Kow, she had launched or was speaking about launching her book that's coming out on September 10th, Do Good While Doing Well, Invest for Change, Reap Financial Rewards, and Increase Your Happiness. I couldn't help but ask her to be a guest because she also has 03:14 passion or a mission, and that is for positive change. And one of many things she's done is authoring this book, which we'll get into a sneak preview of the contents of this book before its launch on September 10th, 2024. I like to choose a title with my guests that are around purpose or sustainability or resilience. And we chose a title for this episode 03:43 which is purpose, do good while doing well. So thank you today for joining me, Marcia. So happy to have you here in the Founder Sandbox. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. Excellent. So, you know, our paths crossed, I mentioned it earlier at the Thai SoCal chapter, the Indus Entrepreneurs SoCal chapter, where you spoke recently on some of the data coming out 04:13 the Angel Capital Association, as well as your role with the SEC. Before I get into my first question, I did want to give my listeners your entire background, your biography. It's very impressive and very extensive. You live your purpose as a multifaceted professional, your author of the book that I just mentioned, Do Good While Doing Well. 04:43 You are also a host of a podcast, The Angel Next Door. You are chair emeritus of Angel Capital Association, ACA. It's a global professional society for angel investors. And you're on the board of Stella, a nonprofit that supports female entrepreneurs. You're also a venture partner at MindShift Capital, and you currently serve on the SEC. 05:10 Securities and Exchange Commission's Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. So thank you for bringing your expertise here into this podcast today. Well, thank you for having me. So can you share for my listeners some of the highlights you walked us through in February while distinguishing the role of an angel investor, a range of fund groups versus VC? 05:37 I mean, some of the trends you're seeing in the markets. Sure. Well, to put it very basically, an angel investor is somebody who writes checks out of their own checkbook. A venture capitalist will pool funds from other people, so they're using other people's money. And therefore, they're held to certain standards, and they're held to certain financial returns that their investors are expecting. 06:06 So angels, while we also of course would love and expect a financial return, we invest in the things that we really care about and are very passionate about. And we don't necessarily have the same time horizons and the same guidelines that venture capitalists do, which makes us a little bit more plausible for being immutable for being able to do certain things and invest in the way that we want to. So, 06:34 Over the last two years, especially maybe even going on two and a half now, the market has been very challenging for entrepreneurs to fundraise at any stage. The market has been very challenging for exits and liquidity. So angel investing or investing in early stage private companies means that you're investing in a company that is not. 07:01 publicly traded on the stock market, like you would see a stock like Apple or something like that. Got it. In order for the investor to have any type of liquidity, there has to be an event. Either the company is sold, or in rare instances, the company would go onto a public stock market, or an IPO, as we call it. So in those particular instances, when there is liquidity, then that money can in a way 07:30 can oftentimes be put back into the startup scene, the entrepreneurial ecosystem, as we call it. And a lot of times, investors will take any money that they do get as a gain from a previous investment and put it into other startup companies so that that capital can keep flowing. That's kind of the whole idea behind as people are getting returns. So that's really the biggest difference between an angel investor and a venture capitalist. 08:00 But right now it's been challenging for everyone because of this lack of liquidity that we've been seeing in the marketplace for the last two and a half years. Now we do think that there's been some talk that that market is gonna start to open up a little bit more. We will see more M&A activity. And if that's the case, then hopefully we will start to see more liquidity and then there will be more capital for investing. And 08:26 as an asset class, right? Angel investing. And with your role as chair emeritus and while you were also chair of ACA, what spurred you to write about angel investing, right? Is this the culmination of your years of experience? Walk my listeners through what made you take the time to actually write a book, do good while doing well. 08:52 Yeah, I think it was out of frustration more than anything. I would talk to people, even neighbors, friends, people I would meet at an event. And I would say, yeah, I'm an angel investor. I help early stage companies. And they were like, wow, that seems really interesting. And I would say, well, you could be an angel investor too. And they would be like, me? I could be an angel investor? I thought that was only for the rich and well-connected. 09:22 that isn't something I could do. I don't know anything about that. I don't have a degree in finance. I don't really think that's for me. So it wasn't that they didn't want to do it. They really just didn't believe that it was something that they were able to do in a way, either from a wealth or income standpoint or from a knowledge standpoint. So I thought, wait a minute, I think there's an awareness problem here because we have all these amazing entrepreneurs. They're building incredible innovations that the world needs. 09:52 But they're really struggling. I mean, struggling with fundraising. And it's one of the hardest things that they end up doing. And it's like a full-time job on top of the full-time job of them trying to build this company. So wait a minute, how can we fix this problem? Well, we could fix the problem if more people got involved and became investors, but that seems daunting. 10:17 So I thought, well, how can I help people realize that that doesn't really have to be quite so daunting? And you can kind of nowadays because of a lot of the regulatory changes that have happened in the last eight to 10 years, you can maybe step your way into it and really start to learn with basically putting less money at risk and you're gaining knowledge at the same time. You can also be a mentor to startup companies. That's become very popular and needed in the last several years. 10:46 All of these things that people don't really know about, that was what I was trying to do, demystify it. Right. And if you had to provide a sneak preview on the gut of your book, what would that be? Set takeaway. And who should be your target audience? Is it just the, is it actually entrepreneurs or is it those people that are just kind of wanting to become more informed around the asset class? Yeah, great question. 11:16 So I wrote the book for people who want to make a difference, but they just don't know how one person alone can do that. Okay. I think you feel that charity is a great way to give back, which of course it is, but they have no idea that this asset class also exists in a way that you can give back and potentially get a financial return at the same time. So that's really who I wrote the book for. As far as a sneak peek as to what's in the book, it is a Y2 book. 11:45 about angel investing. So I saw that there were several books out there and some of them are really amazing on how to angel invest. And most, if not all of them, have the words angel investing in the title. I thought to myself, wait a minute, if somebody really wants to learn about this, but they don't even know that it exists or that it's accessible to them, why would they ever pick up a book on how to be an angel investor? Because this has never even crossed their radar. So how can I attract them? 12:14 to think about things in a different way, to think about how they might use some of their capital in a different way. And when I say capital, I don't just mean money. It can be their human capital, their time. They could be helping an entrepreneur through mentorship. How can they start to look at the resources that they have in order to help grow innovative companies? How can they think about that differently so that they will want to then go and help either people in their local community and in their local area? 12:44 or maybe even startups nationwide or globally. I did watch your TEDx talk and I really do like how you have positioned the asset class or why is angel investing important if you want to make a difference versus charitable giving. And in your TEDx talk that will be in the show notes, you illustrated that extremely well. 13:13 That's very unique. Yes, thank you. And I really want people to donate to charity, help charities, that's fantastic. But we've put such a burden on them and they don't have the resources. They don't have the ability to actually take some of these innovations forward. We need those for-profit companies too. And when you look at the amount of charitable giving that happens in the U.S. annually, it's about 475. 13:41 billion, which is a lot of money. And that's wonderful. But that is equivalent to only about 1% of the value of the US stock market. So when we put things into perspective, it's really not doing any of these nonprofits of good service to say that we're going to put the burden all on you. And what is the size currently of the asset class as angel investing per ACA? Well, pretty much, if you look at the SEC data, 14:10 The most recent data has around $30 billion is where the angel asset class kind of lands. And then from there, we can look at that as far as there's angel groups, there's angel funds, and then there are individual angels. I tend to be a pretty big proponent and fan of angel funds. It allows somebody to put in a certain amount of money and nowadays it does not have to be 14:39 a quarter of a million dollars or any crazy big amount, they could put in a couple thousand dollars and get access to a diversified portfolio, which would allow them to spread their risk and not necessarily put all their eggs in one basket, as you would say. Right, right. Let's kind of switch gears here. While not entirely leaving your experience behind from ACA, you're currently, so you, 15:09 are you've had many women leadership roles, right? Now, whether you got there as a woman, I don't believe so, but what you've had many women leadership roles, most recent, well, maybe the most, I think, relevant for this podcast is you are currently an advisor to the SEC's... 15:34 Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee. Now getting there, and it really ties in well with corporate governance and how to do things, well informed with data so as to provide our regulatory structures or financial or legal with guidance and you're representing the small business world. Are you the only woman on the advisory committee? Talk to me through some of the women leadership roles you have had and 16:04 how you've obtained them and how you are opening opportunities for other women leaders. Yeah. So I have been on the investment committee of several funds. Okay. We were specifically focused on helping to get capital to female founders. If you look at the data over the last several years, although in angel world, it is improving in the venture capital world. And when you for the bigger dollars that companies really need to scale. 16:34 The statistics show it's been, you know, two to 3% of the funding goes to women and the rest goes to male led companies. So I've really been trying to help change that. And one of the ways to change that is to get the check writers or the people making the decisions about where the money goes to be more diverse. So to me, it was important to serve on some of these different investment committees for various funds, help with angel groups. 17:03 member of Golden Seeds, which invests only in women-led companies. I'm also a venture partner for MindShift Capital, where we invest in women-led companies globally. So those were things that were important to me. At the Angel Capital Association, I also started with a couple of my peers. We started a group called Growing Women's Capital. It's a peer group within the Angel Capital Association, where we help bring focus and attention to the female founders who are fundraising at the time. 17:33 And so those were all things that were important to me. As far as getting to be able to participate on the SEC's advisory committee, that's been great. And it is an extremely diverse committee, which I absolutely love. There's really representation there from men, women, racial disabilities, I mean, everything so that every group, I feel has a voice at the table because we're trying to represent 18:03 small businesses across the country. And that doesn't necessarily always mean startups, startups are scale businesses that people would want to invest in. But we also have people on the committee who are representing your Main Street businesses as well, coffee shops, things like that. Excellent. And the, can you talk a little bit about Stella? It's also. 18:30 a nonprofit group in which you've been involved, I think, since its inception. I have definitely been a champion and a supporter for Stella since its inception. I've only been on the board for a very short period of time. But the organization is really wonderful. They have done a lot as far as entrepreneurial education for women. They have an archive on their website of different. 18:58 different educational materials. They have an accelerator. They're always promoting ways that more female founders can get in front of investors. So they're doing some really good work over there. Can you get into a bit what is your role on the Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee? How often do you guys meet? What is the agenda? And what is the term? Because this is just one of many. 19:28 advisory committees under the auspices of the SEC? I'm just fascinated on what is the actual governance around that. Sure. So it's a four-year term, and I'm one year in as of now. We meet quarterly, usually in person at the offices in Washington, DC. Sometimes we meet virtually. It just kind of depends on the situation, but usually we meet in person. Meetings are all recorded. 19:56 and broadcast live over the SEC's website. So anyone who wanted to go back and watch any of the meetings, or if you wanted to watch any of the future meetings live, that is absolutely doable. They're always listed on sec.gov, the website. So the role is really for us to be able to help the commission get a better sense of what's happening, kind of boots on the ground. 20:26 So each of us has a little bit of a different angle for how we represent small businesses. I of course come with the angel investing lens. There's another person on the committee who has a debt crowdfunding platform that he founded. And that's a very interesting perspective since that's something that's kind of newer to the state of how entrepreneurs can fundraise. So we're all. 20:54 trying to have basically a conversation about some of the challenges that entrepreneurs face when it comes to fundraising. And one of the things that we tackled quite heavily, at least for the first few meetings that I was involved in was the accredited investor definition. Got it. As it stands right now, to be an accredited investor means you have to have a certain level of wealth or income, $200,000 by yourself, 300,000 with a partner. 21:23 or a million dollars in net worth minus your home. And there was talk or has been talk that that could be indexed or changed or raised. And we did some rough calculations at the Angel Capital Association. There were also calculations done, then I don't remember the exact numbers, but you could go even go back and watch our meeting on sec.gov and you'd be able to see that, but it would eliminate. 21:47 a lot of the people who were already angel investors. And we only have about 300,000 angel investors in the country. And remember, there's about 330 million of us here that live in the US. So, there's a lot of opportunity, let's just say that. And if we started to eliminate the ability for people to participate based on an income or wealth level, that would be challenging. And it would make fundraising for entrepreneurs even that much harder. 22:14 So what we suggested in one of the, and you can actually see the recommendation that we made on the SEC's website, but we made a recommendation to say, hey, how about we don't actually focus so much on income and wealth and we focus more on education. And we'd like to see there be an education component that would allow for more people to be able to participate in this asset class. And the Angel Capital Association has put in 22:43 And I think there were some others as well who have put in some proposals to say, hey, we could help with this. So that's kind of where we are right now. Right. And as emeritus chair of the ACA, can you talk about some of the innovations that have come out recently? You've talked about angel funds. I'd like you to talk. You've talked a little bit now about credit investor and the definition of your work at the SEC. 23:13 But the recent publication, I'm a member of ACA, attended the annual summit this year. I found the work that you've done on the actual convertible note form for the angel investment is fascinating. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Sure. So there are documents that were put out by the National Venture Capital Association years ago 23:42 companies who want to fundraise to use those documents for a priced round. Of course, that would be for actual equity, you're selling shares of your company, that kind of thing. And those are great. And very, very helpful to entrepreneurs, because I think in some cases, it can save them a lot of time and money in legal costs. However, there wasn't really anything out there that could be used for convertible notes. 24:09 Safes, yes, there is a kind of a standard safe note that people view and that has also saved entrepreneurs time and money, but the Angel Capital Association was interested in putting something out that was like that, but in the convertible note form that was more, quote unquote standard or something that, at least a starting point for entrepreneurs so they didn't have to start from scratch or have to go to an attorney and have them draw up all kinds of paperwork. So yeah, and that's available on the ACA's website. 24:40 So this which gears back to one of your other facets. You are associate producer of a film called Show Her the Money. I first heard of it through, I guess meeting in February and the Thai SoCal chapter on September 19th will be actually screening this film. 25:09 in conjunction with a global competition for women led company. So I'm, when I, um, learned that you would join me as a guest, um, of the podcast, I was delighted to get kind of a scoop also about show her the money, how you got involved as associate producer and what can we expect? Yeah, it turned out to be a tremendous film. 25:35 Catherine Gray and Kai Dickens, who put it all together, Kai Dickens, the director, it was Catherine Gray's idea, have really done a tremendous job of showcasing through storytelling the problem and bringing more awareness to this problem. So Catherine Gray and I met after somebody saw my TED Talk and saw hers and said, hey, do you guys know you're talking about almost exactly the same thing? 26:02 know each other. And this was at the time right before the film came out that Katherine was still looking for a few investors. And so I myself and a couple other angels that I know we, we kind of helped fill that round up so that she could move the move the film forward. And we've been on a 50 city tour that's now turning into probably close to 100 cities. Katherine's been such a trooper. She has really gone to a lot. 26:30 a lot of the screenings. I've gone to several, but it's a lot to kind of go city to city almost, I mean, there's nowadays, there's a showing almost every day in different places around the country. So there, we try to have at least someone from the film or an associate producer there at each of the screenings, but it's really been fun to showcase it. 26:54 We always have a panel afterward and we get questions from the audience. We let the audience kind of, you know, give their comments and what they're thinking about it. And the, I mean, the feedback has just been tremendous. And will there be a sequel? That's a good question. There's a lot of talk about a lot of different types of things, so you never know. Right, excellent. So you heard it here on the Founder's Sandbox. Marsha Dawood is actually. 27:22 Associate producer of a film, Show Her the Money. The Thai SoCal chapter will be screening the film on September 19th at Noah House here in Hollywood, Los Angeles, so very exciting. Well, Marcia, I like to have a part of my podcast where my listeners can learn about how to contact you. They will be, you have many touch points, but what would you... 27:51 suggest as some of the best ways to get in contact with you? Well, I would just say go to my website, which is simply marshadalwood.com. You can learn about all kinds of things. I have lots of free resources there. Currently, you can even download a free chapter of the book as a preview. Oh, to do that, they can do that. And of course, I have everything, I linked everything on there, including the TEDx talk in Charlotte. I did do a rap battle. I don't 28:20 Did you do a rap battle? I did a rap battle called Angel Investor versus Venture Capitalist. Because I was watching YouTube with my step sons one day and we saw a rap battle between Snow White and Elsa. I thought, well, that's clever. And that's a cute way to like kind of get a message across. 28:44 maybe I could do a rap battle about an angel investor versus a venture capitalist just so that people would kind of have a better understanding of what the differences are. So one day I just sat there, this was before chat GPT, and kind of wrote it out, you know, like what it would be. And, and of course, I'm cracking myself up the whole time. And because I was like, Oh, that's funny, you know, how can we make that, you know, more clever? So anyway, 29:13 I debuted it at one of the ACA summits a couple of years ago, but that's all I can say to you. Excellent. So in the show notes, you will have access to the TED Talk, the order online of Marsha Doudwood's new book, and you have your podcast, the Angel Next Door podcast. And who do you invite there? Well, I saw a need about three years ago. That's when I started it. 29:42 that there really wasn't anybody talking about how do you become an angel? Or how would you help a company with either mentoring or helping them with investing? There's a lot of podcasts out there about entrepreneurship, lots of things about pitching, raising money, how did you build your business? And they were great, I like all of them. But I was really seeing a need for how can we showcase this, an angel. 30:08 that can be anybody, it can be your next door neighbor. So that's kind of how the title came about. And on the podcast, I have people who are angel investors who are just telling their story about why and how they became an angel investor, how they learned about it. But from there, it's kind of spun into other things. I've had four Congress people on talking about small business in their community and why it's important and what they're doing in Congress in order to help to... 30:38 spur economic development. I've also had two of the SEC commissioners on, which is fun to go through what they're thinking about and the changes that could potentially also help entrepreneurs. And then I've had several people come on who were experts in areas like equity crowdfunding, debt crowdfunding, revenue-based financing. 31:00 And then of course, one of the things that angels always wanna know about are tax benefits, even though taxes sometimes seems like a boring topic, taxes are something that everybody really needs to know about and there are several tax advantages that angels can partake in, but many are not known. Exactly. Excellent. So before we finish, I actually go back to 31:29 the founder sandbox and kind of the three cornerstones that I am working on as my mission and building resilient, purpose-driven and scalable companies. So I always like to ask my guests and not one guest has the same definition or I guess the meaning to each of these terms. So I'd like each of you to tell me what does resilience mean to you, Marsha? 31:56 So when I think of resilience, it makes me think of how hard it is for an entrepreneur to build a company, just anyone to build a company. So resilience is that tenacity that you need in order to keep going on the hard days and the days that you just wanna throw your hands up in the air and say, why am I doing this? So that is really so important because building a company is such a... 32:22 hard work and it's so much harder than I think anybody ever realizes when they go into it. And I've talked to so many entrepreneurs who've said, oh my gosh, this is like, this is way, way, way harder than I thought it was going to be. But it also takes a village. So that resiliency needs to have a community around it. And so that's why I really am such a proponent of angel investing because we really can form that community and help build the resilience with the entrepreneur. Thank you. Purpose driven. 32:51 I think you have a purpose, right? Which is educating on the asset class and how to become an investor. So what is purpose driven for you? Well, I think that goes back to do good while doing well. I mean, I wasn't necessarily going to title my book that. It was the title of my TEDx talk. However, I went through... 33:16 as you do as an author, you go through many, many, many iterations of what the title is gonna be, because it's one of the most important things. And I did several focus groups where I gave people options about titles and do good while doing well, kept coming back and people were like, that resonates with me. So then I just think, purpose driven, that's what people really, that was the thing that really, it just stuck with them. And so, 33:45 I think aligning your values with your money, with your goals, you know, all of those things are a great way to be purpose driven. To make a difference. Right. Sustainable growth. What's the meaning for you sustainable? So sustainable means like long term, we need to be able to do something that's hard and be able to. 34:12 continue to do it. And if we come up against roadblocks, how do we pivot? We tell entrepreneurs all the time, it's okay to pivot. It's okay if you come up against something in your company and you're like, wait a minute, this doesn't fit or it doesn't work and maybe I need to change something, that's okay. I mean, everything that happened in 2020 with COVID. Oh my goodness. Lots of pivoting, right? So to me. 34:37 sustainable growth is like, how can we do that? How can we be in the right mindset so that no matter what happens, we can keep going and we can keep building what we really wanna see in the world. Very nice, thank you. Last and final question, Marcia. Did you have fun today in the sandbox? Oh, love playing in the sandbox. And had I known that you were also a rapper, I would have had a question in there, but thank you for sharing the fun side. 35:07 angel investing, right? So to my listeners, if you like this episode with Marsha Dawood, sign up for the monthly release of founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional services go-to podcast to learn about how to build resilient, purpose-driven, and scalable companies while doing good. Thank you very much for joining me and Marsha Dawood signing off for today. Thank you.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Khalid Machchate; accomplished 3 x exit startup founder, operator of a startup studio, board of director positions and now in his “NEXT ACT,“ Khalid is a member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed 6th, for the development of the Kingdom. According to Brenda, "Khalid checks many boxes as a guest to the Founders Sandbox. The topic we settled upon is Purpose, when we met for the first time his remark to me about after he found the podcast and later on the website of Next Act Advisors, my consulting business,  “It strikes me that not many people are thinking about their Next Act in life.“ They walk through Khalid's origin story: growing up in a fishing village in Morrocco in a humble family; developing and selling his first software at the age of 11 years, and most recently;  Khalid joined as the youngest member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee for the Special Commission on the Development Model by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed 6th, leading strategically the national development agenda through inclusive and sustainable public policies, technology and innovation.  In conversations they share on how they intentionally and proactively work to provide a roadmap through digital transformation and human capital skill-up with clients. You can find out more about Khalid at: Linked IN  https://www.linkedin.com/in/khalidmachchate/  https://khalidmachchate.com/ And view more of his content here : https://www.forbesafrica.com/under-30/2019/07/01/30under30-technology-category-2019/ https://www.bbc.com/afrique/region-41804783 Khalid Machchate: A Day in Our Digital Future | TED Talk A Revival of Fintech Funding in 2024 is Just a Pipe Dream... Or is it? | The Fintech Times Top 3 Digital Ways to Become the Best Leader Your Organization Deserves - The Good Men Project https://www.menabytes.com/startup-golden-rules/   Read an article by brenda on this topic at:  https://nextactadvisors.com/next-act-as-a-prelude-to-a-last-act/ You can read the article in full by subscribing to Next Act Advisors at https://nextactadvisors.com/product/subscriptions/ and be sure to use the special discount code "sandbox25" for friends of The Founder's Sandbox for 25% off your subscription. transcript: 00:04 Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke corporate governance knowledge. 00:33 This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the Founder's Sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. As a thank you to Founder's Sandbox listeners. 01:03 you can use code sandbox25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:17 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox podcast is now in its second season. I am Brenda McCabe, the host. This monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. My mission is really simple. 01:44 I bring guests to the podcast who themselves are founders, business owners, corporate directors, investors, and professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests, including topics around resilience, purpose-driven organizations, and sustainable growth, 02:11 My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Khalid Machateh. He's joining the podcast today as an accomplished three-time exit startup founder, operator of a startup studio, board of director positions, and now in his next act. 02:41 He is a member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed VI for the development of the kingdom. So thank you Khalid for joining me in the Founder's Sandbox today. Thank you for having me, Brenda. Great. Well, you check mini boxes as a guest to the Founder's Sandbox. And I talked about business owners, corporate board directors, professional service. But this topic we settled. 03:09 upon his purpose. You know, we met for the first time and you'd actually spent some time on some podcasts as well as Next Act Advisors consulting website. And you remarked to me, you know, I don't think there are a lot of people that are thinking about their next act, right? And so we're gonna talk about throughout the podcast today purpose, Kelly's purpose and designing for his next act. 03:38 Maybe for my listeners, we'll get a glimpse of some ideas of how one's journey, professional and personal, really informs what your next act might be. So through Khalid's origin story, he grew up in a small fishing village in Morocco in a humble family. He developed and sold his first software at the age of 11. 04:05 And most recently, after many, many years, he joined as the youngest member of Morocco's Royal Advisory Committee for the Special Commission on the Development Model by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed VI, leading strategically the national development agenda through inclusive and sustainable public policies, technology, and innovation. We're going to hear a little bit more about a state visit that Khalid just had. 04:34 in the United States of America. No, in our conversations Khalid, we shared how we both in our businesses, we intentionally and proactively work to provide a roadmap through digital transformation and human capital skill up with our clients. There is more to discover with you today. You know, my journey of moving back to the United States after over 25 years in Europe really 05:03 became my why, became purpose-driven, scalable, and very resilient. And I took that into my business. What would be your tagline, Khalid, if you were to describe your journey? 05:19 My tagline would be probably the out of the box since we're talking about, you know, so we're in the Fambur sandbox. So it would probably be the most out of the box Moroccan. 05:49 has been, basically that is what I hear from everybody, from my family to people that I studied with back when I was in school, to people that know me now. It's the, you don't fit into any box that our kind of corporate world or business world has. And so, yeah, that would be my tagline. I love it. 06:18 out of the box. And again, on your journey, it was fascinating just to research not only your LinkedIn page, the many accolades that you've received over the years. But more importantly, you have your own website, Khalid Machate. And there I we hadn't touched upon it, but you are an active public speaker. And you have speak around different themes, technology, 06:46 business and entrepreneurship, policy and governance, and you also share your own story on the stage. So I'm gonna cut to the chase. I am most interested for my listeners at the Founder's Sandbox on your story. Of course. So my story can resonate with anybody that grew up in a very small town. So I grew up in a... 07:16 in a small fishing village in the south of Morocco. The reason why that is is that my father was a public school teacher. And within our schooling system, once you get a job as a public school teacher for the government, you get assigned to where you're gonna start your career. And so you don't get a say into where you're going. 07:42 And so while we were living in McNaas, which is the city I was born in, after a year of me being born, my father had his assignment and we got assigned about 2000 kilometers south. So in the village, everything is late. The event of internet is late. 08:11 News are late, opportunities are scarce, you don't get access to much. There are no associations for education or for children's activities. And so basically we always had to make up things ourselves. How to get entertained, how to find access to music, et cetera. 08:39 And so one thing that I kind of stumbled upon, because my father was interested in, was programming. So software programming. So my dad, again, public school teacher salary for to give you an idea is around $250 a month for, you know, when you're starting out your career. 09:07 And so he was trying to round up his end of months. And so he self-learned how to fix computers. And a few years into fixing computers, he started thinking, how can I add more to that service? And then started to learn how to program as he kind of fixed himself a makeshift computer at home from the pieces that he would get from each of the fixing jobs. 09:33 And so, and all of this, I mean, he had his job, he had his salary. So the self-starting and the initiative taking kind of came from there for me. It was definitely, you know, a C to learn in my case. My dad never told me to do anything, never taught me to code. 10:00 He was very clear on, you know, I do what I want with my time and I go and I enjoy myself how I want it. But the books would be left around the house, the coding books, and I got just curious and I started taking those books and using the software on my dad's computer and learning how to code. 10:26 And that was how I got to creating my first kind of accomplished software. Started around the age of nine and finished it at around 11, where I started sharing it with school buddies and then my teacher. And at first it was just a, you know, here you can burn the CD. 10:53 if you want to learn, it was a biology course, but made in an interactive gamified way. Because I got bored at biology classes. And so what happened was, I started giving it around, and a teacher of mine actually, not my father, told me, why aren't you like making any money out of this? And I was like, well, I just thought I could help out. 11:20 And I was like, yes, but that is a lot of value. You spend a lot of time working on that. And so, yeah. And so that's how I started selling the software. And then I ended up selling it to school to distribute to their students. And that's how my first- At 11 years of age. Our story. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And also, you know, you're a- 11:49 a product of the public school system, humble origins, and in your public speaking, you are probably very influential in Moroccan youth today and other Middle Eastern environments, I would imagine. So- I hope though. That's your goal. So thank you. You then went on to- 12:20 create two other businesses, can you speak to them? And were they for profit or nonprofit? So to continue on the story, then around the end of middle school, that's where my dad was able to get reassigned to my my birth city, which was McNeist. And so I started high school there. Now, 12:46 going from where I was, again, where internet had only been introduced at that point, maybe a couple of years, three, four years before that. And so I started finding out that, oh, in the big city, there are a lot more opportunities. So there are associations for students that you can find internships and, you know, different opportunities to 13:14 learn more or to do kind of side jobs or to find also just potential clients because I was always still coding and still making little websites, little management software, etc. And so it just kind of made me aware that the world was a lot bigger than where I started. And at the same time 13:43 hanging out with my family and a cousin of mine introduced me to the culture of manga, which is the Japanese cartoons. Yeah, I was I think 14 at the time. And yeah, I loved it. And I started watching quite a lot of it while being fascinated by the culture. And so 14:10 At some point I started feeling that I was getting fluid and understanding what was happening on screen without having to read the subtitles. And I was like, oh, that would be interesting. You know, I already understand. Maybe let's try to learn also the grammatical aspects of the language so that I can, you know, say that I speak another language, which is Japanese. 14:35 And so yeah, I looked online, I found quite a few websites and quite a few forums where you could learn how to write, you could learn the grammar, etc. of Japanese language. And by the time I was in the end of high school, so the year of graduation from high school, I was fairly fluent and I could write well. 15:01 And so what I did was I got myself into an NGO, a nonprofit that was catering towards university students to have access to internships. And those, you know, you have local internships, but also international internships. This was an international NGO. And so I went to the NGO. I... 15:30 And please, guys, do not hold me up to this. I was 16 at the time. I lied my way through to tell them that I was a student at university while I was still in high school, just because I thought that it wasn't fair that I had the knowledge and I had the possibility of accessing this experience. But just because of my age, I wasn't able to. 15:58 to access it. And so that's what I did. I learned about a particular university and I started saying that I was from that university. Happily enough, they did not check any, you know, credentials and then didn't ask for my ID. I didn't have an ID at the time. Again, I was 16. 16:18 And so, yeah, I had my first interview in the space of like a few weeks after I was enrolled into the internship support program. I met with the CEO of the small company in shipping in Japan that were looking to hire an intern for to help them with their IT management system. 16:43 And five minutes from the beginning of the interview, the guy was trying to speak in English, and it was very hard for him. And so I said, you know what, we can switch to Japanese. Two hours later, the obviously I was hired. But not only that, the guy was saying, you know what, I cannot just hold you for myself. So I'm going to share your resume with all of my CEO friends. So basically, I became the 17:11 this monkey savant that's coming from the Orient, you know, speaking the language and having looking nothing like what they're used to. He shared my resume with I believe 20 of his friends and I ended up having I think five projects at the same time in the space of six months to do for all these folks. 17:39 in Japan. So that was my first international contract. But that's also that was the trigger for me to start hiring other people because well, I was overwhelmed by the amount of things that I had to do. And so I just tried to look for my friends that were you know, coders and hackers of time and people that could that could help me out and started paying them, you know, from from out of pocket. 18:07 And then thought, oh, you know what? This is not very comfortable. Maybe I can, you know, I need a structure to be able to do more, better invoicing or get paid better. And so that's how I created my first company, which ended up becoming my family office now, which is KNW technology group. And so just for reference, KNW technology group, now it's a, now it's a group. It's. 18:36 in five countries. I mean, we have offices in five countries, we have clients in almost 80 countries, we're present in Africa, Europe, Middle East, and APAC, Asia, and the US and covering the Americas. And so, you know, we have quite a large footprint. 19:00 But it started this way. It started by me. At the age of 16, although you fibbed your way through it, right? And learning a language. Amazing. Wow. So you've clearly owned businesses, scaled them not only nationally, but internationally, and at a very, very tender age. Fast forward. OK, we won't talk about your age here. 19:30 People can read them in the show notes. There's some articles for you to feature. So you can do the math and discover Khalid's age. You then struck out pretty recently and decided to obtain credentials as ESG leader with a certification that you pursued both with HSBC and KPMG. Can you? 19:59 What made you pivot to really going deep into ESG, which today it's like, at least in the United States, very front and center. You were a pioneer. So what made you pursue those credentials, Khalid? Thank you. 20:25 In my case, and this was part of the initial conversation, which was preparing my next act. So around, I believe 2018, 2019, particularly 2019, I started feeling that I was kind of ready to move on from managing the group. And so throughout... 20:51 kind of the 15 or something years that I was at the head of the group and developing it, you know, developing various startups under the startup studio within the group. And all of that was exciting and, you know, we were starting projects, but still the underlying structure that is that you're running a large company that answers to clients that, you know, does kind of major projects. 21:20 They all kind of start looking the same after a while. We've worked with over 20 industries. So we've done the rounds. And so now it became more repetitive and there's nothing new under the sun. They started feeling that disconnect. And I really wanted to, basically I had a succession plan in place and I was always thinking that 21:50 I needed to move on from this. This is now is a management play and I'm a creative person, not the best manager or I'm not just not as excited about managing an existing structure as I was starting things and building new things and tinkering with things. 22:16 And so even throughout the 15 years, I've had the great luck of having great COO. And so every now and then I would run away from my duties as a group manager. And I would go do something else. So I was the innovation director for the Abu Dhabi government for a while. I was the, you know, an expert with the G20 in Argentina. I was. 22:45 part of the World Economic Forum panel of experts in Davos. I did quite a few things here and there that mainly had to do with policy at the highest level, strategy and innovation and technology. And so that's kind of what put me on the track of thinking at the time. 23:13 in the early 2010s is the governance and the sustainability aspect is not as commonly talked about compared to profits and margins, top lines. 23:37 And that kind of made me think, oh, so people, when they think about, you know, companies and managing them, they're not thinking as much about the environments within which the companies are evolving, as much as they think about, you know, the ins and the outs of the company itself. So there. And that made me, you know, realize that, oh, I 24:06 do want to create impact here and how can I create impact here is by trying to integrate technology in a way that improves the relationship of a company to their environment and their impact on their environment. And so 24:27 in my next act planning was, okay, I'll transition out of managing the group and I will seek to understand better how to incorporate ESG principles into the board governance. And so the program, which was a full year program, 24:56 was a big kind of micro masters that was very heavily focused on use cases of actual businesses and that's kind of the specialty of KPMG and more on the financial integration from HSBC to 25:25 understands and become a well-qualified board director for publicly traded companies, foundations, family offices, but with a large emphasis on the ESG and on kind of changing the mindsets in boards. So our role as graduates of this program is not to be a regular board seat, 25:54 but to be the kind of change and impact board seat and to kind of negotiate our way into changing the strategy of the company or the foundation or the family office that we are in the board of towards more impactful environment. Excellent. So it started in the 2010s, you said, right? When you kind of cut out 26:23 left the business in charge of your COO, had the opportunity to influence policy, but technology related in the MENA region, and then got formal credentialing 2018, 2019. Still you were head of the wave, right? So you do think out of the box, right? So today you do sit on a few corporate boards. 26:51 for profit and not for profit. What I wanted you to share is some of the work you've done with charitable foundations, your family foundation is one of them, but also for the for profit. So can you speak to a few of the organizations where you have been sitting or you've turned out but you've been sitting as a board member, please? 27:21 role as board member was always, you know, my way of being involved within a particular organization where I can provide the maximum value for the minimum amount of time. So that's kind of how I approached my next act, which is I do want to have more of my time for myself. 27:50 But at the same time, I still want to have impact on a larger scale. And so that's how I both selected the organizations, whether for or nonprofit, that I joined, obviously, other than the fact that I, you know, my personal interests. But it was also my way of giving as much 28:18 impact and of my value and expertise as possible while respecting my own time and my own kind of personal engagements. So I'll talk a little bit about the first the nonprofits as I wanted to be able to touch upon you know all the 28:44 the mission related or my purpose related focus, which was always how do I improve the basic life services for citizens of my country and of Africa. This has been kind of a pulling. 29:11 a theme and mission for me for as long as I could remember. And so one of the activities that I've done is supporting Africa-based entrepreneurs to have access to international markets and to have access to international funding. And so I was on the board of Demo Africa, which was an initiative that 29:40 selected some of the best African startups. So what we mean by African startups is startups that are made by African entrepreneurs and founders and that are targeted towards a need within their market. So it's not a global company or FinTech right away. No, it's actually a company born out of a need that addresses an African market. 30:10 And so taking those, giving them all the tools, teaching them how to be presentable, how to be adapted towards the international market, all the while keeping their focus and their mission on improving the livelihoods of African, you know, of their country. 30:39 Yeah, and so I've done that for I believe three years. You know, in that in that time period, the organization has helped founders raise, I believe over 150 million US dollars. Yeah, my numbers are still I still correct. A lot of them have joined a major 31:06 uh, uh, renowned kind of accelerators like Y Combinator and plug and play. Um, and a lot of them have gone to, uh, uh, you know, establish in, in multiple countries in the world, but always having kind of this underlying mission of serving the continent. Um, so that's one, uh, second would be, uh, the tech green foundation of which I'm still on the, on the board. 31:31 This is a MENA-based foundation that is there to promote and celebrate impactful initiatives and people within the MENA region and supporting them into growing and having more impact across the region coming out of their particular country. 32:00 These are privately held, so there are a few NDAs involved. I'll share just a little bit of the underlying themes. So I'm on a family office board that has multiple holding kind of companies underneath the structure. And the reason why I joined is that because they wanted to 32:29 have a better way of quantifying their impact on the community and on also in bettering the way they track their different investments across the board. And so my role as an independent board member was to come in, both help them with understanding what the financial structures and governance models are that would best suit their multi-facility. 32:58 industry focus, but also how to integrate sustainable monitoring and evaluation practices within their strategic oversight and how to structure their long-term strategies with this in mind, with the sustainability aspect in mind. Another one is a scale-up, which is a larger startup. 33:26 for the lack of a better explanation. So a scale up, they've fundraised, I believe, four rounds till today. They're growing within emerging markets, which is one of the reasons why they've reached out. And so their expansion within emerging markets has found a few blockages with regards to 33:53 cultural contextualization and understanding the mechanics of emerging markets, which is one of the things that I've worked within. Again, the 80 countries that I'm operating, a lot of them are, actually most of them are within the emerging market category. And so, yeah. 34:16 My work was to support them, understand how to contextualize for emerging markets, understand that the regulatory aspects of each of these markets, and that they needed to account for that both from a risk management standpoint, but also from an operational dilution of culture and dilution of processes and principles. And so... 34:45 This might sound a little bit more technical, but obviously to our entrepreneurs and board director listeners, it might be kind of what they do on a regular basis. But I just wanted to give a little bit of insight on that. That is quite extensive. Thank you for that. And there is at least two common themes, either in both the nonprofit 35:14 for profit. It's all around contextualizing for emerging markets, the regulatory regimes around technology, right? And the environmental and impact and society, so ESG. So how it affects the livelihood of those people, stakeholders, be they employees, suppliers, 35:42 in the markets of these that these companies for profit serve. So there is a common, common theme there Khalid. You know, you've received many accolades. I'm going to name them off here, and they will be in the show notes. And I'll get to the question in a minute here. You've received the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2019. You've received 36:11 the United Nations 100 most influential people of African descent. And that was this year. The young Arab pioneer and 2023 Africa lion and entrepreneur of the year 2017. And I don't know whether I left any out. But are is there one that you felt was more rewarding than another in hindsight now? 36:43 Well, actually within the list, I mentioned mainly the ones that were a bit transformative for me in a way. I believe the tally now is about 30 international awards. 37:05 And so the ones I mentioned were mainly ones that came at a turning point in each case. So 2017 was kind of the one of the largest international expansion years for us. Okay. It was one where one of our startups was, you know, very, very well. 37:32 uh uh uh uh prized and and poised within the uh the the international scene um and you know we had accolades from europe from the u.s um uh but the fact that we've won the you know the the the the africa lion and entrepreneur of the year for me was um oh so um you know within my continent i am you know somebody sees what i'm doing 38:02 and I'm doing something right. Whenever you're in an international forum, you feel like sometimes you're the token piece of representation. That's either due to DI or whatever the case may be, right? And so I've come to appreciate 38:30 the fact that I would be the one opening the door perhaps for others. And so being the first on the G20 stage or at a World Economic Forum stage became a way for me to say, oh, so there, you know now that there's the possibility that you also as a Moroccan, as an African, um, become part of this, um, uh, you know, become also, um, uh, Forbes 30 under 30 or, um, uh, speak at a World Economic Forum. 39:00 But back then in 2017, again, I was like this, you know, company founder with all my focus being on how do I break my imposter syndrome? You know, as a 20 something year old, how do I get over the fact that I feel that everything is undeserved, whatever we receive. And so that was that that's why. 39:29 that is on the list that I shared with you because for me that was like, oh, so the, you know, the idea of you can't be a prophet in your own community. Well, we've broken through that. The United Nations one is just because that honors me as a person. 39:53 Instead of, you know, some of my companies or whatever the case may be, but that's not you actually made impact beyond the organizations that you've worked on that you've developed that you've made. And so it felt like a, you know, lifetime achievement award type thing, you know, it just happened on the year that I finally put the mantle of the manager of the group down. 40:23 And so it felt like a consecration and a validation of all the 15 years that I've worked towards and all the things that I've done. So it was like, for me as a person that I've done good. And the Forbes one was in 2019, which came at the time where I was thinking, oh, I want to leave soon. 40:51 And at the time, before that, we didn't have any fancy, you know, kind of world-renowned prizes. We had regionals, we had in Europe, we had in the US, but none of these kind of everybody knows it award. And at the same time, also, I was approaching 30. 41:17 And you know, the, the, the imposter syndrome part started kicking in again, saying, Oh, you, everybody that's anybody has had a 30 under 30 listing, you know? So for, for founders, uh, that's kind of the, the Holy grail that you, that once you get before 30, you're, you know, you're stamped in stone. And so, yeah. So it was, uh, it was really, uh, 41:45 a fun thing to think, oh, I've gotten it actually a little bit earlier than 30. But I got it and now I can relax and get over, you know, the fact that I get to the three zero, I got my Lister. A lot of these are actually imposter syndrome related but 42:14 and really putting yourself out there to be an example for aspiring entrepreneurs to see that you can think out of the box and become relevant in the business world, while also following some purpose, which is around sustainability, which is around human capital development, and providing opportunities for the livelihood of others. So. 42:44 there is that commonality. One, you know, when I was reflecting, reading your materials in Seneca, the Roman philosopher said, you know, luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So for your last, it's not your last, it's your next and current involvement, you have been named the youngest member. 43:14 of the commission for the what is it called here? Yes, the Royal advisory committee, Royal Advisory Committee by nomination from His Majesty King Mohammed for the development of the kingdom. You recently did a State Department tour in several states here in the United States. And while not, you know, revealing state secrets. 43:43 know, what was what is that like? How does that fit into your next act, Khalid? Um, of course. So let's, you know, again, one of the one of the things that I've done, and that, you know, 44:06 And that I appreciate doing. And I've done again throughout my professional career, getting out of managing the company was public policy regarding like around technology and how can different countries and states collaborate with each other for the 44:32 of their people's societal situation or socioeconomic positioning. And so since putting down the mantle as a manager, two things came to mind. One is that I wanted to continue sharing my expertise. 44:59 And that's where speaking, sitting on boards comes in. So I don't want to let all of the experience and all the richness of the things that I've learned, that I've practiced go to waste. And so that's one. And two, I want to be an eternal learner. Like I have been throughout. 45:25 my work as an entrepreneur. I want to always learn and always improve myself. And so the program with KPMG and HSBC was the first one on this journey, but I've also set up a few learning journeys, let's call them. And this- 45:54 to the US was one of them. And so the learning is by meeting all sorts of actors within the United States, whether it's public or private, around an open, secure digital economy. So talking about the subjects like cybersecurity, regulation for AI, development of digital economy, 46:24 understanding emergency management and all the things surrounding how to regulate also blockchain and cryptocurrencies and all of these things. So in three weeks, we've met, I believe, above 50 organizations from state actors to 46:52 US attorneys offices to companies like Discord or Plug and Play to universities like Carnegie Mellon and their centers for research and development to organizations like NIST. And so we've had quite a large panel of organizations that we've collaborated with and kind of had these exchanges. 47:20 of experience and knowledge, both from the US standpoint, understanding how things function within the US and what those organizations are working on, but also from our side to give them a little bit of what the rest of the world, how we view regulation versus the US's view, how we view the research and development paradigms. 47:50 etc. So this was kind of it for me. It was a learning journey but also a formal exchange with these organizations as you know a way for both of us to develop a better understanding of the state of the world of best practices from both sides and it was definitely a great 48:21 Thank you. You know, we were talking about your, your, the State Department visit, and I shared with you the largest seed fund in the United States of America is the SPR, right? And it's different branches, you know, National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, etc. And I asked if they're, you weren't too familiar with that, right? Small business. 48:48 Innovation Research, SBIR, and early, early proof of concept, phase one and phase two with $250,000, typically non-dilutive. That's kind of how the US does it. And the equivalent in Morocco, what were you sharing with me? Because I thought it was fascinating. Yes. Can you share? Sounds good. 49:12 So akin to the SBIR, which you mentioned during our last conversation, in Morocco we have an organization called, previously called the CCG, but now it's called Temwilcom, which is kind of a state investment vehicle. It invests in a lot of traditional environments, 49:41 as the state investment vehicle. It has also an SME and startup support vertical. It started, I believe about seven years ago throughout a co-funding from World Bank. I believe it was a 50, $50 million co-investment, so $100 million in total. 50:09 And it is structured for Moroccan entrepreneurs as follows. You have up to... It started as up to $20,000, now it's $40,000 of grants. So, full grant. 50:28 Then there is an addition of, it was $70,000, now I believe it's $100,000, $120,000. And it's cumulative, so like if you start the first one and you are at the end of the funding, you can request the second one. 50:48 The second one is what we call an honor debt, which is basically non-dilutive, non-collateralized funding. So basically, if your company makes it, great. Then you have, they call it a couple of grace periods, so I believe three or four years where you don't have to pay back. 51:15 and then you start paying back in small installments. If your company makes it, if your company doesn't make it and closes, that's fine. And there's no pursuit of recuperation of fund from your person. 51:34 And so, above this, so between the two, I believe we're at $160,000 between the grants, at least in the current edition, which starts this year. And afterwards, you get, I believe, up to $350,000 or $400,000, and that's dilutive capital. But with no, like, where the collateral or the guarantee. 52:02 is not made by yourself or by your business. It is co-sponsored by the state, so co-sponsored by this fund. So the organism of investment actually co-invests in regular VC and PE investment funds. To allocate a guaranteed section of the funds, 52:31 for these companies. So while the money is not all from the state, but the state covers the percentage that allows the funds to kind of skip over the risk management aspect and not request collateral or not look at the companies existing infrastructure as collateral, but 52:59 the percentage that is coming from the state is what constitutes the collateral in that case. Wow, and you know, you, there are probably a lot of Moroccans that don't even know that this exists. It's my own experience and my consulting practice when founders, particularly in deep tech. Have you applied for an SBIR? What's that? It's a fabulous instrument for non-dilutive funding and to really test your ideas. 53:27 So out of the lab and to potentially commercialization. Well, we're coming to almost the end. Every single guest that joins the Founders Sandbox podcast, I ask you questions that are related to really what I'm passionate about, purpose-driven companies, resilient companies, and sustainable or scalable companies. 53:54 What does resilience mean to you? And not one guest has the same definition or meaning, and it's just a delight to hear what does resilience mean for you, Khalid? So because of the way I grew up and because of the way I, you know, I structured all my businesses with zero regard to any particular business book, just because 54:23 I wanted to go on everything by instinct. And my instinct was very risk averse, which is weird for an entrepreneur, because my objective was to basically take care of my family, take care and support the development of my country and young people that did. 54:50 that were in the same situation as I was, which is not having access to opportunities and struggling throughout their schooling, trying to find their way through to a better future. And so that's why from day one, I've never asked anybody that I've hired for a degree. 55:18 I've never asked them to speak a particular language unless it was really necessary. I structured my company in a way where people can work on what they really want and they can change what they want to work on at any point in time. I worked on the agile model way before it was as much of a trend as it is in the past few years. 55:46 We've had work from home since almost day one. The office is there just for client meetings if the rest of the teams are working from home. Yeah, I mean, again, everybody, whenever I install some different policy in the company or even when I started the startup studio. 56:15 model, it was really just to enable myself and people from my organization that wanted to be entrepreneurs and tell them, you know what, your family, if you want to start a venture, or if you have a great idea, let's do it here. Why do you have to like try to go unsupported anywhere else and try to make it on your own? And so resilience for me was a personal 56:43 like a big personal thing. I've had quite a few interesting kind of runnings with health issues, you know, with a lot of... So I was in a wheelchair for a year, as after, yeah, after an accident. I had typhoid fever coming out of nowhere and the... 57:10 antibacterial resistant one, so 60% chance of not making it. I've had quite a few things along the way that were that made it very hard to do what I wanted to do or to develop my my business or to even think straight. And so resilience is a strong word for me because that's the only thing I see as kind of a 57:39 uh theme on me building my business. It's how many challenges and how many difficulties I've had to to to come through to be able to access the opportunities that I've had or to be able to develop uh you know my company just a passport you know how hard it is to have a visa to Europe or the US or anywhere else with a Moroccan passport it's ridiculous. So try it like making it to 58:08 to your meetings and to sign like a big client to only find that you've been refused a visa for some very random, stupid reason. So again, resilience for me as a person that came from where I came from has a very, very kind of existential meaning. I can see that. And it ties probably into purpose-driven enterprise. So purpose-driven. 58:37 define that? Those startups that go through your accelerators? I mean, what is that strikes you? Curiosity. The startups that ran through my accelerator, one was in education, one was in healthcare, one was in emergency. 58:58 support for. So you can see the purpose going through right there. And the the the health care one was because, you know, my my my, my mom was was going out, trying to find, you know, some some medicines for for my cousin who was staying with us at the time and couldn't find a single it was a weekend. 59:28 And so to find a pharmacy on the weekend, you have to be able to like go and see on the ministry's website, what are the names of the pharmacies that are open at any particular weekend and because they switch. So every weekend, it's different pharmacies that you have to look for. And so it was very inconvenient, very difficult to access. And so I was like, why isn't there an app that can show you on a map what is this weekend, the active pharmacy? 59:58 And then I was like, okay, so not only that, but every time you want to go to the doctor, you have to look for the paperwork that you've gone through your tests and whatever that you've taken from your last visit. Why don't, why wouldn't you be able to have that on your phone? And so, yeah, all of that kind of culminated to a health personal assistant that had all these functionalities. 01:00:23 into one app. The emergency services, again, my mom and dad had an accident. It was in the middle of the city and still they've had to wait almost two hours for the emergency services to come in because it was in a darker alleyway and they just, you know, they avoided a dog, I believe, and hit 01:00:53 kind of bad, severe accidents. Yeah, sequels from that. And for me, it was like, how come that we don't have a system that can notify emergency services to where you are instead of, you know, a person that goes into an accident, even when they're awake enough to call for, you know, the emergency services. 01:01:20 They have to find where they are, even though they're in another town or they're disoriented. They have to describe where they are to the emergency person. It seemed so easily fixable with the basic technology. And so for me, that's what purpose is, is that we can't change the world all at once. 01:01:46 But we can change the things that we see in our lives. And if we changed it for us and for people that are around us, that impact can grow. Because if you have that issue, it's very likely that others do as well. And if you change what's around you, that change will resonate. 01:02:12 with everybody around you. The last point I will make is the platform that I've contributed or led the development of under the OCP Foundation came again from this very basic belief that people were going to university, going for things that they didn't really 01:02:42 understand or want, they weren't well oriented when they came out of high school. And then once that either that curriculum ends or doesn't even end or they drop out because they don't, you know, they don't feel that they can contribute through that, or simply don't find a job, it's, you know, in biology or philosophy or whatever the case it is. 01:03:11 economic opportunity market. They, you know, what are they going to work in with a philosophy degree other than, you know, in a mall or in a restaurant. And so, yes, there's a lot of content that's available online for them to learn a new skill, but they have to pay for most of the things that give you enough credibility or accreditation. 01:03:39 to have access to higher value economic opportunities. And so I was like, well, there is companies in the world that have a lot of these programs that enable you to have access to the certificated learning pathways within particularly within the digital economy for free. 01:04:05 You just need to be an organization that's affiliated with this company and you need to basically do a little bit of work to fundraise or to get that kind of support. And so I was like, why would my the young people from my country and from my continent not have access to these just because it's not usual? 01:04:30 for non-profits or organizations from our continent to have access to these things. And so that's why I developed the platform. And because of who I'm connected with and people that I've worked with throughout the years and my presence internationally, I knew who the director of IBM CSR was and we've worked together on a few things before. 01:04:54 I had a direct relationship with the director of partnerships of Coursera, so I was able to reach out to him as well, or the CEO of Microsoft Africa. So these connections enabled me to go say, hey, do you guys have any problems with accrediting a non-profit in Africa to be able to disperse those programs that you do? 01:05:21 And then taking those programs and putting them into a pedagogically better structured environment for students to go through one, two, and three to be able to be certified as a professional of software development or design or data or cybersecurity. And so this is again how I view purpose is that. 01:05:45 seeing something that is wrong or that is that you want to change within your environment and stopping to think that you can't change the whole world. But if you just, every one of us actually tries to change the things that they can throughout their means and if they can stretch just a little bit further to be able to impact. 01:06:11 the person next to them, I think that we'd have a much better planet to live on. It was the Dalai Lama that said, be the change you want to see in the world, right? Exactly. Fantastic. Sustainable or scalable growth, what does that mean to you? When you see it, you know it, right? Yeah. Sustainable for me is when everybody within the equation 01:06:41 of your stakeholder circle is happy with you being there. So if your company is in a town where you made that town better, if people that work for you don't want to leave unless they're forced to. 01:07:09 The organizations that represent people that work for you, your clients, your beneficiaries, whatever the case may be, are all going along or aligned with your vision because of your understanding of your presentation and you being amenable to supporting those. 01:07:38 elements of your stakeholder engagement circle. For me, that's what sustainability is. And I mean it, obviously, in a perfect world, right? So obviously, you know, some organizations or some people will have ulterior motives, some will have, you know, more personal things to go along. And as you know, you know, corporate politics and nonprofit politics are real. 01:08:05 thing that you need to be careful of when you're trying to engage with your stakeholder circle. But that's for me, I still view it as to what to strive for. And if you, you know, strive for the stars, the land on the moon kind of thing. So if, you know, if that's the best or the perfect situation, how do you try to approach or to get closer to that? 01:08:34 Scalability for me, and I don't see them as separate simply because I could have scaled my company to 10 times larger than it is today. But the reason why I've chosen to stop the growth at a certain level is that because that was the ideal size for me to be able to retain my sustainability. 01:09:03 goals and to retain the humanness of my organization, if that makes sense. Obviously, it's not a choice for everyone, but I believe in that growth for the sake of growth is no longer a sustainable trajectory for the world. We're thinking 01:09:30 infinite growth against finite resources. How do you marry those two? And so for me now, giving the understanding to organizations that you can actually be profitable without growing in that kind of unruly, unmanaged, unlimited growth. You can grow. 01:10:00 with your stakeholders, you can grow with your community. It will take a longer time, yes, but it will also enable you to grow in a more healthy environment, to be more solid and more resilient actually, which is why a lot of these kind of unicorns and hyper scalable, as we call them companies, 01:10:26 You find them, you know, going into the ground a couple of years later, it's because they stretched what hyper growth is, and they've broken the chain of both trust and resilience within their organization. Final question, Khalid. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Yes, it was very, very fun. 01:10:51 Kind of, you know, you dug a lot out of me. I think the last point is something that I don't share as much just because it's not as, you know, I don't get questioned about it a lot, but it's definitely made me kind of re-remember how I view sustainability and scalability and purpose. So thank you so much for being such a... 01:11:19 both a graceful yet very investigative host. That would be great. And I thank you for the time. Again, we chose the title purpose designing for NextAct. You've taken us through a very fast paced and short period of time journey along the different 01:11:48 choices you've made personally and professionally. And I think you're well on your way to your next act and you've put the cornerstones in place. So thank you for sharing this. And I hope you achieved your purpose, which was for this podcast, which was not too many people are thinking about their next act. So I hope this podcast to my listeners, if you like this episode with Khalid Machate. 01:12:17 sign up for the monthly release. We gather founders, business owners, investors, corporate board directors, and professional service providers, and motivational speakers who checks a lot of the boxes like Khalid with his own journey, three-time exit founder, accelerator, sitting on corporate boards, and giving back through social impacts. 01:12:47 Thank you again Khalid and to my listeners, you can download and listen to the Founder's Sandbox. Again, there's a monthly release on any major streaming platform. So thank you, have a great rest of the day. Thank you, you too.  

Brenda A. McCabe, MBA's personal experience has contributed to the work at Next Act Advisors. The Growth Strategies of NAA clients are always informed by current regulations and the understanding of why things have evolved to where they are because of the regulations and how they might change in the future. Enjoy this special Founder's Sandbox Podcast episode of Brenda reading one of her published blogs, "Data, Data, Everywhere" ; Now that all our data – private and enterprise, is out there, how can enterprises uphold trust? You can read along to this blog with your NAA subscription at : https://nextactadvisors.com/data-data-everywhere/

On this Episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Matt Clark-Chief Rainmaker of The Virtual Edge and, in his own words, "Chief Igniter" for business owners. They discuss Purpose in the context of Freedom as Matt shares his background as a rainmaker first as a waiter, where he discovered his gift in connecting people. Soon he evolved to selling door to door telecoms services, and co founder of a business that reached $6mn in two (2) years only to find himself with “golden handcuffs;” he had a wage and began selling his shares in the company after the thrill of building a company was no longer. From virtualedge his goal is to empower business owners to achieve growth without sacrificing their freedom. To learn more about how Matt's journey into helping businesses wasn't just a career choice; it was a calling to fill gaps he saw in the market and to change lives. Matt discovered his purpose and while traveling the world, he has served 1,800 clients in 26 countries representing over $100mn in sales.   You can find out more about Matt at:  The Virtual Edge  matt@thevirtualedge.com   Transcription: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This Founders Sandbox podcast, it's now into its second season. 00:27 The monthly podcast reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, scalable and sustainable business with great corporate governance underlying it. My mission is very simple. I want to assist entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests to the podcast are business owners themselves, corporate directors, investment funds, professional service providers who like me 00:57 want to use the power of the private enterprise, be that small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with my guests on topics that will include resilience, purpose-driven enterprises and sustainable growth, my goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build. 01:26 a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Matt Clark, who's joining us all the way from across the world in Thailand. He's joining in his capacity as chief rainmaker of the virtual edge. And in his own words, his role is one of chief igniter for business owners to enable them to be happy and richer. That's right. 01:55 Thank you, Matt, for joining us today. Thanks for having me on. After our initial introductory call the other day, it got me really excited to join in today and just have a conversation, ask some deep questions, and say what's on the mind. You speak about what's on the mind of many people today. Absolutely. And my listeners are business owners themselves, but also 02:21 corporate governance, corporate board directors, and professional service providers who really are affecting change through the companies they advise. And I'm really excited that you reached out as the CEO of the Virtual Edge, because I think what you're doing to provide freedom to business owners to live a very fulfilled lifestyle is quite unique. And I'm eager to get into the questions. 02:51 We chose my listeners, again, the podcast is available on most podcasts streaming platforms. And I always like to work with my guests on a catchy title that really goes back to either purpose, resilience, or sustainability. And Matt and I chose purpose, freedom to support lifestyles. So catchy title, but you'll hear more as we progress in the interview today. 03:21 Matt and I do have some commonalities in the type of services we provide. We both work with B2B companies and we are absolute connectors. How his ability to connect people is key to being a rainmaker and his choosing to create freedom for business owners to live a fulfilled life is what this podcast is going to be about today. Woohoo. 03:50 Woohoo. So you have a serial background as a rainmaker. You first started out, I believe in South Africa as a waiter. You discovered early on your gift in connecting people. You then were selling door to door sales and then co-founded with two partners, a business that in only two years you got to $6 million in revenue. And at that stage you 04:18 told me in your own words, you know, I felt like I had golden handcuffs and I really didn't feel fulfilled anymore. And so you set out to travel the world and nine years later, Virtual Edge is still going and you discovered your purpose while traveling in the world. And at this stage, nine years in, you've served 1,800 clients in over 26 countries. 04:47 representing over about a hundred million dollars in sales. So absolutely delighted for you to really walk us through your journey, what it is in terms of secret sauce at the virtual edge and as Chief Igniter, you bring to your clients. Can you share your origin story, Matt? Thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. And you kind of touched on some of their, I was never one of those people who knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. 05:17 You know, when you meet those people and they're just like, it's gonna be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor, became a doctor. And in some ways I envy them, where it's like they know what they wanna do and they can just go and do it. And in some ways I don't because there's just one path. And so I didn't know what I wanted to do when I left school. And my dad was like, you're gonna be the first Clark to go and get a degree. I was like, well, I think you barking up the wrong tree there. 05:47 I hated school. Yeah. And, you know, I actually went and my first job was as a waiter and I figured out that I really loved talking to people and I was good at it. And so, you know, I went over to the UK, started doing door to door sales there. And it's a really tough industry. All right. I've actually had one other guest, um, to the podcast who also did door to door sales while she was. 06:15 pursuing her undergraduate degree. It is truly a test of true resilience. I love when I get to talk to other business owners who are doing really well and they say, yeah, I also started in door-to-door sales. And then we go down and have a bit of a laugh about some of the stories that we've got along the way and doors that have been slammed and things that have been said to you. And it definitely does build resilience. And I think 06:44 For me personally, it was the foundation for everything that I've done in my life going forward. I mean, there's not much anyone can say to me that I'm gonna take offense to or get upset by and into days, day and age where people are getting offended by everything. You know, it's, people are more sensitive, let me put it that way. Where people are more sensitive, you know, when you come from a stage where 07:14 You've just been drilled every single day. There's not much that can bother you. And if it bothers you, it actually kind of clears the way for you to go out and do what you want, um, because you're doing it on your terms. And so, you know, when I came back from the UK, uh, I started a, I started working for a company in South Africa, doing door to door sales, we were selling telephone systems on a five year lease agreement to businesses. Okay. And that's where you started with B2B, right? 07:43 It was kind of less harsh, maybe. Yeah, I wouldn't go that far. I heard that. We'll talk about B2B, right? Yeah, let's say they're different. I don't know if they're less harsh and you know, you've got more, more obstacles to go through because you got to get through the gatekeeper or the receptionist or whoever that person is. So it's a different relationship. Right. And so. 08:12 You know, what we learned and what I really uncovered there that made sense to me was that there is a process for everything. And it's a system, right? We were doing things manually, but it was still a process, still a system. And I landed up, you know, starting a business where, I mean, in that business alone, we were selling 200, 400 systems a month. We had offices all over the country. It grew like wildfire. Nice. 08:39 And then two buddies and I started a business and within four years, we'd taken that business up to $6 million a year, just doing door to door sales. And that thing of systems kept coming back to me because we could literally take somebody that had never sold before in their life. You could find them, we could hire them, we could train them. And within two weeks, they're up and running selling, making money. 09:08 That is truly remarkable. A repeatable system. Right. We had a system for how do we find them? We had a system for how do we qualify them? How do we hire them? How do we train them? How do we keep them going? How do we fix them when they're broken? We even had a time when, um, one of our competitors poached all of our sales people, we were left waiting from. 09:35 We went from 18 salespeople down to four overnight. And it was myself, my two business partners and two sales guys in Johannesburg, two sales guys in Cape Town. And what we did was we still went out and we went and sold and you know, we, as owners stepped up and we went crazy. I would say is a good word. In fact, we had one of the best months we've ever had. 10:05 Wow. While that was happening, we were able to replace our entire sales team. So we actually decided to have a smaller sales team with better quality people. Okay. But within a month, we'd replace the entire sales team and back at the same revenue that we were at. Okay. That's truly remarkable and a sign of resilience, right? And you know, having skin in the game as a business owner. 10:28 Exactly. You've got to because you know, what are the options? It's like, do I let this whole thing fall over and then everything that we've built goes to waste? Or do we get stuck in and go and fix it? And so the good thing is, is that we built the systems to be able to do it and to do it quickly. Right. And so I've taken that thinking into what we do now. Okay, because 10:53 For me, you know, my wife and I have been traveling the world for the past two and a half years. Our business has been growing on average, we work with about 50 clients at any given time. And in order to do that, you need to have systems in place. 11:09 So let's go into exploring specifically the use of social media platforms to reach B2B. All right. It's kind of at the core of what you do. And you're going to explain more. But Gina, you and I work in the B2B space. And I was really shocked. You have clients that are from the energy, telecoms, high-tech companies. 11:38 You use LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, perhaps others. I would not have thought that the buyers of these products and services would be on these platforms, maybe LinkedIn. I mean, what's the use of, so the secret sauce, using social media platforms and what is the typical buyer decision profile? That's kind of a loaded question. It may be a great question. 12:08 You've already served 1,800 clients. I want to learn some more. Thank you. Yeah, a hundred percent. Uh, it's actually a really good question and not something that I've been asked before, so I love that. We use LinkedIn as the primary channel for generating leads on the B2B platform. And the reason that we do that is because I don't see LinkedIn as a social network, a social media network. LinkedIn is a networking platform. Right. 12:37 And for me, the reason that we got onto LinkedIn was when I sold my shares in the previous business, I wanted to create something online. I wanted to break free from those golden handcuffs. Okay. And I couldn't figure out Facebook, uh, the kind of clients I was looking for. I couldn't find them. I couldn't figure out Google. I couldn't figure out YouTube. I couldn't figure out these things to actually make it work for me. All right. One of my friends said to me is like, you've got to go check out LinkedIn because it's like, I'm doing amazing on it. 13:06 And I did, and you know what I realized? Is that it's like virtually knocking doors. Except I can skip the red tape, I can skip the gatekeeper, I can go and speak directly to the exact person. I can find them, I can connect with them, and I can start a conversation with the exact person that I'm looking for. Wow. And that blew my mind. Okay. So we started doing it. 13:35 started signing up some clients. Then I went to some of the people that I was working with, some of the clients I was working with, I was like, hey guys, you've got to check this out. This is what we're doing. Would it be valuable to you if you could book an extra five to 10 calls a week with the exact person that you're looking for? And they're like, hell yes, of course, it's a no brainer. So we started helping some clients and they loved it. And then we started running events, teaching people how to do it at scale. Okay. 14:02 we, you know, live events, we'd have like 300 people in a room, teaching them how to do it at scale. And it just kind of grew from there. And now we've kind of gone full circle back to the more personalized, um, working with more specific clients, uh, helping them going deeper and helping them get bigger results. So the buyer decision profile that you then, um, use your system and 14:31 is developed jointly with your client, right? Correct. And we've got a strategic advisory part there. That's interesting. Okay, I get it. Yeah, so we do that. Each client is individual, right? I mean, we work with a lot of our clients are B2B service providers. And who they're looking for is they're looking to sell to other businesses. So typically it's a small to medium organizations or some of them are looking for corporates as well. Okay. 15:01 Um, we've worked with energy companies, we've worked with accountants. Um, we've worked with a company that does, that's an auction house, right? They buy and sell heavy earth moving equipment, you know, where a minimum sale is $200,000. I mean, they did $25 million in six months with six salespeople that they send me publishing houses, right? So it's high ticket services. And it's 15:26 for people that are looking for a very specific kind of client, they know who their buyer is, they know who the decision maker is, they're trying to get in front of them and they're trying to walk them down the journey. Now how we look at it and how we look at our process and what we take our clients through is that we've got about 11 different ways in which you can reach out to them, connect with them, get them on calls, walk them down the journey. Right. And we've created like pre-built processes and campaigns systems. 15:55 that can be plugged in. And when we work with the client, we will identify who is that ideal client that they're looking for. What are the trigger points that are gonna get them moving down, that are gonna get them to connect, to open up a conversation and then move down the buying cycle. And then what's the conversion event that needs to happen? Do we need to be getting them to a call? Do we need to be getting them to an event? Do we send them to a sales letter? What's that conversion event based on? 16:23 their process. Do you want to get them to one of your salespeople, whatever it is? Okay. And we help them structure that. All right. Now, the journey between getting from connection to paying client is where the magic happens. And how we look at it is that if we look at like golf, right? Everyone knows what golf is and how golf works. You stand at one side, goal is hit the ball into the hole. Right. 16:53 oversimplification. If there's any golfers listening to me, I have, I do play and have played golf. So I know I'm oversimplifying. You won't share handicaps on this. My handicap is that I haven't played in a hell of a long time. So I don't even know. Cause you're running a business. I'm traveling the world, right? I tell you one thing that doesn't fit in a 20 kilogram suitcase is golf clubs. So how we look at it is, is if we look at golf, right? So, 17:23 If you are the, you're the person who's swinging the golf club, the ball is the prospect, right? The person that you're trying to convert and the whole is the goal to get them to become a client. Now, what most people are trying to do in their sales process is they're trying to hit a hole in one every single time. They're trying to go from hello to buy my stuff. Right. And if you look at in golf, not even the professionals do it every single time. 17:52 Yes, they get that it does happen from time to time, but it's not, especially if it's like a par four or a par five, you have to have a couple of hits because you just don't have the power or the strength to get there. So we look at it a little bit different. And instead of trying to hit a hole in one of every single ball, we can have multiple balls on the field, right? On the fairway. And we now have somebody that doesn't have to be a professional that can just tap the 18:22 towards the whole. So when they get in, it's an easy tap to get in the hole and become a client. So the approach, right? Exactly. So the best part is because how we've built that is you can have a team member run it that doesn't have to be a marketing expert or a sales expert. It's about building the right assets, the right communication structure and the right journey to walk the client down that it becomes an easy tap in the hole. Excellent. 18:53 instead of trying to hit hole in ones all the time and just being frustrated and disappointed. Actually, another guest that has joined me here in the founder sandboxes, Gaurav Kumar, CEO of Beyond Code, and it's a lead generation and appointment scheduling company, headquarters. 19:19 in the United States, but operations in three continents. He wrote and authored a book and it's inspired. I'm looking for it on my shelf right now. I think it's covered up on the golf game and the similarities of what you're sharing here, the approach and the different tactics that are analogous to a good golf game. So I will introduce you, all right? Amazing. Because it's, yeah. 19:49 there on the other side of the world. Thank you for sharing that. I get it now. And the energy telecoms, high-tech companies. Let's switch gears a little bit. Part of my mission with this podcast as well as my consulting next act advisors is I work with founders, particularly on investor readiness. 20:17 to take in external capital, right? And just take in the amount of money that they need in exchange for a percentage of the company, but not too much, right? So that they can scale with the money they bring in to then increase the valuation of the company and do second and third rounds of investment with outside stakeholders that sometimes operationally help you, but ultimately they want to have a return on their investment. 20:46 I do not work when I do my intake business. I do not work for lifestyle businesses. So I had some dissonance, cognitive dissonance when I'm talking to you, Matt, about, you know, providing business owners the freedom to follow their lifestyle. So walk me through how founders 21:13 maybe have different definitions of success without going for external capital and you at the virtual edge are helping them. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we kind of look at business a little bit different. And I had my mindset completely shifted when I spoke to a buddy of mine. And, you know, he's started 40 companies. He's taken 10 of them to eight figures. 21:43 Um, he consults with some of the biggest well-known companies in the world right now. Um, you know, he's just came back from a weekend with Richard Branson, like that's the kind of level that he's playing at. And he said something to me one day and he was like, you know, so obviously there's someone you want to listen to, right? He kind of knows his stuff. Yeah. Uh, he said to me, he's like, you know, Matt, I think about things very differently. He's like, I decide I don't build my business around my life. 22:12 I mean, I don't build my life around my business, right? And this is the trap that most people fall into. So they start a business, they go crazy. Next thing they look, they've built a monster. They've got all the staff, all this team, spinning a lot of plates, a lot of moving parts. And exactly like what I did, then you land up with golden handcuffs. And so what we do is build things differently. And here's the explanation on this, which we've taken to heart and implemented with our clients, is that we first decide what... 22:40 is the life that we want to live. Okay. Right. What sort of, how, how, how much do you want to work? What sort of investments do you want to have? And how much money do you need in your personal income in order to achieve that lifestyle that you want? Okay. Then you go and you build the businesses around it. In fact, what he says is he calls them boxes, right? You go, you stack the boxes. Okay. 23:09 There's three ways to, to earn wealth, right. And to create wealth, which is start a business, invest in property and then pay the assets, you know, stocks, bonds, crypto, I'm chucking that in with that as well. And essentially it's pretty simple. It's that you choose which ones work for you. Some people are more directed towards business. Great. Some people work in jobs and they like going into property or they invest in stocks or. 23:38 whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. You take the emotion out of it. And the only question that you're asking is, how do I stack the boxes so that I can get the lifestyle and the income that I want? And that removes the emotional energy from it, which means you can look at it objectively and make better decisions. And then you can step back and say, all right, now I know what I wanna create. I know how much I need in order for that to be a reality. Now, what boxes do I need to stack? 24:08 And then when you're looking at them as boxes, you're not as, I mean, you're always going to be emotionally invested, but it's not going to become your baby. And you can look at it objectively and say, is this working for me? Is it getting me close to my goal or further away from it? And that will determine the actions that you take and not only determine the actions that you take, but also if you're building a business, it'll determine how you build the business. 24:33 Cause you'll make very different decisions. If your goal is to work three days a week, or if your goal is to take three months off and go travel, or you're trying to stack a whole bunch of cash so you can invest in property, you can have very different goals and you can have very different decisions that are going to be made to achieve those goals. And different systems you need to put in place in order to get there. And it would, when you bring on a client or a client, 25:01 or prospecting, do you have these conversations or do they find you because of that? Is that your tagline? I mean, how, this is a very interesting concept. Yeah, so it's interesting that people generally work with us because they wanna build systems. They wanna build systems around, how do I find my ideal clients, connect with them and convert them? All right. And where we always start when people come in is ask them, well, where are we actually going with this business? What's the vision for this? 25:29 You know, take a look at the next three to five years and see what the plan is actually bringing in. And then we build the model working backwards to help achieve that. Because it's going to be a very different plan if someone's coming in and saying, well, I just want to get to $20,000 a month than if someone comes in and says, I've got three to five years and I want to sell this business. Okay. You know, 25:56 This is almost a skill set that is prevalent today in the wealth advisor role, working with business owners backwards. Like, when do you want to, what is your exit plan, right? Or how much do you want to have as, you know, monthly income, you know, maximizing your net tax proceeds. 26:26 of selling a business. So again, lovely, highly consultative. This is very unique. I'm thankful that you reached out and wanted to join me in the founder sandbox. Yeah, you know, let me share something with you that I think you'll actually appreciate that might be quite relevant to a lot of people here. Okay. I actually just got off a call with a buddy of mine 26:56 in South Africa. Okay. He's done really well, built massive businesses, like multiple big businesses. And he landed up, you know, selling everything and taking quite life just got too much, right? And, you know, caused some personal issues. I won't share all his, all of his stuff, but cause some pretty significant personal issues. And we got 27:21 chatting again and we actually jumped on a call and he said, you know, Matt, I've gone into this new niche where I work with CEOs of tech companies and I helped them to focus on health, right? Because companies that grow have KPIs to track and measure the growth, but busy CEOs don't have KPIs to track and measure their health. And this is do we help them track and manage it and grow it from there. And his big challenges is like, now I want to go into a new market. 27:51 I don't have any audience. I don't have any network. I'm selling a high ticket offer. It's $15,000 just for the first six months. Right. So it's a high ticket thing and I need to go out and start having conversations and finding them, connecting with them, validating what I've got this and actually start making some sales. And so we worked through that plan, worked backwards. And the first step for him is not to go out and create an offer and make offers 28:20 drive leads and drive calls. His first step is to do market research. Okay. Very smart. And understand his clients on a deep level, because if he does that now, yes, it's going to be more work now, but later on, it's going to save him so much more time because you can get the message, the positioning, the offer, you can run some tests, you can pick up a couple of clients along the way, and you can actually validate his product as he's going through this. Very helpful. 28:50 Um, yes. And it is, um, mental health month here in the United States. And this business is in the mental health space. And there are actually, um, consulting firms catering to the same CEOs of high tech companies, and there is, there are podcasts, there are articles, particularly this month around mental health and yes, running a business is highly stressful. And, um, 29:19 you need to take that time to not read tool, it's just refresh yourself. So thank you. We're gonna switch gears. I sit on corporate boards. I always like to bring my guests back to really think about in your systems today, your processes, your business model. We're all dealing with the advent of generative AI. And how do we... 29:48 bring it into our companies, either for scaling up our talent, for improving processes. It's not necessarily a cost down effort. So you have shared with me that with the 1,800 customers, one thing that you've developed over the years is a proprietary large language model that powers an AI tool, that informs perhaps these 11 different ways 30:17 of identifying your ideal business buyer decision profile. Can you talk to me about how you at the virtual edge have thought about the regulatory environment? It's a hot topic right now, right? Are the AI models biased? Or how is it going to affect my workforce? Share my workforce? 30:44 How ethical is it that we are we getting to the right people or are we excluding some segments of the population? So talk to me through how you've been dealing with AI, your own proprietary large language model and shed some light. So we're not as I think left out, you know, worrying. Maybe we're over concerned by the advent of generative AI and our business models. 31:14 Yep. And it's a great question because there's a lot of people out there. I think everyone has just jumped on the bandwagon and is screaming at the top of their lungs. You need to be an AI or those businesses is going to fall over or become irrelevant or whatever it is. So it's almost like a bit of fear mongering in a, in a way. Yes. There's fear mongering on the one side and there's FOMO on the other side. Exactly. Everyone's like, Oh, this is amazing, but like I wanted, but I don't know what to do with it. So. 31:43 You know, we've gone through a lot of AI tools. We've tested a ton of stuff out. We've implemented stuff. There's a lot of junk out there, right? People that have just thrown stuff together and trying to make a quick buck. There is a lot of really good stuff out there. Okay. What we found is that no matter what tool you use, right. And no matter what system you use, the quality of the output is determined by the quality of the inputs. Say that one more time. 32:13 by listeners. The quality of the output is determined by the quality of the input. Okay, there's a saying called garbage in garbage out. You've heard of that? Yes, I have. With AI, with systems, with automation, if you put garbage in, you get 10 times garbage out. It multiplies that garbage. Right? Yes. So 32:40 What we've done and how we use it and how we help our clients use it as well is that we've been doing this for a long time. We've built frameworks, we've built methodologies, we've built a whole bunch of different stuff. Scripts, templates, frameworks, video scripts, you name it. We've built everything for every piece of the puzzle that we needed. And we used to 33:06 give this to people on a Google doc and have hour long training videos that would walk them through it. Instead of what we did now is we took that thought process, we took that thinking, we went and looked at how we train our people, what are the things that they've got to think about? And we built that into an AI system. So now what happens is that when people in the past used to have to sit and think about this hard and... 33:34 question their life's decisions sometimes and go really deep and it would take long. This was the problem, what it would take too much time to get to results. Whereas now we can literally ask them a couple of questions and it'll give them an answer based on our frameworks and our methodologies that'll get them 80 to 90% of the way there. So prompts, right? That's how you ask questions. Well. 34:01 We ask the questions and then questions feed into the framework that we've built in the back end and then it gives the answers based on our methodologies and our frameworks. So it's very specific to our process. 34:18 And it's the body of information is growing and enhancing the large language model over time. Yeah, absolutely. And the more we use it, the more we refine it because as we're consulting with our clients, then new stuff comes up as we go into new markets or as we come to people that are experiencing new things that are different from what we've done in the past. 34:46 we can tweak and update it so that it'll get them to where they wanna go faster. And what's happened for us is that what used to take our clients three months to get through is now taking three days. So if we go back to the question around regulatory, yes, is if, sorry, I don't know why this thing, I did close it, is if we are looking at how 35:14 it gets used in a regulatory way. I would say once again, the quality of your input term is the quality of your output and use it as a guideline, not as a rule. And you still wanna put your own stuff in there. So I would be looking at questions instead of how do we get AI to take stuff over for us, rather, how do we put our stuff into models? 35:41 and then train it on our models so that it becomes our own internal processes. And in a way, you clone yourself. 35:54 Okay. Yeah. And if you base it around the frameworks and models, it's going to give you much better output type, you know, we look at for, um, for us with, uh, with the coaching and consulting that we do with clients, all the questions that we used to get asked where people get used to get stuck, those disappeared. Yes. That's nine years of craftsmanship, right? With the aid of automation. Yeah. And this has literally been built in the last six months. So. 36:23 It takes you nine years to get there and boom, six months overnight success. Congratulations. That's a lot of hard work. And I would ask, are you protecting it in any way with a trademark or at least patent? Yes. Trademark. Good. Good. OK. I am a listener to the Founder's Sandbox. 36:49 I have listened to Matt, Chief Rainmaker of the Virtual Edge. I'm kind of interested in building a business to support my lifestyle. How do my listeners contact you, Matt? Awesome. Um, so very simple. I'm on very easy to find Matt Clark Rainmaker, M-A-T-T-C-L-A-R-K Rainmaker on LinkedIn, Matt Clark Rainmaker, Facebook. 37:18 Matt Clark Rainmaker, hell, even send me an email, matt at the virtualedge.com. I love it when people mail me, ask me questions, I respond to them all personally. I love connecting with people. And if there's stuff that we can do together, great. If not, that's cool too. Maybe we grow the network, maybe we share our networks with each other, connect, refer stuff to each other. I don't know, who knows? 37:48 I don't know until we, until we reach out, I think there's, there's so much stuff around, especially in today's day and age where everyone's just trying to use social media to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell to each other. Uh, that personal human touches is now more important than ever. Authenticity, right? And personalization, you know, I was going back, I was chatting to a guy yesterday, uh, as part of our, uh, sales process and he's booked to call him with us and he wants to sign up. 38:17 work with us. And we were just voicing notes in back and forward. And he's like, I love this personalized approach. He's like, I actually don't talk to anyone unless they send me a voice note. I was like, well, there you go. Yes, it is personalized. Now, I want to take us back to the founder sandbox. And I started by 38:46 talking about my mission is very simple and really helping business owners to be more resilient beyond their purpose, purpose-driven, sustainable and or scalable growth. I like to ask each of my guests, what is the meaning of those terms? Not one guest has the same definition and it's just a delight to listen to you as a business owner, eight years or nine years now into the virtual edge, helping over 1800. 39:14 companies and growing across 26 countries. What does resilience mean to you, Matt? 39:22 You know, I think all of them, if I can kind of bundle them under one answer that can expand, it means that you've got systems in place that you can track and measure what's going on. 39:38 Right. And the reason I say that, because if I think about all the times where we've had amazing highs and low lows, how do you be resilient if it's just based on feeling and energy? There's only so much willpower that a person has. That's right. Right. But if things get tough and they always do, there's always winter always comes. Right. Sometimes it's just a short little. 40:07 a cold burst, sometimes it lasts a long time. And when those downs hit, if you've got nothing to look back on and say, where did it go wrong? What worked? What didn't? Then everything lands up being emotion-based and that's a spiral, it's a downward spiral. 40:28 takes and when exactly. And you're going to focus and the human brains are designed to focus on the negative. That is true. Right? That's why the news is so had got so big and why they so negative all the time, because that's what captures attention. And so when we look at this, if you look at the numbers, it takes the emotion out of it. And we went through a downturn, uh, last year and 40:57 last year or year before, I don't know, these years are kind of starting to blur a little bit for me when things happened, you know, you move so- You had a winter, let's say. We had a winter, okay. And we look back and we're like, what is actually going on? Why is the stuff not working that's supposed to be working? And we're like, well, I've got a great idea. Why do we pull up all the numbers and take a look at where the gap is? And we look through all the numbers and we're like, okay. 41:24 That's exactly where the problem is. That's what's not working anymore. Let's just fix that one little piece. And guess what happened? Went straight up again. Okay. Remove the emotion, look at the data and just go back and focus, right? Exactly. Because it's a lot more easy to be resilient when you're looking at the numbers and the numbers are showing an upward trend. 41:48 It's difficult to be resilient if you're looking at your bank account and your bank accounts going down, but you've got no reason as to why it's going down or where the points are that things are breaking. 42:00 Right. Then you just living, you're addicted to opium. It's what we call it. Hope is not a strategy. So purpose-driven, I think your own story. Um, I don't want to steal your, your thunder, but your purpose. Um, I remember when we first started our conversation the other day, it was like, I really want to know your origin story. What makes you do? 42:29 you do today? What? The Britcha Wedge. And you said freedom. So what's it? Yeah, purpose driven. Can you tell us a bit about the freedom element? Absolutely. We've got one life, you know, and maybe I can even, I can share a story that hit home for me in a big way. And so a wealthy 42:59 wants to go out on a day of fishing. And he's sitting there on the pier, goes out fishing with one of the local fishermen in a small little boat, single motor. They have a great day, catch a lot of fish. They come back to the place, sitting, having a beer. And the businessman says to the fisherman, he's like, you know, that was amazing. You could do really well at this. You know, if you did this once every day, you could buy another boat. And the fisherman says, hmm, that's interesting. What then? 43:28 He said, well, if you continue to do that, then you can have two boats, then three boats, then a whole fleet. He says, hmm, that's interesting, what's then? He said, well, then you can actually buy a warehouse and you can start running imports and grow the business even then. You can own the whole dock. And he's like, hmm, that's interesting, and what then? He says, and then you can sell it, make tons of money and retire to the beach and come fish every day. 43:58 Brilliant. Thank you for providing another lens of success and freedom within the business world. So, I guess the point is, the freedom is we've got one life to live, do the things that make you happy. 44:20 Fantastic. Final, second to last question, sustainable growth. I suspect what you're gonna, your definition, but tell me in your own words, what does sustainable, scalable growth mean to you? Systems, measurable. Yep. Measurable systems, what do the numbers tell us? Based on the numbers, we can make the right decisions and take the right actions. Don't go feeling, go with decisions, make data-driven. 44:49 And then, you know, at different stages of a business's growth, different data is going to be important. So if you're starting out, you don't need all the systems and numbers and KPIs that a corporation has. Right. You need to know how many people are you reaching out to a day? How many are starting conversations? How many are you getting on calls and how many are converting? So where's the broken points in that? Right. And Matt, that, um, 45:18 I didn't ask this question before, but the types of companies that you serve are from startup to scale up. Talk about the different profiles of your clients, right? Yeah. So most of our clients are, they've got a small team, you know, under 10. And you know, they're doing anywhere from two, 25,000. 45:47 in a month. So it's at 300,000 a year to a million. So about 300,000 to 3 million is sort of like the first group of people that we work with. And then we also work with companies with large sales teams, eight, nine figure businesses that have sales teams that are in the B2B space looking for very specific clients. So the principles are exactly the same, slightly different implementation strategy. 46:16 Um, but the process works. In fact, we often find it's easier to work with the bigger companies and the bigger sales teams because they get results 10 times faster, right? Right. Cause they've got a validating. So, yeah, well, everything's probably bringing a lot of knowledge already of the, um, ICP, right. The ideal customer, right? So there's some, and everything's already proven, you know, we have to build anything. They just need to go get more. Right. Well, thank you. Last question. 46:46 Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Yeah, it was amazing. It was the second time I'm talking to you and the second time I heard a phone talking to you. To my listeners, if you liked this episode with Matt Clark, sign up for the monthly release of the Founder Sandbox. We learn here how to build with strong governance, a resilient, scalable and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. 47:14 And I'm absolutely delighted that we had Matt with us today from the Virtual Edge. And he literally is on the Virtual Edge. He's on the other side of the world, but caters to a lot of US customers. So thank you very much and wishing you all a great day. Bye.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Sue Tinnish- an executive coach working with CEO's and Presidents of middle-market companies. They discuss "unleashing creativity for business excellence" , ranging from Sue's experience while in hospitality to make events interactive and engaging, to using playfulness with very complex issues in analogies and stories to lead good alignment of the organization. Sue is a seasoned professional who has worked in a variety of settings. She has a diverse background in business with specific skills in leadership, formulating strategy, managing change, building teams, and delivering on strategic and tactical projects. She is currently an executive coach working with CEOs and Presidents of middle-market companies. She supports executives as they deal with their own leadership issues (delegation, time management, prioritization, decision making & mindset) as well as supporting their organization's growth addressing issues like talent optimization, sales, finance and risk. Sue earned her PhD from Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. She holds an M.B.A. with a concentration in finance and marketing from University of Chicago's Booth School and a B.S. in communication studies from Northwestern University.  And she likes to have fun! You can find out more about Sue Tinnish at: Linked IN https://www.linkedin.com/in/suetinnish/ or Contact her at: Sue.tinnish@vistagechair.com Resources: Why playfulness matters in Startup to Scale up. https://www.humorseriously.com/     Transcript 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. This monthly podcast is now in its second season and it reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable. 00:32 and sustainable businesses, all with great corporate governance. I wanna assist entrepreneurs and business owners in building these scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. And I bring guests to the podcast that are themselves, founders, business owners, corporate board directors, investors and professional service providers, like Sue Tinnish, who's with us today. We all share a common... 01:01 interest in this using the power of the private enterprise, be that small, medium, and large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests on topics that are gonna include their own experience with resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth, my goal with the Founder Sandbox is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. 01:30 So today my guest again is Sue Tinnish. Thank you so much for joining me here, Sue. So happy to join you, Brenda, in this context. Excellent. Sue's joined in the podcast today in her capacity as a Vistage leader. For those who are actually seeing the video, I love your back screen, leading a life of a climb with Vistage. 01:57 She also has, as a member of Vistage, shares oftentimes in LinkedIn a newsletter called Making a Difference. I encourage everyone to follow Sue in LinkedIn because the messages that come across in this newsletter do resonate with business owners on making a difference. Today, we chose a topic, again, I'm all about resilience, sustainability, and purpose-driven 02:26 businesses. And when speaking with Sue on and off, we both share University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, Abu School is our background, right? That's we didn't meet there. But we did meet the alumni network is really quite active. And we discovered that we both use innovation and creativity with the work we do with our with our clients and 02:54 As I learned more of Sue's background, which I'll get to in a minute, I was just fascinated on specific tools, techniques, writing that she's used over the last 20 years at least. I'm gonna give you a brief introduction to Sue. She has a diverse background in business with specific skills in leadership, formulating strategy. 03:22 managing change, building teams and delivering a strategic and tactical projects. She is currently executive coach, working with CEOs and presidents of middle market companies. Prior to this activity, she's had experiences in academia, corporate banking, consulting and being an entrepreneur herself. So you check a lot of boxes, Sue. I thank you. I thank you again. 03:51 Also, the other aspect that we want to explore today is kind of you're a co-chair of the Chicago based Vistage Chief Executive Group and it's co-led by a male and a female. And I believe it's one of the unique or only chapters that is co-led and you're bringing in the diversity to the actual classroom itself. So I'd love to learn a little bit more later. All right. 04:19 So Sue and I have been in contact through our affiliation to the Chicago Women's Alliance. And I'm absolutely delighted that Sue's gonna tell us a little bit about some of the tools and techniques she explores as leader of Vistage. So can you share what has been a common denominator through your professional journey that has released or discovered, which you've discovered creativity? 04:49 Such an interesting question. So I guess I would say that as a leader, I've always had a real strong focus on people and teams. And so I really have encompassed playfulness, humor, and really creativity to help foster organizational growth. But it's really through people that that has happened. So that's been a very common denominator. And 05:18 I grew up in an era where what I was taught and learned about management was a little more like straight-laced and forward. And just my own personal growth, I really discovered, you know, through the process of learning and growing, I've discovered that that's not necessarily the way that you have to be. And I also think that, you know, interestingly, being a female, we bring different skill sets to the environment. 05:47 being more authentic has been meant that I've relied both on my own sense of humor, curiosity and playfulness to be effective. And you bring that into those monthly meetings with CEOs, I'm certain. Yes. You know, you, one of the articles that will later be in the show notes, is you brought in or explored kind of the entertainment. 06:16 element as a platform that unleashes creativity when you were working in the hospitality sector. Can you walk us through that specific kind of experience? It was, again, when you helped me prepare this, I was reading with awe. I was like, wow, I hadn't ever, you know, it goes back quite a while to 06:39 Yes. So when I worked in hospitality, I specifically worked in sort of the meetings and events and conference space. Okay. And my focus was really on how to create more innovative learning environments in that space. So it wasn't really focused on the logistics or the hotel arrangements or even the food and beverage. And really, earlier in my career, I spent a lot of time focusing on training and 07:09 And so I really thought a lot about how can you make these events, meetings, really more interactive and engaging in a way that's also going to create more knowledge, that's going to make what's happening in those meetings really stick. And so entertainment was one of those fields that I explored to talk about why entertainment can both be entertaining, but also. 07:38 or valuable in helping messaging stick. So like one example would be, think about like the topic of sexual harassment in Illinois, in many places most organizations. It's a requirement. It's a requirement, exactly. So no one's gonna raise their hand and say, oh yes, in a public environment, I've been sexually harassed or I'm a harasser. But when you use actors or entertainment or some kind of role playing, 08:08 a delicate subject out there in a way that people can maybe see themselves or see themselves in that situation and allow themselves to really go internally, aha, I understand now what has happened because of what I've seen on the stage. So I think entertainment can be used in a more strategic way beyond just being entertaining. 08:33 That is fascinating. And thank you for specifically providing an example. I'm just actually visually imagining a setup whereby a hairy topic is addressed in kind of an entertaining way with actors. Amazing. And I liked what you said about it allows maybe some of the learning that is happening within the meeting to stick. 09:01 because one is more relaxed, laughing, right? I actually had written a blog about two years ago on why playfulness matters in startup to scale up. And I discovered kind of five fundamental elements that I have seen or I've observed, I've introduced to my clients, there's no rules, right? 09:27 to generate more ideas, have a problem statement, allow people from all different levels of the organization compete in generating those ideas. But more importantly, when you were talking about the sexual harassment or using entertainment with professional actors, one founder I worked with actually brought in a surprise question at the end of the all hands on deck meeting. 09:56 And then there was a prize. So it really got people to pay attention to what the monthly message was about as the corporation grew. So I'm very happy to know that I'm doing something right and you're basing it on many years of experience in Vistage as well as the entertainment, the hospitality industry. So thank you. I'd like you to, I pride myself on lots of 10:26 really practical nuts and bolts in this podcast that listeners can take away and bring into their own companies. And so you provided some insight on Harry Gardner's similar work on people's concept of multiple intelligences. And there's seven ways people are intelligent. And then you bring that in actually to some of the tools and techniques you use in your session. So can you provide that background on? 10:54 Yeah, sure. What about intelligence? So, you know, Rhonda, you and I, we think we're fairly intelligent. We went to a fabulous business school. And yet, if we were in, you know, the outback of Australia trying to survive, we would not be as smart or as intelligent as an Aboriginal woman. And so there are different ways that we think. And obviously there's been a huge interest in EQ, you know, emotional intelligence, 11:24 IQ, but really, when you start to think about the skills that a surgeon might have, or an architect, they have kinesthetic skills that maybe other people don't. And so kinesthetic is another form of intelligence. Naturalism. There are people that have natural affinity to mathematics. And so you can think about your group, and some groups are more 11:53 homogenous, like an industry group, like an association. So you can think about what kind of natural intelligence that group might have, and then you can target some of the learning and the sessions in a way that's gonna harness the way that those people think. And it may not be humor or playfulness, but you're really leaning into their strengths. And I think that's so important in this topic of adult learning. That is fascinating. Again, I am... 12:24 the seven, you know, one was musical. Again, back to some of the writing I did, and I just saw it reinforced when listening to you is, you know, Mozart was a learner, but he would, he would have to write the music, but then he would never, but to keep it in his memory, and then he would never use it again. But it's really fascinating how I imagine in your Vistage meetings, you have a 12:54 cohort of, I don't know, 10 or 12. You create a safe space where CEOs are sharing current business challenges. Ultimately, they leave the monthly meetings though, and are gonna communicate decisions made to the companies that they lead, right? Yes. How do you share with them how to bring in humor if it's required, right? For the leaders communication, what have you seen to be more effective? 13:24 in some cases. Well, first of all, I'd say that, humor does not mean that you're a standup comedian. Really, when I think about humor, I think about it as more as like levity. And so my first tip always is not to be caustic or sarcastic, cause that's not gonna fly. But leaders can bring in this levity to their communication. I say in several ways. One would be just being able to laugh at yourself. Okay. 13:53 much more approachable, it helps build rapport and trust, and it makes you more authentic and human. So that's the first way, just being able to laugh at yourself. The second way is I think you can use a joke, a little levity to just capture people's attention. You know, we've all been in meetings, blah, blah, blah. Yes. Non-drona. So humor's an opportunity to catch people's attention and really get them to sit up. 14:21 Kind of like the example you were saying before about the leader that had something at the price. I also think maybe it's not exactly humor, but certainly playfulness. It allows you to take complex ideas and make them more simple. Not saying that you're trying to dumb down the conversation, but the kind of strategic issues that leaders are facing these days can be difficult to communicate. And so a little bit of humor or playfulness 14:51 really allows people to make things understandable. Like specifically, I would think about metaphors or analogies, those are great ways, or good stories can help communicate these more complex ideas to people so that people can remember them, and then you have good alignment in the organization. So those are just three tips. Right, and what about storytelling? You just... 15:19 touched it at the end of your comments there, but I've observed primarily because of the working from home and having distributed teams. And there are more and more CEOs that are stepping up and actually using storytelling to become, or appear more authentic. Are you observing that? And can you talk about storytelling and authenticity, please? 15:49 Yes, happy to do so. So storytelling can be personal. I think those are great stories to tell. And so in doing that, you bring your whole self, that whole authentic self to the table. Okay. I just made a post yesterday on LinkedIn where I was talking about my goal around losing weight. And I was like, walking around thinking I had been more successful than I had because I didn't really, I didn't really 16:19 I didn't write my goal down. I didn't write my stating weight down. And then all of a sudden I had the realization, I'm like, oh my gosh, I really actually went up by two pounds, not down by more. And so people commented on how refreshing it was. So those kinds of stories can, and then really to drive the point home, the post was really about goal setting and also how you can do a reset. 16:47 change your mindset to make sure that you do achieve your goals. Because we still have half of the year left. So I could do this. The importance of, of, you know, self belief. And so it was a story that poked a little bit of fun at myself, but really add a message. And so many people responded to that post just by talking about, oh, my gosh, it was refreshing, so honest, so authentic, they use those kinds of words. And so I think those 17:15 That's an example of how you can use a story to resonate with the population. Because again, almost like we were talking about entertainment, people grab onto stories. That's why we go to films. That's why we read books is because for that storyline, that plot. And so finding the hero and how you can get to employees that you could be the hero or you are my hero or you are part of the hero team. 17:44 in the story can, I think can be quite effective. Wow. What about the, the leading from creativity and the use of humor to actually promote creativity? Have you seen that? Do you use those techniques in your Vistage groups or elsewhere? 18:13 So, you know, one thing is humor, right? To enhance maybe leaders communication and the other is actually creativity to generate new business ideas or to think about a problem statement. What have you seen in your work? So. Yeah, I think there's great opportunity to be playful and to unleash creativity. And I know that this is something that you and I both believe strongly in. So I think there's, you know, there's a lot of things you can do. 18:42 Metaphors, I kind of alluded to this before. When you say one thing is like another, and so you can say, you know, I feel like our organization is like a twisted pretzel right now, and why is that true? Like, how is our organization like a twisted pretzel? And so that just encourages people to think more broadly about the concept. So I think metaphors are a good way. Even choosing a random word, 19:12 picking up a book, pointing at a word like, what does bananas have to do with the strategic issue that we're facing right now? And it just causes people to be like, oh, I gotta think about this differently. And it kind of breaks the ice. Yeah, exactly. Yes, and so it just gets people to say, I don't have to think about this in the same exact way. I'm also a big fan of field trips. And so one of my efforts when I was 19:40 uh, leading a training and development effort for an association was that we, um, took field trips around Chicago. Actually related in the hospitality industry. We went to various places unrelated to hospitality and we just said, what can you learn by just going on site to a chocolate place, Garrett's popcorn, a museum, what can you learn about the way that the. 20:09 those organizations greet people, the entering experience, the engaging experience, the exiting experience. What can you learn from that that would cause you to rethink how you do it in your own organization? So I think by taking field trips like when we were kids, I think that's another other way to foster creativity. I like mind mapping. I think that's a real 20:33 good way causing people to start to write things down visually or even using props or toys to try and encompass a concept. I think those can be very effective. I love, you know, I love the improv technique of yes and, which of course is useful in brainstorming, but also useful in saying we have a product design, and it's good. 21:01 And yes, and what can we add on or what else do we need to do? So I think those are some techniques that I think promote playfulness, but also cause us to open our minds to being more creative. These are very actionable. Have they been, is it necessary to, in your experience, have these in person? Can you do this virtually? And how do you get CEOs to allocate time on their busy schedule? 21:32 Well, it's, who doesn't, I mean, what CEO doesn't want innovation and creativity in their organism? So having said that, the question is, how do you really foster it? And you don't just say, okay, let's sit down and we're going to be creative, because that's not gonna work. We all have our own cognitive biases. We have our frameworks, our assumptions, our biases for how we think. 21:58 What you wanna do is break through some of those. And in order to do that, I think you really need to think intentionally about how to do it. And to me, some of the techniques I described are not wasting time at all, but rather an intentional way to allow people to be more creative. Excellent. And so. 22:24 Can you speak to it's actually not in the script, but what is a typical Vistage meeting and cohort look like in your world in Chicago? You co-lead with a male. You have two groups that you're leading now. So what is the typical format, duration, size of group? What are the things that you're finding? Are they Illinois based companies? Do you have any? 22:51 people participate virtually. This is your opportunity to share your craft as a leader of Vistage. Okay. Well, I guess I'll first talk about the group and then I can talk a little bit about what happens in the group. So the peer group is part of the Vistage experience. There's other things, research, virtual events, the one-on-one time with me as an executive coach. But in the group, typically 10 to 18, 15, 16 members 23:21 and everyone represents a different industry. They all own their own lanes. So no competitors, no vendors, customers in the room so that you can really have an open kimono and be vulnerable and being willing to say something out loud. So the kind of people I look for are clearly, you know, very successful already in their own right, but really humble enough to say, hey, what got me here may not be what... 23:50 I need the skills and the mindset and the way I need to lead in the future. We've been through a life-changing event in terms of the pandemic, and it's had a lot of repercussions. And so how do leaders function in a new environment? And so the way you may have done it in the past may not necessarily be the way that you need to do it in the future. So you wanna be, I want people who are already successful, they... 24:17 but they're still hungry. They're hungry for personal growth. They wanna grow their teams and they also wanna see revenue growth in their organizations. And then sort of putting on my University of Chicago hat. So that's sort of the psychographic. But I also think about my group as a portfolio. What I mean is I want certain voices in the room. So like right now I would love to have a person in the staffing or executive search. 24:47 industry because talent's such an issue. So I want to have that voice in the room. So my people, I look as almost like a portfolio. I also look to make sure that I have industry sectors that are either leading or lagging indicators in the economy because those leaders are going to see things first and they can bring that to the group and say, hey, here's what's already happening in 25:16 And so what's happening in my industry is gonna happen to you probably later. And so this portfolio approach, I think, enriches the group and allows everyone to really benefit from the diversity that is inherent in every Vistage group. Fantastic. What about, do you have mixed gender groups? I'm just wondering. Oh, absolutely. 25:46 Not it's people come and go in groups. It serves them well and then they need to move on. Right now I would definitely, I'm definitely looking to add some more female voices to the group. All right, well you heard it here on the founders. Exam clocks. Yes. Thank you. I'm you. 26:10 For this podcast, you provided a lot of articles that you've written over the years. That's a gift. You're a prolific and a polished writer. How do you find the time, Sue? And two, do you believe the ability to write is a skill that leaders must master? Such an interesting question. 26:40 leading does require strong communication skills. And obviously, I think there's many kinds of writing. Yeah, there's academic writing, which I've done published in journals, not necessarily very persuasive, not always persuasive writing. And then there's, you know, writing to to communicate. And so I think that 27:05 I guess I would say, you know, you can be a skilled writer, like a speechwriter, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be a skillful communicator. And I think leaders need a little bit of both. I mean, it's the kind of businesses and leaders that we work with are typically not hiring speechwriters. And so I do think it's an important skill to have if you're a small or medium sized business owner. 27:36 CEO of a huge, you know, fortune 500 company, of course, you can have speech writers write your thing, right, right stuff. And that's a that's a specific skill. So I would say, for our audience, what good or bad, you have to be skilled at writing, but also communicating those words to people. And writing in a way that is going to be persuasive and communicative. And perhaps playful. 28:04 right using humor, which is the topic of today's podcast. You know, when we I was preparing this, you know, I've been pursuing you for quite a while now. Thank you for joining. I did come across in other forums, a book that is accompanied by an assessment test called it's called humor series business. And to 28:31 professors at Stanford's Graduate School of Business have developed a course online to actually discover your type, right? And humorseriously.com. Have you had any experience with this? I thought it took off actually right in the pandemic. And just curious, because we are on the topic of humor and creativity. So, 28:58 what do I love? I love growing and learning and being a life-long learner. And so honestly, Brenda, I had never seen their work or heard about it. So I did watch their YouTube, which I found fascinating. I'm sure you'll include it in the show notes. And it's interesting, not, I think Stanford has done a really interesting job as a business and as a B-school or as a school, I guess I would say, as a university continuing to evolve. 29:24 So actually when I saw that they had this course in their business school, I wasn't surprised. And I actually have followed Stanford for a while because of their D school, their design school. Interesting. And so design thinking is not necessarily only related to the creative arts, but you know, you think about firms like, you know, who started with this concept like IDEO, but you know, this design thinking definitely has some 29:53 some good roots in creativity, innovation, breaking through borders, not thinking about constraints as true constraints and boundaries. And so to me, I wasn't surprised to see that these two were from Stanford. And it was a great listen. Thank you. I too, I was surprised to hear about it and two great schools, University of Chicago and Stanford with great alumni. So... 30:20 I do like to give my guest opportunity to share how you may be contacted. What's the easiest way and this will be in the show notes. Okay, well, I respond to my emails. I also respond to phone calls and voicemails. I love the younger generation that never listen to their voicemails. I actually do. So you can find me via phone at 847-404-7325. 30:47 Email always works and my email is su.tinish, my last at, and then here's the nice long after the at, VistageChair, like a piece of furniture, VistageChair.com. Then I am often on LinkedIn, and so people can DM me on LinkedIn and follow me. They can sign up and subscribe to my newsletter, make a difference. Yeah. Happy to respond any way that people want to. 31:15 Reach out to me, text, phone, email, or DM. Fantastic. So I'd like to bring us back to the founder sandbox and kind of the three cornerstones that I work with founders on and that's around resilience, purpose-driven enterprise and sustainable growth. And by bringing each of my guests back to, hey, what's the meaning of each of these terms? I'm absolutely fascinated that each one of my guests has a different. 31:42 you know, concept and it's so rich to listen. So what does resilience mean to you and your many years as practitioner with CEOs and small to medium sized companies? I'd say the first thing is really having a good balance between positivity and realizing that I have to grow and change and accept feedback. That maybe everything is not. 32:11 So I think especially for entrepreneurs and startups, I mean, you have such great belief in your concept. And so you do have to stick with it and stay positive, but there is that fine balance between accepting feedback and realism. And so I think resilience is balancing those two things appropriately. The second thing, the second characteristic I'd like to call out today is just really... 32:40 facing up to uncertainty. In other words, not being an ostrich and putting my head in the sand. Being resilient to me says, I'm willing to squarely look uncertainty in the face and I may not have all the data that I need. I may not be fully clear on what's the right direction, but resiliency is making that decision, taking responsibility, moving forward. 33:06 and accepting the consequences and then dealing with it all over again. Those are the two things that I think are most important to me personally about resiliency. Thank you. What about purpose-driven enterprise? Harkening back to my PhD where I did something on sustainability. Did you? Yes. So to me, purpose-driven enterprises really mean that you're gonna... 33:34 you will focus on value creation beyond simply profit. And the second quality is that there's really a strong integration in your ecosystem of all your stakeholders, not just shareholders, but that everyone is aligned and integrated and that your strategy is focused on an integrated purpose that serve all stakeholders, customers. 34:02 employees, your vendors, everyone in that ecosystem. And that's it. So you actually were a profit in your own land. Because your PhD, if you wrote on sustainability, I don't know how many years ago, it's just come back full circle, right? Yeah. It's got to be on every CEO's agenda. A triple bottom line. That's right. 34:27 And you heard it here, sustainable growth. So I kind of interchange sustainable with scalable. Again, we work with companies that are growing pretty rapidly. What is the meaning to you for sustainability? So first off, I think there's a difference between running an organization, leading an organization that's growing and leading an organization that's scalable. And so you desire both things, 34:56 you have to build in scale to make sure that you could manage your growth. So that's an element of sustainable growth. And as I alluded to earlier, I do think that this focus on the triple bottom line is really important. And even if you as a leader are not bought into it, think about the kinds of employees that you're hiring and the customers that you're serving as you get younger and younger. 35:24 this triple bottom line is so much more important to them. And so sustainable growth, in my opinion, can only be really fed by that focus on a triple bottom line. Wow. You heard it here. Thank you. Well, I have one last question. Did you have fun in the sandbox today, Sue? Oh, I did. It was fun to dig. It was fun to dig back into the past and think about the future. Yes. So delightful. So thank you so much for inviting me. 35:53 Thank you. The tools and techniques that you provided and just our conversation as well as what will be found in the show notes are invaluable. So thank you for offering these resources to my listeners. To my listeners, if you like this episode with Sue Tenesh, sign up for the monthly release of The Founder's Sandbox. It's available on all major podcast platforms. 36:20 where you're going to learn how to build with strong governance, a resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. Signing off. Thank you for being part of the Founders Sandbox.        

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Kelly Breslin Wright, Founder & CEO of Culture Driven Sales. They discuss resilience and purpose related to the Culture Driven Sales methodology where Kelly Breslin Wright operates as a C-level executive, board director, advisor, and adjunct university professor.  Kelly Breslin Wright is an experienced executive and corporate board director for both public and private companies, with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy roles. She has served as an Independent Director and Advisor for multiple Boards and has helped companies navigate multiple stages of growth. These include IPOs, enterprise expansion, CEO and leadership transitions, globalization, M&A, financings, business model changes, and global crises. She has a unique mastery of sales, go-to-market, leadership, transformation, strategy, growth and scaling, data and analytics, and culture.  As an operator, Kelly Breslin Wright served as President and COO of Gong, an artificial intelligence platform that serves revenue organizations to deliver insights at scale. There, she managed all go-to-market functions, including Sales, Customer Success, and Marketing. For nearly 12 years prior to Gong, Kelly Breslin Wright was Executive Vice President of Sales (Chief Revenue Officer) at Tableau Software (formerly NYSE: DATA). She joined as the company's first salesperson, where she grew Tableau's worldwide sales and field operations from zero to $850M in revenue and managed over half of the company's 3,400 global employees. Tableau was purchased by Salesforce in 2019 for $15.7B. Before Tableau, Kelly Breslin Wright spent time at Bain & Company, McKinsey & Company, Bank of America, Dale Carnegie Training, AtHoc, and Southwestern Advantage.  You can find out more about Kelly Breslin Wright at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellybreslinwright/   Culture Driven Sales Website: https://culturedrivensales.com/   University of Washington Foster School of Business Website: https://foster.uw.edu/faculty-research/directory/kelly-wright/   Winning the Board Game:   How Women Corporate Make THE Difference   Show transcription: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast in which I reach entrepreneurs and business owners that want to learn   00:33 about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I am Brenda McCabe, your host on the Founder's Sandbox, and my mission is really simple. By interviewing guests through their stories, I want to assist entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. Guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers   01:01 who like me want to use the power of the private enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest that will touch on topics that include resilience, purpose-driven enterprise, and sustainable growth, my goal is to recreate a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, my guest is Kelly Breslin Wright. Thank you, Kelly, for joining me today.   01:31 Thank you for having me. I'm excited for the conversation. I've been pursuing Kelly for a number of years. And finally, we're making it happen today. So Kelly and I are going to talk about purposeful, culture driven sales. I'm going to give you a little background on Kelly. She is founder and CEO of Culture Driven Sales. She has promoted and led the Culture Driven Sales methodology as a C level executive,   02:01 public and private company board director, advisor, and adjunct university professor. She is an experienced executive and corporate board director for both public and private with over 30 years of experience in leadership, sales, operations, and strategy roles. We actually share a common past. We both originated from McKinsey and Company, where are paths crossed there. She has served as an independent director and advisor for multiple boards.   02:30 She's helped companies navigate multiple stages of growth, including IPOs, enterprise expansion, CEO and leaderships transitions, globalization, M&A, financing, business model changes, and global crisis. So we're in for a treat today. I asked Kelly to come because she really has a unique way of bringing in culture   02:58 behind sales. I think sales often times is a hidden or unwanted child. And I was amazed that none of my guests up until now has the expertise nor did they speak about sales. So it's the first time, Kelly, that you're gonna be talking to my listeners around your 30 years experience in sales. As an operator, Kelly served as president and COO at Gong, an artificial intelligence platform.   03:28 And we're going to talk a little bit about AI today. And prior to Gong, Kelly was Executive Vice President, Sales Chief Revenue Officer at Tableau Software. And it is formerly was on the stock exchange with the sticker symbol DATA. She was there for nearly 12 years. And she joined that company as the 10th employee. And we're going to listen to her story and what brought her to them.   03:57 So thank you again for joining me on the Founder's Sandbox, Kelly. Thank you for having me. You know, when we were just prepping for today's podcast, Kelly said, what actually made you wanna reach out to me? And it goes back quite a few years. Our first encounter was through a common passion serving on corporate boards. And you reached out to me to thank me for sharing my experiences that is in a book.   04:26 published and written by Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, winning the board game, how women corporate directors make the difference. So I'm always thankful to people that do reach out unexpectedly and just thank you. And I finally, two years later, I've achieved what I wanted to get you on my podcast. So I am honored that you agreed to share   04:56 quite a few real world experiences that started while in undergraduate days and informed your career choices that led you to be the first sales person to join Tableau and number 10 employee. And while you were the CRO, the company went public. The learnings you continue to share as advisor, educator, board director, and executive to private and public companies are centered around your passion for culture-driven sales.   05:26 In preparation, I listened to a recent podcast interview on operators, building and scaling companies and your recruitment to Tableau. It had something to do with educational books. It also had something to do with grit and resiliency. And I work on resilience with the founders I serve as the foundational piece. And I wrote an article myself on empowering resilience   05:54 by unlocking your personal and enterprise value. I touch on three things, Kelly. I'm knowing oneself as a leader, having options and making choices, and finally being thankful. So can you share why Tableau asked you to join as employee number 10? That's going way, way, way back to the beginning of the career. Well, so,   06:20 it's interesting, you mentioned about selling books door to door. When I was in college, I knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and I wanted to be independent. And I came across this opportunity to run my own business selling educational books door to door. And that's what I did for my four summers when I was in college. And I think there are a lot of things, Brenda, that you had touched base on. One was sales. And we'll talk about that a lot today.   06:49 The second was resiliency. And I appreciate that you're always talking about resiliency because it's so critical, not only in business, but in life. And selling educational books door to door, when you show up at someone's house, you're not the most welcome person that they want to see that day. So there's a lot of doors that are slammed in your face and a lot of adversity that I dealt with in my 18 to 21 year old formative years.   07:20 taught a lot about resiliency of how to get yourself back up, keep on going, being able to learn to control what you can control and not worrying as much about the rest, a whole bunch of things. So we could talk about resiliency. Anyway, going back to how I started at Tableau, because when I was in college, I was known as this person that while everyone else was doing these cool internships or   07:48 They were lifeguarding at their home pool. I was talking to thousands of families, working 80 plus hours a week, running my own business. And people thought I was crazy, but I ended up making quite a bit of money. I paid for my undergrad, it paid for my first car, paid for my first house, paid for most of business school. And so later on in my career, when people were starting their first,   08:17 their startup or starting their own entrepreneurial venture. Oftentimes people would call me and say, hey, Kelly, you did that crazy job in college. They'd say, you sold all those books. Maybe you can help us. And that's exactly what happened at Tableau. So what happened at Tableau was the CEO of Tableau had gone to Stanford Business School and was classmates with a friend of mine from undergrad.   08:45 And so I had met him multiple times as Tableau was an incubation idea. And we had met actually at an Oscar party. And so when it came time to, to hire the first salesperson, there was this conversation of, Hey, maybe you should go talk to Kelly. And I remember thinking about resiliency and just raising your hand. When I first had that conversation and I looked at the job requirement.   09:14 Brenda, I literally didn't match anything on there. It was understand a lot about data, has taken multiple companies public, has been at companies that have grown to sizable amounts of revenue. And I had done none of that. So I think I'd had sales and hopefully the, smart and can think on your feet, hopefully that matched, but I didn't match any of the other things. And it really came down to,   09:41 having a passion about what the company's mission was and alignment of the values and how we wanted to work, which is how I ended up joining as the first salesperson. And then the story goes on from there. Wow. And you did just touch briefly on mission and we're gonna get to that in the next question. Okay. Yeah. So, so Tableau, 12 years, amazing. I admire that company.   10:08 A piece you wrote back in 2021, it's on your website and it will be in the show notes. It's called creating winning company culture by perfecting these two elements. You touch on mission. Often founders wait for later in creating a mission statement. And that they're either focused on for a client, a customer, their product or service, hiring a few of their team members   10:39 When does it make sense in your experience, Kelly, to create a mission statement? And what are those two elements you believe that create a winning company culture? That's a loaded question, but you've written about it. We're gonna hear it here on the founder's sandbox. Well, Brenda, I think that it's really important to have a mission from really early days.   11:04 And I think you're right in that companies often feel like they need to have, they need to figure out their product, they figure out the service, they figure out their operational cadence, they go get the first customers. But it can be very confusing if you don't understand where you're going. The way I like to describe it is building a business as you hire employees and as you get investors and   11:32 as you find your first customers and partners, it's building with these building blocks, similar to having a map. Okay. You have a map, you have to have a destination, you have to know where you're headed, because otherwise you can get very lost. And so although companies might not have their exact wording of a mission statement from very early days, it's important, I mean, I think it's important to have a mission right from the beginning. When I talk about Tableau,   12:02 Tableau from the time I started, the mission was help people see and understand data. And that was something that I really was drawn to, which is how I ended up joining as the first salesperson and employee 10 before we even launched version one. Because everyone then that we were hiring, our customers, the whole team was aligned on what it is that we were doing. What was the company's purpose? What was our why?   12:31 And what ends up happening is when companies are not clear on what that is, you might hire different people that all know you're building something in this space, but they may have very different ideas of the reason and the purpose of the company, the why of the company. And so it's really imperative to not only drive the alignment, but to also...   12:57 be able to make sure that the people that you're hiring to go on this journey with you are passionate and committed to what it is that you're trying to build. And if you don't have a stated mission, then everyone will come up with their own definition and reason for why you exist. And it's not always the same. And one thing, Brenda, that I really liked, like for instance, when you started off and kicked off this podcast, the first thing you said is at the Founder's Sandbox, our mission is this, and you explained it.   13:28 So everyone knows what it is that your, what your purpose is and why they're listening. And it's really important for companies to do that. But the mission isn't the only important part. So the two things is there's a mission and then also core values. Okay. Any companies that I meet with, they'll say, we're not gonna spend that much time on mission and core values, because then they're just words on the wall. You throw it up and it doesn't mean anything. Well.   13:54 If you're going to have mission and core values and they're just going to be words on the wall, yeah, then they're not going to work. They're not going to work and it's not going to mean anything. But it is actually really important to have them and help them guide and advise how you build your business, how you hire, how you engage with your customers, and then holding yourself and your teams accountable.   14:22 to make sure that you're behaving in a way that's in accordance with your core values or your operating principles. And I'm sure we can talk about that more as we go through. But each company that I have joined is very intentional about their mission and core values. And that helps them to be very intentional about how they build their culture and how they're guardians of that culture. Yes, and you actually, for your...   14:52 the course you're teaching in the Culture-Driven Sales Institute. You did a lot of surveys and interviews. Can you shed some light on some of the background? I think you talked about the 85 companies at different stages of growth. Tell us a little bit about what you found, those aha moments of particularly back to mission and core values. Yeah, well, so at Tableau, just to go back a little bit.   15:19 So at Tableau, the management team at Tableau had not built a business of that scale before. We were all doing it for the first time. And so we were in a space that was very disruptive and transformative. We were in business intelligence, we were doing data analytics in a different way. We had a different go-to-market approach of how we were actually handling sales. And there weren't companies to go look at to how to do it. So the way we were doing it as,   15:49 first time executives in a first time team is we were very clear, I mentioned on our mission, to help people see and understand data. And we had very specific core values that helped to drive the way that we were behaving. We were on a mission, we used our products, we kept things simple, and we could go through and talk about a lot of these other core values. Well, that is really what helped us to go build this   16:19 really transformative company. When I finished at Tableau and decided that in this next stage, I wanted to be able to help other companies to grow and scale and do work both in teaching as well as an advisor or board director. I wanted to figure out, well, how can I be the most helpful? What is it that companies actually need? And so I ended up meeting with the whole slew   16:47 of founders, go-to-market leaders and CEOs. So in that first year, I did, I sat down with about 85 founders and CEOs over the course of the next few years. I've met with maybe 135, 140. And I asked these companies some very specific questions. One of the first questions that I've always asked, because I'm so passionate about mission, and I just assumed that companies were doing it in the same way we did at Tableau. And I found out,   17:16 that that actually is not the case. So when I was meeting with companies, one of the first things I would ask these CEOs is, well, tell me about your mission. Tell me about your company why. What I learned was actually quite eye-opening. Some of these founders would say, our mission is to get 30% market share. Our mission is to get to profitability in X number of years.   17:45 or very operational KPIs. And so I'd say to them, that's not a mission statement. That doesn't rally around the purpose of what you're doing. And sometimes these CEOs would say, no, that is our mission statement. That's how we're rallying our team. And so that I kind of was scratching my head. That's not a mission statement. Even more interesting to this though, is often times these CEOs or founders would say, hey, Kelly, you're an expert in go to market.   18:13 we're having some lack of alignment and we need help of why we have our salespeople don't want to sell what it is our product team is building or our sales team is trying to sell something that's different than how the marketing team is marketing it. Got it. And so then I would say, well, let me talk to some of those other leaders. And I would ask everyone that I talked to, first question is, what's your mission statement? And this was what was so...   18:42 crazy. I would ask the CEO, I would ask the co-founder, I would ask the chief revenue officer, I'd ask the chief marketing officer, the head of product, what is your mission statement? And guess what? Almost all of the time, each executive that I would ask would have a different answer to what their mission statement was. Wow, at the same company. So crazy, even if they had a published mission statement. And that's when I realized, oh,   19:12 People are just using these as words on a wall. And then you wanna know, well, why is a company not aligned? Well, if you have a product leader who is driving the engineers according to one mission statement, and you have a sales leader that's going and trying to engage your customers with a different mission statement, well, duh, you're not aligned if you're actually training your teams and advising your customers that you do something different.   19:42 And that was a huge aha. And the same thing was true for the core values. And so it is actually, here's just a main takeaway. Okay. Companies need to realize that the corporate strategy is very intertwined with the go-to-market strategy. Got it. Many companies think of their corporate strategy is often very aligned with the...   20:12 product strategy, but it all trickles down to how are you hiring? How are you engaging with customers? How are you making sure those customers are successful? How are you telling your story on your website and how you engage with your investors and in the world? And that go to market strategy goes all the way back up to the corporate strategy and all starts from mission, vision.   20:41 What is your company's story? What is your company's why? And we need to roll that all together. And that's a lot of what I teach in my course on culture-driven sales. That's a lot of how I end up helping companies when I'm advising or on the board. All right. So I often pride myself on my guests bringing in some practical tools while in the interview.   21:11 alignment of strategy with the culture. All right, we get that. Corporate strategy is very intertwined with sales strategy. And again, depending on the stage of the company, what do you see as key takeaways? I mean, how do you recruit? Is it dependent upon stage of the company? What are those KPIs or what are those core values? How do you measure? So can you walk us through some specific examples and tools that you perhaps used at Tableau?   21:42 on bringing in the mission to the core processes, hiring, training, the sales motion. What are those behavioral elements that you would include in your managing your teams, as well as growing the company? Yeah. Well, Brenda, I think it is really important to be able to have very specific hiring and performance management tactics that help to make sure you're managing that.   22:11 bar of your mission and value. So here are some very specific things. And I can give kind of tangible examples. Like for instance, companies should be using behavioral interviewing. And what happens is many companies are focused so much on the experience and the resume skills that they're looking at, has someone done this job before? Have they been successful in doing this exact   22:40 thing that I need, whether it's enterprise sales or have they been a CFO before, depending on whatever the role is. But it's really important that everyone can do behavioral interviewing. Now behavioral interviewing can be kind of tricky. The first thing you need to do is you need to make sure that you understand what behavioral traits you're trying to flesh out and be very specific on that. And then training everyone that is in the interview process on   23:08 How do you do behavioral interviewing? Now, some of the things that to do with behavioral attributes is look at the most successful people in your company, what are the behavioral attributes that they have, and then how do you interview and flush that out in the interview process? So that's example one, and we can do a little bit more there. Number two is how...   23:36 can you make sure that your core values are being identified and fleshed out, not only in your interview process, but in performance management? So I'll give a very specific example. At Tableau, one of our core values were like the first core value was we build great products, second core value, we use our products. How do we flush that out? In at Tableau, I had.   24:06 at the end, maybe 1800 people on my team in the GoToMarket organization. Virtually every single one when they were hired during the interview process had to do a demo on Tableau because our mission was we help people see and understand data. Our product was so easy, everyone could use it. And typically in software sales, it's the sales consultant or the sales engineer   24:34 that does the demo. But in Tableau, it's so easy, we wanted everyone to use the product. So here's an example of what often would happen, especially for someone that was more experienced and further along in their career, we would give them the assignment of, we need you to go download the product, takes 90 seconds to download, go find your own data set or you can use our sample one and do a demo. And this is gonna be one of the interview stages.   25:04 And sometimes people would be very excited about it. Other times people would say, hey, you know, Kelly, I'm interviewing with a ton of companies. And if you hire me, then I will learn the product, but I'm not gonna spend tons of time to go learn the product in the interview process. And the answer there, you can imagine Brenda, was thank you very much. The interview process is done.   25:33 And yeah, because, and that was a few things. One is our mission is we help people see and understand data. We want people that are super excited about that. So if you want to work here, we want you to be very excited about understanding what it is that we do. And if you're not going to do that in the interview process and you're not really that passionate about our mission. But secondly, we wanted people who were going to be all in and be able to use our product.   26:00 And that was one of our core values that we fleshed out very early on. So there's ways that you can look at that. Another tangible is in the annual performance review, it wasn't just the work that you did, but in our annual performance review, at most of the companies that I've been involved in, one of the checks are how much are you abiding   26:28 and embodying the core values of the company. People didn't get promotions, they didn't get pay increases, they didn't get high ratings unless they were living every day according to the core values of how they interacted with the internal team and with the customer. So those are some tangible ways to summarize again, behavioral interviewing flesh out the core values in the interview process.   26:58 and make sure that those core values and adherence and passion about the mission are part of your annual performance review process. Thank you very much. Three practical tools when you're scaling your organization, not just in sales, the entire organization. That's very, very helpful. You've recently launched Culture Driven Sales Institute.   27:28 And I know in one of the podcasts that you've been a guest to, you talk about storytelling and that a salesperson has to have at least three stories. So I wanted to do a practical exercise here today. Give you a bit of your own medicine, right? Which is you've started a culture-driven   27:58 that you would tell about. Yes. Well, so let's back up a little bit and why storytelling is so important. Thank you. I think what happens is when companies think about selling their product, they often are so focused on the what and the how, they miss the why. And the why comes back to why the mission is really important. Because   28:28 Well, when you think about not only employees, but for customers, customers want to understand why a company exists. Because what people don't realize is that the whole process of purchasing is very emotional. People use logic to do their research, to make sure that that product or service has everything that they need. But the lion's share of why someone actually makes a purchase decision,   28:57 is actually emotional. And so companies need to be emotionally connecting with their prospect and their customers. Think about this on a very tangible level. Just think about it separately of why you as an individual would buy a house or why you would buy a car. If you're looking for a house, you know you want it in this neighborhood, you want this number of bedrooms, you want this amount of square footage, this amount of bathrooms, but in the end,   29:26 you have to like feel it with the house. It's an emotional connection with that house. And this is the same reason that people buy, even if it is a software or an enterprise product or whatever it is that people are buying, a system or consulting, you need to feel it with the person and company that you're going to be interacting with. And it's shown in, if you look at research,   29:56 had done a whole survey to understand why people buy a certain product or service, most companies behave as if it is the specs of the product or service and the price. And as it turns out, those are two reasons why people buy. But the largest reason why people buy is actually their engagement and experience with the company. So this is really important to think about. So now going back to the stories.   30:25 The stories are, well, you want to be able to communicate the company story. You want to be able to communicate the individual, your personal story, and then also your customer story. So three stories, company story, personal story, and your customer story. So if I were to talk about it specifically for me, the company story of why I founded culture driven sales in the first place was.   30:54 What I realized is companies were just focused so much on the what and the how, focused so much on operational processes and operational execution and all these tactics. And they were missing the real reason of why companies buy, which is tied to   31:19 having an integrated go-to-market strategy that ties back to the corporate strategy, coming all the way from mission, vision, company story, values, but then how that ties into how a company tells their company story. What are your unique differentiated value propositions? Who is the ideal customer profile that you're trying to reach?   31:48 And then what is the best sales approach to be thinking about it? Companies were often asking me, well, how can I go get my specific sales? Hey, Kelly, just help me with, should I be enterprise sales or a different motion? What should be on my sales operational tactics? And they were getting in at such a detailed operational level, they were missing that high piece, which helped guide the strategy on the go-to-market strategy. So this is why.   32:16 I founded Culture Driven Sales in the first place. The second reason of my personal story is why was this important to me? Well, when I talk about what we did at Tableau, remember we discussed how this was the first time I had built an enterprise software team. And the first time that I had been building a company from zero up to a public company.   32:46 We had a team that we were so focused not only on building a great company, but thinking about our high priority was we want to build a great place to work. We were intentional on creating a great place to work with a great culture where people felt like they could bring their authentic self and be able to really build their career at Tableau. That was as important a goal to us.   33:15 as it was to go build a huge sustainable business that was creating great products for our customers and good returns for our investors. And what I realized was not all companies were thinking about that, but we were creating this movement where our customers were really excited and our employees are really excited. And this is something companies want to do, but they just don't know how to do it.   33:45 by putting culture at the center is really important. And so having culture drive sales rather than just focusing on your sales and thinking culture will just fall out on the backside. Culture isn't just a derivative that happens. You have to be as intentional and thoughtful about culture as you are in driving all of your other strategic priorities as a company. So that is the whole company story.   34:12 And then my own personal reason, my personal story for why I did it for a customer story is customers are actually realized that they get better results when they do this. And so when I'm on these different boards, oftentimes companies are saying, you know, how, like what, what, one specific example is oftentimes a company will say,   34:41 Well, how can I do this myself? If you look at their website and then you look at the website of their five competitors, they might all look identical. You take their name and their brands off and they all say that they're doing the same thing. But when you weave the company's story into it and their unique differentiated value propositions, that company gets more of a personality. It actually is unique. And that is what...   35:10 can really help to light up these individual companies so they can be different, they can be unique, and they can understand how they're gonna go and differentiate themselves across everyone else in the noise when they go and focus on culture more than they have before. Yeah, so what maybe, you know, biodegradable chickens are largely made by emotional, right? Okay, so.   35:38 One of the things that we did that was very different at Tableau is we did storytelling training. Okay. Many companies, they do when they're training their salespeople, they do customer centric selling, they do spin selling. They're trying to talk about solution selling in a way where it's really more about pitching the wares of the company. When you're really focused on the customer more.   36:06 you want to do storytelling because we've already established that it's an emotional type of cell. So we did a very atypical type of training. We brought in storytelling training and we taught people, well, how can you learn to tell stories? More about the company's why, more about the customer story, more about your personal story. And it was very interesting what happened is after this two interesting derivatives came out of this is   36:35 Our employees said, wow, this is not a typical sales trading. This is a communication trading that's helping me to communicate with not only my prospects and my customers, but everyone in my life, my family, my kids, all these things, because sales is about communication and emotionally connected. So that was the first derivative of our employees said, this is really useful.   37:05 The second derivative that came out of this is we had our customers came back and they were saying to me and my team, huh, why is it that Tableau is selling in such a different way? It seems like the Tableau salespeople are understanding me and my problems and my company in a way that others are not. And it was because when you're storytelling,   37:31 you're really emotionally connecting in this more deep communication way. It's not just twitching your wares. This is why you should buy. Here are all the things that we should do. And companies want to really be able to strive to do that. And the companies that do this well, they're often talked about that they're creating a movement. They're doing something transformational and disruptive where they're bringing these customers in that really wanna be   38:01 part of that whole aura, rather than just buying the widget in a transactional way. It's a way to really connect with your customers in a much deeper, more meaningful way. Thank you. You heard it here. Storytelling training. This is fascinating. Going to switch gears. Let's get back to the corporate boardroom. All right.   38:28 The right you check so many boxes. So you with scaling companies. They start out with advisory boards, but when they're at their first fiduciary fiduciary board of directors, what would you be seeking in a high performing company, Kelly, for this important milestone in terms of all the nuggets you've provided today, mission, core values.   38:57 storytelling, what are some of the nuggets you'd want to bring into the boardroom at the fiduciary board level?   39:06 at the board level? Well, that's a really wide question. I think there's a couple things, Brenda, to consider, especially if people are considering adding board directors or for those in the audience who are considering maybe being a board director yourself. Okay. First thing is companies will often have a board matrix. They'll have their idea of what are the different skills that they want to have represented   39:36 on the board. And so if you're a company, you want to be able to be thinking of what are the different skills and experiences that you want on the board to be able to help guide your executive team and your entire company. So for instance, for me, I brought, I've been a strategic consultant, so there's strategy. Strategy is a very big part of what happens on the board to help   40:06 the company think about their short and long-term strategy. Two, I'm a go-to-market expert, I'm in sales. And many boards will have different experts in different disciplines. So pretty much every board will have a former or currently sitting CEO to be a CEO coach or mentor. Oftentimes there will be a financial expert who was a CFO or worked at one of the big audit firms.   40:36 because they might be chair of the audit committee to help drive all of the financial and regulatory issues that are on there. And then oftentimes they'll have a product person that helps them with the actual product. My expertise would go to market for sales and marketing and branding. And you want different members on the board to have different expertise. So you can bring that and have resources for all those different areas of knowledge   41:05 will help to upscale and scale your team. The next piece is you want to be able to have a culture in the boardroom that is reflective and complimentary to your culture as a company. So you just in the same way, you want to do behavioral interviewing for your employees to make sure that the employees...   41:31 are aligned and operate in adherence with your core values and are passionate about your mission, you want that in the boardroom too. You don't want people that are just gonna tick the boxes for experience and resume, but they're passionate about what it is that your company is doing and that they will behave in a way that will help to further those core values and the culture. The last thing that I'll say is,   42:00 You want to be able to have discourse and open conversation in the boardroom. Yes. And you want to be able to promote diversity of thoughts and ideas so that you not only can have different experiences represented in the boardroom, but you're going to be able to have different respectful conversation so that the best idea wins.   42:29 and that you can have board directors who will challenge your way of thinking and ask questions to make sure that you're getting that top performance. And many companies, they think they want that in the boardroom, but they actually operate in a way where they want more yes people on the board. Just people to validate and say yes and agree, that is not going to be the most effective board.   42:57 You actually want people in the boardroom who are going to be able to challenge your way of thinking to call you when there may be a better way to do things. And of course, they're not the ones ultimately making the decision. You as the operators are going to make the decisions, but you want to have a respectful discourse where people are going to be able to challenge the way of thinking.   43:27 rather than just have a stamp of approval.   43:32 Excellent. Thank you for changing course there. So skill matrix, largely functional, strategy, finance, go to market sales, prior CEO or sitting CEO, culture in the boardroom, that is reflective of the company. So actually choosing and through the interview processes, right? For the corporate boardroom. I like that. And then finally, diversity of thought.   44:01 Right. First thing you thought is really important, not only in the boardroom, it's important inside the company too. And that is when we go back to having the best culture and behavioral interviewing, all of those kinds of things. Remember when you're thinking about culture, companies evolve. So in the past, people talked about cultural fit. I don't like to use that term because cultural fit is they're fitting into the mold of what the company already is. It's more of.   44:30 Are they going to be culturally additive to help to abide by these core values and to help to continue to grow and extend the culture in a way that you're scaling and growing into your next space? Thank you, Kelly. I want to ask you a question because last night when I was preparing the Zoom, we record this on Zoom platform,   45:00 they now have generative AI. And it is the presence of AI for me as an operator on my podcast and other materials that I generate myself, it's quite overwhelming and kind of intrusive. So I tried to turn it off, right? I was unable to. So after this recording, we'll have AI generated summary. How do you see...   45:30 AI's role in sales motions. And can you share your experience while perhaps you served as president and COO at Gong, which is indeed an artificial intelligence platform that serves revenue organizations to deliver insights? Just bring some light and maybe I'll be less overwhelmed. Well, I think Brenda, anytime you're introducing a new technology,   45:58 There is a transformative time because things change. And a lot of it has to do with change management and people just accepting that new technology. And you can think about that with, it took a while for people to accept new cell phones and smartphones. If I think back to early days at Tableau, for people to say, wait, you're going to collect all my data?   46:22 Are you, oh my goodness, no, there's the privacy and all of that. Now that's the same thing that's happening now with generative AI. Okay. Saying, Oh, it's a little scary. It's a little big brother. I don't want someone to be looking at all of this data and information. It seems a little creepy. And this is just typical of technology evolutions. You have the first movers who are the early adopters.   46:49 And then you have the rest of the world you ask to get comfortable with that. So, so Brenda, you shouldn't feel bad. It's just, there's many companies that are saying, Hey, I'm not sure that I'm really comfortable with it. I think the next thing though, is it's interesting for companies to look at it in a different perspective and see generative AI and AI overall. It's here to stay. It is not going away.   47:17 and it's going to transform businesses and transform the way we do work in a pretty meaningful way. And so you can push it, but it's gonna catch up anyway. So the companies who are actually going to do the best are going to be those who embrace the new technology and figure out how they can make it beneficial to them and help get through that change management faster.   47:46 Now you asked a specific question about how is it going to transform and augment go to market and sales. Yes. If you think about a sales person, salespeople have to know so much. I mean, when you're interacting with a company and a prospect, you have so many conversations, you have emails, there's texts, there's so many different things and there's their. Customers are going to your website. They're putting in.   48:15 report and support questions and tickets and all of this. And it is very difficult for any one human being to actually recognize, synthesize, and know everything that's going on with all those customer interactions. Okay. And from a sales way, if you could as a sales person actually have a technology that would help you to understand   48:43 What is this customer a prospect? What are they most interested in? What are their key issues and problems and challenges? What are the main things that they've been bringing up consistently on all of these prior conversations and sales calls and interactions and support tickets? And it was able to say to you, Hey, this is what you need to know. Okay. Then it, then it doesn't become scary anymore. Then it becomes, wow.   49:11 I am helping someone as my own personal assistant to do my job faster and more effectively. And that is what AI does. That's what Gong does, is Gong takes all the interaction with the customer and helps to tease out what are the most important things that you need to know. And now it can even be more of an assistant of I'm writing an email to you as a followup for this call.   49:37 Well, the AI will actually tell me, here are the most important things we talked about. It might even draft the email. And then it allows me to have more time to help my customers and less time having to parse through all of these disparate sources of information and content to try to remember, or sometimes it's not even remembering because I wasn't even involved in all those conversations. So you should think about AI as a way   50:07 that is a personal assistant to help you be faster, more effective, and you can always change it and you can augment it and you can edit it, but it's helping you to do your work faster and better and more effectively. Excellent. Productivity. Productivity, yes. Helping productivity. Wow. So the show notes are actually generated in Zoom. I have...   50:36 use a different platform myself, Riverside. But you should see how it works. Yeah, and it's amazing. Yeah, and it was in beta and now it's fully, so I was like, oh, that saves me at least two hours of running things. It saves you two hours of time. So ask yourself, it seems scary and overwhelming, but if it saves you two hours, then one, you have two hours of your time back to do more meaningful work.   51:04 but it also might give you a bunch of good ideas of synthesizing the content in ways that you hadn't thought of, or it might actually bring up something that you would have missed. So it's making you more effective at your job, but you are still in complete control because you can use it or not use it, right? So it's just helping your productivity. Thank you, thank you. Well, we're...   51:28 This is the time that I want my guests to have an opportunity to provide some contact information on how to reach you. It will also be in the show notes. Would you like to share some contact details? Absolutely. There are two of the best places to reach me. The first is on LinkedIn. Please go find me, Kelly Breslin-Wright on LinkedIn. Connect to me. Reach out. Send me a message. And would love to be connected there.   51:57 The second is on my website, which is cult Just the three words, cult There's tons of content there. There's a lot of tips and tricks and podcasts and speaking bits of what we have talked about there. There's also a contact form on that website. If you would like more information, if you would like to do one of my workshops for your company, if you have any kind of questions,   52:26 or would like to engage in a different way, please go visit the website and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you, Kelly. So I'm bringing it back to the Founder Sandbox now in the second season. I do ask each of my guests to share what the meaning is of certain areas of work that I work with founders on, which is resilience.   52:56 purpose-driven enterprise and sustainable growth. So not one guest has the same definition which makes it so rich. What does resilience mean to you? We kind of started the interview around the grit and resilience you had selling educational books. I think resilience, if we go back full circle to where we started, resilience comes back to one, being able to bounce back, being able to   53:26 control what you can control because there's a lot of uncontrollables. But resilience also means embracing failure and growth with the growth mindset because we learn a lot more from our failures and where things go wrong and our challenges, often than we do from what goes right. And resilience is being able   53:52 to be elastic in that way of not everything is going to be perfect and be able to continue to grow and develop. So that would be my answer on resiliency. And what about purpose driven enterprise? What does that mean to you? Well, purpose driven enterprise. I mean, this is a very easy one for me. I teach class on culture driven sales. Much of that is helping companies to really think about   54:20 What is their mission? What are their core values? So that they can understand and operate in accordance to their company's why, be able to communicate that. And so much of this means is, if you look at what is engaging employees the most now, yes, employees want to be employed at a company where they can identify with the mission and the purpose.   54:48 where they can see how the work they're doing, they're not just a cog in the wheel, but they're actually contributing to have an impact on a larger purpose. So this is important for the employees. The thing though, when it comes to purpose-driven enterprise, it's important for all of those different communities as well because it's not only the employees, it's the prospects, it's the customers, it's the investors.   55:17 it's the communities in which we serve, people want to understand who is it these companies that they're dealing with? And do they believe in the purpose of what that company is? So it's important for not only the culture side, but these purpose-driven enterprises, they're the ones that are getting much better, proven, factual results. The data shows.   55:46 The person driven enterprises are actually the ones that are doing better, getting better performance. Amazing. Sustainable growth, not to be confused with sustainability, but sustainable, scalable growth. What's that mean to you? Yeah. Well, with this for sustainable growth, it's interesting because there's always a balance between doing what's important right now for the short term.   56:15 And also making sure that you're looking far enough out into the future. And the things of this is if you think about companies, companies are building day by day. So one of the tidbits that I often will give companies is don't get too ahead. Don't go too far over your skis because companies are built day by day. And oftentimes there might be a smaller company. I deal with a lot of   56:42 startups or hyper growth companies and they'll say, hey, I want to be a public multi-billion dollar company and they might be at a hundred million now. Well, you're not going to get there overnight and you have to remember that companies are built one day at a time. So make sure you don't go too far at the same time though. You need to balance and say, okay, sometimes people get so looked at what is sitting right in front of them.   57:11 They forget to see the forest between the trees and they're only focused on, well, I'm gonna do this today, I'm gonna do this this week, I'm gonna do this next month. And they end up adding a whole bunch of operational processes and systems that then in six months or a year or two years from now, they're gonna have to rip out and redo. And so we need to be thinking, well, as we add, is this something that is going to help create   57:41 like the baseline of where we're going to go. So it's always a balance of make sure you're not getting too far in advance, but make sure you're not getting too stuck in the weeds today. And I think that if you can balance out those two, then you can really have sustainable growth. Yeah, so thank you so much. This is truly from the voice of an operator. I appreciate that. Last question, did you have fun in the sandbox today?   58:09 I did have fun in the sandbox and Brenda, it's always good seeing you. I appreciate the conversation and looking forward to continuing to connect with people that are going to go play in your sandbox. Thank you. So to my listeners, if you liked this episode with Kelly Breslin, right? Sign up for the monthly release. We're founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers.   58:37 help to share their lessons on how to build with strong governance, a resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. Thank you, signing off for this month. Have a great day.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Genevieve LeMarchal about Resilience: Journalist to Venture Capitalist. They speak about Genevieve's "Phoenix Manifesto", and what journalism and venture capitalism have in common.  Genevieve LeMarchal is the Managing Partner of Suncoast Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund specializing in healthcare impact and equity funding opportunities in medical AI, digital health, health tech, medtech and select therapeutics. She launched and ran Expert Dojo's healthcare program and ran 3 full cohorts of health tech and medtech companies, becoming one of the most prolific early stage vc investors in Southern California (Crunchbase, 2022) and winner of the 2022 Biocom Lifescience Catalyst Award. She loves to innovate financial models and find better ways to structure and fund companies and deals. She previously served as Partner at a science focused advisory and fund in formation, was a General Partner at Oregon-based FoundersPad VC Fund II and she is co-founder of the XXcelerate Fund. She is the host of the AdVentureous Podcast. Genevieve writes and delivers talks, keynotes and training programs to groups all over the world about venture capital and entrepreneurship, impact and equity investing and more. You can find out more about Genevieve and Suncoast Ventures at: https://www.suncoastvc.com/ adventureous podcast linked in   Transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs, business owners, and business owners.   00:30 who learn about building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I am Brenda McCabe, your host on the Founder's Sandbox. And here my mission is very simple. I want to assist those entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. Guests to this podcast are either founders, business owners, players in the VC,   00:59 private equity, ecosystem, professional service providers who like me want to use the power of the enterprise be that small, medium or large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each of my guests, we're gonna touch upon their own personal and professional journeys. And I always tease out topics around resilience, purpose-driven businesses and sustainable growth. My goal with this podcast is to really   01:29 create a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today my guest is Genevieve LeMarchal. It's an honor to have Genevieve today with me. Thank you Genevieve. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. You know Genevieve is the managing partner of Suncoast Ventures.   01:56 an early stage venture capital fund specializing in healthcare impact and equity funding opportunities. I'll go a bit more into your background in a moment. Genevieve and I go back probably two years when you were at Expert Dojo and their healthcare fund. And recently we met again at an investor summit and got to have dinner with Genevieve.   02:25 and discover kind of her journey to what she does today as managing partner of a venture fund. And in that dinner discussion, I discovered actually the theme of that. So very near and dear to my heart, which is around resilience and her own personal and professional journey is all about resilience. And the title for the episode today is resilience on journalist.   02:54 to venture capitalist. So thank you again Genevieve for joining me today in the Founder Sandbox. I'm gonna give a bit more color to your very deep expertise in healthcare. You're fun today, invest in digital health, health tech, med tech and select therapeutics. You also launched and ran   03:22 at Expert Dojo, a healthcare program running three cohorts of health tech and med tech companies. Shout out, quite a few of those companies are women owned. You become one of the most prolific early stage VC investors in Southern California as per Crunchbase 2022. You also were the winner of the 2022 Biocom Life-Size Catalyst.   03:50 Life Science Catalyst Award. You have a strength in developing innovative financial models, and you find better ways to structure and fund companies and deals. We all know that life sciences has a really long time to market. A lot of patient money has to sit behind that. You also previously served as partner at a science-focused advisory and fund information. You were a general partner at an Oregon-based   04:19 Founders Pad VC Fund 2, and you are co-founder of the Accelerate Fund. And you also have your own podcast. So this is not new to you. She is the host of Adventurous Podcast, and she writes and delivers talks, keynotes, and training programs to groups all over the world. You're a Pacific Northwest native, and you now reside in San Francisco Bay Area.   04:49 Genevieve, thank you. Thank you. After the dinner, where I had the honor to sit beside you, I came back and took a look at Suncoast Ventures website. And digging through it, I landed upon the Phoenix Manifesto, which is on your landing page.   05:15 And I want to read it here because I think it so encapsulates before you tell us what does journalism and BC investment have in common. I'm going to read this. Again, this is on the website of Suncoast Ventures. I am a phoenix. I am shakeable, not because I have never had setbacks. I am intimate with pain and failure. I stand tall.   05:43 and look it in the face and I have always pushed through. I always show up and I never give up. I believe anything is possible no matter the odds. I have faced the odds my entire life, fighting for my place in this world, for my right to walk the pathways to achieve greatness. What makes me resilient has nothing to do with what you see on my surface and everything to do with what lies.   06:13 within. Science and technology for betterment of society is how I choose to contribute to the world. I have dedicated my life. This is how I live and love. I'm willing to bend, but I'll never break. And the darkness can't get me because I burn on my very own. This is how I create my own light.   06:43 I have risen from the ashes many times. I am forged and fired full of grace. I am unshakable. So with that, tell us your story Genevieve. What does journalism and VC investment have in common? Yeah, well, so I started out my career for a short period of time as a journalist. Straight out of college, I went to school for journalism, all of that.   07:11 And journalism school is actually very difficult. You have to be very, they teach you to be very precise and they teach you to have extremely high standards for your work because if you mess up or if you have an incorrect fact or something that's inaccurate or whatever that might be, it can't run on paper. It does, you're gonna make the paper look really bad and you're probably gonna get fired. So.   07:40 So that's really ingrained. But then the next thing that's really ingrained into journalism students and eventual journalists is just this insatiable ability to tell a story and the desire to find one, to seek the truth, find out what's really going on. And so even though I had to report as the youngest and new reporter in the newsroom on the really boring story is things that no one could do.   08:08 talks about, no one wants to read. I had to write about the squirrel that was going rabid on somebody's roof and they called the police, just turned out it was a squirrel. It was a small town. News was limited, but things like that. And then, but I was always, I had this dream, I wanted to break a story, and I really idolized the great journalists like Edward R. Murrow.   08:35 of course, Anderson Cooper. I really thought that he was like a really revolutionary journalist of our time and all these different things. And so I was always looking to dig past what I was being told on the surface and get down to the truth. And that is something that you have to do every single day as a venture capital investor, because unlike investing in...   09:02 later stage deals or even like public markets or things like that, the information is not readily available. So you have to dig for it and you have to look for it. And you're also making bets on really nascent things that don't really exist yet. So you're always looking for information to piece together to try to determine whether or not an area of investment is viable.   09:31 Is it a gap we should be focusing on? Is it not a gap we shouldn't be focusing on? And that doesn't just come from one person's single observation of what they see on the surface. It comes from lots of information gathered and aggregated over time to create a story. And then we hope, as investors, that the story is true. So I would say those are the parallels. And that's a great segue to the next question.   10:00 around you hope as investors that the story that you've been able to weave together jointly with the company your funding does come true. There are parallels with running a fund, setting up a fund VC fund to that of being a founder, right? Yeah, not not all of them. Right. And so you know, what has you you?   10:30 have been through a couple funds. And the most recent is, is you are the fund manager. You know, what does staying true to your purpose, right? And your fun mean, you know, we've we've coming up for you raise this fund in June of 2022. Yeah, you bring in some of the companies from the cohorts coming up about expert dojo, you're really centered on the thesis of   10:59 of health care. You know, what is it that allows you to stay true to purpose?   11:06 That's such a big question. Like you can write a whole book about that. I need to talk about that. I think that the thing that allows me to stay true to purpose is the fact that I've been burnt out so many times and a lot of it has to do, had to do with the fact that I wasn't being true to myself. I wasn't being just, you know, I was hiding something. I was lying to myself. I was, you know, trying to be something that I really wasn't.   11:35 And it's not to say that you won't get tired and burnt out by being true to yourself. In fact, I feel very burnt out right now at this moment. But it's different because I think now I have the skills, the ability to be resilient. That whereas past I hadn't, but also because I'm still being true to myself, I just have a lot of my plate. But I think that when you kind of look at your   12:02 tendencies and it you know, one of the things we'd get as adults is the ability to look back at patterns of our own selves and patterns of our own life and say I always tend to do this and then I end up in these situations and It now it doesn't have anything to do with anyone aside from myself. I'm the common denominator How do I fix this, you know and and you start to call and you start to edit? And you over time you kind of realize like really?   12:32 The area that I always come back to is this core. And this might have been trendy at the time, and maybe I wanted to do it. Or this might have sounded interesting, and I was influenced by someone. Or this seemed opportunistic, and I went after it for a while. But at the end of the day, this is where I'm always ending up. And you have that kind of feedback as an adult if you're willing to listen and learn from it. You know, on your own. Yeah, that's very authentic.   13:01 Thank you for that. You also are a big follower, Warren Buffett. I think one of your, going back to your being true to yourself, your financial acumen and how you look at companies. Can you speak a little bit to the fundamentals that have informed your fund? Yeah.   13:26 Yeah, well, so the Warren Buffett thing is interesting because it's like Warren Buffett's investing mindset and his fundamentals. He would probably never be a venture capital investor. You know what I mean? But at the end of the day, Warren Buffett is who Warren Buffett is. And he has been very successful because he has stayed very true to his core principles. He has always made the main thing the main thing.   13:53 And I think in venture capital, we tend to get so pulled into all these different areas that are hot or new or that people seem to be doing or whatever. And you don't see a lot of steadfastness in venture capital like you might see in funds like what Warren Buffett has. And we can benefit from that because the legendary fund managers, the Warren Buffetts of the world, the Ray Dalios of the world.   14:22 They all focus very, very strongly on just core fundamentals of investing. And in venture capital, like you mentioned earlier about the time and patient capital, that's one of the things that people get so swept away in is trying to make venture capital all things. And it's like, oh yeah, we're going to get these quicker returns. They're going to be high in this unicorn.   14:46 And then you watch these things fall apart. You watch the bottom fall out. And you're like, it was never real. It was always alive. And maybe some people made money. They got lucky. They got out or whatever at the right time. I don't know. But the point being, we're always trying to manufacture some sort of crazy situation when in reality, and one of the ways we manufacture it is by doing round upon round upon round of.   15:13 higher and higher valuations that are getting crazier and crazier. And then it all comes crashing down, and we wonder what happened. And we say, venture capital is massive class is bad. It's like, well, not really. The mindset that we might be approaching it as managers is sometimes not right, because we need to remember venture capital is patient capital. It's slow. Our investors and LPs, while they are my bosses, they know that this is not going to, you know,   15:41 turnover overnight and start to create returns. The pressure that I feel to produce returns is healthy to an extent, but we need to remember that we're investing the gaps. We're looking for opportunities to invest in underpriced assets. Yes. And that's the bet we're making is this asset is underpriced and it will be, and that doesn't mean this asset is underpriced per what the public market might say. That means this asset is underpriced   16:11 like now, you know? And I think that if I invest in this, it will generate a positive markup and eventually a positive return because it's creating real economic value and not just paper returns on paper returns. And so those, I mean, I could go on and on about what the fundamentals are, but I think it comes down to, we then vilify the asset class.   16:39 when the asset class is actually not the problem. The problem is the way that we try to finagle it to get to get it to be what we want it to be. And it's not like that. That's so elegant. And I also am a true believer in the patience that is required in life sciences, biotech, that anything that is any startup   17:06 it's any startup a particular life sciences or right that those there's no hockey stick, right? It is you, you have to introduce largely against the standard of care, right? That is incumbent within treating a certain therapeutic area. Let's let's kind of change the messages for my listeners here on the pad cat podcast. So at   17:36 the founder sandbox, I often end up being a mentor to CEOs and digging in when when times get tough, we know we are coming off particularly difficult two years with head winds, you know, we have high interest rates, there is a lot of dry powder out there. Yeah, but what and I and how I work with founders oftentimes is hey, have you written?   18:05 And will you show me a thank you letter that you've been, that you've sent out either to somebody within your personal or your professional network. I did this really early on with founders because to build resilience, I think being grateful and just recognizing those people because you are riding on the shoulder. Sometimes your team might not be following you along. The market's timing isn't the greatest. So you've had a recent change in your family.   18:34 and new addition. You're running a VC fund. You have you're raising money as well. How have you built resilience and how you do you continue to build resilience to naive within the new arrival to your family? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I don't know the answer to it. Oh, 100% yet. But last year, I'm decided to make my kind of word of the year.   19:04 Perfectly imperfect. Perfectly what? Perfectly imperfect. I love, okay. And the reason I chose that word was because, you know, I've always been a very high achieving person. And ultimately, I was always, as a high achiever, also very controlling. Okay. Not of other people, but of, of like, what was happening.   19:30 you know, I have very specific goals, very specific outcomes. And I would say, oh, I was being goal oriented, but no, I was being controlling. And I wanted things to go a very specific way. And when it didn't go like that, I would be, I would work harder, fight harder, try harder to get a certain outcome to occur. And then when things were going differently in my life, I made myself wrong for that.   19:54 And so it was like this perfectionism thing and trying to control the outcomes of my life so that it could look the way I thought it should look. And it was not healthy. And then when I realized that I'm not in control no matter how hard I try, I'm not in control no matter how much I might stress myself out and try to make myself in control. And if I let go a little bit and do more steering and allow,   20:22 things to occur, it's hard because it's going to require me to have faith. It's going to require me to face a lot of the fears I have about not achieving the thing I'm trying to get to of, you know, and all the things associated with that. But oftentimes the outcome that ends up occurring for me is better than what I wanted, had I... Figured that. You know, yeah. So I was like, well, this is interesting because I'm not in control anyway.   20:50 And this could very easily become very much a spiritual discussion. It could keep it not that, but like, you know, if I want to create this life of purpose and life of impact, I've got to just stay core to the values and core to that and move, but allow things to happen. And so with having a child recently, you're even more not in control.   21:19 this child is in control. So the word of the year continues to be perfectly imperfect because accepting that things may not necessarily look the way you want them to. I used to have these idyllic mornings where I'd wake up and rested, you know, and have my coffee and, you know, catch up on my email. And like, you know, everything in my life was very easy.   21:44 and very prescripted almost in a way. And this morning I got barfed on, you know? Yeah, that happened. Yeah, and so I was like, well, you know, but how, but it's different, but the only thing that makes it bad is that it's not my idea of what things should be. You know, things should be this way, should be that way. So when I let go of the shoulds, it's perfectly imperfect just the way it is.   22:10 I got you've heard it here on the founders sandbox with Genevieve LaMarchelle perfectly imperfect. I great I love that. I love it. Okay, up until now, you've shared and I've shared your background, many, many success stories, many awards. We all know that the road to success is often fraught with some stories of failure. Can you share some of these stories with my listeners here?   22:39 I have a lot of failures. In fact, it's interesting because I just think a lot of those successes were actually like kind of a failure but it worked out or something like that, you know, in a way. But I think I often tell people that I came into venture capital off of a failure and not off of a success. As a founder, I had a startup and a lot of things went very, very, very wrong.   23:08 in that startup and a lot of it was my fault. Some of it was not my fault. And some of it was just like perfect storm of crap that occurred and it was just like, well, this is, it taught me a lot after I finally was able to recover from a lot of that that happened about how   23:36 one thing like what is failure and what is success really? And how would I have, I have the outcome that I wanted in my head, but when things are going really bad, you kind of create a new outcome and that becomes success. And the definition of success started to change. And so I realized like, I don't actually think that in startups, there is a way to be successful. I just think you don't fail.   24:05 for long enough and you eventually get lucky. That's full. We were unlucky and I didn't have the experience or the resilience or the support in order to be able to navigate out of some of the situations, you know, and to your points about, you know, governance, we didn't have good governance. We didn't have any governance whatsoever. That probably would have helped us a lot, but we didn't have it. So, yeah, I think when...   24:34 at the end of the day after you've recovered from whatever the fallout of your failure is, you're left with wisdom. But you can only be wise and you can only turn that wisdom into like gold if you're willing to accept yourself as someone who failed. You're willing to, you're not trying to hide it. You're not trying to like shove it under the rug or pretend it didn't happen or pain.   25:00 paint a picture over it, lipstick on a pig, if you will. Right. To say, this was a garbage fire, and it was my garbage fire. And this is what I learned from it. And this is what I can help now to either not do it again, or in my case, as a VC and advisor to a lot of companies, help them not do these things. I made a lot of pretty common mistakes, pretty common stuff. Yeah. And thank you for sharing.   25:30 your, I guess, failure, a startup that eventually did not prevail in getting financed. I couldn't help but listen to and hear from you lack of governance, but also about you didn't have the operational help around you. That would have perhaps ushered you to   25:59 success and getting funded. What are you doing at Suncoast Ventures to operationalize those founders? To operationalize the founders or? Yeah, to help them. Yeah. Well, so I mean, there's not a lot I can do because the founder, like I'm not on their board. I don't have a board seat in the companies, nor do I really want one because of the operation Suncoast would have to   26:28 With those founders, oftentimes now I can see the signs of things that are going wrong. And not only do I see the signs of something going wrong currently, I can see a train coming. And that's something that I don't think a lot of other people have that foresight that I've gained over my years of failures. Is I can recognize a failure when I see one. Like I know a speeding train is not a, I don't know.   26:58 I'm making up something weird, but so I, you know, I can kind of talk with them about that. And I also, because I was a founder and I went head strong and I did think I knew the best and, and things like that. And truthfully, as we see, you want to back the best founders and the best founders are resourceful. Yes. They'll listen to you. They won't always implement what you said, but they will actually listen and they'll actually take it to heart and things like that.   27:27 And so the best founders are very, very communicative. They share with you what's going on, the good and the bad. But if you have to drag the bad out of them, because of course you wanna present the best light to your investors. I know, I certainly do. And so when they share, or when you ask, what are you struggling with right now? And they kind of dance around it. I can quickly kind of pull out what's happening and say,   27:57 I know that you don't have a lot of time to do this administrative activity over here with the cap table, or I know that you're feeling really stressed and stressed and you don't really have time to address this issue or that issue. But here's why I think we need to do it now. Here's why it's not going to be as hard or scary as you think. And here's what could happen if we don't do it. And those types of conversations.   28:27 Then you leave them. They'll usually set the ball in motion to make that right. And I often have my founders allow me to help them at that point, where I can say, I know it's challenging. We've got a cap table problem. It may not seem like a problem now, but it's going to be a problem at series A, and that's not that far away. So let's fix it now, because I don't want you to be in a position where you can't raise your A round because.   28:55 we've got this fixable thing, but it's just going to take time. So let's just solve it now. And they're like, Oh, I hadn't thought about that. And so, and then they'll let you solve, then they'll let you fix it with them. Excellent. But it can't just be like a, you got to fix your cap table is a mess, you know, or it's, um, as you said, you do have to have founders that are communicative and, um, you know, tell you the good, bad and the ugly, right.   29:24 Yeah, on a recurring basis so that you as the fund manager and the investor are able to provide your wisdom that you've acquired with your many, many experiences. And you can get a vibe early sometimes from founders. As I'm sure you've noticed, sometimes the conversation with the founders vary one way. They're just pitching at you and they're not really listening and they have their response. And you're like, this is like...   29:53 interesting company, you know, great founder, great team, but I get this weird feeling that I'm just being, this is very one way and it's not reciprocal. And in the seed stage, especially if you're going to be one of the first like VCs or professional investors in that, it's really important that you get the vibe that there's going to be a reciprocal communication going on.   30:22 You know, your Suncoast Ventures Vintage One is from June 2022. So kudos to you raising a fund in a pretty tough market. You've been in the venture space for over 10 years, right? As an emerging fund solo manager, can you share some of the lessons learned? Maybe it's about aciclality, because life science is acyclico.   30:51 Talk to us about how it's how you weathered through raising a fund, particularly with the headwinds that we've had. Right? Yeah. Well, so I mean, all things all early stage venture is not tied to public markets. It's not it's not. So that's so as a person, whether you're thinking about being an angel or whether you're thinking about having a fund or whatever, if you have the ability to weather storms, which requires   31:19 patients and resilience and all this stuff like that, early stage is the great place to be, even with the companies that completely blow up. Early stage investors usually did kind of okay when you look at a lot of these as examples. That being said, in where we specialize in healthcare technology and medical AI type tech and things like that, we're also...   31:49 Health tends to be a laggard in terms of technology adoption. The stuff that is super bleeding edge that we're looking at like Nvidia is doing and things. Yes. Health care is not there. So I do sometimes have some of the benefit of being able to be with the pack that's a little bit more of a laggard in terms of technology because you can see how other industries adopted it or didn't adopt it and adjust. So there's some of the foresight there. But.   32:17 You know, in terms of the cyclicalness of this, I think that's where almost the journalism training comes in. You know, you don't get, actually, I love my quotes. So Warbuffet, love him. John Wooden, he had a quote that was like, you can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a fallacy to get caught up in either one. And I remember hearing that, or reading that, or something like that back in my 20s. And in my 20s, I was just chasing   32:47 validation and praise, like we all were, you know, and, you know, come from a military family, they were very much like, um, focused on high achievement. And, and so I was really looking for that, looking for that and all the places, both right and wrong. And, um, and so the idea that it was a fallacy to get caught up in praise, I was like, huh, why would that be the case? You know? And, but   33:14 So over time, you can liken John Wooden's quotes to the craze that happens around anything. Right now, it's AI. Before, it was about there's crypto, and then there was a bunch of Web3 stuff going on. And it's sort of like, don't get caught up in any one thing. It's always a cycle. The market's great. Awesome. The market's not great. Fine.   33:39 Like, you know, I'm sticking around. And so last year as the market cycled, it was a little scary to watch my watch managers, um, not that dissimilar to me, just old everywhere, just fall apart and, you know, and be afraid of for myself. But I just thought, you know, we're, we're going to hunker down and we're not going to go anywhere and then, you know, and that keep doing what we do. And.   34:08 Maybe we'll slow down a little because we have to. Maybe we will make slight adjustments to course because we have to. But we're not going to respond with these big swings to whatever the market is doing. And so last year, I started thinking a lot about market cycles. And I went back and looked at some of these really, really old investment analyst documents that I found. OK.   34:36 from like the 1960s. And I can't remember who had produced this, but it was like a photograph of like a brown paper, sketches. And I was looking at this and I was like reading recessionary trends and just being a nerd. And I was like, this guy in 1942 to 1965 or whatever that he was doing this, the curves are the same.   35:06 they're just maybe slightly closer together now because things happen much quicker. The velocity. We're still doing this. So, you know, let's not act like right now as a unique situation because it's not, we've seen it before and we know what we would have done or should have done back then. So let's just do that now, you know, which is not lose your head and- And stick to your knitting. Yeah, just keep going. Yeah. Excellent.   35:36 I would like to give you the opportunity Genevieve to tell us how to reach you, my listeners. Please, is that on LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn is great. Please don't pitch there. My inbox is involved with pitches. And most of them aren't even like in thesis for what we do. So you know, if a company does, if someone's a founder and they want to submit Suncoast on our website, you can submit on the website. Okay.   36:07 So that, and we do look at those, like those things come in and we do look at those. So that's the best way to reach me as a founder. If you wanna not pitch, if you just wanna like connect and, you know, read posts, you know, and interact on LinkedIn, LinkedIn is great. But just don't pitch on LinkedIn. And then if you have an Instagram. Okay. Yeah. Is it Sankos Ventures? No, no, it's just my name. It's at Genevieve. Genevieve LeMarchal, yeah. Okay.   36:35 that. And then of course, you know, there's adventurous podcast, which is on all major podcasting channels, there's links to it, you can get to from Instagram and things like that. And also, I have a website for it. I don't use it much, but it's adventurous podcasts.com. Thank you. All of these ways to connect and what to do and what not to do will be in the show notes. Yeah, just don't pitch on LinkedIn. Yes.   37:05 Very sound advice. I always asked my guests to kind of come back to the founder sandbox with me. I work on themes of resilience, purpose driven enterprises, and sustainable growth with the founders I serve. And I do not one guest has the same description of the the meaning of this word. So resilience, what does it mean to you? I mean, your man, your Phoenix manifesto is for me.   37:35 the an amazing show of resilience. But what does resilience mean to you? Resilience, I think it just means that like.   37:51 you're going to give yourself grace, but you're, and you're going to stay the course, you know. And so, you know, there's times when it's hard to be resilient when, you know, we need, we need to give ourselves grace. We need other people to give us grace. You know, we need that. It doesn't make you any less resilient because you need that. First and foremost, you give it to yourself.   38:21 some grace doesn't mean you're not going, you're not continuing forward. You're not pushing forward and you're not staying in course. So, um, I guess while moving forward, I don't know. Yeah. Yes. And I loved within the manifesto I'm willing to bend, but I'll never break. So that, that ability to, to have grace, give yourself grace, purpose-driven enterprise. What does that mean to you? So, um,   38:49 What purpose-driven means to me is that it is really aligned with what we've defined as purpose and impact and health. Purpose-driven means that it has a greater, it's a bigger outcome than simply just large returns. It doesn't not mean large return. It should mean that in fact, because if you want more and more.   39:15 assets and allocations to be put into impact or purpose driven enterprises, you need to produce returns. But that's what it means to me is more than just the financial outcome. And also I'll go back to your Phoenix manifesto, science and technology for betterment of society is how I choose to contribute to the world.   39:43 Sustainable growth. What's that mean to you? Sustainable growth. I'm sexy growth. Don't chase the latest, right? Yeah. Thank you. And your last, the last question. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing. It's time with me.   40:13 And my listeners will be better off after listening to Genevieve. Is it Lamar call? Is it? It's lay Marshall. And they marshaled. Genevieve, they marshal. So if you've liked this episode, sign up for my monthly release of a podcast where you're going to be listening to entrepreneurs, business owners, VCs, professionals, and risk providers.   40:42 on how to build strong governance in a resilient, scalable and purpose driven company to make profits for good. This podcast is available on any major streaming platform and I look forward to dropping again in on a monthly basis this podcast. Signing off until next month. Thank you.  

  On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Anna Jacob about "Maximing Purpose while Achieving Profits". They speak about her broad experience coming full circle from her experiences growing up that informed her future career purpose- and in assisting women business owners to think strategically on exit strategies.  Anna Halloran Jacob specializes in selling privately owned companies and maximizing their after-tax proceeds. She has also served as Adjunct Finance Professor, Loyola Marymount University, 25 years in investment banking, private equity, and corporate operations. Anna was also COO of a full service advertising company with over 150 employees. Anna is passionate about educating business owners on how to maximize the value of their company for a successful exit. She has significant experience in representing companies in the sale of their business, capital raising and valuations.  You can find out more about Anna Jacob at : Linked IN https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-halloran-jacob-6543b8193/ Diamond Capital Advisors Show Transcript:   00:04 Welcome back to the Founder's Sandbox. The Founder's Sandbox is a podcast now in its second season. The monthly podcast reaches an audience of entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient,   00:32 scalable and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. I'm Brenda McCabe, your host here on the Founder's Sandbox and my mission is simple. I want to assist both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in building their scalable, well-governed and resilient businesses. The guests to my podcast are founders, business owners, corporate directors and professional service providers who, like me, want to use the power of the private enterprise.   01:01 small, medium, and large to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with a guest on topics that we touch on, including resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth, my goal is to create a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one business owner at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. Today, I'm absolutely thrilled to have as my guest Anna Jacob.   01:30 Welcome, Anna, to the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you. It's great to be here, Brenda. Thank you. You are a managing director at a Los Angeles-based firm, Diamond Capital Advisors Investment Partners. It is a mid-market firm focusing on investment banking, M&A advisory, and capital markets. And Anna and I are going to talk about   01:55 something very near and dear to your heart as well as mine, is maximizing purpose while achieving profits. And if you allow me, Anna, I'm gonna give a brief background on yourself. Anna Halloran Jacob specializes in selling privately owned companies and maximizing their after-tax proceeds. She also has served as adjunct finance professor at Loyola Marymount University.   02:22 25 years in investment banking, private equity, and corporate operations. Anna was also COO of a full service advertising company with over 150 employees. Anna is very passionate about educating business owners on how to maximize the value of the company for successful exit. She has significant experience in representing companies in the sale of their business.   02:51 capital raising and valuations. It's truly a delight to have you here. You have such a broad experience. It was difficult to choose the topic. And I think your broad experience and having known you now for a couple of years while we work with women owned businesses is a testament that you're coming full circle to the episode's title, maximizing purpose while achieving profits.   03:18 I've known you for a few years and it wasn't until recently that I went, aha, I want to invite Anna to my podcast. I learned that you had an early formative or growing up experience that informed your purpose, Anna Jacob, in assisting business owners to maximize profits and alignment to your purpose. Can you share with my listeners, you know, what was that experience that was so formative and what you do today?   03:48 Yes, absolutely. So I'm one of 10 children. And my father was an entrepreneur. And he had a very innovative orthopedic device company. And it was for the betterment of patients. And we were too young at the time to know this was going on. But what had happened was he had received a couple of offers.   04:19 And unfortunately, he did not have advisors that helped him. And the technology was literally shelved. One of the offers was with the largest global medical device distributor in the world. And that would have changed not only patient outcomes significantly throughout the world, but it would also have, you know,   04:47 the technology wouldn't have been shelved and it would have provided retirement for, you know, my parents and so forth and security. We found this out when I was older and it really impacted all of us. And so I wanted to learn everything that I could about how to help entrepreneurs like my dad get the full value of their company to realize their hard work.   05:16 and to better, you know, people's lives. So after business school, I went to work for Lehman Brothers in New York, and investment banking, and did M&A and capital raising for Fortune 500 companies and learned everything I could. Yes, and I applied that I moved back to Southern California where I'm originally from, and focus and dedicated my career on   05:46 helping privately owned companies, entrepreneurs, to achieve maximum value on exit. And part of that process for me is that I like to get involved early on, as Brenda knows, with the entrepreneurs, and whether you're selling a year from now or five years from now, do you have the right advisors in place? Tax attorneys or wealth advisors?   06:16 in order to prepare for an exit. And also just counseling people that received unsolicited offers, you know, what to do. I'm very, very passionate about helping entrepreneurs in that regard. Thank you. It's always extremely enlightening to know what purpose has driven us into our current businesses. And, you know, I think it's   06:43 timely that you agreed to join as a guest in the podcast, because it's an election year in the US, and it just so happens that there are over 66 elections going on across the world today. Actually, not today, but over this in 2024. Interest rates remain high. Inflation is persistent, not only in the US, but in other countries.   07:13 Two wars continue their course. It appears that the US has made a soft landing, and we're going to avoid a recession. What are you observing in the merger and acquisition markets that there may be risks and opportunities with this backdrop during this month of March? Yeah, so last year, the M&A market definitely was down.   07:43 significantly globally. And a lot of that was driven by a very fast increase in interest rates. Yep. Very unprecedented. And that just causes uncertainty. It also causes financing costs to go up. And private equity is the big driver of the M&A market. And costing them more money, it's   08:12 you know, multiples that are paid for companies, which then puts these sellers on, you know, on a holding pattern. But what has happened and it started happening, you know, last fall is with interest rates starting to stabilize and now people are looking to in the future that hopefully to decline if the market is stabilizing.   08:42 both on a volume basis and also the multiples that are being paid. Okay. This is just very recent data, but we're seeing it's positive. We're seeing the stabilization. And, you know, in terms of, you know, what I would say in terms of risks to sellers, it's, we're still looking at instead of 100% cash deals that were, you know, being done.   09:10 Now we're seeing a lot more earnouts. Okay. And with earnouts, there's uncertainty. So, you know, our advice to clients is take as much cash upfront as you can. And, and just to talk about earnouts, you know, that's basically compensation that you will or consideration is a better way to say that for your company based on future.   09:39 either revenue or typically EBITDA milestones that the buyer is going to set to make part of that consideration. And there's just a lot of uncertainty with that. So what what the good news is, is that there's still a lot of money out there. There is 2.6 trillion just in private equity money.   10:05 And because interest rates, you know, borrowing costs are stabilizing, we are seeing, as I mentioned, the multiples starting to stabilize. And, you know, there's so what I would say to a CEO or an owner is know your cash number. Okay. Know what you want, because the earnout may or may not happen. And what we have actually done in certain transactions is negotiated a lower   10:34 total transaction value, but a higher cash component. Because the seller, their objective was to make sure that they absolutely had that cash number in their mind. So I would encourage people to help find that number is to talk to your financial planner and find out what it is that you would, when you do sell, what do you need? Because that will help you   11:03 well before you get into any negotiation or, you know, help representation in that negotiation in terms of what you actually need. So thank you. I like how you've taken us through both the risk side and the opportunities. And I had a little sigh of relief that we- there is a bit more stabilization, despite the headwinds that we've had over the last, I guess, two years, right, coming out of the pandemic.   11:33 On the Founder's Sandbox podcast, I really pride myself on the content my guests bring on real nuts and bolts for company owners. And what I'd like you to talk about is, all right, I listened to this podcast, met Anna Jacob. Yeah, I'm going to look at what my cash, my desirable cash exit value would be. Can you walk?   12:00 us through what is a real M&A timeline and when does it make sense to really line up those advisors? Yes, absolutely. So deals are taking longer in this market.   12:18 The expectation if you're doing an auction, which is what I would recommend to get the highest price, is typically it's about nine months. Some deals are taking longer. But, you know, typically you're, you're going to, and this is if you're well prepared. And by prepared, I mean that you have your financials and you know, it's readily available.   12:48 Um, if you have the due diligence process is pretty intense. So you want to make sure that when people ask you for financials, that you have them readily available. Um, and that increases your credibility, which increases your value. Um, and you know, to your point, Brenda, um, really you don't want, you don't need to get every advisor involved, involved at the beginning.   13:16 I think the first advisor you definitely want to get involved well before you receive an unsolicited offer and offer is what is that cash number? So that would be a wealth manager. Now in terms of my role as an investment banker, I would want to start talking to somebody a year before they're looking to get together so that I can help them.   13:45 figure out what are those two diligence items that you need so that when you go to market, it's very efficient because the longer a deal goes on, the more things that can happen. So you the process is critical. You want to make sure that you hit the market running that you can negotiate. You don't want to keep buyers on hold. You want to create this very, very efficient process. Okay, highest price. So typically, I would get involved   14:15 about a year before just consulting and then getting retained when you are ready to go. I also, in terms of another key advisor, I would bring in a tax expert, and that could be a CPA or a attorney, whatever makes the most sense, when we're getting ready to consider an offer.   14:45 The minute you hit into what's called a letter of intent, that is when you want to make sure that you have already talked to your tax advisor about what does this mean? So for example, just very specifically, it's not about getting the highest value. Okay, my job is to get a seller the highest after-tax proceeds. Got it. So we need to negotiate, know exactly what your cash number is.   15:14 And then also, depending on the form of consideration, buyers are going to have different types of consideration. Maybe someone's going to pay 100% cash, or maybe someone's going to say, I want to do an earn out, or maybe someone says, I want to do milestone payments. And it's very important that if you're going to do something like that, like a milestone payment, that it's not considered.   15:40 compensation where your tax on an ordinary income tax basis instead of capital gains. So all of these things before anybody gets to that letter of intent and they're giving us bids and we say, what is your form of consideration? We're gonna review all those and we're gonna pick the best one that has the best after-tax proceeds for the company and the highest certainty that it's gonna close. And so that's when we get somebody involved. Right, and you bring it back to the cash value, right? That's-   16:09 business owner has dreamed about. Exactly. In order to go on and build another business. Right. And then the M&A attorney comes in to help with the reps and warranties and any kind of exposure. And that's critical at that point. But that's not until you know that this is, what we're doing is we're vetting the buyer so that the seller is running their company. This is how it should be done. They shouldn't be distracted.   16:39 time-consuming process, they're running their company, they're making their numbers, they're running. And we're doing interference with the buyers and negotiating everything and weeding out the people that aren't gonna be the ones doing the highest bidding. And I should note one thing too about this process, Brenda, that's interesting is that we sold a company last year in the consumer sector and they didn't wanna go to auction.   17:08 They were approached by a competitor. Okay. And what we recommended to them was, we know that you think this is the most logical buyer, but we're going to negotiate a higher price from what they offered you. They offered 54 million, which was a good value. We said, we're going to get you a much higher price. And part of that was by us representing them, we were able to negotiate   17:39 what the company would look like on a pro forma basis to the buyer. How much money was the buyer going to save by buying this company? Because the seller had significant technology that was going to reduce their cost significantly. And so we basically did a pro forma showing this is what you're getting. Right. And, you know, we want you to pay for part of this because you're getting this value and you need this.   18:07 Because if you don't buy this company, you're going to have a lot of problems going forward. That was a negotiation while the CEO was running the company. The buyer also knew that we, at any time, could go out to market.   18:23 And we had a whole buyer's list. We had a book put together. We had all the due diligence done. We negotiated that $54 million to $68 million. Wow. So $14 million. So even if a company says, you know, I don't want to go to auction. I don't want to do that. I know who the buyer is. There's a lot of validity in a very efficient type process. You know, I like.   18:51 of this specific example, because it kind of comes back to the work I do with founders pretty early on. They're just starting to scale. It's like, who was the CEO or which was the company in which you inspired your business? Because you want to look and we create a table of peers or comparables that are largely listed companies. And I want to work with the founder to make them look like that.   19:21 And we always ask, what is your exit strategy? And oftentimes, some of the founders I work with want to sell to a potential competitor. So I think this is a real life example of selling to a competitor. The other thing that I wanted to comment based on the process you've walked us through is the due diligence process is very onerous.   19:51 Get your ducks lined up early. I had another guest on the podcast, Lisa Greer-Quateman, an attorney, and she used the word fluff and fold. She recommends on an annual basis, even if you're not considering selling your company, to really go through those corporate governance documents, your tax filing. So the house is in order in that unexpected, unsolicited offer to buy your company.   20:21 So thank you.   20:25 You know, bring it back also to the sandbox.   20:31 If you were on a board, I work a lot in setting up first advisory boards as the company grows, they're going to bring in another series A, they're setting up their board of directors.   20:49 If you were on a board today in the current market context that you introduced us to, what would be some of the topics that you think should be front and center in those boards, Anna? Yeah, I think today it's we're hoping that things seem to have stabilized, right? But I think one of the most critical things   21:19 And I learned this more so as a CEO, a company with 150 employees. So there's a lot of personnel challenges and so forth is really getting together a strategic plan is whether it's three years, you know, at least at a minimum to look at and make sure that all of management is on board.   21:48 It can't just be the founder saying, OK, this is my strategy, is to get input from the key employees, is to make sure that that is one put together and has projections in there. And that it's revisited at least on every six months, if not earlier, where you have real actionable items.   22:16 It's especially if you're in a very competitive market in terms of what are you gonna do to deliver on those projections on those numbers and how is everybody in the team going to contribute to that? So you have to have people that have responsibilities in order to execute on that plan. I think that's critical. I know that   22:44 Operationally, when I was COO, there were certain things that we could do to increase profitability and to increase market share. But without a strategic plan, I think that is one of the most critical things that a board, being on a board that you need to make sure that that is being implemented in supporting the management team to, you know, give your input on   23:14 you know, does this make sense? Are you really looking at the competition correctly? You know, are these, is this realistic in terms of your projections? Just being that sounding board, I think is really critical. You know, as an investment banker, I would, you know, I am qualified to sit on audit committees as an SEC expert. I would definitely think that you would want somebody who was really looking at those numbers and the cashflow.   23:44 especially for capital intensive businesses in this environment to make sure that you have funding that you're not going to run out of cash. Looking at that is very critical. So I think, you know, those are just the two things that come to mind to me, it's the strategic plan, and then also just making sure somebody's really looking at your cash flow.   24:14 And what would happen if something in a down market to run that case, I think is really critical, which is part of the strategic plan. And I would add, based on your experience of 25 years and in different environments, investment bank and private equity and actually as an operator, I think the power of a good corporate board   24:44 is beyond the strategic plan is really pushing the management team CEO to think about options. Right. So it's around, like you were talking about, is it a cash deal? Is it an earn out? What are the milestones? So what are the options? Because maybe there will be an unsolicited offer by the company. So I think I would add to your two comments of what a corporate board would be   25:14 I think it's all about options as well. I think that's such an excellent point because there is an unprecedented amount of private equity out there. And the number of unsolicited offers that are being received by companies has significantly increased over the last, especially in the last five years.   25:44 they, the private equity firms have to get their money out. When we're talking 2.6 trillion of dry powder, that's what's available. Because their LPs will ask for a back if they don't deploy it. And so it's as a board member, and I know you've been very proactive about doing this Brenda to your credit, is when you do receive an unsolicited offer that the board takes a pause   26:15 and says, is this something we want to pursue right now? Is this a good time? Let's talk to an experienced investment banker that we trust to say, what do you think? Just as a sounding board, is this something we should look at? Is this something, what do we do? Can you counsel our founder or owner? Because...   26:43 Once you start that negotiation, you can, it can cause a lot of domino effect, tax wise and also just credibility, the market finds out or, you know, you, NDAs we know aren't necessarily just signing an NDA, what information are you giving? And counseling them on how to get that number.   27:12 you know, what are these people thinking? Are these people that you even want to do business with? Yes. All those things that Brenda, you have brought up to me before is to say, you know, we need somebody to help and figure out what's the situation here. I think board members have that as a fiduciary responsibility.   27:35 Thank you. I would love you to let my listeners know how to contact you. Yes. The best way is LinkedIn. I should say that it's Anna Halloran Jacob, not LinkedIn. OK.   27:56 Fantastic. And that will be in the show notes, as well as diamond capitalizers. Another part of my podcast, and I do this with every guest is bringing your experience and the meaning of certain topics that I am very passionate about and the work I do with founders. And I always go do around with Robin, what does resilience mean to you, Anna?   28:28 Well, I think resilience is in the face of adversity is.   28:37 finding solutions and moving through it. And that is really important instead of panicking or saying, okay, I'm gonna just throw in the towel as to figure out, look, there's a roadblock, how do we get around this? And the more that you can do that with your management team and board, ask for help, because that's resilience. There's always gonna be a challenge, right?   29:07 And options, exactly. Yep, exactly. And for you, what does purpose-driven enterprise elicit? You know, I think I love that you do this for founders. I think it's fantastic. I think it's like what my dad's company was. It was for the betterment of everyone. And to be passionate and to be able to do   29:36 do something that's bettering the world. I think that that's really what it is. And to have a real vision of why you're doing it and if you're passionate about something and it's for the good of mankind. Yes, the greater good. Yeah. While still maximizing profits.   30:06 Yeah. And I do want to do a shout out here. You do advise women-owned businesses. And this month of March is International Women's History Month. So I want to thank you for what you do in helping business owners that are considering selling the business.   30:33 Maybe are, have, aren't yet at that, what cash amount do I want to sell for? And you're ably guiding them, putting them in contact with the different, advisors, domain experts that can help them make that decision when they eventually do want to sell. So thank you for what you do. Well, thank you, Brenda. And.   30:57 I'm so honored to be on this podcast with you. You're bringing an amazing message to entrepreneurs and it's really an honor to be on this. Thank you. Last but not least, what does sustainable growth mean to you?   31:17 So I look at that as sustainable growth is having a proprietary product or service in a large market, large growing market. Got it. Where ideally you have recurring revenues.   31:44 That to me is a sustainable business.   31:49 Thank you. Last question, Anna. Did you have fun in the sandbox today? I did. I always have fun with you, Brenda, but it was really fun. And I love what you're doing. And thank you so much again for having me on the podcast. Well, thank you. To my listeners, if you liked this episode with Anna Jacob, you can sign up for the monthly release of Founders.   32:15 business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers like Anna to learn about Founder Sandbox, how to build with strong governance, a resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. You'll find this podcast on major streaming platforms, and until next month, thank you very much.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Shashi Triphati. They speak about the purposeful "design driven life", Shashi's personal struggles as an immigrant to the US, the growth and recognition as CIO and as entrepreneur. Learn more about his fund nurture.ventures and their work at TIE SoCal.  Shashi is a serial entrepreneur, investor, board member and advisor to several companies. His focus areas have been in technology, and healthcare. He has deep experience in healthcare working across hospital, clinics, health plans and life-sciences. He has been awarded CIO 100 by CIO Magazine, Best Patient Engagement Strategy and Medical Design Excellence awards. He is a founder of  nuture.ventures an early stage venture fund which focuses on a broad range of areas including health technology, cyber security, applied artificial intelligence & customer experience.   You can find out more about Shashi at: Linked IN Shashi Tripathi https://www.linkedin.com/company/nurtureventures/   Other resources on this episode include: TiE SoCal https://tiesocal.org/ February 12 Join TiE SoCal's event Venture Investment: Strategy and Tactics  Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem   Show transcription 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host. The Founders Sandbox is now in its second season. It's a monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about   00:31 building resilient, scalable, and sustainable businesses with great corporate governance. My mission with the Founder Sandbox is to assist entrepreneurs and some entrepreneurs in building those scalable, well-governed, and resilient businesses. And guests that come to the podcast are either founders, business owners, corporate directors, VCs, professional service providers, who like me want to use the power of the enterprise.   01:01 be it small, medium or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling with each one of my guests on topics that while discovering their own journey, we're gonna touch upon resilience, on purpose driven enterprises and sustainable growth. My goal is to provide a fun sandbox environment where we can equip one startup founder at a time to build that better world through great corporate governance.   01:30 Today I'm absolutely delighted to have as my guest, Shashi Tripathi. Thank you Shashi for joining me today. Thank you, Brenda. Good morning. We were just saying that we're not morning people, but we'll do anything to help founders. Yes. Yes, so Shashi's joining the podcast today as founder of Nurture Ventures and board member of the chapter of the TIE SoCal organization.   01:59 He could speak to many, many things, but today we're going to hone in on actually purpose-driven design of life. Sashi has an incredible background. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's an investor, board member, and advisor to several companies. His focus areas have been in technology, healthcare. He has deep experience in healthcare.   02:27 working across the entire spectrum just blew me away, starting with actually med tech, then to move to hospitals, health plans. And he has been awarded CIO 100 by CIO magazine, best patient engagement strategy, and medical design excellence awards. So it's truly an honor   02:56 and incredible breadth as well as depth within the healthcare industry. So again, thank you. Thank you, Brenda. I appreciate it. You know, our paths crossed recently, we joined the SoCal, the TiE SoCals board, and we're in for a fun two years. You possess again, a unique broad and   03:22 deep understanding of the healthcare system in the United States. You worked primarily at, or when you first came to the United States in supply chain management, really addressing the large waste issue in the medical sector. You then went on to the hospital side, the payer side, and finally you ventured out and became an entrepreneur and founder where you built and sold   03:51 Follow My Health, which was a mobile enterprise patient engagement platform that connects millions of patients to their doctor in a whole new way. I think you said at one time you're touching over 20 million lives. Wow. Well, it's challenging to do you justice in this 40 minute podcast. Let me begin by thanking you again. And then again, I was blown away by your breadth and depth. And I am an avid reader. I Love   04:19 Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I thought of this quote that to describe your background, and you're going to share here with my guests today.  "To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,   04:49 or a redeemed social condition, (I get all teared up) to know even when life has breathed easier because you live, this is to have succeeded. " So thank you again for joining me. How would you like, would you like to share your arrival to the US in 1999? As an immigrant, how did that inform your entrepreneurship journey? So first of all, Brenda, thank you. What an honor to be here with you, Brenda. You yourself.   05:19 are amazingly talented. And I was getting goosebumps by the way, when you were sharing that poem from Ralph, making the world or society a bit better. What a world that is, a bit better. So, coming back to your question, I grew up in India. I did my masters from IIT Bombay.   05:48 Immediately after that, I got a job through a company called I2 Technologies and I got to headquarters in Dallas. And I always had dreamed to come to US by the way. Here I am, my dream is getting fulfilled. I get a flight, land in Dallas Fort Worth airport and my manager then was supposed to pick me up and he forgot.   06:16 And I'm a 23 year old boy, afraid, nervous, excited internally, but now I'm nervous. What do I do? I had no choice, but just to wait at the airport. And after two and a half hours, he came and he took me to the apartment. Dallas, as we all know, is a big city and it's hard to walk.   06:46 I didn't have car, didn't have credit card. Many nights, Brenda, I had only bread and milk as my dinner. And so my company gave a month for this apartment and then after I have to find an apartment, no one will give me apartment. Because I have no credit history. So I went to a bank.   07:15 I gave the bank $500 as a restricted deposit, meaning I cannot spend more than $500 to build my history. Right. Slowly, I built my history. I didn't have cell phone. And I did not even know the proper English in the US. So I took a course on accent reduction.   07:42 I remember sitting in front of CNN and Fox. And in those days, we didn't have all this gadgets we have today. So I had a thick accent and I will pause and see the word. Wow. So to learn in a hard way about adjusting in US culture and US society. But in some ways, I'm glad it happened to me. Because that made me resilient.   08:12 and a strong person. And where I am today, I'm not afraid. And because I've seen the low, what is the lowest I can go, I didn't have a home. I didn't have food. And so it always has instilled in me to fight for it. And things are only going to look upwards. And I think you use the word perseverance and resilience, just one.   08:42 step at a time and in a very intentional way, Shashi. I mean, just going in, you know, when I came back, there was, I didn't have credit history. I was living in Europe. So it is the way, it's a difficult market to crack. And so that was 25 years ago. So what made you, what you have a huge passion for healthcare as I've shared with my listeners, starting with life science/med tech and    09:10 going into the hospitals and actually into the payers. It's quite extraordinary. What underlies this passion for healthcare? Thank you, Brenda. I mean, if I look back my childhood, my mom, my dad, and even at the childhood, Brenda, I always had passion to create things. Okay. And I would get immense pleasure if what I have created is used by someone.   09:40 And that someone can be a small group, it doesn't need to be big. So that at the childhood level. So when I came here to do my supply chain projects, I got into a company called Medtronic, it's a large medical device company. And then I got a really big exposure to healthcare, learned a lot, found that in US, we spend $2.3 trillion total per year. Out of that,   10:10 approximately $800 billion is waste. B. B, not M, is B. And this is per year, this is not one time. And in a very small way, I felt the products or solutions we are creating or designing, if we can make even a small difference in reducing that waste while making an impact to the human life.   10:40 why not? And that really solidified my career, my passion to remain in healthcare. And if I wanted to be in healthcare, I wanted to know the details of it and all the angles of healthcare. Right. So while working for Medtronic, I got a lot of exposure to hospitals and clinics.   11:04 So I felt if we are selling our product and services to hospital and clinic, I wanna work inside the hospital and clinic. And how did that go? So it went really well. So I joined a group called Facey Medical, which is part of Providence Health and Services and learned a lot by the way, how a patient operates, what's really important to the patient, what is really important to hospital. And   11:33 That gave me a lot of exposure and also the appreciation for patient care, by the way. Okay. Because at the end of day, anything we do in healthcare is really important to how it's impacting to the patient's care. Absolutely. Healthcare is the only industry Brenda, where if you improve the quality, you reduce the cost, that's the only industry. If you go in that again, say that again. That's very important.   12:01 If you go in hotel, for example, if you buy a five star, you pay more. Am I right? That's right. But in healthcare, you improve the quality. The cost goes down. That's the only industry by the way. It's very fascinating. So learn a lot about the wider side, which is the hospital clinic. And then I said, for all this, that someone is paying and yes, patients pay the portion in The US.   12:28 but the health plans are the one which are paying majority of our US healthcare cost. So I said, I need to go to the work for the health plan. And crack the code for CPT codes and all that. Exactly, ICD and CPT and claims. So I went to work for a company called New Century Health and there I learned a lot about risk contracts and how we manage the provider, what is really important to the claims.   12:58 how we do the utilization management. So I learned a lot about how the payment system in US healthcare works. So, and then of course the company Follow My Health, I got a lot of exposure about patient side. Right. Because at the end, whatever we are doing, either from life sciences or hospital clinic or health plan.   13:28 It's really impacting the patient in the end. So I feel privileged and somewhat lucky, to work in all the facets of health care systems. Affecting patients' lives one by one. Perhaps the most far removed is that of payers. And that was your last venture. And by creating Follow My Health, you create a new life.   13:55 removed a bit of that friction, I imagine, for patients and their providers. Right. Yep. Excellent. So when did you have time to do Follow My Health? If you're busy working in these large companies, cracking the code, what changed in your life, if anything, to abandon the helm?   14:21 of, you know, working in enterprises to create companies to then become a founder of a venture fund. So walk us through those purposeful decisions that help you design your life. Yeah. So as we look, as I shared with you that I love creating product. Okay. And I love   14:47 the product which we are creating is making a difference in human lives. So when I was the CIO at Springfield Clinic, working with Jim Hewitt, we created this platform back in 2011. And the idea was to make it simple to every stakeholder, to the physicians who are using it, to the patients who are going to be using it.   15:17   and if you make it simple and useful to the stakeholder, money will come. Um, and I remember a story, uh, when I was CIO at a Springfield clinic, uh, I used to walk around and, um, I would sometimes talk to the patient and I talked to a patient who was elderly, probably early seventies or maybe even late eighties, uh, uh, late seventies. Um,   15:46 And I asked him, what do you like about us? And he said, oh, I love this new product you guys have launched, Patient Portal. I said, what do you like about it? And he said, when I didn't have this, I go home and my wife will ask me what happened to you at the doctor's office. And I didn't remember all that and she would get mad. Now I've given my user ID and password to her and she knows everything about what happened. So I don't have to memorize it. So that probably gave you goosebumps as well.   16:15 Right. So these are the stories which give me extra energy to move forward. Same concept in merlin.net and the patient who has pacemaker or ICD is implanted. Okay. In those days they had to go see their cardiologist every quarter. Okay. So we felt was why don't we create external device.   16:44 which can communicate to the implanted device, takes the data, and then over the internet has that data and we build the whole web application for cardiologists and electrophysiologists to monitor the patient. So now patient can be anywhere in the world and they can be monitored. My sister-in-law, by the way, has that product and she often appreciate how beneficial   17:13 Merlin.net is because she can go travel anywhere in the world, not worry about her appointment with cardiologists and she is being followed. So these are the moments which makes me propel, gives me extra energy to keep pursuing and creating the products and services which makes a difference in human lives. And what was the, I guess,   17:41 point in which you decided to abandon those 16 and 17 hour days and, and you'd exited a few companies. You know, what led you to create nurture ventures and can you walk us through the thesis and does it go back to your passion? Right? Yep. So it always goes back to my passion, which is creating product and helping society and balancing life.   18:10 in the process. So I got married. I have two kids, my daughter is 13. My son,, he just turned seven actually on the weekend. We had a party. And we all know, by the way, entrepreneurship life is very hard. Yes. People see the success, they don't see what has happened behind the scene. Yes.   18:39 And for any entrepreneur, I mean, yes, there are some exceptions, but I would say majority of the entrepreneur, they work very hard. Um, I would say 16, 17 hours, um, per day is this hard. And so I have kids now and I have to balance my life. Um, but yet I still wanted to achieve my dreams and be associated with the entrepreneurs.   19:06 why don't I start investing? And I started very small by the way Brenda. My goal was not to go big really. But again, it goes back to simplicity and not with the goal of making money. So I designed my investment very, very LP friendly. LP is a partner who are investing with me into the companies. And because of that simplicity,   19:35 And also just happened to be, I would call it luck. Okay. I got lucky and we got an exit, um, carbon card, which gave us, uh, seven times return in 11 months, but it did happen to us and, uh, some of my LP got money back in their bank, um, so it put our name on pitch book and crunch base and   20:04 So we started growing. So we have now 45 limited partners. We have invested in total 31 companies now. We have a fund, we have an SPV. So it has been grown more than I expected. And I'm really happy because now again, I go back, I follow my passion about creating products and services.   20:34 which are helping society grow. And I'm doing not directly but indirectly because when we are supporting the founders and they are growing and their product and services are being used in society to make a difference, I feel privileged. Many of our portfolio companies, by the way, started small, $40,000 ARR per year. Now, they are six million ARR just in two years.   21:03 Wow. Happiness that we were a small part in making a difference in growing that company and in return, they are making a difference into the society. So that's how I got into this world. I love it, actually. And is the thesis only around healthcare technology companies or is it broader than healthcare? Your passion. So we started healthcare. But in order to make a difference.   21:31 You have to also see what is other things which are impacting and growing. And part of our early thesis was artificial intelligence, software as a service, and financial technologies in addition to healthcare are growing very rapidly and much needed into society and making a difference in human lives. So those are part of our thesis to invest in those four areas.   22:01 artificial intelligence, software as a service, healthcare, and fintech. Excellent. Now, you are also a member of the Angel Capital Association, ACA, and we recruited you from TIE SoCal to join our chapter in SoCal. You also have become a board member for the 2024-2025.   22:29 period, we both have joined the board after the effusive leadership of Gaurav Kumar.   22:38 What would you, I'm going to describe a little bit, TIE, as a nonprofit organization for my listeners. And then I'll get to the question of what your contributions are going to be and how it goes back to your passion. So the Indus Entrepreneurs, TIE T-I-E, was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs with roots in the Indus region with a mission to foster entrepreneurship.   23:07 globally through funding, mentoring, networking, and education. Today, the TIE ecosystem comprises over 25,000 startups and 15,000 members across 58 chapters in 12 countries. Within TIE, there is an angels organization for profit. It started in 2010, also in Silicon Valley, and has moved into another eight to 10 chapters.   23:36 representing groups of angel investors. And they're in actually 12 cities with over 3,000 accredited investors. Last year in PitchBook, actually TIE SoCal was among the top 10 in the number of companies that we had invested in. So what's it gonna be like with your presence on the board? And what have you been tasked to do, Shashi?   24:05 My God, what an incredible honor to join this group as you described how powerful the TIE is, but more than power, the impact it continues to make in society across those 50 chapters. As you pointed out, Gaurav Kumar, such a strong leader, and I'm beyond privileged to work with you and others   24:35 to take TIE SoCal to the new heights. Part of TIE SoCal, I have been tasked to lead what we call it TIE Angel Program. Okay. And it basically has three areas within the Angel side. Bring the companies to our members. Okay.   25:06 So they can choose to invest into those companies. The second vertical is we do events very focused on investment, venture capital, or angel investing. And third is having a fund which relates to the first one and take the fund and go invest into the companies.   25:35 catering the entrepreneurship journey and entrepreneurship society. Part of this, by the way, Brenda, we are hosting an event on February 12th, which is Monday, Hyatt at Long Beach, from 3.30 to 8.30. And it's a wonderful group of speakers which are coming and talking about venture capital   26:05 strategies and tactics. And then we have our flagship event, which is scheduled on Friday, April 26th, again in Hyatt Regency. It's a full day event, and will be roughly attended by 400 venture capital, angel investor, startup. If you are any one of those, this is not to miss the event.   26:34 And you do not have to be a member of the TIE SoCal organization. So anyone can attend either of those events, by the way. February 12, which is Monday, 3.30 to 8.30, and April 26, all day, big event, our flagship event, hosted by TIE, but anyone who belongs to those communities. So either investors, a startup,    27:03 or you're supporting any one of those. So you can be service providers. Do not miss any of these two events. I'm very excited to be part of TiE SOCAL and continue to work with intelligent minds like you and others to make a difference in our society. It's going to be an exciting next two years. And I...   27:31 want to share with my listeners, there's a lot of nuggets in the podcast today with Shashi. And so there'll be more information in the show notes with respect to Nurture Ventures, Shashi himself, TIE SoCal, and the upcoming events on February 12th and April 26th. So thank you for leading the charge there. Thank you, Brenda.   27:56 You know, 1999, we're in 2024. It's going to be your 25th anniversary, Shashi, in the United States. I was doing the math yesterday. I went, wow, that's a major, what are you going to do? You've done everything. All right. Oh my God. I'm getting goosebumps right now. My gosh. I'm now thinking about my day when I arrived in Dallas Fort Worth airport. Right.   28:25 I'm nervous. I didn't know where my life will be, but Brenda, I'm so, I'm really in debt of this country. This country is so powerful. If you're willing to work, that's the key word. If you're willing to work, this country is powerful. And there's so many good people. I often hear that, oh, people don't support and help. That's not the experience I have had here.   28:54 Nor has it been mine. I met some incredible people who have helped me to grow my career, who have helped me when people were saying, don't do that. You are crazy. Don't start a company. But there were at the same time, there were many who were there to support me. My family, of course, they endured me so much. All my craziness and.   29:21 all my travel across US and beyond. My parents, I remember my dad, by the way, who I lost here. Sorry. Thank you. He did not want me to come here. Oh my. His goal was that in India, there's a government job, I should go and work into that area. And I end up not. But when I came here, he was the biggest supporter.   29:51 my mom, my wife here, my two kids, and all those who have supported me throughout my career in the last 25 years. I am in debt to so many people I cannot name all of them here on this podcast. Well, thank you. Those are really beautiful words. And you continue to be that young child that wanted to create.   30:20 products that affect people's lives. That's quite laudable. You know, I like to do a round of questions with each one of my guests. I go back to the cornerstones of the consulting work I do at Next Act Advisors. I work with scaling companies on resilience, on sustainable growth.   30:47 purpose-driven. And I ask my guests, you know, what are the meanings of those three words? And that one guest has a similar definition. There's no right or wrong. It's just fascinating. And with your broad and deep expertise in the ecosystem of healthcare and also early stage companies and large, what would you consider? What would you define? What would be your definition of resilience Shashi?   31:15 So in my view, don't give up if you have a passion for something. You will encounter the reality of the life is you will encounter challenges. You will encounter problems. Do not give up on it. There is going to be people.   31:39 who will tell you, you are crazy, don't do that, this is wrong, but at the same time, there will be people who will support you and will root for you. And even if you don't, by the way, believe in you. Believe in you if you wanna do something and go change the world. That's what resiliency to me means. I often do this Brenda and I don't share much when I start to do something new.   32:08 I always plan a worst case plan in my brain. Okay. I always think, I'm going to create a company, for example, how low I can go. I lose my phone, lose my car. That's fine. I'll manage it. We've all been there. Yeah, exactly. So if you in your mind, if you have planned the worst case scenario, I'm not suggesting go do it, but just plan it to give a feeling in your head that that's the lowest possibility that always helps you.   32:38 So coming into challenges and problems, other thing I often say is when you hit the wall, go deep. And we all hit the wall in our personal life, in professional life. Don't give up, go deep. Find it out what elements, what detail elements which are letting you hit the wall.   33:07 And once you figure those details, you, our brains are so powerful. We just have to access those elements of our brain to go deep, find the solution. And I can say it with very high confidence. If you believe in you and try to find a problem, you will find the solution to the problem. And that's what it means. Powerful. Hit the wall. Go deep. You heard it here on The Founders.   33:37 Sandbox. What about purpose-driven enterprise? You have a purpose-driven design to your life. What about purpose-driven enterprises? Yeah, so I often say this also. When you are designing a product, solution, or enterprise, don't make money as your primary objective. And I'm not saying don't be financially conscious, by the way. Your primary goal should not be making money.   34:08 If your primary goal is to make a difference in human lives, if your primary goal is to make a product and services, which people will buy and will help improve their life or their experience or their feelings, believe me, money will come. That's true. So when you're designing product or running a company, think from those aspects. Who is your customer?   34:38 and what is making them to delight your customer. And if you take customer or consumer or your end user, trying to design your product and solution and business processes also, by the way, money will follow to you. And that's purpose to me because if you have that in mind, you will sustain on a long-term basis.    35:06 Which leads us to the definition for you of sustainable growth, right? Yeah, so to me, sustainable growth is how you are growing without adding the debt and liability in your company. So most people can go get a debt, get liability and not think too much about the long-term growth, not think too much about   35:34 improving the value into society, that will not be sustainable growth. Sustainable growth in my view is   35:44 the value you have created for society, the value you have created for your customers, for your end users, how they are driving you to grow. And if they are, money will come and there will be VCs and there will be investors who will give you money, but not just go acquire the money and start to grow, not other way around. Grow first. Take all those...   36:14 stakeholder into the mix first. Yes. And then go look for venture or money to grow the company. That's how sustainable you can be, in my view, Sinder. So self-funding until you do have product market fit and continue to innovate. And the money will come if you're addressing the needs. Correct. Yep. Excellent. Keep customer and end user in the mind. Society also sometimes.   36:43 enterprises think, oh, I'm spending this for the benefit of society and it's going into taking away from my Point of view. Not the case. I mean, if you add value to society, at the end of day, who is the user of your product and services society? Society. We all, we human beings, we are using your product and services. And if we see that   37:12 you care about me, believe me, I will spend money because I know that in return, you're going to care for me on a long-term basis. And if you can get into the hearts and parts of the people through your product and services, it's very hard to go back. You will grow. I will come to you asking, Hey, what is your next product? Because I believe in you.   37:41 Did you have fun in the sandbox today? I loved it. Brenda, thank you so much for having me here. It's just exciting and amazing. And what an incredible work you are doing, Brenda. Thank you. By inviting people to your show where we all can learn from each other. Yes. Seen some of your podcasts in the past, and I can learn. And hopefully, through this, someone can learn. And even if we can make a difference in   38:11 one human life. I think we have done our job. So thank you Brenda and the work you are doing is amazing. Any help I can do, I'll be happy to do so. I'll see you in the sandbox at the TIe Socals board soon. Busy year. Well, thank you. It's been an incredibly fun and insightful podcast. To my listeners. If you like this episode.   38:40 with Shashi Tripathi. Sign up for the monthly release where founders and business owners join me here in the sandbox to learn about how and share how to build strong governance in a resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven company to make profits for good. You can listen to this episode and more on any of the mainstream podcasts, platforms, and   39:10 I look forward to next month. Again, this is the monthly podcast. I'm signing off until next time. Thank you, Shashi.  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Oscar Neyra, CEO and founder of Lisus Energy, about building a sustainable business model. Lisus  is focused on identifying better sites to source materials for batteries. Oscar holds a Doctorate in Environmental Science and Engineering from UCLA, as well as a Master studies in Homeland Security from USC and Global Security from John Hopkins. Before starting LISUS, Oscar was a Research Associate at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also founded an environmentalist group called GR, which has over 5,000 members. Here is a sample of what you will hear in this episode: types of teams in deep tech, challenges of entrepreneurship in the current enviroment and as an immigrant founder, and product market fit. To contact this week's guest,  Oscar Neyra,  or for more information follow the links below:  partnerships@lisus.com www.lisusenergy.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/oneyran/ Resources listed in this episode: Gene Pool Engineering for Entrepreneurs https://www.khoslaventures.com/gene-pool-engineering-for-entrepreneurs/ https://www.Rabbit.tech https://nextactadvisors.com/when-spending-time-in-the-sandbox-isnt-fun-anymore-and-yet-you-still-can-play/ Show transcript: 00:04 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. The Founders Sandbox is a monthly podcast. I'm Brenda McCabe, your host. This was launched in September 2022. We're into our second season. And as I said, it's a monthly podcast.   00:33 that features entrepreneurs and business owners who learn and share about building resilient, scalable and sustainable businesses, all with great corporate governance. I have a very simple mission with this podcast. I want to assist the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to build scalable well governing resilient businesses. The podcast, the Founder Sandbox, is just an additional channel to   01:02 materials on my website, NextAct Advisors, and originally authored blog posts that you can find on LinkedIn. My guests are founders, business owners, corporate directors, and professional service firms who, like me, want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, or large, to create change for a better world. Through storytelling, each of my guests touches topics around resilience, purpose-driven enterprises, and sustainable growth. And my goal with this   01:31 monthly podcast is actually to equip one startup founder at a time to build a better world through great corporate governance. So today my guest is Oscar Neyra. Oscar is the CEO of Lisus, a venture-backed startup that is focusing on identifying better sites to source materials for batteries. And when I spoke with Oscar, we came up with the episode title   02:00 a sustainable business model and a sustainable market. So Oscar, thank you for joining me here in the Founder's Sandbox. Thank you so much, Brenda. It's my pleasure to be here. Let me give you some intro. Oskar holds a doctorate in environmental science and engineering from UCLA, as well as a master's studies in homeland security from USC and global security from Johns Hopkins. Before starting Lisus, Oskar was a research associate   02:28 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And he also founded an environmental group called GR, which has over 5,000 members. Oscar, my past that crossed at USC Viterbi Engineering Schools, Massey Entrepreneurship Prize Competition. About three years back, I was one of the judges on the panel in the pitch session. About a year later, Oscar asked me to join his advisor.   02:58 in corporate governance in lisus. And I'm sharing that here in my podcast as a full disclosure. And we have, we see each other frequently. And I thought as a first time founder with really deep technical and scientific knowledge and into your third year, you have a lot of stories that you could share here on the podcast. And I'm going to ask you, you know, I'm delighted you joined, but I'm going to ask you to start.   03:27 Just, you know, share how your life up till now, Oscar, has shaped your journey in entrepreneurship. Thank you so much, Brenda. Yeah, I think definitely entrepreneurship is a really interesting endeavor. You know, I don't come from a wealthy background. I come from a small town in Mexico. And all my life, I've been used to navigating against the current.   03:56 probably being the first member of my family to come to the US to study or to go to grad school. So I think entrepreneurship and this adventure resonates a lot with the path I've had in my life because it's a lot about being persistent and definitely going against the current and against   04:23 all the challenges that entrepreneurs like me face on a daily basis. Wow, thank you. It's always good to know the background of my guests. When you accepted to join me in the Founder Sandbox, I couldn't help. And you're technical scientists, right? PhD. Yeah, it took me back to an article I wrote some time back. It's called, When Spending Time in the Sandbox Isn't Fun Anymore.   04:52 and yet you can still play. So what I wrote is really about the teams. There are three types that I have discovered when working with technical founders. And we're gonna cut to the chase. I'm gonna ask Oscar in a minute what his perfect team is like. But in that blog post, I talk about technical scientific founding teams. Typically they come from a large enterprise. They excel at their craft as engineers, inventors. They have written patents, have worked at the bench for years.   05:22 And while their secret sauce has become a business, they don't have the skills and competencies in a technical or scientific founding team. They're insufficient to scale the business and they need time away from the sandbox and really working on the commercialization. And the second type of team is they've been there and done it. Founding teams, maybe it's their first or second exit. They've been there and done that. They may have the skills and competencies acquired at a large enterprise.   05:52 or a family-owned business, maybe they've been part of a startup, or they are bringing to life the idea of a patented product. Again, we're talking about scientific founders. And time in the sandbox, we're always gonna go back to the sandbox, was never an issue because they had access to abundant resources. Finally, a third type of team that I've been exposed to is the adult supervision.   06:16 And they are founders that have never worked for a large or medium sized enterprise with the processes, systems and operations that enable scaling a company. They've never hired or fired and they're many first. And they look around, say, isn't there an adult around that can help, can take the time to do those unnecessary things. So Oscar, of those three teams, you know, where would you place the licensed teams? And more importantly, you know, what does a perfect team?   06:47 mean to you and how have you, what makes a perfect team? Perfect, yeah. To the first question, I would say we're probably in the first definition, which is we come right from the lab. And before founding a startup, we definitely didn't know what was going to be. And of course, what are some of the things that you need to do?   07:15 in order to build a startup. I think something that has been really interesting to me is that in the lab, you are allowed to not know anything. And especially it's important kind of like to challenge every assumption that you make. Whereas when you're a founder and when you are building a startup, you are expected to have all the questions. So that is...   07:43 kind of one of the major differences that I've seen from the lab and from the startup world. So the ability to ask questions outside of the scientific realm, right? Exactly, yeah. Wow. Another thing that I think is very important is that, in my opinion, not knowing has a lot of value. And in a startup, unlike in a lab, it's better to not know.   08:12 because that is what opens many doors and what pushes the boundaries of what's possible. Wow. So the open sky. Exactly. That's my personal opinion. But yeah, I would say we are in the first box. Thank you. So what has been a major challenge in entrepreneurship? While building licensure into third year, what would you share as a major challenge? Perfect. Yeah. I can tell you   08:41 about the challenge and of course, coming back to your question about the Perfect Team. Yes, sorry. Yeah, I would say to the first question of the major challenge, definitely the landscape, when we started actually scaling with the company, it was when Silicon Valley Bank started to fall. So I remember we were in a meeting, we were in Menlo Park and then suddenly everybody starts texting and then we say, what is going on?   09:10 So we drive in front of the Silicon Valley Bank headquarters in Silicon Valley, and then we start seeing the people there. So I would say we were born out of a time of crisis, and that's what has made us stronger. But the major challenge is definitely the landscape right now. And most importantly, I would say the...   09:40 higher kind of a the higher kind of bar that you are subject to as an entrepreneur because in these times only the best ones thrive. So it's definitely a really fun time to be in and really exciting but also challenging. Thank you. Yeah. So let's go back. Do you have the perfect team to address and thrive in this and these challenging times? I yeah.   10:09 I like to think kind of like out of the box. Yes. As a technical founder and leading a deep tech startup, I see many companies that try to put together teams that are mostly PhDs with a lot of experience, post-docs, former professors, that kind of profiles. But in my view, the biggest challenge of those kinds of teams is that you get, as you advance in life, you get a little bit more   10:39 skeptical of what can be done. So to me the ideal team is similar to what we put together in license which is a combination of a lot of experience with a lot of innovation and a lot of youth. And this goes to a story that I really like from an article that is really   11:09 When one investor funds a company, a really big deep tech company, and the investor as the company, how was the team integrated? And the founder says, okay, like we have the best from this part, the best from this part, the best scientists in the world. And he asked the founder   11:39 And how many of those are under 35? And he says, wait, none. Yeah. And I think that's really interesting because the investor ends up saying, okay, to me, a diverse gen pool needs to have a combination of this kind of experience and also the value of, understanding the value of bringing, you know, people in their 20s that are right side of school that have all the energy in the world. And that don't necessarily know what they are getting into.   12:08 To me, that is the perfect thing. And I can think of a couple of examples of these kinds of things. Actually, you did have some interns during a period of time, right? Postdocs, are they working on the docs from USC or UCLA? Exactly, yeah. Right? Yeah, correct. We had some teammates. That's what I realized, because we have, as teammates, very experienced people.   12:37 And then you see the energy that the interns bring, the perspectives, the desire to push these boundaries. So that's what I love about it. And if you see one company that I really like, that right now is really famous in Los Angeles and that is like thriving, is Rabbit. Before Rabbit started to get hot as it is getting right now once they presented.   13:07 one of their hardware. I was looking at this company in their crunch base profile, and I look at the team and it was really interesting to me that when I saw the team, I saw that their CTO is like 20 years. I think he was part of Carnegie Mellon. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon and he right after became the CTO of this company. And when I saw that, I thought to myself, okay, this is the perfect CTO for this kind of company.   13:37 Yes. So pushing the boundaries, right? Digital natives and representing that generation. That's fascinating. Exactly. And of course, having adult supervision. Right. So a combination. Exactly. Yeah. Right. So you're into the third year. Market wins, they changed in March of last year, as you alluded to with the...   14:06 SVB and First Republic Bank debacle, right? With that background, have you continued to evolve the product market fit because of the market downwinds or what have you done with the product market fit? Yeah, that's a great question. Has it evolved? Yeah. I would say, you know, we need to think in terms of our customers, but also we need to think in terms of our times. Yeah.   14:36 2021, I would say there was a big focus on having the best technology at any cost and more in delaying, for example, revenue, profit, good unit economics. Now that the market has shifted, not only on the investment side, but also on the customer side, the focus is more on...   15:05 the focus of our products is more in generating revenue faster and in building a business that is more real and that can thrive regardless of the market conditions. So yeah, I would say that has been the major change. And in this search for the product market fit, we've realized that it's also important to focus to be super cash efficient.   15:34 to build instead of experimenting with three, four products, it's better to experiment with one product and to testing, but testing with a margin of safety rather than just testing every single perspective. Can you, for the benefit of my listeners that are not deep tech founders, walk us through actually the product in its current state   16:04 how are you creating the ability to identify sites that have better resources, more efficient? So what's the actual tech stack and how are you able to then think about monetizing that? Okay. That is a great question. So we have a product called Alchemist. It's a mineral exploration tool where we integrate remote sensing capabilities and state of the art artificial intelligence algorithms.   16:34 in order to prospect the areas that have potential for critical minerals. So we use remote sensing in a non-invasive way so we can explore for these minerals. So the way we've integrated a platform is in two components. One of them is the platform itself, which is what the customer interacts with. And the other thing, the other component is...   17:02 the what we call the license labs, which is essentially a very sophisticated platform that in the backend allows for the exploration and integration of AI capabilities. So that's the way we've structured it. I think with this advance that has been going on with AI and remote sensing capabilities, I think it's gonna get very exciting in the next few years.   17:32 So we love it. In terms of monetization, definitely. We've thought of some interesting approaches to it. Excellent. So Oscar, in continuation of my question around challenges of an entrepreneur, would you add any challenges as being an immigrant founder? Yeah, Brenda, that's a great question. I do think.   17:59 as an immigrant founder, you get a different perspective and probably you also lived it when you were in Spain. Yes. But one of the major things is figuring out how to build actually a business from scratch in a completely different legal system in a completely different landscape and building a network out of scratch too. Because you come from, in my case, I come from a university that like...   18:28 where I don't have any connections here. And then it's important to learn how to knock doors and how to search for opportunities out of zero. That is one of the major challenges. The other one is culturally, and I've seen it not only as myself, but also from friends that come from Australia, that come from India, that come from Japan.   18:55 that you see that there are some things that you need to be familiar with so that you can make sure to do the things in a diplomatic way. Okay. So I think that's also important. And that's those are the things that people don't tell you about. And the third one is definitely the immigration system, which is, you know, when you're trying to start a company here, you don't even know   19:24 like whether you're going to be able to do it, if you're like allowed, if you can sell something because it can be defined as work. So early in the beginnings of Lisus, that was our major concern. It took us a while to figure it out, to do the green card application, things like that. And once like you solve it, you are like in an even field. But yes, an immigrant, those are things   19:54 a long time and that we have in the back of our mind all the time. I've seen it with many, many founders and it's always a funny to see that we share the same challenges. Thank you for sharing. So, you know, the founders podcast is not solely around deep tech. So I have a lot of listeners that are business owners or founders in non deep tech. So could you describe   20:24 the business model of lysis. You talk about full stack, right? Business model. And I really would like you to get into the weeds to provide some more context of what is the product and how is it scaled and how do you monetize it? Definitely. Yeah, we're product Alchemist. It's a mineral exploration product that we use to search for critical minerals   20:54 And our business model is a full stack play. And essentially this means that we are not using our software and selling it by providing services. Rather we are using it as a tool or as leverage so that we can generate revenue in a faster way. To give you kind of like a better explanation or like a more in depth perspective on the full stack business model.   21:24 I would say when there is a transition or a big opportunity such as the one we are living now, it could be the energy transition where you are living this shift to the electric vehicle. So it could be a long time ago when we transitioned to the World Wide Web or when we started using the cell phone. All of these changes.   21:54 are defined by two waves. You have the first wave where there is a companies that try to solve and to actually serve a market. And there are companies that serve the companies that are trying to serve that market. So full stack means that you are, instead of being a service provider in a market, you're actually the solution provider. In the case, for example, of...   22:23 vehicle electrification should be the most common. There are companies that at the beginning, they started to focus on actually selling vehicles and electrifying. And there were after that, the second wave, a lot of companies that were trying to serve the market of electric vehicles through battery analytics, through efficiency, through different materials, but the big opportunity   22:51 in our view was actually in being the one providing the product. So what we're doing at Lysus is being full stack and becoming a materials company since the beginning. Yes, we have an amazing platform, Alchemist, and we use it to partner strategically with the miners, but we see a lot more value and as a company in being the actual solver of the problem and being the actual supplier of   23:20 the materials rather than just serving miners and serving companies that are focused on providing materials for batteries. That's why we think it's really an interesting business model and most importantly because full-stack businesses have proven in history to provide much better opportunities for revenue. Let's say   23:48 Some examples are Flexport, for example, SpaceX, companies that since the beginning, they tried to solve the problem rather than just being a service provider. Excellent. I also am thinking of Atlassian. They created quite a bit of work tools for developers of code.   24:17 Jira is one of their products, but they built, right? So Last scene is one of the companies, it's out of Australia, funny enough, created a lot of enterprise value early on and their tools are pervasive in the engineering teams that are building code today. So that's the analogy that I found while working with Lysis trying to get out of clean tech and looking at other.   24:44 There's similar analog businesses. Yeah, no, Atlassian is a great example. And we use it on a daily basis. I bet. We use all the tools, and it's amazing. So that kind of thing we have. Right. And we just had a great segue into clean tech. So Lysis is full-stack working in one of the deep tech sectors or verticals of clean tech. What are some of the things you're   25:14 clean tech market right now? Yeah, that's a great question. You know, the most interesting to me, of course, is critical minerals. It's probably the most boring, but it's also the one where we're gonna see the most exciting changes and advances. Some other things that are interesting are new materials. That is really interesting to me, because I think there is gonna be big opportunities in new materials and in...   25:44 in nature-based solutions. That's also something that's very... Right, synthetic. So within the biotech applied with nature. Exactly. And yeah, and I've been exposed also just to new techniques applied to solar panels that increase the efficiency. So there's always, it's all about efficiency, right? To compete with...   26:12 Oil and gas, right, in terms of the parity or gas lead for your car, right, electric vehicles. Yeah, no, I agree. Yeah. And something that is really interesting, too, I think that in the future, like, I envision a world where materials are going to be produced differently. And we are going to leverage nature to produce these materials. So I've seen, for example, very interesting companies that are using nature to produce   26:42 to separate minerals, for example, or that are using it to produce different type of materials, modifying it, et cetera. Of course it has its risk, but I think it's really interesting to see organic-based solutions. So that is another one that is interesting. And the other ones are in energy. I don't think that our energy system is gonna change drastically, but I do think   27:12 there is gonna be a lot of changes in how we use energy, how we store energy, yeah, what is the way in which we use energy. Those are some things that are amazing to me and where I see a lot of changes. And yeah, probably we're gonna see very interesting models for carbon capture.   27:41 Dequestration. Exactly, yeah. And technologies to solve the problem in the point source. I am not that much excited about the kind of like carbon credits, things like that. But I am very much about the technological approaches to it and also innovations in transportation. That's also really exciting. It's the biggest sector in energy consumption.   28:09 Actually, transportation, people don't think that. I think it's right. I'm sorry, in the emission of CO2. Correct, yeah. And GSD is transportation. Right. And what about, this is actually a nice little conversation about innovation and clean tech. But what do you think about the space that Lysis is competing in? Right.   28:37 efficiency and better site identification where the rare earth metals or the critical minerals are. You've got other competitors that are looking at it in a different way. Can you talk about how the identification of rare earth metals is evolving across the world?   29:06 Yeah, that's a great question. It's definitely an interesting field and one that is very small, because of course, it has a lot of barriers to entry. So when people realize that it's not as easy as they thought, they leave it. So yeah, definitely all the founders that are working in this sector have heard of each other or know each other. So that is fun. I would say.   29:35 in the part of critical minerals, in the market of critical minerals, it's a really old school field. It's really old school. You're using tools that you have been using for a hundred years and they've been working really well. So the big opportunities are in bringing new type of sensing and incorporating it in the sector of mineral exploration. But also I think it's very important to continue using some of the things that   30:04 have been done really well and help them optimize their operations. I think the major innovation in the sector is not gonna be in the technology, but on the business model. And I think, and I've seen it like with all the companies, all the funds, everyone is trying to figure out the right business model and go beyond just the project financing and being a fintech company, which in reality, all the mining companies are fintech companies.   30:33 into being more of a company that can produce better returns in an interesting way. So yeah, I think it's one of the most exciting fields to be in because there is going to be so much innovation, but also innovation is not going to come in the way we think it's going to come.   31:03 you to provide my listeners how they may contact you personally, right? Oscar is CEO and founder of Lysis as well as your company contact details. How's it best to learn more about Lysis, Alchemist and yourself? Yeah, through the website, you can in the website, you can get into contact us. So what is the website? The website is www.   31:33 Lizusenergy.com. And then right there, you can request to contact us and then you're going to get access to our calendar. And as quick as that, you can book a time with us to chat. And then also, you know, we're emailing, which is partnerships at Lisusenergy.com. There we can also chat. And if you have any ideas, careers, or any interesting perspective, we would love to hear from you.   32:02 Excellent. And I love to do a round of questions to each of my guests that kind of mirrors what I do at Next Act Advisors. I talk about sustainable businesses, resilience, and purpose-driven organizations. Not one guest has the same definition, and it's fascinating to do a little round of questions here. What does resilience mean to you, Oscar?   32:34 Yeah. Resilient to me means a, I see it kind of like as a synonym of perseverance, which is even if you fall, you can fall a hundred times and you stand up and continue going. That's what resilience means to me, being able to get hit and keep going. And it's very necessary in the early stages of a. Possibly. I would say it's possibly much more necessary than.   33:04 having a good academic background or having experience as an entrepreneur. What I've seen is that the best entrepreneurs are the ones who are resilient and who keep going no matter what. Excellent. Perseverance. Purpose-driven enterprise. You know, the title that we chose for this podcast episode is a sustainable business model in a sustainable market. What is purpose-driven enterprise for you?   33:35 To me, purpose has to be holistic rather than just focusing on one specific thing. I think it's important to think holistically and incorporate different attributes to pursue the right purpose. So I would say a purpose-driven enterprise is a company that has a very clear north star and that has different paths to go and follow that north star.   34:04 That's the way I would define it. What would be licenses Northstar? I would say over Northstar is sustainability and not environmentalism. So the way we see it is that there is kind of like certain currents where companies tend to try to be only environmentalist without incorporating other aspects. Got it. So to us...   34:34 that would be the north star, like being sustainable rather than being just environmentally friendly. Excellent. And finally, sustainable growth, not to be confused with sustainability. What is sustainable growth? So what is that growth curve right for you? How to consistently grow a business? Yeah, that's a great question. Sustainable growth means, in my view,   35:03 considering the environmental aspects, but also considering a sustainable business model that can self-fund itself. So the way I would see it is, okay, you're gonna build a company of X. And if you're gonna build this company only thinking in terms of environmentalism, you are doing it not in the right way, because you also need to consider how you're gonna fund.   35:32 those, that purpose and that mission. So sustainable growth means constantly, constantly checking to make sure that you are doing it well, but also creating systems so that you can fund that mission. Very good. That's very holistic, as you as you suggested. Exactly. Final question. Did you have fun in the sandbox today, Oscar?   36:00 Definitely. Yeah. It's the first time that I do a podcast. And I love it. Really interesting. And there are many things that you don't get to share on a day to day basis. So amazing opportunity kind of like to talk about some of the things that we believe in. Thank you. I want to let my listeners know that we will be providing   36:29 the show notes and the release of this podcast during the month of February. And more importantly, the article you've mentioned about how to build a perfect team, right? And your eyes will reference that in the show notes, as well as how to contact the founder of Lysis Energy. And yeah, so thank you very much for joining me and the founders sandbox.   36:59 along with Oscar Negra of Lysis. This episode will drop in February and you will always find the podcast available on all major platforms, Spotify, Apple, and wherever you get your podcasts. So thank you for listening in and see you next month. Thank you, bye.

Listen to the latest episode of "The Founder's Sandbox", where Brenda tackles the topic of starting discussions with your clients on setting up the board. Brenda speaks with Matthew Lopez, managing director of Wolf and Snow, about board creation. Matthew Lopez is the Managing Director of Wolf and Snow, the first national firm providing fractional General Counsel services to founders. After years as in house counsel, Matthew wanted to serve more than one client at a time. He started the firm over 3 years ago and began with 3 clients and now serves from the practice of Wolf and Snow 30-40 clients spanning the US and international with a full-service legal services including paralegal and services that include connections to potential clients, partners,  investors and talent.  Wolf and Snow works with companies with a minimum of $1 mn in recurring revenue. Other Resources mentioned in this podcast: Strategic Board Formation key steps for startup growth https://www.clerky.com https://carta.com/ Learn more about Matthew Lopez, and Wolf and Snow:  mlopez@wolfandsnow.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewtlopez/  

Check out this month's timely podcast with film composer and creator, Carlo Siliotto. We talk about co-creation; the music supporting the storyline. The Writers Guild of America strike that began on May 2, 2023 continues as of the date of the release of this podcast. You can listen into Carlo's soundbites on AI in the creative process, the economics of residuals and governance as a committee member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Carlo Siliotto is a Golden Globe nominated Film composer.  Since 1984 he has written music for over a hundred projects, ranging from theatrical features to documentaries and television series. Carlo is a prolific composer of concert music.. Carlo currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.  See you in the Founders Sandbox!

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host, Brenda McCabe speaks with Rushabh Mehta- CEO and Founder of MatchbookAI. They speak about Resilience: creating a new category by filling unmet needs with a new Data category. Rushabh shares his point of view on the primary challenges faced today in large enterprises, including latency, high costs associated with how data is used across enterprises and the control of the data.   You can find out more about MatchbookAI or contact Rushabh at: rmehta@matchbookai.com https://campain.matchbookai.com  

On today's episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Min-Yi Shih. Min- Yi has a background in Physics and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, (quantum optoelectronics field aka laser, etc), got his MBA from UCLA, prior CTO, COO and GM in the R&D, defense, medical and communication equipment industries, angel investor and more recently advisor to early-stage founders and academics in the deep tech space.  Brenda and Min-Yi speak about “intrapreneurship through the lens of a scientist solving nonlinear equations”; How his journey started as a Research scientist at GE Global Research – where he considered himself an individual contributor; soon evolved to an individual enabler as a program manager, and eventually as an organizational “sherpa “guide for startups and academic institutions. You can find out more or connect with Min-Yi on his linkedin page at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/min-yi-shih-86506a3/

On today's episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host Brenda McCabe speaks with Lisa Greer Quateman – Corporate Board member, recently retired Attorney, and advocate of a greater presence for legal expertise on Boards of Directors. They speak about “Enhancing resilience and supporting good governance by tapping legal expertise“- how to incorporate legal practices into your startup to enhance the governing principles of your company. You can contact Lisa or find out more about her at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-greer-quateman/ https://www.directorsandboards.com/articles/singlemy-board-journey-lisa-greer-quateman Lquateman@gmail.com  

For our third Women's History Month special podcast, Brenda McCabe speaks with Martha Gamboa; CEO and Founder of Frendii. Martha shares how a personal journey of health and wellness led to building Frendii- a technology startup developing a solution for women over 50 to build community and facilitate frequent social and human connections. You can find out more about Martha and Frendii at: https://frendii.com linkedin.com/in/martha-gamboa  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Veronica Parmar. Veronica manages and teaches at a Pilates studio in Playa Vista, California, where her diverse client list includes professional athletes, entertainment personalities, seniors, and those recovering from injuries.  With her deep understanding and passion of the Pilates work, she is able to inspire her clients to gain flexibility, strength and body awareness.  Veronica wants to expand her instruction to other aspects including guest teaching, workshops and Pilates retreats. You can find out more about Veronica or contact her at: www.pilateswithveronica.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-parmar/  vlutz18@gmail.com  

Today our host, Brenda McCabe, speaks with Betsy Berkhemer Credaire. Betsy is an advocate, author, and search professional, CEO and President.  Her retained executive seach firm, Berkhemer Clayton Inc., has celebrated 28 years in business. The retained executive search firm specializes in senior-level national and regional searches with diversity focus for Corporate Boards, Communications & Marketing, Finance & Investor Relations, for client corporations, universities and large nonprofit organizations.  Additionally, 50/50 Women on Boards is the only national campaign to educate and enable more women to serve on corporate boards of directors, and encourage companies to seek and select women.  She's also author of two books, "Winning the Board Game" and "The Board Game--How Smart Women Become Corporate Directors" You can find out more about betsy at www.berkhemerclayton.com. and her book "Winning the Board Game" or find her on linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/betsyberkhemercredaire/

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks to Brian MacMahon of Expert DOJO. Brian specializes in helping entrepreneurs become more successful in their business by using all the tools available as owner of the largest peer to peer peak performance academy in the world. Expert DOJO improves the success rate of early-stage entrepreneurs with investment, foundation, showcasing, influence, and community.   You can reach Brian at : brian@expertdojo.com https://expertdojo.com/

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Enrique Serrano, founder of B5Tec, about how his company combines organic chemistry coupled with manufacturing at scale. You can find out more about B5Tec and Enrique at https://b5tec.com/ https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_23_232 https://www.linkedin.com/in/enriqueserranodorado/ https://b5tec.com/b5tec-at-final-phase-of-bloomberg-bnef-pioneers/  

On this episode of Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks to Christopher Locher, PhD; Co-founder and CEO of Versatope Therapeutics. He previously led drug discovery projects for infectious diseases at Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston, inflammatory diseases at Opsona Therapeutics in Ireland and malaria and alphaviruses vaccine development programs at Maxygen in California. Their conversation centers on harnessing the power of nature at scale for good: how and why did Versatope begin, what is deep tech, and how can we build a resilient culture in a pandemic world where the work could not be done “from home?" You can find out more about Christopher and Versatope at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-locher-biotech/ https://www.versatope.com/ https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/09/new-kind-influenza-vaccine-one-shot-might-do-trick

Our host, Brenda McCabe, reads outloud from her blog about the crucial steps to forming a corporate board and the meaning of starting off with good governance.

On this Episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe speaks with Gaurav Kumar. Gaurav is an entrepreneur, author, speaker, angel investor, and an avid golfer, based in Southern California. 

He is the Founder and CEO of BeyondCodes Inc.—a global leader in Sales and Lead Generation for IT Services, Product Engineering and SaaS-based product companies. Gaurav Kumar is also an author of "Sales Lessons from Golf 18 insights for Sales Professionals from the Great Game of Golf". Brenda and Gaurav discuss how Gaurav's book first started as a project to give back; to leave a legacy behind that shares insights from the practice of golf translated to the practice of sales. "Set up a Driving Range" when having to practice your swing before playing and practicing your sales pitch before the sales call. https://authorgauravkumar.com/product/sales-lessons-from-golf/ Learn more about Gaurav Kumar, and his recently release book by:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravkumar1977/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/gauravkumar1977/) https://authorgauravkumar.com/ www.beyondcodes.com  

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, our host, Brenda McCabe interviews Dr. Larry Taylor on Corporate Governance! Dr. Taylor is a seasoned independent corporate director, having served on 24+ corporate boards, including family-owned, publicly traded, private-equity owned, closely held privately-owned, advisory, and non-profit boards.  He has been recognized as a “Financial Expert” by the SEC while serving as board member and CFO of a publicly traded company.  He has extensive environmental, social and governance experiences from around the world.  You can find him on linked in at https://www.linkedin.com/in/larry-taylor-phd-nacd-dc-b07a5822/ And find a copy of his book, "Tone at the Bottom" here   

On this episode, our host, Brenda McCabe speaks with Pete Lee; a writer, teacher and coach. Pete has been supporting the spiritual growth and transformation of many life purpose and truth-seekers for over 16 years through one-on-one and group coaching sessions, gentle and restorative yoga and meditation classes and workshops, healing energy work and gong sound frequencies. Pete is also a certified and registered instructor of Sacred Energy Arts, Kundalini and Restorative Yoga, having trained with Matthew Cohen, Rachel Sat Siri Dougherty, and Jillian Pransky. He has taught at many renowned yoga studios throughout Los Angeles including Yogaworks, Equinox, and Golden Bridge Yoga. Pete's website is cpetelee.com

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda McCabe interviews Rocio Summers; an independent director and a global CFO, with business and financial experience in Europe, North and Central America, and South America. They discuss setting in place scaleable processes to create a sustainable business model that can grow and change over time. You can find Rocio on Linked in at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rociosummers/

Leadership teams that recognize that “it takes a village” to build a sustainable, well governed business – are increasing the probabilities to be successful. In my experience, there are three core indicators of a sustainable business led by a high performing leadership team: 1. Revenue 2. Governance 3. Time Management   

Operating from your center leads to a purposeful life. The same applies to a business. To be operating from your center all your life – is highly unlikely. Often, it isn't until having enough experiences over time that some of us can find our life's purpose.. But; It doesn't have to be that way for a business. Purpose is your “Why.”  

In this episode, NAA founder, Brenda McCabe, talks about the “soft" aspect of personal and professional success; Resilience. Like a three-legged stool, resilience is best found when all three legs are present: 1) knowing oneself and how one best performs and learns; 2) having options and making choices and 3) being thankful.

The Founder's Sandbox is going to be an exciting new podcast produced and sponsored by Next Act Advisors. Brenda McCabe, founder of NAA, will be interviewing players in the ecosystem of startups. Discussion centers on the nuts and bolts of resilient companies, shared experiences creating (and keeping) revenue, while making companies playful AND well governed! We will tackle common issues faced by the founders of startups, and talk about how to create a fun environment where, under great corporate governance, founders can sit back and watch their employees build and play.