Podcasts about larry it

HIGHLIGHT QUOTESWhat does it mean to sell from the heart? - Larry: "It depends on what's in your heart, again, goes back to how your authentic self sells you. You have to be willing to do the inner work when you uncover who your true self is when you uncover what's in your heart, amazing things start to happen. But it's just how you can connect and how you can relate to people." Learn more about Darrell and Larry: Darrell | Larry | Website Got a video about how you sell from the heart? Share it by texting VIDEO to 21000.Click HERE to preorder your copy of the rerelease of the Selling from the Heart book.  SUBSCRIBE to our YOUTUBE CHANNEL! Please visit WHYINSTITUTE.COMPlease go to WORKBETTERNOW.COMClick for your Daily Dose of InspirationCheck out the 2023 Authentic Selling ChallengeGet your Insiders Group FREE PASS here

With Larry Oleinick, Founder of Nonprofit Heart 2 Hart Detroit   Over the past few years, substance abuse and mental health issues increased significantly as a result of the isolation brought about by the pandemic. For these vulnerable individuals, the added loss of jobs or familial support led to a noticeable increase in the homeless population. Whereas in the past, veterans or the elderly made up a majority of the homeless, today there's a growing number of younger individuals living on the streets. Although many of these young people are motivated to seek employment, they find it increasingly difficult without a steady paycheck or stable housing. For a homeless individual, simply showing up to their job or even an interview, wearing clean clothes and freshly bathed can be a huge challenge.   But sometimes out of the most devastating of personal experiences, we find miracles do happen. What if I were to tell you the story of a military veteran living on the streets whose entire life changed after a chance meeting with a small group of local volunteers? Offering him a sandwich, the group said they visit that same spot several days a week with food and personal hygiene items and encouraged him to come back. Soon, he became a regular visitor to the group, seeking not only their sandwiches and hot coffee but drawn to their welcoming smiles and friendly conversation. The volunteers didn't judge him or make him feel uncomfortable. In time, he opened up to them and shared his story. With their support and encouragement, eventually, this individual found the will to seek recovery from his drinking. With the aid of the Veterans Administration, he found a good job and housing assistance.   It took a few years but as this individual continued to excel at his job, he was promoted to a managerial position that allowed him to purchase his own home. Today, he travels around the country speaking on behalf of his company and sharing his personal story! What a miracle!    The Oxford dictionary defines the word miracle as “a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences.” Typically, when we think of the word miracle, we attribute divine intervention but some miracles happen through the power of human intervention. Sometimes, even the simplest, well-intentioned act can lead to the most extraordinary consequences and enrich a person's life in ways we never anticipated.   At a time when many of us may be feeling cynical and world-weary, it's comforting to learn that good people and good deeds still exist and that by acting in ways that benefit each other, we can seemingly rise above the chaos to actually give birth to miracles. If you want to learn more how a small, simple gesture such as showing up with a friendly word of encouragement, a hot cup of coffee, and a nutritious sandwich can help someone overcome the hardest of circumstances, you'll want to listen to Florine's interview with Larry Oleinick of Detroit-based charity, Heart 2 Hart from June of 2021.   What You'll Hear on This Episode: What was Larry's home life like growing up in Oak Park, MI? How did Larry come up with the name Heart 2 Hart? What was Larry doing before he started his nonprofit? Did Larry or anyone close to him ever experience homelessness? Where does Larry get the food? Why do some people choose not to go to a shelter? What is Heart 2 Hart's unique offering? How is the food prepared and distributed? Did the pandemic complicate distributing food and finding volunteers? Does Larry have a relationship with the people he helps? Does Larry see people he's helped actually get off the streets? Has Larry ever felt threatened when helping people? What does Larry deliver besides food to help people? What's the biggest misconception about people sleeping on the street? How do those sleeping on the streets get their medical needs met? How can people donate to or volunteer with Heart 2 Hart?   Today's Takeaway: The events of the past year have taken a toll on everyone, but perhaps none more so than a person who suddenly found themselves without a home in the midst of a global pandemic. We want to help those in need, but the magnitude of the problem feels so enormous and overwhelming. But Larry has demonstrated how even the smallest of steps can make a major impact. Larry's spontaneous and selfless gesture one day on his lunch hour led to founding Heart 2 Hart. We never know when the actions we take today might blossom into something grander tomorrow. Instead of telling yourself you can't possibly make a difference, why not focus on doing one small gesture today to bring a smile to someone's face? Remember, every day is a gift and we're so lucky to be here. When we set aside our own problems for a short while to help others who are less fortunate, we always feel better. We may even gain a new perspective about our own situation. When I lend a helping hand to others I feel a renewed sense of purpose and I'm much better equipped to handle my own challenges. I'm Florine Mark and that's “Today's Takeaway.”   Quotes: “Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for nine years we get in the van and go down and try to make a difference for that day.” — Larry  “There's a lot of issues that people that aren't in the system don't understand about shelters.” — Larry “We build relationships with people. We just don't hand them something and go away. We have ongoing conversations.” — Larry “We have to make sure we give them what they need.” — Larry  “How do we really know how we would react if certain things happened to us?” — Larry “We're not doctors, we're not nurses, we're just nice people.” — Larry “It was my heart giving to the people who were in Hart plaza.” — Larry “It may be a play on words but it was really just hearts connecting.” — Larry “As I had always volunteered in the past, it would be great to put a little energy into giving back to people.” — Larry “A lot of people are just walking around in pain.” — Larry    Brought to You By: Gardner White Furniture   Mentioned in This Episode:  Heart 2 Hart Detroit Donate Today!

What you'll learn in this episode: Why advertising for professional services is unique compared to other industries How to make the subjective creative process more objective The process behind some of Brad and Larry's most well-known campaigns Why law firms need to be responsive to the changes in the marketplace, and why advertising is no longer optional Why a good website is a nonnegotiable, especially when it comes to hiring and retention About Larry Cohen: Larry Cohen is the president and co-founder of advertising agency Glyphix. His vision of a small agency of talented, skilled professionals doing great work for great clients is what drives the group. He's a writer. Copy. Scripts. Children's books. In addition to his work with clients, he understands the financial side of their investment in Glyphix…and keeps Glyphix financially strong and stable. About Brad Wilder: Brad Wilder is creative director and co-founder of Glyphix. Art direction and design are his thing. The national and international awards he's won prove the point. Awards for almost everything… corporate identity, advertising, packaging, in-store merchandising, display and trade show booth design, interfaces, for clients like Nestlé, Mercedes-Benz, Baskin-Robbins, Xircom and Disney. He's also a tech geek. Transcript: In the legal industry, advertising has done a 180. What was once considered tacky is now a requirement. And according to Larry Cohen and Brad Wilder, co-founders of advertising agency Glyphix, if you're going to advertise, you better make it count. They joined the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast to talk about how to make the creative process run smoothly; why a strong website is a critical part of attracting top talent; and why even the best brands need a refresh from time to time. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Welcome to the Law Firm Marketing Catalyst Podcast. Today, my guests are Larry Cohen and Brad Wilder, who are some of the professional forces behind Glyphix. Glyphix is an advertising agency which works across all genres but has particular expertise in the professional services space. They're specialists in all kinds of advertising, websites, print, etc. I say specialists because they're specialists in having their work stand out from the crowd. We will learn more about Glyphix today. Larry and Brad, welcome to the program. Larry: Thank you very much for having us   Brad: We're glad to be here.   Sharon: We're so glad to have you. Each of you, give us your career paths just briefly.   Larry: Interesting question, because our career paths are almost exactly the same in the sense that—   Sharon: Larry, that's you speaking?   Larry: Yeah, this is Larry. Brad and I met in high school at Hamilton High School in Los Angeles. I was a writer for the school paper. Brad was the photographer and designer, and that's where we met. After college, we got together and began working for an advertising agency called Mendelson Design. Back in 1986, when the Mac came out and gave us the tools to do a lot of great creative work for a very affordable price, we decided, “Hey, let's start our own new agency.” We've been together since 1986. So, it's been a very similar career path.   Sharon: So, you've known each other a long time.   Brad: Longer than we've known our wives, yeah.   Sharon: Can you tell us what Glyphix does in general?   Larry: In general, we do professional services-focused, full-service advertising, some marketing, no PR. We try and delineate those two things, but it's soup-to-nuts advertising from brand building to SEO and social.   Brad: The bottom line for us is really helping our clients position themselves in the marketplace against the competition and keeping them ever-present in the minds of their potential customers and clients. That can start with the strategy, and then from there move right through to naming their websites, logos, branding, TV advertising, print. All those are different tools we have at our disposal to keep our clients front and center in front of their clients.   Sharon: How do you describe each of your roles at Glyphix? Are they the same?   Larry: No, our roles are very, very different. I came out of university with a business degree. So, for me, it's the business, dealing with clients, doing some copywriting. Brad is our creative director, so he runs the creative. Whether we're designing websites, shooting TV commercials, doing print ads, Brad's the guy that runs the creative here. I think it's one of the reasons we've survived together, as we have a good delineation between who does what with respect to each other's talents.    Sharon: That is a good delineation. You're not crossing over on each other. Brad, the first time I ever saw the agency was when you did something—I can't remember which company it was for—it was advertising an x-ray. It was for a healthcare law firm.   Brad: It was for Fenton Nelson which is now Nelson Hardiman, health-care attorneys. What was the question? That was a great piece. It was so radically different at the time. No one had ever done it before.   Sharon: It was radically different. It was for healthcare marketing attorneys, as you say, and it really stood out.   Brad: To give some background on that, Fenton Nelson is a healthcare law firm specializing in all things healthcare. They wanted direct mail, not digital, but they wanted it to completely stand out. We actually shot x-ray film with a design that became a direct mail line. It was a full x-ray in an x-ray envelope. It was sent to all the healthcare agencies on their call list. It was 10, 15 years ago, and people are still talking about it.    Sharon: So, it was a real x-ray?   Brad: Yes.   Larry: We actually had to source x-ray film.    Sharon: How did you come up with that?   Larry: That's a great question. We came up with it because Brad and I always try to look for what makes a client unique, what makes them special. In this case, we interviewed Harry Nelson and his staff and they said, “We could go to any healthcare facility. We can walk through the facility and see what their issues are and where they're going to get in trouble. We see things that other people don't.” That gave us the idea that an x-ray allows you to see things other people don't. That gave us a positioning line for the firm, and it was, “We see things other firms don't.” It was a positioning that said, “We're unique because our experience and expertise allow us to help our clients.” In that case, it was to help healthcare clients, hospitals, and facilities stay out of trouble.    It really came out of the client organically, and that's what Brad and I tried to do. I think we're good at helping clients find a position for themselves, find the thing that makes them unique. Are you the most expensive? Are you the most experienced? What is it that you're the best at, and how do we translate that into a creative message? Then, how do we get that in front of our potential clients?   Sharon: Do you tell the client that even if they don't ask for it? Do you tell them what you're working from?   Larry: Yes, absolutely, because we want to educate the client. I think clients find it exciting. People love hearing stories, and every firm, every client has a story to tell. The trick is to find that story. I have to uncover that and deliver that story. It's compelling. You think about great brands. Most of them have a story behind it: why the company was started, what problem you are solving for your customers. That's what customers and clients care about. Nobody cares about what you do. They care about what you can do for them, how you make them successful. Our job is to translate what you do into why somebody should care.    Sharon: Is that how you got the name Glyphix? Is there something with Glyphix that tells clients that?   Larry: It was painful naming. We're a creative firm, so we have to have a creative name; we have to do things differently. We went through hundreds of names. We kept focusing on the name “glyph” as in a hieroglyph. It's using a picture or several pictures in a row to tell a story. At the time, everything that ended in X was much cooler, and we just stuck with Glyphix. Even our logo is a little “GX” man—it's on Glyphix.com; check it out—that tells a story through pictures and simple storytelling.   Sharon: I was thinking this while I was looking at the website. You have these very simple line drawings that tell what you do. Was it you who came up with that, Brad?   Larry: Are you talking about the video?   Sharon: Yeah, the video.   Larry: We typically come up with work as a team. At Glyphix, we have a great bunch of people who work together as a team. At the time, we had a gentleman, David Allman, working with us. I think David and Brad came up with that idea. Then we had it animated, and we had a wonderful gentleman who did the voiceover. We wanted a very simple way to explain what we do to people.   Sharon: As I was looking at it, I thought it was great, but it's like, “How do they come up with it?” I don't know if I could have.   Larry: We're very glad that other people can't do it; otherwise, we'd be out of work.    Sharon: If somebody says to you, “What does the firm specialize in?” do you have an area you specialize in?   Larry: I'm not sure about the word specialize. We do a lot of work with professional services firms. We understand how they function and how they work. We work with dozens and dozens of law firms and accounting firms, helping them craft their position, understand the brand and keep it in front of clients.    Ballard Rosenberg is a firm out here in the Valley. We keep them in front of their clients by keeping them in the business journals every month. For other firms, we'll get them on television. For others, we'll put them on KCRW radio. For us, it's helping our clients manage their brand. For others, it's evolved into websites and doing some social media for them. I think nowadays people are so busy, it's difficult to keep up with everybody. The key is keeping our clients front and center in the minds of their clients so when a need comes up, they remember them.   Brad: And I should say we don't do only professional services. We just happen to be very good at it. Professional services, especially with law firms, they bring their own special challenges, and we've learned to work around those things. You often hear that working with law firms is like herding cats. We've gotten pretty good at herding cats, but we handle many other firms. Our newest onboard is an AI and machine learning company. It couldn't be any more different than law firms, and the approach is very different from law firms, but again, we're looking for that story, that one thing they do best.   Sharon: How would you say that working with professional services firms is different than working with a products firm, let's say?   Brad: It's super different, because with professional services firms—I don't mean this in a negative way, but there's a lot of ego involved because it's personal. You're talking about selling the people. With a product, you can get some distance in between them. I can go to a CEO or marketing group in a firm and say, “Hey, your product is this and that. Here's the audience. Here's how they're going to respond.” There's some objectivity you can bring to that.    With professional services firms, it's very, very personal, especially when you get in a room with three, four, five partners of a law firm. They all have opinions. They're all valid, but they're all personal. Imagine taking five lawyers at a law firm out to purchase one car. You'd come back with a motorcycle. They have very strong opinions. They're always very articulate. They're very bright folks, so they all have valid opinions. Trying to get to a consensus is oftentimes difficult, as opposed to a product that stands on its own. Instead of telling a story about the product, you're telling a story about the people at the firm, and you have to get them over that hurdle. The firm itself has a brand and that brand stands for something. If you can get to that point, they can put their own personal biases aside and do what's best for the firm, but that's a challenge sometimes.    Sharon: I'm sure that's a challenge if you're dealing with ego. How do you overcome that? If you have a managing partner who feels one way and a senior associate feels differently, or if you're talking to an equity firm and the driver feels they're going one way and the other people are going another, how do you overcome that?   Larry: It's a great question. It's challenging. You can start by listening. Hopefully, we can spend the first meeting or two really listening and coming back to them with a creative brief that says, “Based on all the input we've received, this is what we're hearing. This is the direction to go in. Do we all agree on this?” We'll never start a design, whether it's a logo or a website or an ad campaign, until we understand who we're talking to, what we're trying to say, what our goals are. We try to get them all on the same page. That's the first hurdle.   The second hurdle is when you show creative. Creative is subjective in nature. People like blue, but they hate green, and they like flowers, but they don't like butterflies. Who knows? With that subjectivity, we try to bring objectivity to this process by saying, “Based on what we heard, this works well for you. Here's why these colors work well. Here's why these graphics work well. Here's why this typestyle works well.” We bring objectivity and some rationale behind the design, but again, you can look at a painting and you can love it or hate it. It may be a Rembrandt, but you may still hate it. It's hard, and you just take time. Sometimes these projects will go on for months and months because they're debating in-house or they're busy. We do our best to keep moving things along and trying to get to a final answer.   Brad: In addition to that, I think it's partly common ground. If you have a lot of partners and they all have strong opinions, it's sitting down long before any creative and discussing likes and dislikes, because personal likes and dislikes are every bit as valid as any other design criteria. In talking with you as long as possible, we try and pick out the common ground they all agree on to start with and then build outward from there. We build on the common ground and the trust that's been created in the initial discussions. Then that's where, as Larry was saying, we try and make it as objective as possible in a very subjective industry. That's one of the biggest challenges about being in advertising.    Sharon: I bet it's a challenge with a lot of professional service industries. Are you ever the order takers, as we sometimes get accused of being? Do people call you and say, “We need a new website,” and you go in thinking, “O.K., let's look at the website. We may not need everything new.”   Larry: I would say definitely not. In fact, we've lost business in the past by saying, “This is not what you need.” I feel like our responsibility is to talk to the client and say, “Based on your goals, here's what we suggest.” Now, if you want to ignore that, O.K., we can do what you're asking us to do. But I'll always give a client our best advice right up front, because otherwise I don't think we'll be successful in the long term, and they won't be successful. That doesn't work for us.    Most of our clients we've had now for, some of them, five, 10, 15 years. I think they know we will make the hard call and give them good advice. We may not be so popular, but I think in the long run, it serves them well. We try very hard to avoid being order takers. We always say, “If you ask for this, we'll give you that, but here's what we think you should do as well. Here are both options for you.” I always want to feel good that we gave the client the best thinking we could, even if they want to make a bad decision. That's up to them, but I want to give them an option and say, “Here's another way of going. What do you think?   Brad: We will never do only what the client asks for. I don't want that to be taken wrong, but if they ask for something very specific, if they've got something in their mind they want to get out and see how it looks, we're happy to help them with that process. But we're always going to give another opinion or two about a possible better way to get them thinking in larger spheres or in different directions.   Sharon: Do you think it's possible to rebrand? If everybody has a brand in their mind, is it possible to change that?   Brad: Oh, absolutely. Brands evolve constantly. If you look at the big brands, the Apples and Cokes of the world, they're constantly evolving and changing and staying current. We do that very often. We just finished a project for Enenstein Pham & Glass, a great law firm over the hill in Century City. They wanted to tighten the name up to EPG. We had a great project we did with them. We redid the logo and updated collateral materials.    I think firms constantly need to be responsive to the changes in the marketplace. They need to stay fresh. Law firms oftentimes say to us, “We don't need a website because nobody checks our website.” Well, the truth is when you're hiring, that's the first place they go. We've been working with a lot of our law firm clients and accounting clients so their site is designed in part to attract young talent, to bring people on board. Your website is your calling card. It's your office. Everybody goes there and checks it out just to validate who you are. Oftentimes, you have to understand who is going there. If you are looking to hire, which every accounting firm we know of right now is looking desperately to hire talent, that's where talent goes. They check out your site and get a sense of who you are.    Larry: And to see if it's some place they want to join. The better the candidate, the better the website should be to impress in both directions. Most people think of a website as outbound. I don't get new business from my website, especially in professional services. It's usually word of mouth. But they're always going to validate, and that validation has to be up to date. It has to be modern. It has to be credible for every law firm, and everybody knows this.    For 20 years, the professional services industry has been going through upheaval after upheaval because it came from a time when law firms, if they advertised, they were shysters. Now more than ever for law firms, you have to think about marketing and social and putting your best face forward. That's a huge turn of events, and I think some law firms are still having trouble getting used to that idea.   Sharon: Do you think that in any professional service there's room for traditional advertising, for print, for newspaper ads or magazine ads? Is there room for that?   Larry: Oh, sure. I think they all complement each other. As I said, for Ballard Rosenberg, we keep them current. They represent companies in employment law cases. So, for that firm, we keep them in front of the L.A. Business Journal, the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and some other publications where businesses are looking, where CEOs are reading those publications. I think there's definitely room for that.    For other clients—I'll give you an example. With direct mail, people think, “Why would you use direct mail for a law firm?” Well, we've got a number of law firms who don't want to do traditional advertising, which I completely respect. They have a list of 5,000 clients they've worked with over the past 10 years who they don't normally talk to. We put together a concept called an annual review. It's an annual report that goes out, basically. It's not the financials, but it's a yearend review on what happened at the firm this past year. It talks about cases they've won and publicity and pro bono work and new hires. It's a lovely booklet, and it goes out at the end of the year to 5,000 clients. Suddenly, it's a non-advertising way to get in front of all those clients you've had in the past, remind them of who you are, remind them of the exciting things going on at your firm and why they should do business with you.    We've done this for a number of firms and they've gotten tremendous response. People say, “I love this. I get an update on what's happening at the firm.” It's a very non-solicitous advertising piece, but it still an advertising piece because it communicates what's going on. It's a communication tool. I think it's traditional because it's direct mail, but it's been tweaked a little bit to be more contemporary. All these things combine to deliver an impression to your clients.    Sharon: That's interesting. Given the amount of direct mail I receive, my first reaction to what you're saying is, “Who would do direct mail today for any kind of marketing?” But I guess a lot of people do.   Larry: I think the key is to do it well. I agree with you. You get a lot of crap in the mail. 90% of it is garbage. Our job is to make sure that whatever we do, like that x-ray we did for Harry Nelson years ago, it's got to stand out. We've done those campaigns for law firms. We have a lot of nonprofits we work with. Whenever Brad and I do a direct mail campaign, we always push the pedal to the metal on creative. How out there can we be to get some attention, whether that's headlines, colors, different sizes, different materials? Brad and I have sent things out in tubes before.    Brad: Even bubble wrap.   Larry: The direct mail piece was sent out in bubble wrap because they were an insurance company. It was about protecting yourself, so it went out in bubble wrap. People went nuts. They were like, “This is so creative. I had to open it. I got a piece of bubble wrap in the mail. I had to open it up and see what was inside. You got me. I gave you the 10 seconds to read it.” So, I think the trick is to get creative.   Sharon: That makes a lot of sense. Brad, when it comes to picking the right photo, you did a little booklet on your website. What do you think about when it comes to picking the right photo? What do you both think about?   Brad: Actually, that one was very specific. That wasn't actually about photo composition choice. We tried to educate our clients about aspects that are really different with digital advertising. The biggest problem we've had over the last five, six years is responsive web design. Every screen has a different ratio, a different dimension, a different pixel count, and website elements move depending on how big the screen is. Most people think of websites as the old desktop publishing page layout, where you put everything in. Then, if you want to move it around, it's going to stay exactly the same, like a print piece. The web is not that way at all anymore. It is completely data-driven and responsive to the screen size. It's a phone up to a 32-inch monitor. It still has to lay out properly, but it's not the same.    So, we had this issue with photos. People would pick the exact cropping of a photo they liked, and it would have things on the edges and the corners of the photo that were very important to the composition. When we put it in the website, when the website responsive design would change for different screen sizes, the photos would crop differently and something that was important on the edges would get cut off. It's a very difficult concept to understand, that even a webpage looks different on every screen. It's a difficult concept for everyone to deal with. I know people in the industry who still have trouble with it. So, that booklet was to try and help clients understand that digital technology is not the way it used to be and there are adjustments that need to be made in that area.    In terms of regular composition of photos, we generally do it for the client. We alter it. We choose stock photos, and we work with them to find the photo they like. We are always keeping an eye on the images we give them to make sure they are proper for the branding with their approval. I totally forgot about that being on the website.   Sharon: How do you keep current? As you said, it changes so quickly.   Brad: Neither of us wants to answer that. It is insanely difficult. I personally spend probably eight hours a day in addition to work trying to keep up. I'm not the spring chicken I used to be, and it's getting harder and harder, but I love the industry. In fact, I love the web far more. I grew up on traditional advertising. I've done print. My first job was for a print company, actually, on the presses. I know traditional, but I prefer digital. It's more free flow. It's more creative. Sometimes, when things have a lot of hard parameters, you have to get super creative, and the web has a lot more parameters than print. I love it.    I love being in it, but it's starting to vulcanize a little bit where you need specialists. There are specific SEO specialists now in different areas. Social has become an industry in itself. We used to do it all in-house, and it's starting to get too complicated to do that. So, we find the best we can. We don't do PR, but I love the industry. If I didn't love design and trying to make companies look better, I wouldn't have been doing this for the last 30 years. It's barely better than ditch digging, but I really love it, as an old partner of ours said.   Sharon: You have to love it. You have to bite the bullet, I suppose, to keep abreast of everything.   Brad: Absolutely. Larry, on the other hand, he wants nothing to do with technology. So, we keep him doing what he does best, and we try and educate him as best we can on the fly. But we have developers in-house, we have designers in-house, and all of them have to be more up to date on the nuts and bolts of digital marketing than you did before. It used to be that a designer had to know how to create something that will print correctly, but he didn't have to know how to do the printing. Now, you have to learn a little about coding and what coding platforms there are for web and for social and APIs and all of that stuff. It's getting into the weeds, but once you grasp it, it's actually fascinating. It really is.    Larry: You're talking about technology. Once we thought we had it all figured out and websites were a piece of cake, then the ADA comes along. Now you have ADA compliance issues. You have to really understand what ADA limitations are in terms of fonts and colors and be responsive to that. Technology is always going to be encroaching on the creative aspect. You have to learn how to balance the two of them.   Sharon: I agree with a lot of what you're saying. You do have to balance, and it seems as soon you've learned it all, it changes. Let me ask you before we end, because you did write something about this. How do you know if your logo sucks and what do you do about it?    Larry: That's a tough one. It's hard to go up to someone and tell them their logo sucks. It's like telling them their baby is ugly. They may love the logo or hate it, but if you say something about that, they're going to take it personally. They should take it personally. Your logo represents you and your company, especially in professional services, and very few friends are going to tell you your logo sucks. That's just the way it is. When someone's building a company and building a brand, you don't want to tear them down if you're a friend.    So, the best thing to do is get a third opinion. Get an objective view. Every design firm, every ad agency will be more than happy to do a quick review of your identity. Every marketing design firm is going to have a different opinion about it, but they will be as objective as possible within their preferences. There are design rules that can't be broken. So, if it breaks design rules, the logo needs work.   Brad: Things also just get dated. I'll go back to the Cokes and the Disneys and the Apples of the world. These are companies that don't need to change their logo, yet they do because society evolves. Things change, and you want to look progressive and contemporary. I think even just a logo refresh is a great idea. You don't have to change the whole thing, but maybe bring it up, make it current. Fonts change. Colors change. There are lots of ways to refresh a brand. Plus, it gives you a wonderful opportunity to go back to your clients and say, “Hey, check out our new logo. Same great commitment to service, but a new logo reflecting whatever it is.” It's a nice way to take a new look. It's like painting your house. It gives it a new, fresh look.    Sharon: Larry and Brad, thank you so much for being with us today. You've answered a lot of questions and given us a lot to think about.   Brad: It's a pleasure. It was great.   Larry: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

High five for Round 5 with Larry Levine! As Collin and Larry talked about keeping your word to build your reputation and brand, today, they will be talking about honesty and being true to yourself in selling. It's high time to stop identifying yourself with your company and start selling as your true self. Tune in and learn more in this latest episode of Sales Transformation!Power up your podcast experience by joining our Free Podcast Community!Are your Reps hitting their quotas this 2022? If not, then a Wingman Free Trial is what you need!HIGHLIGHTSBe honest, beyond anything elseInner work first, outer work followsPerception is realityStep away from the company and make yourself the centerQUOTESCollin: “People think their brand is something they need to create, and it's not. Your brand is who you are, who you really are.”Larry: “The toughest work that salespeople have to do, it's the work that many just choose to just push off to the side is the inner work.”Larry: “If you can really key in on the inner work, the outer work becomes so much easier, but that's the crap everybody wants to run away from.”Larry: “It's time to step away from your company. It's time to step away from your product. You got to become front and center because in my opinion, if they can't make it past you, you're dead in the frickin water.”Connect with Guest and learn more about what he's been working on!About LarrySelling From The Heart LinkedInSelling From The Heart WebsiteConnect with Collin and find out what's new in Sales Transformation and other things he's up to:About CollinAbout SalescastSalescast CommunitySales TransformationWanna kick off your own kick-ass podcast?Already have one? How about growing it, or even monetizing it?LET'S TALK.

If you learn these eight principles of sustainable fundraising, your nonprofit will grow to the next level and exceed your expectations. Conversation Highlights {00:33} Introduction to Larry Johnson {07:16} Principal #1 Donors are the drivers {12:11} Principle #2 Begin at the beginning, that is, create a message {19:55} Principle #3 Leadership Leads {26:22} Principle #4 Learn and plan {32:13} Principle #5 Train the trainer {36:32} Principle #6 Divide and grow {40:21} Principle #7 Renew and refresh {43:23} Principle #8 Invest, integrate, and evaluate Remarkable Quotes Larry: We train people on how to build a metaphorical pipeline that brings their donors closer to them emotionally. Larry: Your goal is to be in that navigation seat and then you can help that person navigate their philanthropy. Larry: It's not just a handout, they're investing in you. Larry: You need to create a message. Travis: You must be able to get recurring donors, the best time to do that is within 13 days of first contact. Larry Johnson Bio Larry Johnson, founded The Eight Principles™, believing in the simple, the practical, and the joyful. He is the author of the award-winning book, “The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising,” and has been named to the top 15 fundraising consultants in the US and Canada by the Wall Street Business Network. The Association of Fundraising Professionals named Larry, Outstanding Development Executive of 2010. Larry's thirty-year career spans both program development and capital fundraising. After serving with the nation's leading consultancy, he served four institutions of higher learning as chief advancement officer. He has led successful capital funding efforts which were local, regional, and national in scope with objectives ranging from $650K to $200M. He serves on both nonprofit and corporate boards including, the advisory council of The Carter Center and the Philanthropy of the 39th President of the United States. Larry has coached the staff and volunteers of hundreds of nonprofit organizations in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Connect with Larry Johnson https://www.linkedin.com/in/larryjohnsonmegrace/ https://theeightprinciples.com/ Nonprofit Architect Podcast Links Website http://nonprofitarchitect.org Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/NonprofitArchitect Ultimate Podcast Guide https://nonprofitarchitect.org/ultimate-podcast-guide/ Subscribe and Leave a Review https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nonprofit-architect-podcast/id1481292481 Patreon https://www.patreon.com/NonprofitArchitect Watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQm8fnR2sHyrmLpV2jKYajA Listen to these other great podcasts from Veterans https://nonprofitarchitect.org/veteran-podcast-network/ Want help getting your podcast started? Visit: https://nonprofitarchitect.org/podcast-production-services/

If you learn these eight principles of sustainable fundraising, your nonprofit will grow to the next level and exceed your expectations. Conversation Highlights {00:33} Introduction to Larry Johnson {07:16} Principal #1 Donors are the drivers {12:11} Principle #2 Begin at the beginning, that is, create a message {19:55} Principle #3 Leadership Leads {26:22} Principle #4 Learn and plan {32:13} Principle #5 Train the trainer {36:32} Principle #6 Divide and grow {40:21} Principle #7 Renew and refresh {43:23} Principle #8 Invest, integrate, and evaluate Remarkable Quotes Larry: We train people on how to build a metaphorical pipeline that brings their donors closer to them emotionally. Larry: Your goal is to be in that navigation seat and then you can help that person navigate their philanthropy. Larry: It's not just a handout, they're investing in you. Larry: You need to create a message. Travis: You must be able to get recurring donors, the best time to do that is within 13 days of first contact. Larry Johnson Bio Larry Johnson, founded The Eight Principles™, believing in the simple, the practical, and the joyful. He is the author of the award-winning book, “The Eight Principles of Sustainable Fundraising,” and has been named to the top 15 fundraising consultants in the US and Canada by the Wall Street Business Network. The Association of Fundraising Professionals named Larry, Outstanding Development Executive of 2010. Larry's thirty-year career spans both program development and capital fundraising. After serving with the nation's leading consultancy, he served four institutions of higher learning as chief advancement officer. He has led successful capital funding efforts which were local, regional, and national in scope with objectives ranging from $650K to $200M. He serves on both nonprofit and corporate boards including, the advisory council of The Carter Center and the Philanthropy of the 39th President of the United States. Larry has coached the staff and volunteers of hundreds of nonprofit organizations in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Connect with Larry Johnson https://www.linkedin.com/in/larryjohnsonmegrace/ https://theeightprinciples.com/ Nonprofit Architect Podcast Links Website http://nonprofitarchitect.org Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/NonprofitArchitect Ultimate Podcast Guide https://nonprofitarchitect.org/ultimate-podcast-guide/ Subscribe and Leave a Review https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nonprofit-architect-podcast/id1481292481 Patreon https://www.patreon.com/NonprofitArchitect Watch on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQm8fnR2sHyrmLpV2jKYajA Listen to these other great podcasts from Veterans https://nonprofitarchitect.org/veteran-podcast-network/ Want help getting your podcast started? Visit: https://nonprofitarchitect.org/podcast-production-services/

CHRIS NEWBOLD: Hello, Well-Being friends, welcome to The Path to Well-Being in Law Podcast, an initiative of The Institute for Well-Being in Law. I'm your co-host, Chris Newbold, Executive Vice President of ALPS Malpractice Insurance. And, boy, how exciting is it that we're actually moving into the summer months? I always feel like well-being takes a natural elevated state in the summer months. We're also coming off of a really exciting Well-Being in Law week, and I'm joined by my co-host, Bree Buchanan. Bree, I'd just love to hear your reflections on, again, a May event that's really become a foundational element in the well-being horizon, as we think about bringing people together and shining a light on well-being. What were your reflections on this year's Well-Being Week in Law? BREE BUCHANAN: Good morning. Hey, Chris. So that was just... It's such an amazing event, and it's really become a signature event for The Institute for Well-Being in Law. This is our second year to do it. We didn't necessarily have people sign up, but we were able to look at things like the analytics, the people coming to our website, all of that doubled over last year. We had so much energy and excitement around that, and many people involved. We had the actual... the whole week for the Well-Being Week in Law, every day programming. And then this year, we added the after-party, which two weeks later, we did another full week of programming around the different dimensions of well-being for the professionals in this space, the people who are tasked with law firms, with... coming up with well-being programming. That's really an area that the institute is focused on, and supporting the movement and all the people that are out there that are part of this movement. So, it was a great event. What did you think? CHRIS: Yeah, I thought was fantastic, again. One of our goals on the podcast is to build and nurture a national network of well-being advocates. I think one of the great results of the week was just, again, a mobilization an army of folks who are really interested in this particular issue. We would be remiss without recognizing one of our colleagues, Bree, Anne Bradford, and all of the work that she did to really both initiate, and has really been building some significant momentum in building this community through events like Well-Being Week in Law. BREE: Absolutely. The community and just the partnerships that she's helping us create, really valuable. CHRIS: I think the folks interested in receiving mailings and communications from the institute, I think went up to like 1,400. Again, just a testament to the number of folks who are really passionate about this issue and want to see it remain at the forefront as we look to improve the profession. So that's awesome. Let's move into our podcast today. We're, again, super excited. We've taken a little bit of a pivot. In our first 10 to 12, 15 podcasts, we really focused on some individuals in the movement. We've been moving to a little bit of a mini series format. We started with law schools, and now we're really excited to delve into the intersection of well-being and research, and research into the well-being cause. There's been, in a lot of professions, probably a lot more empirical research. We certainly are moving into that space in terms of specifically looking at lawyers, research, well-being, happiness. I know, Bree, we are super excited about our guest today, who's going to kick off our research miniseries, Larry Krieger from Florida State University. Bree, I know that you've known Larry for a lot of years, I'm going to give you the honors of introducing Larry. But we are really excited about our podcast today in the intersection of well-being and the happiness of lawyers, which is, again, something I've been really excited to get into. BREE: Right. I am delighted Larry is somebody I've looked up to and look to as such a real expert in this space ever since I started working in this area, which was 2009. So, let me just give everybody an introduction. Professor Larry Krieger is a widely-recognized expert in lawyer well-being, and particularly, I think, he's known for his study and work around What Makes Lawyers Happy? And we'll get to hear more about that. That study, in particular, was research on 6,200 lawyers, and identified the specific factors that are required for lawyer wellness and satisfaction and basically, happiness. The New York Times report article on that study was the most shared article in The Times for the following two days. So a lot of buzz about that when it came out in 2015. Larry was the founding Chair of the section on balance and legal education for the Association of American Law Schools. He was a litigator for 11 years, so he knows what it's like to be in the trenches. Part of that was Chief Trial Counsel for the Florida Controller, and he now teaches litigation skills and professionalism at the Florida State University College of Law. He is rightly-so recognized as one of the 25 teachers in the Harvard Press Book, entitled, What the Best Law Teachers Do. Finally, I got to meet Larry in person when I presented to him in 2018 at CoLAP Meritorious Service Award, which is given, really, for a lifetime distinction in the work that addresses mental health and substance abuse issues in the profession. That is a small introduction to all that Larry has done in this space. So, Larry, welcome. We're so glad you're here. I want to ask you a question of what we ask for all of our guests. We start off with asking, what brought you to the well-being movement? We have found that just about for all of our guests, and certainly for all of us who are involved in the institute, there's some sort of personal life experience, something that drives our passion for this work. So, what can you tell us about your experience? And welcome, Larry. LARRY KRIEGER: Well, first, thank you so much. It really is a pleasure and an honor to get to talk to you both, and thank you for the amazing work that you both are doing them and all the people out there. Funny story. So what brought me to it was my first wife, who... way back then, she had actually been dating Mike Love, the lead singer for the Beach Boys, when the Beach Boys learned meditation. BREE: Okay. LARRY: Remember [inaudible 00:07:27] back in the late '60s or something. So we're going back a little ways here. I've been around. So I was in law school at the time, actually, I was miserable, and we heard that this meditation teacher, Transcendental Meditation, at the time, was coming to town. And she said, "Oh, let's go." And I said [inaudible 00:07:50]. And so she dragged me in there. I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever heard. We walked out, she was glowing. Like, this is fabulous, thought [inaudible 00:07:59], brother. They wanted 35 bucks for you to learn this technique, I thought this is for the birds. So she learned it, and she changed within two weeks. She was a different person. BREE: Wow. LARRY: So I said, "Okay, I want to learn it, too." Then it took me months to get into it, because the teacher didn't come back for three months. So it was just really good luck. It transcended my own ignorance, honestly. And then I was unhappy in law school, and actually quit law school. It took me eight years to get through law school, which I love telling students when they're discouraged. BREE: Right. LARRY: I just didn't like it. The reason I didn't like it is everybody there was so unhappy. I had already been in the Air Force through the Vietnam War, and I was a little older and stuff going to law school, and I thought, everybody is so serious. Oh, my God. Nobody's got their leg shot off. BREE: Right. LARRY: I just kept quitting law school, because I just didn't like being around. It was so serious and negative. So yeah, that was on me. I've learned to have better boundaries. But that's how I got involved. Then when I finally became a lawyer, I noticed how unhappy the lawyers were. BREE: Right. LARRY: [inaudible 00:09:14]. Come on, guys. Even the super successful ones were just ramped up, tense, pushy, on edge all the time. Of course, by then I had been meditating for a while, and so I it was keeping me chilled out. I was prosecuting in West Palm. We had the sixth highest crime rate in the country at the time. So it's not like it was... I was dodging the bullets and avoiding the trenches, like you say. But just, do your job and then go home and have a nice life. So what got me involved was good luck, certainly not my own intelligence, and then just seeing what was going on in front of me. BREE: Right, right. Absolutely. CHRIS: Well, Larry, you've... Certainly, when you look back on your research and scholarship, it now goes back almost 20 years. I know that you've been thinking about it even longer than that. In some respects, you've been a disruptor in our space before it was even a thing. If you look back on some of your titles, I just I marvel at the fact that you saw so much of this so early, that even though the movement is where it is today, again, you were talking about a two decades ago. Some of your titles included Institutional Denial About the Dark Side of Law, and I think that was published in 2002. Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students, again, 2002. Does Legal Education Have Undermining Effects on Law Students? 2004. What were you seeing among your students that brought you to engage in this type of research and scholarship? LARRY: Yeah, thanks. Let me just say [inaudible 00:10:55] just like me starting meditation and getting a bigger picture on life than what I had up to that point. I got lucky and got this job. I wasn't looking for a job, I had a marvelous job of chasing Ponzi schemes out of the State of Florida for the state comptroller, like Bree already mentioned. But I just got lucky and got into this job through happenstance, and it gave me time to start thinking. What I saw immediately was... I think I started this job in '91. I just passed 30 years. Yay. Had a little lunch with the dean, and it was really sweet. So it was a good ways after I had been in law school all those years, and seeing all the unhappiness there. When I got into teaching, I realized nothing has changed. Nothing. And I thought, "Okay, well, I've got some time here. I'm going to try to write about it." Actually, the first article I wrote was in '99. I'm not on tenure track, so writing all that negative stuff is a little tricky for me, but I figured, honestly, what the hell? I wouldn't mind going back to being a prosecutor or a lawyer. If they don't like me, they can just get rid of me, but I'm not going to keep my mouth shut. But the first one I wrote was in '99, and it was called What We're Not Telling Law Students - And Lawyers - That They Really Need to Know. In that article, I was just going from my experience, but I was saying we really need to research this. And then shortly after that, just, again, through happenstance, I ran into a fabulous empirical psychologist who was willing to work with me, Ken Sheldon. So, off we went. BREE: There you go. I really relate to what you're saying. I graduated from law school in 1989, and then had the opportunity, about 15 years later, to go back and lead a clinical program there, and it was the same thing. I saw students were still unhappy, stressed out, everything happened around a keg, alcohol flowed through every event. And then actually, when I got to the lawyers Assistance Program and went back to law schools talking, 10 or so years later, it was the same thing, there just hadn't been any shift. I want to talk to you a little bit. My experience with you, my first Larry Krieger encounter... When I started working at the Texas Lawyers Assistance Program in 2009, I came across your booklet that spoke to me so loudly, it was The Hidden Sources of Law School Stress, in which you openly wrote about the dark side of the law school experience, and it just rang so true for me. I was so impacted by that. Tell me what it was like during that period of time to write about these things. It's like sort of the emperor has no clothes, you were going out proclaiming. Just the same truth at the heart of the matter in the profession. How was that received? LARRY: Well, good question. That book's been a thrill for me and me. It turned out that half the law schools in the country and also in Australia and Canada, more than half of them have used the book with their students in bulk. So, that was a thrill. I'm writing a new one now. I'll explain why I decided to take a new tack. But hopefully, that'll be out at the end of the summer for fall students, if I'm lucky. The first thing I started doing before I wrote that is I started talking to clinical conferences, because I'm a clinical teacher, I teach litigation skills. And every time I would give a talk on this well-being, I never saw any other talks on it. It's so wonderful to see the movement now. When I started doing this, it was weird. But rooms would always fill up. There were so many teachers that would say, "This is so important. I wish I'd heard this when I was in law school." And I would say, "I wish I'd heard it law school." BREE: Me too. LARRY: Right. So somebody needed to start saying it. So that was really good. And then our dean of student asked me to give a talk to an early orientation group one summer here, that came pre [inaudible 00:15:49] law school, and I gave this little talk, and it really went well. What I did is I... This is where the booklet came from. I asked them, "So what are you worried about? Let's list everything you're worried about on the board, everything you're afraid of." And then we're going to shoot it all down, one at a time. So they listed it on the board, I explained why they shouldn't stress about it, and then I woke up the next morning [inaudible 00:16:14] you know that was really a lot of good things. And it all came from them, I thought I had to write this down. So I sent out a little summary to this listserv that I had started by then on humanizing legal education, and people wrote back and said, "Oh, can I use it? Can I use it? Can I use it?" And I said, "Okay, I got to put this into a publication." So I was already getting a lot of positive feedback from my community, which was the community of people who actually care about the well-being and happiness of... and sanity, really, of law students and lawyers. I've learned to focus on the people that are supportive, I just don't focus on the other people. [crosstalk 00:16:56]. BREE: Words of wisdom. CHRIS: Well, Larry, obviously, we're shifting a little bit in the podcast here to a three-part series focusing on research, and we just would really enjoy focusing now on your 2015 seminal work that really helped set the stage for the entire well-being movement. Your work, What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success Redefine Professional Success was really at the forefront. It was a large research project that you conducted with Ken Sheldon. Tell us about the survey, what inspired you to do it, who you surveyed, just setting the stage for what you ultimately found. LARRY: Sure, Thanks, Chris. That came out so well, too. I was shocked at how well... After we publish that, I had a lot of people from different journals and the press [inaudible 00:17:54] and they asked me if there are any surprises in there. Really, the main surprise was that we were right. Everything we predicted came out, and even stronger than I would have imagined. I really encourage folks who are listening to this, take a look at this study, because there's a graph in there of the results, and you can see it in a picture. It's so striking. It's on SSRN, Social Science Research Network, ssrn.com, and it's called What Makes Lawyers Happy?. But what came out of it was that success does not make lawyers happy. That's why The New York Times had such a buzz with it. BREE: Right. LARRY: We were actually able to quantify exactly what's making lawyers happy, and we were able to show, with numbers, it's not the money, it's not the partnership, the junior partners were not any happier than the senior associates in the big firms, not even a bit. Even though they were making 70% more money, and they were partners now, nothing changed. The idea came from because we started researching law students before that, and we were in some of those journals you mentioned with the institutional denial and understanding the negative effects, all that business. I wanted to be sure that what we found in law students actually was going in the direction that the studies predicted, and that lawyers were suffering from the same exact problems. So it really took seven years to get that study done, because I had to get bar associations. Five state bar associations agreed to participate and put their bar members through this survey. I got CLE credit assigned to the lawyers- BREE: Wow. LARRY: ... who were willing do it because it was a long survey. And then one of the states backed out at the last minute, a really big one. So otherwise, we'd have had 10,000 lawyers instead of 6,000, but results would have been identical. But I think they thought it's going to be too hot politically. BREE: Right. LARRY: I think they were afraid that we were going to show what we ended up showing, which is everything that the profession thinks is important, actually isn't important, other than helping clients, and everything that the profession thinks isn't important, like spending time with your family and taking care of yourself, actually is important, and those are the things that's going to make you happy. So, it took years to get that research in but, but we pulled it off. BREE: I see it was just sort of... The findings are just bombshell findings for me. I actually printed out, and I'm looking right now at that graph, and it is so incredibly demonstrative. When you're looking at what really moves the dial on subjective well-being or happiness, are things like autonomy, relatedness, internal motivation, the intrinsic values. So those are long bars on the graph. And then you get to income, class rank, making partner, Law Review, and the bars on that graph drop by like 75% or something. It is just striking visually to see this. Can you talk just briefly a little bit about this divide between the extrinsic and intrinsic values, sort of digging into the secret of happiness? LARRY: Yeah, great point. Thanks for bringing that up. I'm actually looking at it. I did a follow-up booklet to that, Hidden Sources of Law School Stress, that extended out to lawyers too, after this study came out. I have a few of those left. I'm trying not to sell them much anymore, and I'll tell you why at the end here. But it also has that chart in it. It's called The Hidden Stresses of Law School and Law Practice, because they really are hidden stresses. They're mis-assumptions. What these bars mean, is basically, that the human connections that we make, if I could put it in a nutshell, the human connections that we make are everything for the happiness of a lawyer or a judge. They are everything. What these buyers stand for is our connection to ourself, autonomy. Really, the way we measure it is integrity or authenticity. Are you a whole person? Are you true to what you say? Do you follow your own values, or are you two-faced? The negative stereotype of lawyers would be anti-autonomy and anti-integrity. So that's the number one factor, are you well-connected with yourself? And who is, in modern society? What is ourself, even? [inaudible 00:23:00]. And then the next one's obvious, relatedness to other people. Are you closely connected with other people? Not are you around them? Not, do you tell them what to do? But do you feel a close intimate connection with them? The third one and the fourth one have to do with work, do you feel competent at your work, and are you motivated to do your work because you care about it? In other words, is- BREE: Right. LARRY: ... are you connected to it? Not just, are you doing it to pay the bills, but does it give you meaning and purpose in your life? Does it give you joy? So those are the top four, and then autonomy, support, relationship to supervisor. So those are the things. They're way up there as far as predicting well-being. If you don't have those, you're not going to be happy. BREE: Right. LARRY: These numbers are so huge. And then when you get down to made partner, like I said, it's .00. It had no effect on the lawyers, at all, being on Law Review, what all the law students get the most depressed about. .00 and for the layers, it had no effect. Income is very modest, it's .19. These others are .65. BREE: I mean, you just turned it all on its head, Larry. First, when I would see these, I would think I... I would question the validity of the study, almost, because it's so striking against what we're taught and inculcated to believe. But it's a huge set of people that you surveyed, so I'm a believer. It also resonates with me. There's what we've been told, but it resonates with me because it's my lived experience. I believe it, because that's... what I experienced is true, what you found. So, anyway. LARRY: Yeah, thanks for that. If you look at scriptures since time began, in any culture, whatever, they all say the same thing. BREE: Right. LARRY: Right? BREE: Yeah. LARRY: All the music that sells tons and all the movies that are so popular, it's all about love, not money. We actually did a factor analysis. Again, I got lucky. My brother's a math genius, PhD type neuroscience person, and when he saw these results, he said, "Oh, you should do a factor analysis." I said, "What's a factor analysis?" He said, "Well, tell Ken Sheldon. He'll know." You can see I've been led by the nose all the way through my life in this. So we did a factor analysis, [inaudible 00:25:35] in a nutshell, looks at all these top factors for well-being and what my brother said, and it turned out to be true. So those are so big and so close in numbers, that it's going to turn out that they're really saying the same thing. They're not actually five different things, they're going to be one. One thing that's more fundamental. So Sheldon, it took them five minutes when I emailed him, and he said, "Yeah, he's right. There is one thing that's accounting for most of this variability in all of them." He said, "Good luck. Now you have to figure out what it is. I'm just a psychologist, you're the lawyer, because Matthew won't tell you that." Over the years, I did, I think, figure it out, and I've already explained it to you, it's the feeling of connectedness. I tried to think, what is it that makes me feel good when I tell the truth, or when I do what I think is important to me, or when I hug someone, or when I do work that matters, or when I look at a sunset and I feel joy? What is it that they all have in common? It's feeling connected to life. More or life? So I think that's the key to everything going forward, is how do we get lawyers to think bigger, make the box bigger. Because the box we grew up with, that we assumed was going to work does not work. This research shows it so clearly with numbers. We have to get outside that box and think bigger for ourselves. CHRIS: Larry, you've obviously studied this in the context of lawyers, but I just... It's hard not to think about this and say what you've learned about lawyers is really the fact that we are human beings before we are lawyers, and if we take care of ourselves and the relationship and the connectedness... In your study, you talk about what a profile of a happy lawyer is. You could probably replace that with a profile of what a happy person is, and it's going to be equally applicable. LARRY: No question. Actually, that's how we set up the study, is we had all these hypotheses based on research on "normal people", or regular people, not lawyers. That's how we had set up our studies of law students to start with, is using self-determination theory, which had never really been tested on lawyers. That's what I meant when I said, I was just surprised how well it all bore out. These numbers are enormous. Correlations with happiness for each of these factors is like two thirds of a perfect correlation. If you have any one of those five, you're way up there already. But if you're missing any one of the five, you're really missing a lot. So, yeah. Actually, toward the end of the study itself, again, on ssrn.com, I talk about how lawyers are normal people. This is exactly what we would get with normal people. I got to say, I'm a little bit proud about this study because I don't think there's another one that quantifies it like this. This was a another bold step. Once we were getting these results, I asked Ken, I said, "Sir, is there any way we can actually measure these out, not just with P values, which is a probability?" Because they were all highly significant, so they all looked the same. But to show which ones are the strongest. He said, "Yeah, there's these Pearson correlations, these standardized correlation." So he sent me some articles to read about that. And I said, "Let's do that." That's how you actually get these numbers. Because you can't really compare... Bree, you mentioned, you can't really compare how much money you make with how close you feel to your children. They're on two different scales, one's in dollars, and one is in subjective warm and fuzzy feelings. So we were able to do those comparisons and show, for example, that earning more money is a .19 correlation with happiness, whereas having integrity, what we're always pushing lawyers about, is a .66. It's three and a half times as strong. We had to do that with the mathematical conversion into standard. So he was able to do that. Like you said, Bree, I expected to get just hammered once this study came out by people saying, this is garbage, and your methodology is garbage and this and that. Haven't had a single complaint about it, I think partly because every single thing we looked at in the study... And there's probably 50 or 60 correlations in here that people will be interested in like, what about having children? What about being married or a long term relationship? What about how many vacation days you take? What about how big a city you live in? What about the rank of your law school? We were able to compare all those, and everything came out consistently. So each of the findings confirmed each of the other findings. BREE: Right. CHRIS: Larry, first of all, you should be proud of your study. Again, I think it was more, ultimately, reaffirming than anything else, what many of us suspected. So, hey, let's take time to take a quick break. We certainly want to come back after the break and talk about implications of the study, some advice that you have, and then where you're going on the research front from here. So let's take a short break, and we'll be right back. — ADVERTISEMENT: Your law firm is worth protecting, and so is your time. ALPS has the quickest online application for legal malpractice insurance out there. Apply, see rates, and find coverage, all in about 20 minutes. Being a lawyer is hard, our new online app is easy. Apply now at applyonline.alpsnet.com. — CHRIS: Okay. Welcome back to the podcast. We have Larry Krieger here, who published a seminal study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?. Larry, I'm curious, if you had an audience of a group of big law CEOs, HR officers, based on what you've learned, what words of advice would you give to them about having and nurturing successful lawyers? Because obviously, successful lawyers are the key to a successful firm and are, I think, the foundation of, ultimately, serving society as problem solvers. What advice would you have? LARRY: It'd probably be what I'm telling you two. You're CEOs of your organization. [inaudible 00:32:42] being proud of the study. I'm really smiling here so big while I'm talking to you all, because I'm really happy that it came out the way it did. It's wonderful, because I think it's helpful for people, if they take a look at it. I've already intimated what I would want to tell people, is we have to think bigger. Look, when I went to law school, this all started for me. I guess I was somewhat instrumental in getting it going in other circles and in legal education in particular. It started for me because I came with a different perspective. I came from outside the legal perspective. I had gone to college, I'd gone into the military, I'd seen some serious life-threatening situations, and some soldiers who didn't make it that I was transporting here and there. I lived in different countries. I not only took meditation, but I actually taught meditation. So I came with an outside-the-box perspective. And then when I came to law school, I said, "Oh, this box is too small. We have to think bigger. People are not coming to law school expecting to be happy. You've got to think bigger about your life." It was like a merit badge to be so stressed and stay up and be studying and having big circles on your eyes. I don't even want to be around this. This is just bad thinking. The more powerful you are, the more you know what it takes to be happy, usually. Now, that may not be true in our political system anymore. Those people are not happy, I don't care what party you're in. But as you become more successful, you should be becoming more happy. If you're not happy, you're not successful. There are great quotes from great philosophers that happiness is the highest form of success, and that has to be true. So first of all, I would tell CEOs, and I also tell law students the same thing, the highest form of success you can have is to really be deeply, consistently happy. If something sad happens, be sad, be in touch with your feelings. Everything you're doing, you went to law school, why? To become happy. You're making money. Why? To make you happy. You got married. Why? So you'd be happy. You had children. Why? Right? You're going to retire. Why? You'll be happier. Everything is for that, but we put it aside and get lost in the details. BREE: I want to ask you about your current research, and we'll make sure we have time to talk about that. It sounds like you're doing a bit of a pivot in your focus. Tell us about that. LARRY: I think is that the research is so helpful, it will challenge people. Because they may think, "Oh, my gosh, I've spent all my time doing this, and now I need to shift." You just need to make an internal shift, keep doing what you're doing, because you're good at it, but stop thinking that winning or being the greatest is going to make you happy. Just keep doing it because you're good at it and you're competent at it, and you can help people. That will make you happy. So it's this connectedness to self, to others, and to purpose that shows up in the study as being so strong for making people happy. If you don't have it, you're simply not going to be happy. That's what these numbers mean. So once we get there and we accept that, then I started thinking, "Well, how can I really teach my litigation students? Because they're stressed out, they're trying to learn this high pressure stuff, and they're going to lose lots of cases, just like I did. And I need to get them ready for that." So I started thinking, "Well, what's the most important connection that we could have?" And it comes right from that factor analysis, it's really our connection to life. Our connection to life. When we first got this research, and then the analysis, I thought, "Well, what's the difference between me feeling well-connected to you and caring about you guys, and the difference with me making lots of money and feeling well-connected to my money?" Why isn't that so satisfying? The answer is, there's no life in it. There's no life in it. I mentioned this to my minister, my little church I go to, and he told me this great quote from Thomas Merton, that love is an intensification of life. Love is an intensification of life, a wholeness. I looked it up. And I realized, yeah, that's what's making these lawyers happy. They're connecting with their own self, which is life, they're connecting with the life of other people that they care about. So life is connecting to life and reverberating back and forth. In my slideshows, in my PowerPoints, I use an image of a power cord that's plugging in at both ends, and you see electricity going. That's our life. So the more you plug into life and connect to it, the happier you're going to be. So that's one big piece of it. I'm trying to actually get Ken to do another study with me on spirituality and religion, showing that people who feel connected to whatever they believe, might be God or a higher authority, or this or that, if they feel connected and close to it, they're happier people than if they feel a fear of it, or like it's judgmental and this and that. So far I haven't got him there, but I will. I'll keep after him. But I think there's another area of science now that's so important for lawyers, which is the old power of positive thinking from the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale. But it's turning out to be scientifically really true. Epigenetics, neuroscience, neurobiology, biochemistry. There's a huge body of science now that when you think positively, you feel good, and when you think negatively or you have a negative belief, you feel bad. You can think of the optimism and pessimism research. Same thing. Optimist is just somebody with a mindset that everything is good, even if it sucks. "I got a flat tire. Well, that sucks, but I'll go have a cup of coffee. I got AAA. I'm lucky, I'll call AAA. I'll call and tell them I'm going to be late," and they're fine. Whereas a pessimist has the same flat tire, but has a different mindset and decides now life sucks. Not just this sucks, but life sucks, I suck, and it's never going to get better. BREE: Right. LARRY: So it's the exact same flat tire, it's the exact same client that got convicted of a DUI or got custody, whatever it is, but people frame it in different ways. The way they frame it makes about a 2,000-point difference in your biochemistry. 2,000 different chemicals in your brain and your body, depending on if you have a positive thought or a negative thought. And then that structures how you feel, how you work, how much inflammation you have, whether you're depressed, whether you age, or stay young, and whether you get the raise and the promotion or not, because people actually like being around you, and so forth. So really pushing that now, that people, we need to basically... We have two big things we need to do. First of all, we need to locate our life, and we need to connect to it. Of course, this is a lot of mindfulness and meditation stuff. But that first research shows how important it is to find life in what you're doing. If it doesn't have life, don't do it. [inaudible 00:41:01]. And then both inside and outside. And then the second thing is manage your thoughts proactively. We're so smart, but we have a tendency to think negatively. [inaudible 00:41:16] pessimistic way of thinking what can go wrong? BREE: Right. LARRY: So I'm really coming around, and I'm going to write a paper on this, it's coming pretty soon, about, first of all, work-life balance, real quick. I'll spend just a minute on each of these, because I know we're getting close on our time. Work-life balance is great. I don't think it's worked. The reason it hasn't worked is because nobody's finding life. We're saying we shouldn't be working all the time, let's have more life, but nobody really understands what life is. It's not going out on the golf course and getting aggravated. BREE: Wow. LARRY: It's not spending lots of time drinking. That's not life. It's like, you have to find your life, and then you have to express it to other people, and you have to find it in them, and let them express it to you. So it really involves going deeper inside taking care of your health, and being mindful and finding life. So I've been teaching law students and others, taking just simple meditation practices to do that. And then the second key thing is manage your thoughts proactively. The other sort of talisman we have besides work-life balance that I think is not working well is stress management. Stress management is way better than stress mismanagement, or unmanagement. But stress management, as a talisman, presumes we're going to be stressed. Why do we have to be stressed? To me, that's dumb thinking. You've got to think bigger than that. I actually just did a survey, it was just a random one, no IRB approval, but it's not going to be published, just to prove the point. I want Ken to research this with me, as well. I sampled a bunch of law students, one, two and three hours, just asking them, what did you think law school would be like? That's all. Give me one word. What did you think law school would be like before you started, and what do you think law practice will be like now? One or two words. So they had no bias [inaudible 00:43:34]. 70% of them said stress, burnout, anxiety. That's the mindset, even coming into law school. BREE: Right. LARRY: What this new research says, if that's what you expect, that is what you'll get. In other words, when you get a big assignment, now it's all about, I'm so stressed. I was telling my wife this morning, and then I'll close here, I'm going to get to talk to Bree and Chris today, and hopefully, some lawyers. I could be all stressed about this. I have so much work to do, I don't have time [inaudible 00:44:06]. Or I can say, this is a wonderful opportunity. It's going to be the same talk, either way. What you think it's going to be determines those 1,000 positive or 1,000 negative chemicals flushing through your body and your brain for the rest of the day. So we have to learn to be positive about it, and so we got to get rid of stress management. I would call it thought management, belief management. Just stop looking at the hours of stress. One other quick note. We do have a study that's going to probably be published in about six months, we're just submitting it in the next week or so, that shows that it's not actually the long hours that's making lawyers unhappy. It's not the long hours, it's the wrong work. People who like their work, they work more hours, they actually enjoy it. And the people don't like their work, when they... they're just as unhappy whether they're working long hours or not. So, we need to shift our focus on to find life inside yourself, embrace it, be grateful for it, connect to others, share your life, and think bigger, expect to be happy. Don't expect to be stressed. Because if you expect to be happy and start every day like that, you're going to be happy. Is garbage going to come up? Sure. People come to you because you're a lawyer, they have problems, if you're in that practice. Well, okay. So, let's help them with their problems as much as we can, and then let's go home happy. If we didn't fix them, it wasn't our problem, it was their problem. So we have to have that boundary there and appreciate ourselves. BREE: Larry, thank you so much. It's such a joy to hear you speak, and your point of view when you're thinking about these things. Again, going back to... really just confirms, I think, what I know and what we all know in our gut, in our heart about what makes life worth living. So thank you for that. It's a bit revolutionary, and we need you right now, we need thought leaders like you, and so I'm really excited to hear and read your studies that are coming out. I commend everybody, and I'm going to... We'll make sure that there's a link in the transcript of our podcast. But do take a look at the study, What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success. Again, it is really the work that kicked the current well-being movement off, and launched many other research projects that came from that. I've always thought that it is not... I think our listeners can hear that you are not ego-based, you're humble man. So there was not a lot of promotion of this study. I've really felt passionate about... In kicking off this series on research in this area, we had to start with you, because you are the Godfather of this area, Larry. So thank you so much, and we will be back in the next couple of weeks with other researchers to shed light on, what is the cutting edge thinking in this area? Chris, thank you too, for being here today, and take care everyone. We'll talk to you very soon. CHRIS: Thank you.  

Summary by author Larry: It's a podcast where we discussed about the different disabled people's situations between China and America and some reasons that lead to this series of different issues. As we've known that disability issues are great challenges all around the world. We further discussed about some potential keys to the problems which are possible. Bibliography: Hofstede.CulturesConsequences[M].London：SagePublications，1980. Forrest Gump. Robert Zemeckis. Paramount Pictures,1994. Jotting In Sickbeds, Shi Tiesheng, People's culture publications,2008. Chinese disabled people's report. Chinese Disabled Persons' Federation,2020.

Who is Larry Hughes, and how does he help business owners? (1:40) Why you need to do a valuation of your business before you sell. (8:56) Common reasons business owners sell their business. (13:36) Does your business have value? (19:49) 5 things you have to do to create a highly valuable business that someone will want to buy: 1. Operating margins above industry standards. (22:00) Strategies for improving your margins. (29:22) 2. Have a stable, motivated management team. (33:55) If you already have a great manager on your team, how do you keep them? (39:00) How do systems help make your business “buyable?” (41:31) 3. Systems that support sustainable cashflow. (45:59) 4. Realistic growth strategy. (48:20) 5. Diversified customer base. (51:15) How to protect yourself from Godzilla. (52:28) Who buys businesses, and why do they buy them? (57:48) Scenario: You're a business owner and you're looking to grow by buying another business. What should you be looking for, and what are red flags that should cause you to steer clear? (1:07:29) What are you actually buying when you buy a business? (1:10:53) How is business valued? (1:12:08) Where do you find buyers? (1:20:15) If you want to sell your business, good books are SO important! Here's why. (1:24:10) We've been hearing about Cliff the whole episode... What ended up happening with his business? (Spoiler alert: it's good!) (1:29:07) When should you start planning for selling your business? (1:36:18) Ethan's Insights — What are the most important things from this info-packed interview with Larry Hughes? (1:37:06) Quotable Moments “We all know that there are two things that are definite in this world. One is taxes, and one is death. But for business owners, there's a third, and that is that one day, they're going to leave their business.” — Larry “When you build a business to sell, you're also building a business that you might choose to keep because it's making extraordinary income and it runs relatively hands-off... which is what makes it attractive to buyers.” — M “Value is all wrapped up in one key item, and that's cash flow.” — Larry “Cut costs, not corners.” — Larry “It's so important that you are NOT the key guy in every aspect of your business.” — Larry “Sometimes a little too much money is not good for a business owner because he makes a decision without planning.” — Larry Resources 5 Things to Do to Create a Highly Valuable Business infographic IBIS — Look up your industry standards, from gross margins to employee costs  The Profit Problem by Martin Holland More from Larry at thehughes-group.com Call Larry directly at (405) 478 - 3800 More from Martin theprofitproblem.com annealbc.com    martin@anealbc.com  LinkedIn Facebook Instagram More from Khalil benali.com  khalil@benali.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram More from The Cashflow Contractor Ask Us A Question Sign Up For A Free Consultation thecashflowcontractor.com  info@thecashflowcontractor.com LinkedIn Facebook Instagram

A history of a history of west OlympiaMusic in this episode:Frog In The Well by Lucas Gonze used with Creative Commons licensePaper Crowns by Ditrani Brothers used with permission.Sleep by Ronny Tana courtesy of 2060 recordsSwing Gitan by Ditrani Brothers used with permission.Feathersoft by Blue Dot sessions The following is a full transcript of this episode:Rob Smith: One thing I know about the last name Smith, is that it makes you hard to find. I've always seen this as a benefit, but now I'm trying to find a random Smith. Larry Smith. I've been thinking about this guy for several months now. Ever since I learned he helped write a book that's long been out of print. I found a copy of this book on eBay, bought it for $25. It's called How the West Was once a history of West Olympia.On phone: Hey, my name is Rob Smith, and I'm calling for a Larry Smith who used to be a English teacher in Olympia at Jefferson junior high school. And I have no idea if this is the right Larry Smith, but he wrote a book called With some students and I wanted to talk to him about that book that he wrote. So, if that's you, Larry, if you're the Larry Smith..Rob: Here's what I know. Larry Smith was an English teacher at Jefferson Middle School in West Olympia. In 1974, his last year teaching at that school, he assigned his eighth graders a collective writing project. How the West Was Once is the product of that assignment. On the phone: Hey, my name is Rob Smith. I'm calling for a Larry..Rob: The book is small. I'm holding it here it's about eight by five, and just under 100 pages, black and white. My copy has this blue binding material holding it together. The cover's yellowing and only slightly thicker than the books pages. It's clear it was made on a budget. And yet it's well done. Those hundred pages are full of accounts of life on Olympia's West Side, from the mid 19th to mid 20th century. It's not definitive by any means. Some of the stories read a little like legends, and there's a few cringy passages. But the book adds real personal color to the history of West Olympia, a place I learned, once known as Marshville. Ever since I got my hands on this book, I've been thinking about the people who wrote it. I wanted to talk to them. What sort of teacher takes on a project like this? A lot of what I like to do with my audio work is record stories of older people. I see it kind of like time traveling, or preservation at least, it struck me that that's exactly what this project was doing. 45 years ago, in book form.I pay for this service that I use to look people up. It's kind of amazing. You can get phone numbers, addresses, email addresses. The problem is there's a lot of false positives, old numbers, dormant email addresses. Most of the time, you're just reaching out to the wrong person all together. So I went to Jefferson Middle School, the place where this book was written over 45 years. ago, I talked to the principal. He'd never heard of the book. The one who worked there the longest, a woman at the front desk, said she must have just missed Larry Smith. She started in the late 70s. I was told to go see the librarian. She knew the book, had a personal copy herself, but didn't know what had happened to the teacher who orchestrated it. I called the district offices, talk to someone in archives. They had nothing. So I decided to go back to the book, knowing i'd have better luck finding one of the couple dozen students listed in the credits. The first page is a list of names. And at the top of the alphabetized list is Rick Aarts. AARTS. I looked him up, called him, left a message. He called me right back! Rick was great. We talked a while about the book. and what he remembered about his teacher. He said Smith left an impression Only had good things to say about him. I asked him if he knew what had happened to Mr. Smith. Rick remembered something about California. Maybe he moved there for health reasons. He couldn't remember. Rick didn't want to talk on tape, said he'd be a lousy interview. I disagreed. But he gave me another name. So I stopped bugging him.Ray Houser just turned 60 he was one of the eighth graders that put together How the West Was Once Ray Houser: I lived on Decatur Street, which was probably a block and a half from the elementary school, and maybe 8-10 blocks to the junior high. Walked to school pretty much my whole life - typically with my buddy Bruce and Rick and, you know, we built these and developed these relationships and it was back in an era where you could ride your bike anywhere you wanted and you coiuld stay out late at night and we'd go to the park and... It was a little Mayberry.Rob: Bella biagio was also a student of Larry Smith.Bella Biagio: I was considered basically, maybe the class clown. Just because I am who I am and I continued. (laughing) I just you know, I'm, you know constantly.. things make me laugh and everything's comedic to me. So sometimes that got me in trouble.Rob: Ray and Bella both remember Larry Smith as an exceptional teacher. Bella, who as an adult would be diagnosed with ADD found relief in his class.Bella: He was one of the people... if anybody, you know, you didn't think you were done. He... you know what I mean? I f you had that in your mind, that was completely eliminated when you were in his class.Ray: What was unique about Larry was, he was a younger teacher back then, and I was a younger student back then - and he really took a genuine interest in his students and knew something about his students and And genuinely cared about his his kids. Rob: I interviewed Ray and Bella separately on separate days,Bella: Even though I am who I am, and I have this personality and everything. I also am very insular and somewhat shy,Rob: But they both landed on the same word to sum up their eighth grade English teacher 45 years later.Bella: But he just, you know, he was able to like, just take you and just make you feel really safe. I think that's a very good word for him.Ray: It was safe, it was safe physically, it was safe intellectually, and it was safe emotionally.Rob: Obviously, many of their memories have faded. But this feeling of safety has stuck with them all these years. Other memories have stuck around as well.Bella: He had a very distinct smile, a very distinct nose. It's it's weird that I remember this. Like I remember some of the clothing he wore. Like he would wear shirts with the little tie maybe, sports jacket maybe, a sweater or something but he was just always so like... Look he's so cool! And just just like little, the twinkle in the eye and the smile and lanky, sort of tall guy and his wife was beautiful.Rob: Larry's beautiful wife was another clue I had. I knew her name was Nikki. I'd left about a dozen messages for people I thought might be Larry, but none of the contacts had a Nicki associated with them. Then finally, one night as I was making dinner, the phone rang. The caller ID said Smith, Larry. I answered. An old voice told me that he was indeed Larry Smith. And he really wished he was the Larry Smith I was looking for.That night in kind of a fit of desperation. I just googled something like Larry Smith, English professor, California. And as you'd expect, I got a lot of hits. But I found this one in LA, a teacher, an English professor at LA City College. I clicked on his rate my professor page - years and years of glowing reviews. I knew it was a long shot - I mean, Larry must be retired by now. But I emailed this professor and went to bed. The next morning I had a new email. I hit record on my cell phone just before opening it.Rob reading email: ...and just based on the subject line, I think I might have found him… Ha. Cool. "Rob, haha, you hit the jackpot since I’ve never had been on Facebook or MySpace. I'd assume I'd be hard to trace. After Olympia. My wife and I moved to San Jose for four years. On to Coos Bay, Oregon for 16 at a high school, with two in the middle to work in Papua New Guinea to give our three kids a true cultural experience. Paso Robles, California for six, California Youth authority prison, then down to LA area in 2000. Where I continued with high school and adjuncted at several colleges. Now I'm in my fiftieth year with no plan on retiring…. Phone message:Thank you for calling the Whittier Union High School District. Please listen closely to the following options as our menu has changed. Para Espanol oprima a nemero 8. If you are calling from a touch tone telephone and... # Wait while I transfer your call…Larry Smith:Hey, morning, Rob.Rob on phone: Hey, Larry. How you doing?Larry: Good. Great. Hey, let me go grab Patty. She had a she had an event and so she's around here somewhere. She's the one with a phone.Rob I got ahold of Larry Smith in his classroom. He recorded his end on a colleague's cell phone. Larry: Okay, we're on.Rob on phone: Okay, well, um, can you just start, Larry, by introducing yourself, and maybe where you are right now?Larry:Yeah, my name is Larry Smith. I'm a teacher. This is my 50th year. So I've been teaching starting in Olympia, Washington and now I am in Whittier, California teaching at an alternative high school, and Los Angeles City College and living in Pasadena.Rob: Larry grew up near Seattle. It's where he expected to start his teaching career after graduating from Seattle Pacific University. But he finished school during a big recession.Larry: Nobody was hiring. And so I just started going further and further south until I finally found a district that did have an opening and I found the first one in Olympia. And so I had literally never stopped in Olympia. I'd never been on the Capitol grounds. West Olympia, I had no idea what that was. So the first time I really saw where I was going to be living was for my job interview and ended up really enjoying the area, rented a house. It was on Plymouth Street, a two story house in West Olympia for $65 a month! That's how bad the house was and how the economy was in those days.Rob: Jefferson junior high, it was a junior high then not a middle school, wasn't in great shape either. Larry says./Rob: It was pretty rundown, actually, you know, there was like three trees on the whole property. In fact, I think my second year there, we did a big project where we got a bunch of trees donated and the kids planted them along the front of the school and on the side. And I believe if you drive by Jefferson today and see any fairly large trees along the front, they were planted by my eighth graders that year.Rob: I asked Larry what he did for fun. Like, did he go downtown?Larry: No, I didn't. Downtown, my goodness? No, that's where the Washington and Reeves kids hung out. And I wouldn't dare do that. No I was pretty much Westside. I mean, You know, I would eat probably three times a week at Bob's Burgers, which was right across the street from Egan's drive in, which had the worst worst ice cream in the history of humanity, which was so grainy that it would literally sand your teeth down and would go to Peterson's Food Town to buy my food. And then went to church at a little church actually was built during probably my second or third year there, Westwood Baptist Church.Rob: He still had friends and family up north. He'd visit them on the weekends.Larry: So I would jump in my Volkswagen bus, hippie mobile and drive into Seattle and then come back on Sunday for church and then, you know, kind of that was sort of the ritual but yeah it was pretty much West Olympia. Rob: Larry started teaching here in Olympia at 22. closer in age to his students than to their parents. Far from home for the first time, he just folded himself into the west side community. Larry: It was just pure fun. You know, and as a bachelor first year teacher I mean I lived right in the middle of where all my students lived and you know, my door didn't have a, my house didn't even have a lock and I would come home from school and five kids would just be hanging out in the living room and I would be invited to dinner all the time. And, I mean, it was just really a big family thing.Rob: The Bachelor days were short lived. In his third year teaching, Larry magically reconnected as he puts it, with a woman he was engaged to years before at SPU. Within three weeks, the two were married. over winter break, Nikki resigned from her teaching position in Santa Cruz.Larry: And then she moved up and shivered for a year and a half before she talked me into moving south.Rob: It was Larry Smith's last year teaching in Olympia that How the West Was once was written.Larry: I knew it was going to be my final year. I just wanted to try something really unique. And I just happened to be really blessed by an incredible group of kids and wanted to do more than just daily and weekly assignments. And so we just took on this virtually a year long project. Ray:He explained it to us and said that we're going to, we're going to write a book as a class and it's like, oh, okay, well, what does that mean?Rob: They had to decide what to write a book about.Larry: We listed all the possibilities, and I remember one of them was all the uses of ivy. But that didn't seem like a book that would really sell and might have been a parent came up with the idea that we should do a history of the local area because West Olympia is really a distinct geographical region from the rest of the city.Rob: Larry says the first topic was wild John Tourneau, a mass murdering man of the woods that one of his students had told him about. A story he'd passed off as legend. Larry: We looked it up. And sure enough, this guy was a real person who was killed in a gun battle. And so he became sort of our first story and then it just took off. Ray: Everybody in the class got assigned different, different jobs, editors, interviewers, researchers, etc. And we kinda launched into this giant project.Larry: Different kids got more involved. Some of them were involved in every single aspect. But nobody was uninvolved. It's like the entire class picked up the vibration and parents were actively involved. I would get phone calls from people just out of the blue suggesting somebody to go interview. You know, the kids didn't have cars. They were eighth graders. So, their parents would drive them out to the middle of nowhere up to the end of Cooper point or somewhere and sit in the car while the kids went in and did the interviews.Rob: This was all on top of the regular duties of eighth grade English - reading, writing vocabulary. A lot of the work on the book, like the interviews took place after school or on the weekends. Ray and Bella did some of those interviews. Ray: My role was to actually go out and meet with the elder community of West Olympia. They were so gracious and so interested and willing and eager to share their experiences and many who had lived there their entire lives. Rob: Ray remembers a couple of those interviews in particular. One was with an old man that lived near the water and mud Bay.Ray: He wasn't a curmudgeon by any means. But he talked about how the changes and the you know the bringing of new businesses had kind of altered the community feel. And then the other was just an elderly woman who like I say she had cookies and lemonade and it was just exuberant and excited and wanted to meet with us. It was a little intimidating. I was in eighth grade and I was with Larry and my buddy Rick. And we really enjoyed spending time with her and just very gracious and very interested in sharing her experiences.Bella: Oh, they just thought it was so great. I mean, they just thought it was so exciting that one, we we're writing a book and two, what it was about, because, you know, nobody was gonna ask them the history of West Olympia. And they were really excited about, I think, I think people really enjoy telling the history of where they've lived, probably all their entire life.Rob in conversation: Yeah. Some of my favorites are the personal ones like the guy that did the ark, built the ark.Bella:Yeah. Why did he built the Ark? I don't rememberRob in conversation: I think he was waiting for the second flood?Bella: Yeah, you know that really live in it up, didn't it? (laughing)Rob: Each chapter of the book is a different topic or story. There's a chapter on the different incarnations of the Fourth Avenue Bridge, The story of Harry Beechy, a hulk of a man who lost his arm working as a longshoreman. I love the story of the streetcar that used to run up Harrison Hill, and take a right on Rogers, how kids greased the tracks one year as a Halloween prank. Each account was recorded by the kids during the field interviews, some on tape, some handwritten notes. The stories were written up back in class, then edited. Larry says plenty of the work didn't make it into the book.Larry: Certain stories, we couldn't verify. And so they were eliminated. The stories that weren't as well written and we just wanted it to be a crisp, concise, only the very best. And so the story about Harry Beechy, the guy that built the ark, and the plane that crashed into St. Peter's hospital, you know, they made the cut and so we really focused on them. Bella: Here's the art guy! Here it is! Oh my god, (reading)“Bill started work on ark II in 1922 and worked on it for four or five years before he finished it” (laughing) "Bill was an average man except for one thing, he built an ark". Oh, that's great!Rob: When the writing was done, Larry's wife Nikki typed it all up. This project wasn't over yet though. Students helped collate the pages and learned how to bind the books. There was marketing. They built wooden display cases to put in shops around town.May 16 1974, the students finally had finished products to show for their work.Larry: We just sold it I think it was for $1.25, which probably today would be about $15. Of course, every kid in the class had family members who wanted to buy them and the Daily Olympian published a story about it. And that developed some interest.Rob: The book sold out in no time, 1500 copies before school was even out for summer. Summer was when Larry and Nikki packed up their house on Plymouth Street.Larry: I basically put a fairly large group of them in charge of whatever was going to happen with a book. And they authorized and supervised another printing, continued to sell, continued to meet and determine where the money would be distributed after I left the school. I mean, this group was so responsible and incredible. Rob: Larry didn't know it, but he wasn't done with this group just yet. The following year, they won an award.Larry: Yeah, it was, it was like a new author prize that was given every year for the entire state of Washington. And it was so exciting to them and I, of course didn't know about it, and this was way pre-internet and nobody had my phone number but I got a... somebody, I think I had a forwarding address probably in the personnel office. And so I got a letter from the kids confirming that it was me and once they knew it was they purchased and sent me down a round trip plane ticket from San Jose to SeaTac and back to attend the, it was a governor's reception at the Capitol, and all the kids, it was funny because there were just probably 10 other adult authors and then like 50 kids (laughing) at this thing, that were still actively involved in this book, and they all got some kind of a metal certificate. I can't even remember what. But it was great, you know, best reunion I've ever had, even though it’d only been a year to just see, see how these kids had grown and just continued to be an enthusiastic bright group.Rob: In the end, about 60 Kids helped in the production of the book. 2500 copies were printed and sold. And much of the money from the sales was donated to help local senior citizens. Bella and Ray, both tell me that they think often about this eighth grade project and their teacher, Larry Smith.Bella: He really just made this thing happen. Like we wrote a book.Rob: Bella - whose last name in the book is Sabella, by the way - Bella has made a career in the performing arts, both on stage and in the restaurant industry. She says that Larry's class, that feeling of safety, helped her out of her shell and gave her a feeling of accomplishment.Bella: You know, feeling so like important and proud that we did this, you know? And, you know, I think it's a really wonderful thing that we all had that opportunity. 'Cause I don't think a lot of people get to have that kind of opportunity. They just don't.Rob: Like Larry, Ray Houser went into public education. He's worn a lot of hats over the years. From teacher to assistant superintendent. One of his roles had him traveling the country researching effective teaching strategies. It gives him a unique perspective on Larry's approach to teaching.Rob: I gotta say, Larry was lightyears ahead of his time when it comes to effective teaching strategies. And I've, I've done a ton of research. The whole idea of relevance, real world experiences, collaboration opportunities, engagement strategies, it was, now that I look back on it, I didn't know then obviously, as an eighth grader, it was, it was pretty incredible that he had kind of discovered how to engage his students, how to ensure that their learning was, was relevant and required them to work collaboratively. That's, that's the stuff we've been focusing on for the last 10 years and we're still trying to get into most of public education, he was doing it 40 years ago.Rob: Larry was modest when I asked him if he had any secrets to great teaching.Larry: Yeah, the secret is when you teach Junior High they're, they're too clueless to really know how bad you are. And if you tell jokes and give fun assignments, they might like it. But, you know, I don't know. It's hard to tell. I mean, teaching in some ways is hardly, it's not like a job for me because, it's like the old saying that if you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life. And it's… I got a, received a card from a student in that class that I tucked away somewhere that said "Mr. Smith promise you'll never grow up". And, unfortunately, my wife says that's the case.Rob: After the self deprecation. Larry got a bit more real.Larry: But really what it boils down to, it's kind of a 50/50 thing. You have to love the material and you have to love the students. And if you love the students, you're going to make sure they learn the material and if you love the material, you're going to make sure the students you know, have access, learn to love it as much as you do. And you just can't take things too seriously. When kids are in bad moods, you can't think that they're doing it because they're angry with you, but there's probably something going on in their home and, and a lot of that whole philosophy came in my very first year teaching probably three or four months into the year, a student who was a foster girl, her name was Valerie Good, was shot and killed by her foster brother in their home. And it just shook me to the core realizing how fragile life is and how special these kids are. And that stuck in my mind forever that you know, every single kid is really valuable and full of potential. And to this day, I think, after 50 years and probably 50,000 students I don't think I've met one kid who didn't have vast potential and some of them never realized it. Some ended up in prison, some ended up dying of drug overdose, some ended up suicides. But the possibilities were always there and, and since you don't know who's going to just blossom and potentially be the next, Michael Jordan or Barack Obama or, you know, great author, you just treat all of them as if that's going to happen.Rob: These days Larry and Nicky Smith live near Los Angeles. They have three children and six grandchildren. One of the things that Larry loves about Southern California is all the different cultures. He tells me that LA City College where he works is the most culturally diverse college in the world. Another obvious difference between here and there is the weather. Larry can't seem to get enough of the warm, sunny climate after his early years in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe this is the origin of the rumor that Larry and Nikki moved to California for health reasons. Despite the weather, Olympia holds a high place in Larry's mind.Larry: Of all the schools I've taught in, the class of 1974. Jefferson Junior High is the most memorable. It was that group that, I mean, all my kids in Olympia were great, but for some reason, it's like a convergence of the planets or something. But I still can look over the names and picture every single kid in that group. Great, great memories, and I wish I had been a more experienced teacher and had done a better job academically, but I'm sure if I could find out what you're doing. I would be so proud and so impressed and so amazed, and just, you know, blessed that I got to be a part of your lives for nine months, and that was the best nine months of my life. So thank all of you for sure. From the bottom of my heart.CREDITS:Rob: Thanks to Rick Aarts for calling me back. Thank you, Larry for checking your email. And on that note, Larry says if you're a former student of his, he'd love to hear from you. His email address is Smithoverseas@hotmail.com. Thank you to Ray and Bella, for allowing a total stranger to come into your homes and talk with you. Even if it was against the better judgment of your friend, Bella.Bella: My friend's like "hey, do you know this man?" I'm like, "No". he's like, "you're letting him in the house?" I'm like, "Yeah." He goes "Do you have something that if you need to kill him..." (Laughing)Rob: You heard music today by, in order, Lucas Gonze, two pieces by Northwest band Ditrani Brothers. The psychedelic track was by local artists Ronnie Tana, courtesy of Olympia's own 2060 Records. Additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Ending theme music by skrill Meadow. More info and links on all these artists in the show notes and welcometoolympia.com.I first came across the out of print book How the West Was once in the bibliography of a book that's very much in print. Understanding Olympia is a really funny and (smiling) mostly accurate guide to Olympia by David Shearer Water. You can buy it at Browsers, Orca Books, or online at buyolympia.com. Ending Theme Music by Skrill Meadow. With permission I posted the chapter on the ark builder, Bill Greenwood at Welcometoolympia.com. It's under the show notes for this episode. Also, this book wasn't the only extracurricular activity that Larry Smith did with his class. They also made silent films. Ray still has one of these and he shared it with me. Honestly, it's just a bunch of teenagers goofing around on the Capitol campus, but it was 45 years ago. Check it out. Welcometoolympia.com. It'll also be in the show notes. Finally, I thought it only fair that I give Egan's a second chance on Larry's behalf. It has been 45 years. I took my five and seven year olds recently. Rob at Egan’s: Does it taste grainy at all to you?7 year old: No, it tastes like ice cream a tiny bit melted with chocolate and vanilla mixed up together good.Rob: There you have it. I'm Rob Smith.

The cavnessHR Culture Podcast – A talk with Larry Naylor – President/COO of Naylor 2 Enterprise, LLC (N2E) – SDVOSB https://www.cavnessHR.com Larry's Social Media!! Website: https://www.naylor2enterprise.com/ Larry's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ldnaylor/ Larry's Resources!! For anyone that reaches out to us. Let us know that they're looking for an opportunity to receive some awesome transformational leadership initiatives in their organization. If they contact us and let us know that they heard this in relation to this podcast, we are going to provide discounts to them for that. Daniella Larry is the President and Chief Operations Officer for Naylor 2 Enterprise. N2E is a Veteran and Minority-owned small business that provides corporate training, development and administrative management consulting services to U.S. and international organizations. At N2E, he's responsible for the conduct and business operations of global transformative leadership and consulting service initiatives. Earlier in his career, Larry gained extensive leadership experience while serving 20 years as a commissioned officer in the army, where you retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. He spent 13 years with L three Technologies, Inc, a $10 billion company where he was the Director of Training and operations for global trade and master trainer. Responsible for providing leadership training to 38,000 employee infrastructure. So Larry is like super leadership guy. He's probably the most qualified leadership guy we've had on our podcast so far. He's got a bachelor's, Master's, all kinds of training certificates, most recently got a coaching certification from Georgetown, I believe. Larry is very active in several different organizations, including the Society for Human Resource Management, Association of United States Army, and the Society for International Affairs. So Larry, can you tell us something that you are working on these days? That is super exciting? Larry Absolutely Daniella, I would have to say several things are going on right now. But what most exciting is to be able to work specifically for a law enforcement agency. We are working to put together a leadership program. What that program does is it's transforming the department. To see that happening right in front of your eyes, where people from the sheriff down to the sergeant are realizing that there is a better way to do things and to watch them self transform. To recognize that wait a minute, I am. I am I'm different. Because I see myself now I'm, this is amazing. It's exciting, not barring the fact that leadership when you look at the essence of leadership, and when you sit people down and talk to them about the importance of it, and how you can see the lights come on.  Daniella It's so interesting that you mentioned law enforcement, and people tend to think of law enforcement teams, military teams, as some of these very high-speed organizations as Oh, they're just great teams, right? They're great teams, they have great leaders, they don't need to work on it. But you're saying that they do need to work on and they are working on it, which is great. Larry Absolutely. I think most organizations realize once someone comes in, and there's a moment of silence, and it allows them to reflect on who they think they are, as opposed to who and what they should be. They do realize that we probably could do some changing here. Especially in law enforcement organizations. Maybe we should think about looking at another way of doing things, approaching people talking to people and things like that. I think the military is doing that and, of course, I'm a few years removed now. But I'm hearing out there in the winds that the winds of change are starting to blow where the old school military of because I said so is changing now to be more encompassing of the group. Bottom line the mission still needs to happen. But just because you ask others, instead of just telling them and commanding them. Once you ask them, they will probably follow you with the same zeal, purpose and commitment. Because they feel like you love them enough to ask them their opinion and allow them to do it. So I think that's where we're headed. Daniella It's interesting, the bottom line is the mission still needs to happen in any corporation, right. But a strong culture and a strong team is going to get you to your mission so much faster. I think what the modern sort of leadership is starting to learn, and it's starting to realize. think in the military for the longest time in the in sort of the special disciplines, we already knew that. Right? So in intelligence, which is what I did, we knew that I can order how much can I order my guy to analyze and give me the best information? Not much, right? If he's not motivated to do it he can order a bare minimum of outcomes. But you can inspire kind of a lot more and if you let the experts live in their expertise like they will give you so much more information than you even want. Larry Yeah, that's true. That is true. Daniella Okay, so Larry, you became an Officer in the Army, the year before I was born. You retired a few years before I commissioned. Which means for the listeners that even though Larry and I are comrades in arms, we both served in pretty different militaries. As Larry kind of already alluded to. So Larry, as we heard, is now basically a leadership expert. He was telling me about some of the changes that he's noticed in the definition and practice of leadership over the years. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, whether that was your time in the military or your time in the corporate sector. Larry So as you said, Daniella, I started out in 86 and my first assignment was in Germany. That's the whole Cold War era. I'm a 23 year old kid out of college. I was taught and bred to do what needs to be done, salute the flag, make it happen. I grew up through that time, from the wall, the Cold War, the wall coming down, and then through Gulf War One, and into 911 and deploying into Afghanistan, 101st, in 911. So I think my career spans a lot of different things in there. A lot in a short amount of time. In that 20 years, we went from cold war all the way to post 911.  Larry So what I've what I learned as I continue to mature in the military, I grew up in an environment where you just do what you're told to do. You don't necessarily question, you just execute. You do that, well, you succeed. Then you go to the next level, and you expect everybody under you to do the same thing and they execute and it just works. I will say, when I moved from Afghanistan, coming into the Department of State, I spent about five years there at State Department, I had just left Afghanistan, and I flew back to the United States. There I was, and the environment was different. The language was different and the actions were different.  Larry I struggled because I didn't understand that there was a transformation that was taking place from the military side to coming to the United States Department of State. The leadership styles were different and then from there, I went to corporate America. The leadership styles were absolutely different. I would say that I kind of lived through that to state government, local government, excuse me to federal government, and then to defense contracting. I realized that leadership is distinctly different in each one of those areas. But ultimately, today, after I had an opportunity to teach leadership, to, as you said, a 38,000 employee organization. I live leadership and probably didn't even realize how much you learn and gleaned out of being a military person over the years being thrust into it. Today, after understanding and believing that this is my calling, now. I do see that there are different ways to lead. I have started to look at the transformational leader. Larry If you can't love me, you can't lead me. Now, most people would say, I don't believe in that touchy feely part of things. Just do what I say, well, love has a big meaning. Love means, do you love me enough to whereas the leader, would you sacrifice yourself for me. Would the leader sacrifice themselves, so others may gain versus sacrificing others so that they gain? That's one of the things that I think is really important. As we get into this new type of leadership, we start to realize that you can't lead the way you used to. We're in an organization, we're in a time where four generations are together, and therefore generations worth of fault. There are all kinds of diversity things that are going on now. That same square hold leadership is probably not going to fit in today's round hole. So I have started to realize that a lot of changes that are taking place in leadership, and we're at the cusp of this transformational leadership shift. It is great to be there and I have a lot to offer. I'm looking forward to hopefully getting in front of even more people and explaining to them and getting them to realize that there is an another more effective way lead people to the things that you want them to accomplish. Daniella Now it's interesting, Larry, that you said people find talking about love and leadership to be touchy feely. Most people would probably categorize military leadership as not touchy feely. But the first thing we learn as leaders in the military is that leaders eat last. The whole concept of that is exactly what you said, you through eating last are signaling. I am willing to not eat if there's not enough food, which means, you know, going way way back to homo sapien fighting for food. I am willing to die for you are in modern day 2019, signaling to these people. I'm willing to die for you. Will you let me lead you? That's a very hardcore, not touchy feely concept.  Larry It's funny, you should say that Daniella, I use that term a lot. When I'm teaching leadership, leaders eat last. For some people, it's like what I have to eat first because I need to have nourishment to be able to lead the people. it is a sign of sacrifice, a sign of devotion to your people. So grasp that leaders eat last. So good, good point. Daniella I think probably for all of us, you mentioned being a 23 year old kid right out of the Academy, right or out of ROTC? Larry Out of ROTC, that's correct. Daniella I had a similar experience 22 year old kid out of a commissioning program and you are obsessed with being the best. You think you need to outperform everyone else? How long do you think it took you to realize that being a leader was not about you, but was about your team? Larry It's funny that you should ask that question because there is a paradigm in there. Back, in those days, there was the zero defect army. I mean, you have to be near perfect, or you walk on water, and you just get wet to the ankle. I mean, you had to be that person. So what it caused is this, do not mess with me, don't touch me, because I got to be perfect. So micromanagement was a huge thing. All kinds of things came into play that caused people to be that way. Now, that's one end of the pendulum. The other end was that people started to realize in that era, what it caused was people's inability to feel like they could make a mistake. Or feel like they can allow their people to do things and use their own intuitive nature and ideas. It created this environment where you just felt like you couldn't do anything other than got to be perfect. It's got to be spot on. It causes you to grow up in an environment and a culture where you struggle with making a mistake.  Daniella You're speaking to my heart because there's so much danger in the zero defect environment. By the way, it's still a zero defect environment for women in the military, and a lot of other industries, of course. But I am very glad to hear that these great leaders like you and leadership trainers are thinking about this. Larry We're teaching a law enforcement organization here in a few days, called women in leadership. I am starting to realize even more as a black man. I used to feel like I've got to do 110%, just to be equal with everybody else. Now I'm thinking about what it must feel like sometimes and in a workplace environment, as a woman. Who is intelligent, who is absolutely capable of doing even more than many others. I wonder if they have that same feeling that I have that I really can't explain and articulate. Daniella I think I can articulate it. So when you are a member, this of course my personal belief. When you are a member of a minority group, of which women are still considered one. You represent that entire group in a way that a member of the majority doesn't. So, for example, when you Larry, as a man in the military, messed up. Did something wrong made a mistake, you were Larry, the soldier making a mistake. When I mess up and make a mistake, this is why women shouldn't be in the military. Right? So Daniella Young had to carry the weight of representing all females on her shoulder in the military because we're such a minority there. You probably had this experience as a black man in corporate America or somewhere else that you represent all African American people in all of your actions. That is far too heavy of a burden for any of us to carry. Larry Also with that, because it is true, where you feel like you are representing as a leader. You're representing the greater organization or people. So everything you do is going to maybe impress others that are watching to have a perception of everybody that's like you that. So it causes you to feel like you have to ensure that you present yourself the best at all times. Which comes back to part of that theme that works within you as as a leader where you feel that has to be the case, and you're constantly making sure you push yourself to do that. Because you're you're representing something much bigger than you. Daniella I'd be interested to get your opinion on this. When you allow people to see holes that you have or places where you're not perfect? Well, other people might have skills in those areas that are on your team that have a specific skill in that area that you wouldn't have known about. Larry There are five principles that I kind of adhere to, when I'm doing training. Empathy, esteem, support, share, and involve. Most of the time, leaders will give someone responsibility to do something. But because there's zero defect mentality, or they feel like it can't be done, as well as if I if we're not doing it. They tend to remove the responsibility to the individual. Because Okay, if they turn in a 50% solution, you're like, okay, I'll tell you what, I'll work on it from here. Most of your subordinates realize that's what you do. So they only do half anyway, because you know, you're going to take it and do it.  Larry But if you can figure out a way to involve your people, to where they take that as their own, and they actually feel great doing it. That's what makes the difference. A lot of times, leaders do not realize that you cannot function. These people are the wind beneath your wings. They are the literal air that you breathe. So if you do not empower them, and give them and involve them in the opportunities to do great things, without removing the responsibility, allow them to do it. If it's not done to exactly what your standard is, based on your perception of what right looks like, it's okay. As long as it's ethical and legal, moral and safe. Because what's going to happen, it's going to snowball, it's going to pay bigger dividends down the road.  Daniella Larry, we're gonna have to wrap up soon. Unfortunately, I know. We could go forever. We'll have to have you back on in the future. Larry I would love it. Thank you. Daniella So Larry, are you providing a gift or a discount for listeners today? Larry Yes, I am. As a matter of fact, I would love to, for anyone that reaches out to us. Let us know that they're looking for an opportunity to receive some awesome transformational leadership initiatives in their organization. If they contact us, and let us know that they heard this in relation to this podcast, we are going to provide discounts to them for that. Daniella Perfect, and  what's the best way to contact you, Larry. Larry So the best way to contact us is if you would, you can go to our website, it's www. Naylor2 enterprise.com or you can actually look me up on LinkedIn, Larry Naylor, I'm out there. You can actually see a lot of the information that we have. But if you go to our website, you can see some of our capabilities in leadership and in coaching, as well as international and global trade compliance and things like that. We'd love to come and talk to your people. We love what we do. We're passionate about it, because it makes a greater greater America, greater culture, greater world that we're living in. So we're so looking forward to doing those types of things. Daniella Perfect and all of the links and how to get in contact with Larry will be on our show notes, which are found www.cavnessHRblog.com. Okay, Larry, 20 seconds, what's one piece of advice for our listeners? Larry One piece of advice for our listeners. Leading is an art form. Leadership is a gift, but the ability to portray that so that your people will follow is where the magic actually happens. So I would empower all of the leaders who are out there, and it goes back to the beginning of what I said. Leadership Is loving your people, sacrificing yourself so that others may gain. Then in the end, you will realize that was what you were set out to do from the very beginning. Leaders lead from the front and leaders eat last.  Daniella Larry, thank you for so much for sharing so much value on our show today. Can't wait to have you back on and thank you to all of our listeners Remember to be great every day. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Flora Paul Flora Paul developed an analytics practice she calls "editorial intelligence" during her time at BuzzFeed Brasil. She firmly believes that writers and content strategists "can be friends with numbers and data." Flora and I talked about: UOL, the huge internet portal in Brazil, her current employer her prior work at BuzzFeed Brasil how she came to coin the term "content intelligence" - which arose from the culture of data at BuzzFeed and her curiosity about the numbers behind their editorial work how she transformed "boring data into cool content" - turning her data discoveries into editorial goals the origins of her curiosity about numbers the importance of understanding what did and didn't work with BuzzFeed branded content how she used tools like Looker, a SQL tool that let her dive deeper into her editorial data the custom publishing tools developed by BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti and publisher Dao Nguyen how Looker dashboards helped her share with her team the editorial insights she uncovered how she mixed and matched content formats like listicles, quizzes, and popular internet memes with different topics (like food, lifestyle, etc.) to generate large numbers of editorial ideas how BuzzFeed's reliance on "relatable content" may have been responsible for the rapid growth of the popularity of quizzes in Brazil her transition from "staff writer" to "content strategist" at BuzzFeed - and how her "annoying Type A personality" may have been a factor :) how content formulas helped shape BuzzFeed's success - but also how the editorial staff balanced that dynamic with long-form content and innovative story formats the differences between "data journalism" and her data-backed work as a content strategist her optimism about, and hope for the future of, content strategy and editorial intelligence her advice for writers: "We can be friends with numbers and data." "Numbers are on our side." Flora's Bio Flora Paul is head of content strategy at UOL, the largest Brazilian online content and digital services company. With a bachelor's degree in journalism and working for print and digital media for over a decade, Paul was a reporter for MTV and Glamour magazine before developing content strategy for BuzzFeed Brasil. Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/tBLiqODCFXE Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 43 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Flora Paul. Flora's down in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She works currently for an outfit called UOL which is ... I'll let Flora tell you more about that, because it sounds kind of like AOL meets GoDaddy or something like that. Can you tell me more about UOL? Flora: It's one of the largest and oldest portals in Brazil. I remember when I was using dial up internet in 1997, we would use you UOL to connect to the dial up. It's pretty old in a way, but they really kept up with what was happening in the internet board, and they're really trying to focus to gain more millennial views, so they're really trying to be up today. Larry: That's so interesting because when I look at this site, I see a combination of AOL and Yahoo, which have completely lost relevance in the U.S. They're just gone, but UOL is huge. I think, they're the fifth most visited website in Brazil. Is that correct? Flora: Yes, I think that's right. It's huge, and the numbers are pretty close to Facebook and Google actually. Larry: Interesting. Flora: It's a huge portal. Usually, people would just go to UOL to know if their internet connection is running. It's like that kind of site. Everyone knows it. Larry: Again, back to the AOL. I remember back then people thought of AOL as the internet. Flora: Exactly. Larry: It sounds like that's how UOL is. Interesting. Recently, you were with a cooler job, well, I mean,

Flora Paul Flora Paul developed an analytics practice she calls "editorial intelligence" during her time at BuzzFeed Brasil. She firmly believes that writers and content strategists "can be friends with numbers and data." Flora and I talked about: UOL, the huge internet portal in Brazil, her current employer her prior work at BuzzFeed Brasil how she came to coin the term "content intelligence" - which arose from the culture of data at BuzzFeed and her curiosity about the numbers behind their editorial work how she transformed "boring data into cool content" - turning her data discoveries into editorial goals the origins of her curiosity about numbers the importance of understanding what did and didn't work with BuzzFeed branded content how she used tools like Looker, a SQL tool that let her dive deeper into her editorial data the custom publishing tools developed by BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti and publisher Dao Nguyen how Looker dashboards helped her share with her team the editorial insights she uncovered how she mixed and matched content formats like listicles, quizzes, and popular internet memes with different topics (like food, lifestyle, etc.) to generate large numbers of editorial ideas how BuzzFeed's reliance on "relatable content" may have been responsible for the rapid growth of the popularity of quizzes in Brazil her transition from "staff writer" to "content strategist" at BuzzFeed - and how her "annoying Type A personality" may have been a factor :) how content formulas helped shape BuzzFeed's success - but also how the editorial staff balanced that dynamic with long-form content and innovative story formats the differences between "data journalism" and her data-backed work as a content strategist her optimism about, and hope for the future of, content strategy and editorial intelligence her advice for writers: "We can be friends with numbers and data." "Numbers are on our side." Flora's Bio Flora Paul is head of content strategy at UOL, the largest Brazilian online content and digital services company. With a bachelor's degree in journalism and working for print and digital media for over a decade, Paul was a reporter for MTV and Glamour magazine before developing content strategy for BuzzFeed Brasil. Video Here's the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/tBLiqODCFXE Transcript Larry: Hi everyone. Welcome to episode number 43 of the Content Strategy Insights podcast. I'm really happy today to have with us Flora Paul. Flora's down in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She works currently for an outfit called UOL which is ... I'll let Flora tell you more about that, because it sounds kind of like AOL meets GoDaddy or something like that. Can you tell me more about UOL? Flora: It's one of the largest and oldest portals in Brazil. I remember when I was using dial up internet in 1997, we would use you UOL to connect to the dial up. It's pretty old in a way, but they really kept up with what was happening in the internet board, and they're really trying to focus to gain more millennial views, so they're really trying to be up today. Larry: That's so interesting because when I look at this site, I see a combination of AOL and Yahoo, which have completely lost relevance in the U.S. They're just gone, but UOL is huge. I think, they're the fifth most visited website in Brazil. Is that correct? Flora: Yes, I think that's right. It's huge, and the numbers are pretty close to Facebook and Google actually. Larry: Interesting. Flora: It's a huge portal. Usually, people would just go to UOL to know if their internet connection is running. It's like that kind of site. Everyone knows it. Larry: Again, back to the AOL. I remember back then people thought of AOL as the internet. Flora: Exactly. Larry: It sounds like that's how UOL is. Interesting. Recently, you were with a cooler job, well, I mean,

NEWS [39:45] Lion Air black box reveals fatal man-machine tug-of-war to save plane [59:16] Boeing 737 Narrowly Avoided Disaster in Belfast After Crew Error [1:09:32] Japanese Carriers Strengthen Alcohol Rules [1:16:53] UPDATE: Jet Airways B738 at Goa on Dec 27th 2016, Runway Excursion During Rejected Takeoff [1:22:33] VietJet A321neo Loses Nose Gear Wheels in Hard Landing FEEDBACK [1:25:30] Ron/Sean/Rob - Piper PA-31 Navajo Flies 46 km Past its Destination After the Pilot Falls Asleep in the Cockpit [1:31:21 ] Q Captain Tony - YHZ Runway Overrun [1:36:58] Jerod - ATP Flight School [1:42:59] Mike - VFR Chart Changes [1:43:50] Ahmad - Audio Feedback [1:47:47] Steve - Unfriendly JFK ATC (again) [1:59:05] Larry - It's Been Let Out of the Bag! [2:07:55] A Plane Tale Classic - Joe Gilmore, revisited [2:14:54] Wayne - Every Time I Walk Past This in DEN I Have to do the Double Take [2:17:14] Sean - United Pilot Arrested for Being "Out of Uniform" [2:24:36] Michel - APG 350 Feedback [2:29:41] Tom - Another Singing Pilot! [2:34:13] Timo - Feedback Episode 349 and Before [2:46:30] Alex - Easy Question [2:53:36] Steve - US Marines Rush to Plane Crash to Rescue Survivors VIDEO Audible.com Trial Membership Offer - Get your free audio book today! Give me your review in iTunes! I'm "airlinepilotguy" on Facebook, and "airlinepilotguy" on Twitter. feedback@airlinepilotguy.com airlinepilotguy.com ATC audio from http://LiveATC.net Intro/outro Music, Coffee Fund theme music by Geoff Smith thegeoffsmith.com Dr. Steph's intro music by Nevil Bounds Capt Nick's intro music by Kevin from Norway (aka Kevski) Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100255 Artist: http://incompetech.com/ Copyright © AirlinePilotGuy 2018, All Rights Reserved Airline Pilot Guy Show by Jeff Nielsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Larry Eustachy has been placed on administrative leave from the Colorado State men's basketball team, leaving Steve Barnes -- his longtime friend and assistant coach -- as the interim coach for CSU.Saturday's loss to Nevada -- a close one against the best team in the Mountain West -- was the first in six years without Eustachy on the bench for the Rams and the first Barnes has ever coached at CSU. We bring a bunch of quotes from Barnes after the loss and also read off a whole host of tweets from former Rams players who continue to defend Larry's coaching.Then, we give you three things to know about tonight's CSU men's basketball game against Air Force in Colorado Springs and who to watch in that game.In the second half; could Becky Hammon be a candidate for the next CSU men's basketball coach if the school decides to move on from Larry? It's possible, and we look at three other, fitting candidates as well, for the position. Of course, it's not open as of yet, but it could be soon.Finally, some recruiting news with National Signing Day tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in!

A little about our guests. Larry and Isabel have been married since 1959. They have 4 children, Mitchie, Barry (yup, our very own), Scott and Helene. They also have numerous grandchildren (Together 24/7 note – while they are our nieces and nephews, honestly, we lost count). There are no great-grandchildren as yet. Eldest and married grandson, Evan, is constantly reminded of this fact. Larry and Isabel are world travelers who meet someone they know on every trip and make friends wherever they go. Larry is a former Navy Sailor having served on the USS Alstede. Both Larry and Isabel work on the semi-annual Alstede Reunion open to anyone who served on the ship and their spouses. A little about their business. Larry started as an accountant out of Pace University where he achieved Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees and went on to get his CPA While working for the accounting firm that had the Woodstock Aquarian Exposition as one of its clients, he also started to develop his own accounting practice. Over the years he grew his client base, became an accounting professor and brought Isabel on to assist him in the administrative aspect of his practice. They have worked together since 1980 and are still in love and working together. One piece of advice (the nutshell version) Stay single. (Larry) It’s not yours or mine, its ours. Just do it – go for it, but keep a separate space. Reading Material Wall Street Potholes by Simon LackKilling Reagan by Bill O’Reilly Get in Touch with Our Guests Larry and Isabel are somewhat retired, sort of. They are no longer taking new clients. If you were part of the USS Alstede crew or know someone who was, please email us at info@together247.net and we will forward your information to Larry and Isabel for the Alstede Reunion. For the Alstede Farm, go to http://www.AlstedeFarms.com

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Helen Greiner Co-founder and Chairman of the Board, iRobot Corp. Date: June 11, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Helen Greiner BIO: In the early days of iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq:IRBT), co-founder and Chairman of the Board Helen Greiner envisioned robots as the basis for an entirely new class of products that would improve life by taking on dangerous and undesirable tasks. Greiner's vision has been brought to life by products such as the iRobot Roomba® Vacuuming Robot, which has sold more than 2 million units to consumers throughout the world, and the iRobot PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robot, which is helping to save soldiers' lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Greiner's nearly 20 years in robot innovation and commercialization includes work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, where she met iRobot co-founders Colin Angle and Rodney Brooks. Before founding iRobot in 1990, Greiner founded California Cybernetics, a company focused on commercializing NASA Jet Propulsion Lab technology and performing government-sponsored research in robotics. Greiner holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in computer science, both from MIT. In 2005, she led iRobot through its initial public offering. She also guided iRobot's early strategic corporate growth initiatives by securing $35 million in venture funding to finance iRobot's expansion in the consumer and military categories. In addition, Greiner created iRobot's Government & Industrial Robots division - starting with government research funding leading to the first deployment of robots in combat in Operation Enduring Freedom. Currently, the division is shipping iRobot PackBot robots for improvised explosive device (IED) disposal in Iraq. In part because of the success of these initiatives, Greiner has helped enhance public acceptance of robots as one of today's most important emerging technology categories. Greiner was named by the Kennedy School at Harvard in conjunction with US News and World Report as one of America's Best Leaders and was recently honored with the Pioneer Award from the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) in appreciation for her work in military robotics. Greiner has been honored by the World Economic Forum as both a Global Leader for Tomorrow and a Young Global Leader. In 2005 Good Housekeeping Magazine named her "Entrepreneur of the Year," and Accenture honored her as "Small Business Icon" in its Government Women Leadership Awards. In 2003, Greiner was recognized by Fortune Magazine as one of its "Top 10 Innovators of 2003" and named the Ernst and Young New England "Entrepreneur of the Year" with cofounder Colin Angle. Greiner won the prestigious "DEMO God" award at the DEMO 2000 Conference. In 1999, she was named an "Innovator for the Next Century" by Technology Review Magazine. Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I am the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous IT entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies in a variety of different sectors, all of whom have absolutely fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me doing these interviews is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. How are you? Larry Nelson: Well, hello. Boy, am I happy to be here. Lucy: Why don't you tell us a little bit about w3w3 because these will be podcasts on w3w3 as well as on the NCWIT website. Larry: Well, just briefly, we started in 1998 before anybody knew what radio on the Internet was all about. And finally we learned a number of interesting lessons. We started doing podcasting a little over a year ago, so that's a big leap since then. We have been very fortunate to have a number of interviews with top‑notch heavy hitters, but after I saw the list that Lucy put together I was just absolutely stunned. Lucy: To really just get right to it, the person we are interviewing today is Helen Greiner. She is the co‑founder and chairwoman of iRobot. I have to admit up front that I am an iRobot stockholder, and Helen knows I am one of her best salespeople ‑‑ maybe not her best sales person but certainly one of her salespeople. Helen Greiner: I hope you are not just a stockholder, but I hope you are also a Roomba owner. Lucy: I am a Roomba owner. It's getting double duty now because we're doing a kitchen renovation, and we set it loose in the house at night to pick up all the dust and stuff so it's getting a workout, Helen. Helen: You'll be needing the Dirt Dog model for wash ups and construction areas. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: We're going to have to have a link to all of these on the website. Lucy: Absolutely. We are really happy to have you here, Helen. We are really looking forward to talking to you about entrepreneurship. Larry: You know, I can't help but wonder: we have four daughters, and how did you, Helen, get really involved and interested in technology? Helen: Well, I think this is a common story in technology, but I was inspired by science fiction. I went to see "Star Wars" when I was 11 on the big screen, and I was enthralled by R2‑D2 because he was a character. He had a personality and a gender, and he was more than a machine. I was inspired to start thinking about, can you build something like that? As I was hacking on my little TSR 80 personal computer, obviously I had no idea just how complex it would be. Lucy: What are you thinking about those new mailboxes that are R2‑D2 mailboxes, Helen? Helen: I think they're pretty damn cool. Lucy: I think it's pretty cool. As a technologist you obviously look at a lot of different technologies. I am sure you have some on your radar screen that you think are particularly cool and compelling. Maybe you could share some of those with us. Helen: Well, of course, the coolest is robots because they are just on the cusp of adoption today. Other than the robots and ones that very well might feed into the robot, are large scale memories, multiple core processors, cameras on cell phones. Technologies as they go to mass market are getting cheaper and cheaper which enables them to be bringing them into other applications, like on the robots. Larry: I just want to make sure that the listeners do understand that you are talking about robots everywhere from the kitchen to Iraq. Helen: Yes. We have over two million Roombas out there in people's homes doing the floor sweeping and vacuuming. We have a floor washing robot, the Scooba, that you just leave on your floor and when you come back it's clean. We have a robot for the work shop called the Dirt Dog, and what most people don't realize is we also sell a line of robots for the military. Our Packbot model was used for the first time in cave clearing in Afghanistan and now is being used for bomb disposal over in Iraq. One of the neat new developments we have is we just put out a version of this with a bomb sniffing payload, so it can actually go out and find improvised explosive devices. Lucy: Well, I've heard you speak about the robots over in Iraq, and it's very compelling to know that we can use technology like this to really go on these types of missions instead of our young men and our young women. Helen: The robots allow a soldier to stay at a safe, standoff distance. He doesn't have to go into unnecessary danger. Lucy: Right. Helen: Our servicemen and women, you know, are exposed to a lot of danger when you send them to roadside bombs when a robot could do the job instead. We think that's really something that should be changed quickly, and it has changed very rapidly. Just two years ago they would suit up a soldier in a bomb suit and send them down range, and now you have to get permission to do that. The common operating procedure is to send a robot into the danger. Larry: That sounds like iRobot is doing everything from saving backs in kitchens to saving lives in dangerous situations. Let me see if I can migrate to the entrepreneur part of you. What is it that made you become, or why are you an entrepreneur? Helen: I was deeply interested in making robots into an industry. People have been talking about robots. They have been in science fiction for decades and decades. Yet, when I started in this field I looked around and there were very few robots that people could actually purchase and could actually use. When I was at the university at MIT the people worked on wonderful robot projects. It was really, really cool technology, but when the PhD got done or when the project ended, all of it would kind of stop and then somebody would start a new project potentially building on some of the results. But the actual robot that was built. many times progress stopped on it. Just like the computer industry, I believe it takes a company that can reinvest some of the profits back into the next generation and the next improvements on the products that really has started the industry to take off. Lucy: Well next the definition that I carry in my head of true innovation is taking research and the types of projects you are talking about, Helen, and driving them out into the consumer space and into the mass market. That is what innovation is all about. Larry: You bet. By the way, what is it about being an entrepreneur, what is it that makes you tick and turns you on as an entrepreneur? Helen: Being an entrepreneur is creating something out of nothing. You know, when you start it, it's all consuming. It takes your whole focus. It is very compelling to me. I tend to be someone who when they jump into something they jump into it with absolutely full force, and it allowed me to learn so much along the way. Everything from how to hire people, how to apply for and win a military research contract, how to raise venture capital, how to set up a management structure and, very recently, how to take a company public. Lucy: Helen, tell us, obviously, entrepreneurship makes you tick. You love to create things from nothing, and along the way as you chose this career path, who influenced you? What kind of mentors did you have? Helen: I have had a lot of advisors who I could talk to about the different stages of the business, and that's been an incredible gift. That is one of the most valuable things you can give: the benefit of your own experience. Early on I was influenced by my dad having founded a company, so entrepreneurship was part of my culture growing up. Larry: So, it's not genetic. It's part of the culture, right? Helen: I believe that. Larry: You, I'm sure, like all of us entrepreneurs ‑‑ you know, Pat and I, we have been in business together and entrepreneurs for over 30 years. There are a lot of bumps and things along the road. What would be some of the most challenging things that you have experienced? Helen: Well, iRobot has been in business for 17 years, and it's a lot different company today than when we founded it. Early on, this was a bootstrap company, credit cards filled to the max. Larry: So you made money right away? Helen: Yeah. Larry: You were profitable right away? Yeah. Lucy: Like many of us. Helen: No, we really had a bumpy beginning because in part the technology wasn't ready yet upon time. So we came up with a method to develop the technology and to develop business plans so when the opportunity was right we could capitalize on it. Lucy: So, as we shift a little bit now toward the future entrepreneurs, if you were giving advise to people about entrepreneurship, young people, about the career path you have chosen being an entrepreneur, what would you tell them? What advice would you give them? Helen: I would say, definitely do it, because it's probably one of the most rewarding career paths you can take. One of the most challenging, but one of the most rewarding. I would say very strongly, don't do it like we did it at iRobot. IRobot, we didn't do it with a business plan. We didn't start a real crisp idea of what these robots would used for. We basically started with the future of the technology and it happens to have worked for us, but it was a long haul in the early years. I think if I had it to do over again, it would be done a lot more efficiently. Larry: When did you finally get the real management team put together? Helen: In 1998 we decided to take venture capital for the first time. And that was a big decision because that's what took it from being more of a lifestyle company, somewhat of a research lab. Folks were building any kind of robot, because they were passionate about it. Some of them are quite frankly cool to a real business concern. You could almost consider the company a re‑start in 1998. It only took the first venture capital, which allowed us to invest in the management team and take it to the next level. Also to invest in our own product lines, rather than relying on government contracts coming in or strategic relationships with larger companies. Larry: Well, you have been very passionate about iRobots and you've also been very humble in terms of what you have done, what you have been through. What are some of the characteristics that maybe have been a benefit to you in becoming a successful entrepreneur? Helen: I'd say the biggest one is persistence. There will always be speed bumps along the way. And generally being able to say, OK, I might not have the solution to this problem right now, but I know that there's a way. And either by talking to people, getting advice, by brainstorming with people, by being creative, by thinking out of the box. There is always a way to get through any problem that presents itself. It's takes persistence to do that because you will get knocked quite a few times along the road. Being able to pick yourself up, dust off and say, I learned from that experience, I won't do it again. We don't look at anything at iRobot as failed. This got us to the next step and the next step was different, but they were all stepping‑stones to where we are today. And many of them were necessary. Larry: I have heard that persistence is omnipotence. Lucy: Sometime we refer to it as relentlessness. Larry: Oh, is that what that is. Lucy: Yes. I also have to say something about Helen how and just as a sidebar: Helen gives one of the best talks on robotics I have ever seen. Helen, your talk at the Grace Harper Conference was outrageously good. Helen: Oh, well I appreciate that. One of the things that I would like for folks listening to know that it is important to be able to grab the microphone and get your message across. My personal background is: I was extremely shy, terribly afraid of public speaking. You know, reports that people who would rather do anything else sometimes than get up in front of a group of people and speak. I was one of those people. It doesn't come naturally to me. But I recognized that it was important in getting the message of the company across. I really worked on how to improve and just by taking speaking opportunities I got better and better at it. Which doesn't mean I will ever be a natural just really, really want to jump out and do it. If I can do it, anybody can learn to be a better public speaker. So they can take advantage of the opportunities to get their message out that it provides. Larry: It might not be natural but you certainly are unique and passionate. Lucy: The best talk I've heard, a mix of computer science and business and humor, it's wonderful. Helen: That is very nice of you. It means a lot because I did have to work harder than people who are naturals, "Yes, I want the mike!" Lucy: One of the things that our listeners will be interested in. The entrepreneurial life is a tough life. It is a lot of work and yet it is important to bring balance between our personal lives and our professional lives. So what kinds of hints do you have to pass along? Helen: I don't think I'm a shining example of balance in my life, but I can say the philosophy I've always had is: work hard, play hard. So, when I do take off from iRobot, being able to go out snowboarding, being able to tight‑board, being able to go scuba diving. I'm just learning how to tight‑board. I have a goal to learn one new sport each year, because it's good to take up something new and to me I like doing it in the athletic arena. Lucy: Well, it sounds like fun to me. Larry: Lucy likes to go out there and jog every day after... Lucy: Well, you're right I'm not that good at it either, but I still get out there. Larry: I can't help but ask this. You know, you have had a very exciting and challenging ‑‑ and obviously with the persistence and the talent ‑‑ you really accomplished a great deal. I know you want to accomplish a great deal more with iRobot. What's next for you? Helen: Well, the challenges that iRobot faces today are different than when we were a start up company. Now we have over 350 people. In 2006 we did just about $189 million in revenues and now it's about making the organization click, to function as a team, and making sure that things work like clockwork at the organization, while still keeping that innovative flair, so you can get the next generation of products into the pipeline. Lucy: So, I have to ask, just because I love iRobot so much, what's the next great product? Can you spill the beans? Helen: I can't tell you what the next consumer robot products are, but on the military side, we have a hugely exciting robot that can run over 12 miles an hour, that can carry a soldier's pack. It's got a manipulator on it that can pick up a Howitzer shell. That thing picked me up the other day. Lucy: Oh. Larry: Wow. Helen: We're very excited to get that type of capability also into hands of our soldiers. Lucy: Wow, that's pretty exciting. Larry: Nothing like getting picked up. Boy, that's for sure. Lucy: I don't know what I would do if a robot picked me up, but I guess one of these days maybe we'll experience ‑‑ we'll get you to bring that to one of our meetings, Helen. That would be very cool. Larry: I'd love a picture of that for the website. Lucy: Yeah, thank you. OK. Larry: Helen, I want to thank you so much for joining us. We are so excited about this program. When we get to talk to people like you with your background and your experience, it makes it just that much more exciting and motivating to a number of young people. Helen: Well, I appreciate it. Lucy: Well, and we want everybody to know where they can find these podcasts. They are accessible on the NCWIT website at ww.NCWIT.org And along with the podcast, his information about entrepreneurism and how people can be more involved as entrepreneurs and also get resources on the web and also from other organizations, should they be interested. Larry: Yes, and thank you for all of the great hints and probably more than that, some really golden nuggets in there. One that's sticking out in my mind right now is the mass‑market adoption. I guess that is what we all want to charge for. Helen: It's not where we started out, but it is where we're fully focused at. Lucy: Well, thank you very much. Helen: OK, thank you. Have a good one. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Helen GreinerInterview Summary: Helen Greiner is co-founder and Chairman of the Board of iRobot Corp., maker of the Roomba® Vacuuming Robot (over 2M units sold) and the iRobot PackBot® Tactical Mobile Robot, which deactivates mines in Iraq and Afghanistan. Release Date: June 11, 2007Interview Subject: Helen GrenierInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 15:30

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Leila Boujnane CEO, Idee, Inc. Date: January 4, 2011 Interview with Leila Boujnane Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I'm the CEO of Boulder Search, and a board member for NCWIT, the National Center for Women & Information Technology. This is part of a series of interviews that we're having with just fabulous entrepreneurs. These are women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, and all who have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me today is Larry Nelson, from W3W3.com. Hey Larry. How are you? Larry Nelson: Oh, I'm magnificent. I'm excited about this interview. This whole series has been just terrific. We get all kinds of people from the entrepreneurs to the executives, and many young people who are looking into getting into this kind of business. Lee: Great. Today we're interviewing Leila Boujnane, the CEO of Idee. That's French for "idea." Hi Leila. Welcome. Leila Boujnane: Hello. Hello. Lee: Now did I get your last name right? Leila: That is correct. Leila Boujnane. It's too many Ns, but yes, that is correct. Lee: Great. Idee's goal is to make images searchable. Idee develops advanced image identification and visual search software. The technology looks at patterns and pixels of images and videos to make each image or frame searchable by color, similarity, or exact duplicates. Did I get that pretty close? Leila: That is very close. That's pretty much exactly what we do. Everything that we do is based on actually looking at what we call an asset. That could be an image or a video. But we'll look at it differently. Instead of looking at a text file or looking at a keyword, or looking at what describes that image, we actually look at what makes that image, so all the pixels that are actually making that image or the frame in a video that you're looking at. Lee: That is so interesting. Larry: That really is. Lee: Tell us a little bit about what happening at Idee lately. Leila: Well, we launched, I would say, the world's most awesome reverse image search engine. I think it is still the largest reverse image search engine out there. It's called Pineye. So basically what you do is you give it an image and it indexes that image on the fly. By indexing, we mean it actually creates a unique fingerprint for that image based on what it sees in the image. Then it compares it to our image index, and it tells you in real time where that image is actually appearing on the web. Lee: Wow. Leila: It does that very seamlessly. If you've played with it, it's as simple as, drop your file here and get results there. It's doing that using image recognition, with a pretty, pretty large index. Our current image index, and these are the images that we've crawled from the web and indexed, is actually close to two billion. We haven't gotten to two billion, but it's very, very close. Lee: Wow. Larry: That's with a B? Leila: Yes... Larry: Wow. Leila: ...With a B, with a big B. Upper-case B. It's been a really, really exciting undertaking for us, because it really brought what we call image recognition-based search to everyone. Anyone that is used to actually going online and searching for an image has been doing that using keywords. When you have this in your head and you say, "Where did this appear?" or, "Who created this?" or, "Where can I get more of this image than I already have?" There wasn't really a mechanism to do that. This was a very good way to actually put image recognition out there and have it solve problems daily for people. Larry: Wow, that's fantastic. One of the questions, of course, that Lucy Sanders likes us to always ask is, how did you first get into technology? If I could couple that with another question, is, what technologies, in addition to the wonderful things you're doing, that you think are real cool? Leila: Well, how I got into technology was completely by accident. I tell people all the time, you can't underestimate the power of luck or accidents, or just what makes you do something when it's not really what you planned. If you had told me more than a decade ago that I would be in technology, I would have just looked at you and laughed and said you didn't know what you were talking about. Lee: Wow. Leila: Because I actually was in med school studying medicine, in Bordeaux, in France, to become a doctor. Lee: Oh my gosh. Leila: I was curious about technology and computers and so on, but I was more of a science-mathematics mind rather than an actual engineering or software type of person. Much to the dismay of my family and parents, I decided that medicine was not for me. I just completely out of the blue stopped my studies and decided to take a year off to figure out what was it that I was really going to be doing, after having grown up... I thought my entire life that when I grew up, I want to be a doctor. I actually never questioned that. Nothing besides medicine ever entered my mind. But when I was studying it, I just realized that it just was not for me. When I took a year off, I actually moved from France to Canada, and completely by accident, met a group of individuals who were starting a software company here in Toronto. They were looking at an addition to their team. I turned out to be a good fit. I just decided to try it and see what happens. If I like it, then that's great. I just needed a bit of a change. After that, I've actually never looked back. I'm amazed that I didn't do that early on in my life. But it was really, really completely accidental. Lee: That's a very cool story. Larry: Yeah. Leila: And scary at the same time, because if you think about how one decides what to do and what career to enter, like this was a fluke. If I hadn't met the individuals that started Algorithmics in Toronto, and if I wasn't talking about being interested in exploring other things, this really would not have happened. Perhaps it would have happened later, but it wouldn't have happened the way most people enter technology or move into working in software. Larry: Yes. What technologies outside of what you're doing do you think are cool today? Leila: You know, it's a bit funny to be asked that question, because in the field that I'm in, I'm in search. I always think all technologies are awesome. Everything that I see out there, you look at it and you think, "Oh my God, this is exciting, it's going to change A, B, or C." But I'm very focused on search. When I look at what I find really, really exciting that's outside of search, I have a tendency to look at any type of technology that allows us humans to analyze really, really, really large sets of information. Like, anything that allows us to visualize that. If you were able to get access to, I don't know, all the war, conflicts in the entire world for the past hundred years. If you had that kind of information, what tool could you use to visualize it? Tools for visualizing information, and also any type of tool that actually allows us to stay in touch and communicate better. When I think about that, and I think, tools like Twitter. But it's not the only thing. But I just think that communications and tools that facilitate communications are really, really transformational tools, for all kinds of purposes, whether it's a mobile device that allows you to sell goods or to stay in touch with family or to book an appointment or confirm something, those are pretty transformational technologies. At least, when I look outside of search, that's what I see. Lee: I totally agree. It seems like with the ubiquitous use of cell phones that all have cameras, it's amazing what's going to images. People are taking pictures of coupons and the little scan codes... Leila: Of everything. Lee: Yeah. Leila: Absolutely everything. Lee: It's really exciting. Leila: Yeah, we find that exciting and strange at the same time. But the reality is that our brains are actually wired to work with images. An image has far more impact on us than a word. If you look at an image and you see something in that, the impact of it is far greater than a word that's displayed to you. If I put a word in front of you and it says "famine" and I show you a photograph, they have very, very distinct and separate impacts. Larry: It is worth a thousand words. Lee: Yeah. Leila: Just about, I think, yes. I think there is some truth to that, that's true. Lee: Leila, I'm curious. You went from your plan to be a doctor, scientist mode, to a technologist. But why are you an entrepreneur? What is it about entrepreneurship that really excites you, makes you tick? Leila: Well, that's something that I've always had. Like from the day I was born, I think, much to the dismay of my mom, I had this thing where I really wanted to do things on my own. I wanted to set my pace. I wanted to do things in particular ways. I didn't want to have anyone else dictate how this should be done, even if the way they are asking for something to be done is actually the correct way to do it. But I have this thing about wanting to figure things out on my own and then set a pace and then run to that pace. That was always there. Even when I was in med school, it was there, which was also a bit of a challenge in that kind of environment. For me, that was very, very critical. So when I started working in a software company and I realized that that's a fantastic environment, or technology is actually a fantastic industry for that, it just confirmed exactly what I always had, which was the desire to do something by myself and build the road and travel on that road. That's always been there. I didn't find it surprising when it materialized into building a firm, but it just took longer to get there. Larry: After you get into the technology part, Leila, who are some of the people that maybe influenced you, supported you in your career path? Sometimes the word "mentors" is used. Leila: Well, for me, it's a bit different, because as I said, I accidentally fell into technology. But once I was there, I figured that this is really something that I'm very, very interested in, so I wasn't really looking so much for encouragement or someone to facilitate that entry. It was pretty much like, roll up your sleeves and figure out what you need to get done, and figure out how to do it. Learn and learn as much as possible. Stay curious about what's happening around you and ask questions. But I couldn't really have done anything that I'm doing today if it wasn't for one single thing, and that to me has been very critical my entire life. That was really, really my mom's desire to make sure, and I'm not sure it's a desire, but the way she brought us up. It was this philosophy of, it didn't matter what you wanted to do. You just go ahead and do it. You might succeed, you might fail. But you shouldn't be questioning, "Can I do this? Will I be good at doing it?" It was like, today I call it overconfidence-building, because it went beyond just making sure that your children have the confidence to undertake or try anything. It was more about, don't let anything stop you from doing something. Actually, don't even ask what that could be. Just go and do it. And that was critical. That was very important. If I were to say, what can be encouraged or what people should have more of in their lives, it would be that. It would be really someone who completely encourages them to try pretty much anything that they want to try, and figure out the other pieces afterwards. There are, of course, a lot of people that you look at and then you think, "My goodness, these people are incredible." You really admire them. Like for me for example, Cheryl Sandburg, the CEO of Facebook. She would be a hero. She would be in my book somebody that I really admire. I'm sure everyone is familiar with, Takushi, who started as a biomedical engineer, but became, at least for me, because I was in the medical field, somebody who actually transformed the batteries used in defibrillators. In the time, and even today, to me, that was just fantastic. That was just incredible. Not necessarily individuals that I related to my field, but just people whose work I admire and who have accomplished so much. Lee Kennedy: Wow. The takeaways I get is your mother basically gave you the confidence and courage that you could do anything. Then you're inspired by some of these other women that have just done really, really exciting things with their career. That's great. Leila: My goodness, yes. You look at what they have accomplished and you just think, "wow. How can they have done all of that in such a limited time? That's so brilliant!" Lee: Every time I do one of these interviews with Larry and Lucy, I get so excited and motivated. I leave that day just feeling like I could conquer the world. Thank you. Well, speaking of all that exciting stuff, I guess on the flip side of the coin, what's been the toughest thing you've had to do in your career so far? Leila: Well, that would have been early in my career. When I started Idee, we actually didn't start as a pure software company. We did a lot of consulting work. We took on a lot of clients that had nothing to do, necessarily, with the world of image search and search technologies overall. That's simply because the company was not VC- backed. It was completely organic. Profits and revenues actually built the company, not outside financing. But at the time, we were taking on a tremendous number of consulting projects, and a tremendous number of new outside clients, a little bit away from our field. There were, generally, I think, great revenues, but it was going to, how do you say that, just keep us from releasing search products because we would be busy solving problems for customers, which was great at generating revenues, but not really working on search problems. I have to say that one of the toughest decisions was to sit down and simply say that we can no longer do that. We are not going to do that. We are going to bite the bullet and restructure the firm to move from a service company to an actual product company. When we did that, it was my decision as well to lay off a number of people that just didn't fit the vision of where the company needed to go. I have to say, reflecting back, that was one of the hardest decisions I had to make. Larry: I'll say. Now if you were sitting down right now, across the table, across the desk, with a young person who is thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Leila: Well, I would say, don't do what I have done, which is sometimes, try to figure things as you are trying to solve a problem. Like, something I have lacked in the beginning of my career was looking at how other people have done things and learning from that. That's something that I've become much better at doing with our board, so figuring out, what is it that I'm good at, and what is it that I'm lacking? Is what I'm lacking something that I can learn, or is it something that I can get by talking to a number of people that have done that, and have done it very, very, very well. It's doing a little bit of an assessment early on, as you decide to become an entrepreneur and to build the company, just figure out what are the few things that you need to do better or learn, and figure out where to get that, and not wait until you are actually battling something to know or to figure out and reach out and try to get that expertise. That would be one thing. The second thing I would say, and I see that happening a lot, don't wait until tomorrow to start something. Lee: That's great advice. It's always easy to think, "Oh, I'll get to that." Leila: Yeah, exactly. Or you know what, this is a really great idea. Let me think about it a little bit longer. Then before you know it, a whole year has gone. Just do it. Lee: Well, along that same vein, you had spoken earlier about how you've always felt this entrepreneurial spirit. What would you say are the personal characteristics you have that have given you an advantage as an entrepreneur? Leila: I think about it as a great characteristic to have. Other people might think about it as something that's pretty awful. It's just one of these things. It's just like, giving up, to be honest, is just absolutely not part of my DNA. It's not part of my vocabulary. It's just like, it's not there. Lee: That's probably the most important thing, because being an entrepreneur, you face so many roadblocks. Yeah, that's awesome. Leila: But sometimes you have to, and I still haven't learned that. I'm sure I need another 10 years. Sometimes you have to stand down and then just give up because something is not going to work. But I have to say, the one saving grace is just exactly that, like, no desire to give up. It's not part of my makeup or who I am. It doesn't even exist. Larry: Yeah, I'm going to have to look up the word "give up" in the dictionary. I don't know what it means either. Leila: There you go, exactly. That's what I should be saying. Exactly. Larry: All right, Leila, I have to ask this. With all the things that you're doing and working on and starting up, how do you do bring balance in your personal and professional lives? Leila: Oh my goodness, Larry. You guys had to ask that question. I don't. I have to be honest. I don't. I don't even try. I know things will fall apart when they do. Then I'll deal with that then. I don't even try. Lee: Well, good for you. You sound like you know yourself. Leila: Exactly. I just like my life, and I know this. I'm a workaholic. My life is very chaotic. It's very fast. It's at times a bit disorganized. At times it's difficult for other people to deal, because I have a lot of balls in the air, and that doesn't change. But I would be lying if I actually said that I look at trying to introduce balance in my life or figure out how to lead a balanced life, because it's just not my personality. I look at things that I'm interested in, and I'm interested in doing them, and I just do them. If it ends up being too much, then I adjust as I'm doing things. But yeah, it's probably something I will have to learn. Lee: Well, good for you. So far it sounds like it's worked. Larry: You bet. If we have a class on that, we'll let you know. Leila: Awesome, yes. I'll attend. Lee: Well, last question we have for you. You've achieved so much in your career. What do you see as next? What's down the road for you? Leila: Well, I'm not very good at looking at the future and predicting, thank God, actually, what may or may not happen. But I know one thing. I will speak again from a business point of view and from what I'm doing currently that is work-related, because that's a very, very big focus. We're just in the very, very early days of search. Everyone has spent the last decade typing keywords into a field to basically get search results. That is actually being enhanced by image searching, by mobile searching, by augmented reality. We are just getting better and better tools to find the needle in the haystack. For me, at least when I think about it, from a research perspective and a software development perspective, these are incredibly early days. My work's not done. I could be working on this for the next couple of decades. This is not really something that I would consider as, "Hey, achieved check mark, and let's move on to something else." It is really the early days of that. Short answer, I'm looking forward to more of the same. Larry: We're going to follow you, too. Leila: That would be great. Lee: That's great. Larry: You betcha. Leila, I want to thank you for joining us today. You listeners out there, pass this interview along to others that you know would be interested. They can listen to it at w3w3.com, and ncwit.org 24-7. Download it as a podcast and we'll have it on the blog also. Leila: I will, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. Larry: Thank you. Lee: Thank you, Leila. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Leila BoujnaneInterview Summary: A decade ago Leila Boujnane was in medical school in France, studying to become a doctor. If you'd told her then that she would be involved with technology, she would have laughed and would have said you didn't know what you were talking about. Release Date: January 4, 2011Interview Subject: Leila BoujnaneInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 21:50

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Dr. Marcie Black Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Bandgap Engineering Date: August 23, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and with me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com Internet radio. Larry Nelson: Yes. Lucy: And we are very happy to be doing one in a series of interviews with women who have started IT companies and we love this series because there is so much wisdom with these entrepreneurs that everybody can benefit from. Larry: Yes, it's very exciting and we get a tremendous amount of business leaders, parents, all with different ages of people who tuned in and listen to this and we are very happy because we know that we need a lot of encouragement in this area. Lucy: Absolutely and very excited about today's interview. We are interviewing an entrepreneur who is helping the world solve our energy problems. We all know energy is a very important topic, very hot topic and the person we are interviewing today is a very impressive one. She has very impressive technical credentials with a PhD from MIT and also post doctoral work at Los Alamos laboratory. So, very, very well credentialed to take on the energy problems of the world. So, just to get right to it. We are interviewing Marcie Black who is the CTO and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering. And we are going to let her tell us a little bit about what the company does but in brief, they pioneered the development of highly tunable and inexpensive methods for nano structuring silicone and they are applying that technology to high efficiency solar cells. So, Marcie, first of all welcome and why don't you tell our listeners what this technology is all about. Marcie Black: Lucy and Larry, thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here. So, Bandgap Engineering is reducing the cost of solar electricity and the reason why we are doing that is there are a lot of trade-offs in producing electricity and by moving to renewable energy source, we can lessen some of those trade-offs. And solar is the only renewable energy source that has the potential of being or dominant energy supply. So, there's a couple of ways to reduce the price of solar electricity so that it is cost competitive with conventional sources. One of the ways is by reducing the cost of processing the semi conductors. But another way is increasing the efficiency of the solar cell and by increasing efficiency means that you can get more power over the same area of the solar cell. So, what Bandgap Engineering is doing is increasing the efficiency of the solar cell while keeping the cost per area constant. And that effectively will bring down the cost of electricity from solar energy making it cost competitive with other conventional energy sources. And as you mentioned the way that we are increasing the efficiency is by nano engineering silicone so that it's a better converter of energy from optical energy to electrical energy. Lucy: Wow. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Now, see, I just write softwares. I'm pretty impressed. Larry: No small thing. Lucy: It is very important and it is a young company, isn't it Marcie? Marcie: Yeah, we are about three years old. Lucy: Awesome. So, how did you first get into technology? You obviously love technology and I think our listeners would be very curious to know how you first became interested in it and besides, the nano technology which you are using today, other technology that you see are especially important. Marcie: Yeah like many engineers. I've emerged from very early on. So, I remember when I was very young, my father who was also an engineer would take me to the basement and we'll build electronic circuits and radios and do all kind of cool, crazy stuff in the basement. But when I got older, I didn't explore. At AT&T Bell Labs and what that was I call that branch of boy scouts and we were able to go into AT&T and basically, play with other toys. So, play with their softwares, computers and play with some of their electronic stuff. And that I really developed a love for understanding how things work and using that knowledge to build something from it. I say that's my first exposure to technology. And as far as what technologies I think are cool, for me what's cool is the applications. So I get very excited when a technology comes out that has the chance of really improving the world. And I think that right now we're at a very critical point in history where there's a lot of technologies that are coming out that will help us live in balance with the world around us. And I find that very exciting. So it's not just renewable energy. But for example, I read about some technologies that can take salt water and turn it into fresh drinking water without using very much electricity to do it. And I find that very exciting. Also a lot of the work with the Smart Grid I find very interesting. So right now it costs a lot more money to produce electricity when all of your neighbors are using electricity, but it doesn't cost very much to produce it in the middle of the night when no one's using it. So a lot of the technologies out there are to help levelize that load, which is good for conventional energy sources but is also good for renewables as well. And there's also a lot of battery technology out there that I find very interesting and has the potential of being storage for the national grid. So I like looking at how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, and seeing how this critical time in history is going to unfold to the point that we are burning less coal and living more in harmony with our surroundings. So I find that very exciting. Lucy: Well and we do too. We just interviewed the CTO of WiTricity, wireless electricity. And that was just fascinating. That whole area is so interesting. Larry: It sure is. Now Marcie, here you are a "nerd." You've been with some magnificent companies, from Lucent and AT&T and all, and certainly a crossover with Lucy's background also. But why are you an entrepreneur and what is it about you that makes this entrepreneur tick? Marcie: I never woke up and said, "I think I want to be an entrepreneur." For me it was more about how to best get technology into the marketplace. And so I worked in government labs, and academia, and big industry. And they all have a piece in the puzzle. But I think if you are really driven by taking an idea, and making a product out of it, and getting it into the consumers' hands, I think the fastest way to do that is in a small company. And so for me that's part of what makes me interested in being an entrepreneur. I also really enjoy in a small company the team atmosphere. And how everyone is working together to make the company move foreword and helping each other just to make it work. I find that very motivating in doing a small company. Lucy: Well we almost have to work together. Larry: Yes, you bet... Marcie: Right, right. Otherwise the company won't succeed. Lucy: Absolutely. It is true. We were just reading... I forget where it was that a lot of the smaller companies now are where real innovation is going on. The adaptation of ideas and so forth, that's where a lot of the job creation is right now as well. So it is an interesting time in start-ups. So along the way you mentioned that you had had this time with Lucent and time with Bell Labs where you could be in the labs and tinker with things. And that your father encouraged you from an early age. Who else has encouraged you in this path? Being a technologist, of taking risks, and being an entrepreneur? Marcie: That's a good question. I felt very fortunate to have had so many people really help me throughout my career at different times. So when I was young I mentioned my father introduced me to the love of science and engineering. And later on a lot of my professors really taught me how to think critically and understand technological problems. And into my Ph.D. my advisor was Professor Millie Dresselhaus, and she taught me. She's a very hard worker. She works all the time. And that taught me the value of a strong work ethic. And throughout my career there have been other people. Like now there are quite a few people including my board members and other mentors that help me on how to learn the new set of skills that you need to know when you're starting a business. So I can't really pin down one person. There's been a whole bunch of people that have been very nice to help me out throughout they years. Larry: You've done lots of very interesting things, and I would like to ask the question: What is the toughest thing that you've had to do during your career? Lucy: [laughs] There's been a lot of things that have been tough throughout my career, but I have to say the most difficult is probably starting Bandgap, because there are so many aspects that have to come together in order to make a company successful. So, when you're doing research, you have to get the technology right, and the engineering right. But, in a small company, you also have to get the IP right, and the culture right, and set up a good infrastructure in the company. There are million different things to think about, that all have to come into play in order for the company to be successful. So I find that both challenging and rewarding at the same time, but it's definitely the most challenging part of my career so far. Lucy: I have a follow up question to that. We don't really interview many cheap technology officers; we will interview founders or CEOs. So, our listeners may want to know, what is the role of a CTO in a startup company? How would you describe what you do in Bandgap? Marcie: I think it's funny because I've been talking to a lot of my other CTO founder friends, and what we've decided is that the title really doesn't mean much. It basically means you do what needs to be done to make the company successful. So, different people end up doing very different jobs with the same title. So, some people are in the labs, working side-by-side with their people, and other people are filing patents and writing grants. And other people are doing all of the above. So, I think it depends on the company and what the company needs, as well as what the CTO founder wants to do. Larry: Good point. Lucy: Great answer. I think that the role of CTO is pretty broad in a lot of companies. And I think it's really good advice hidden in what you just said: don't get hung up on the title. When you're in a startup company, everybody's there to row the boat and it doesn't really matter what they're doing, as long as the boat's moving forward. If you were talking to a young person about being an entrepreneur, what other advice would you give them? Marcie: I wouldn't advise people specifically to be an entrepreneur, even though I love it. What I'd advise them to do is, really figure out what drives them. And I think, don't take this the wrong way, but if what drives them is making money or having proceeds, it's probably not the best route for them. [laughter] But, if what drives them is, for example, bringing technology to the market and trying to make the world a better place through their technology, then I would advise them to become entrepreneurs. Once they decide to become an entrepreneur, my biggest advice is to follow your passion and do what you enjoy and what you really believe in. Because if you believe in something and you work hard at it, you're much more likely to be successful. Lucy: So, let me rephrase the question just a little bit, then, and ask you: how would you interest a young person in pursuing technology today? What would you say to them that might hook them to get that interest? Marcie: Well I did technology simply because it was fun. Lucy: Yeah. [laughter] Marcie: But then, as you know, I worked on it more, I got good at it and then it made sense for me that I stay in technology. So, I guess I would probably invite them to a lab and play in lab with them, so they could see how much fun it was. Lucy: It is a great deal of fun. I'll come! [laughter] Larry: There you go. I'm there. Lucy: I'm there. Larry: What are some of the characteristics that have given you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Marcie: That's a good one. I've noticed that all the successful entrepreneurs I know are very optimistic, and I am definitely optimistic, as well. But you can't be blindly optimistic; you have to be what I call "realistic optimist". You can't have your blinders on, but you do have to be able to see a way that the company can be successful, and arrange it so all the parts fall into place, so that task remains clear and you can move forward down that path. So I say optimism. Also persistence and work ethic are also very important and seem to be consistent among the successful entrepreneurs that I've met. Larry: Marcie, thank you very much for that. I agree 100 percent. Marcie: Are you optimistic and working hard? Larry: You got it. Lucy: Larry's an entrepreneur too. Many times over, we're both insane about entrepreneurship. So, we totally get it. Larry: Well, I only heard the word insane, but that's OK. Lucy: That's OK too. So it is hard work to be an entrepreneur and you do need to have passion and you need to be motivated, I think, truly by bringing innovation out into the world. And yet entrepreneurs do have personal lives and struggle sometimes to bring balance between the professional and the personal lives. What do you do to attend to this issue? Marcie: It's a tough one. I think what allows me to be able to do both, is that I really enjoy both my jobs. When I say both my jobs, my other job is I'm a mom. I have two wonderful children. And so I go to work and I love my job. And then I come home and I'm with my kids and I really love being their mom as well. And so, that makes it a lot easier and allows me to work many more hours because it reenergizes me. Lucy: That's exactly right, I feel. I mean I honestly think that where I saw young parents who were struggling a lot between, with this balance issue, it was when work had become tedious. Larry: Right. Lucy: And they had to give up a lot. They had to give up being with their children for a job that they didn't find fulfilling. And so this notion that you need to be in love with both of them, I think is very sage wisdom. Larry: Yes. We love all five of our children too. Marcie: Yeah. And I guess I feel fortunate that I've managed to get a job that I really love. Larry: That's great. Lucy: I somehow think that you're always going to have jobs you really love. Larry: I think so too. Lucy: I think so too. Larry: Now, you've already achieved a great deal. And I realize your company today is only three years old. But what's next for you? Marcie: I won't be happy with what I've achieved until our cells have replaced the coal plant. So, I guess the first answer to that is to build Bandgap up to the point that we're producing a significant amount of solar energy that is making an impact on our electricity production. And it's not just building a big company. I want to build a company that obviously makes money and impacts the world. But also, at the same time, I'm hoping to build a culture where people can grow professionally at the company. Where they can come and contribute, but also improve themselves as well. So when I do that, then I'll feel like I've had a successful career. And then probably the next thing that I would accomplish is traveling all over the world. Larry: Ah-ha. Lucy: Ah. Where do you want to go? Marcie: Oh. I would love to go to Africa. And like Egypt and yeah, many places actually. I very much enjoy the music of Africa and would love to go visit it. Lucy: Wow. I've never been there. Plus I know you're in Boulder, Colorado. We have a coal plant that you could replace. Larry: Yes. That's right. Lucy: And we could turn it into a shopping mall. Marcie: That would be great. Lucy: It's rather unsightly. Larry: It's not Africa here but it is Boulder, so maybe we could get you here. Lucy: We'll introduce you and maybe you could talk them out of their coal plant. That would be awesome. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Thank you so much for talking to us Marcie. And you have a great company with a great mission and a great background. And we didn't even get into your background around your authorship and journals and patents. You're truly a technical expert in this area and I know your company's going to succeed. So, thank you so much for talking to us. Marcie: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Larry: Yes. And we're going to follow up on you, so be careful. Lucy: Oh, and you have to remind people where they're going to find this. Larry: Oh yes. You can also listen to this interview 24/7 at w3w3 dot com and the NCWIT channel. And you can download it as a podcast. We'll make sure we have it on the blog. And Marcy, thank you so much. Lucy: Thanks Marcie. Marcie: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Marcie BlackInterview Summary: The mission statement on Bandgap Engineering's website says nearly everything you might want to know about what drives its co-founder and CTO, Marcie Black: "Our motivations are many and varied. We want to mitigate the impact of humans on climate change and ease the global political tensions caused by competition for scarce fossil fuels. As parents we are inspired to leave the world a better place for our children and their children. As entrepreneurs we love the thrill of a startup and think our technology represents a very, very good business opportunity. As scientists and engineers we are motivated to tackle difficult and very meaningful technical challenges." Release Date: August 23, 2010Interview Subject: Marcie BlackInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 18:04

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Krista Marks General Manager, Disney Online Kerpoof Studios Date: August 2, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes Lucy Sanders: Hi this is Lucy Sanders. I am the CEO of NCWIT or the National Center for Women and Information Technology. And this is one in a series of interviews that we're doing with great entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies. And they all have great stories to tell, especially in the areas of entrepreneurship and the technology of the future. And with me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I am happy to be here. Lucy: What's going on with w3w3? Larry: Well we're doing all kinds of very neat things; we interview all kinds of neat people. But we really enjoy the NCWIT interviews because I'm having four daughters, and this idea of information technology in helping support women, it's just fantastic. Lucy: Well today is a real treat for us because today we're interviewing one of my absolute favorite people and entrepreneurs, Krista Marks. And she's a real blend of technical accomplishments, and social passion, and entrepreneurial spirit. You cannot spend more than five seconds with Krista without getting all kinds of really great information, and energy, and passion. And I had the privilege of interviewing her recently at Entrepreneurs Unplugged Session, and it was just a real treat. Everybody loved it. And I know our listeners are going to love the interview today. She's the co-founder of Kerpoof Studios, but before that in working in many technical areas with great technical credentials, patent-holder, et cetera. And when she started Kerpoof it was around a passion of children and innovation, and a great place to be on the Internet for learning. And apparently Disney thought that as well, and acquired Kerpoof in 2008. And Krista is now the general manager of Disney Online. And like I said at the Entrepreneurial Unplugged event she gets that little Mickey Mouse on her card, which I'm entirely jealous about. So welcome Krista. We're very excited to interview you. Krista Marks: Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be here. Lucy: Why don't you tell us a little bit of about what's going on at Disney first before we launch into the interview. Krista: Well one of the most exciting things that's going on, everything on the Create portal is done in bolder. And if you go to disney.com there's a game portal like a video portal, but there's now a Create portal. And that was the vision when Disney acquired us, that we would take an extended technology we've done around Kerpoof and really combine it with their IT, and build kind of an area on that dedicated to creativity. And we've done that. But we have a very big event that's going on now that I'm super excited and proud about which is a digital mosaic. Lucy: Oh wow. Krista: It's a large scale mosaic. There are images of Mickey. We provide the tools for kids to create drawings online. Those drawings are submitted and once moderated there incorporated into a Mosaic of Mickey that takes thousands and thousands pieces of art. In fact, we are rolling out different images of Mickey and each one is populated as a Mosaic. The whole portal is very exciting but for me this is sort of the combination of what is exciting about the web. Is this idea, the technology the technology for those not interesting to me but technology combined with the kind of things you can do in terms of being kids into this story? Be part of the story to participate and that kind of interaction is just super exciting. And to do something on that scale so its not just, "hey kids come in and draw, hey kids come in and draw and be part of something larger. Is part of a large Mosaic dedicated to Mickey?" In addition, it has been hugely successful I think were over 300,000 pieces of art created today. Lucy: Wow that is awesome. I am going to check that out four sure. In addition, its just so fascinating to you knows Krista is a real pioneer in the area of innovation for kids on line and it is very inspiring. Therefore, I am glad a company that is big as Disney is getting into that, that whole area. Krista: Serious, honestly is not it I thought it was very exciting. The reality is to have a company with number one family media company in the world really embrace bringing the kids into this story. Not just saying here is our art and here is art beautiful this is what they do well. Right, they create content saying, "you know what kids we want you to create content too, we want you to be part of that." I think its extraordinary exciting and I am really proud to be part of it. Lucy: Absolutely, one of the things that we always like to ask people and you rather go back in time a little bit. And think through here you are at Disney today but you were not always at Disney. You were interested in technology for some reason so why don't you tell us how you first got interested in technology. And as you look at the technical landscape today what technology do you think are especially important? Krista: My road is not, some ways its super smooth because I went, I graduated high school and I went to college and I studied electrical engineering. I would say it was unsmooth and it is why NCWIT is so important and that when I went to college I did not know about technology or pursuing a career in technology. Which for me it ended up being electrical engineering but obviously the number of careers one can choose in technology. For me what happened in high school is that I really gravitated in mathematics and science, problem solving. This is the areas that I like, unfortunately when I got to orientation for college I sat next to a student and I said what your major is. In addition, they said they were an electrical engineer and I said I do not know what that is, what is that? And they said oh well, I do not what that is either. But I know that if you really like math and physics, that it's really the best major to have and I said oh my gosh. Those are my two favorite things. So I really fell into it. And so I think, why NCWIT is so critical in the kinds of things they're doing, that you are doing which is so important, is that I would like no young person to start college not knowing what computer science, engineering, electrical engineering, all of the areas that on can pursue in technology, bio engineering. You know, the list goes on and on. But to be really aware of those opportunities, it may not be for everyone. But at least to be aware of them and so mindfully know what you're choosing from, when you choose a career. So anyway, again, I think I got lucky which I don't think is a good thing. But the good news is I did end up there and love technology and in fact really wanted, from that point on, to be part of designing technology. And spent a number of years, my first eleven years, designing custom electronics for high energy physics experiments. Got to work around the world, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that really solidified my love of technology. Again, I was just working on really state of the art technology and systems. Great experience, great first experience. Worked with some real giants in that field and had amazing mentors. So that's kind of how I landed in technology. In terms of technology that I think is very interesting right now. I first would say, look at the I-pad, for a number of reasons. But for me, particularly, and again I'm interested in kids and technology. And the reality is kids learn by touching things. And so the I-pad is just perfectly designed for this demographic. And I think increasingly kids will literally learn how to read and problems solve using these types of devices. You know, what's interesting is, is I'm a part of a number of groups that are always thinking, gosh, can digital media actually make a difference. We have a lot of kids that are falling behind that aren't doing well. And there's always, can it be the silver bullet. We know that kids need scaffolding and they need adults to be there to help them succeed. But can digital media, can technology actually help set them and do something about this. And I think, to me, the I-pad is the first device, first piece of technology. And actually I like to bring up I-pad because a lot of times I think young people don't even think about the I-pad, the I-phone, the computer, that those are pieces of technology that are designed by technologists, right. And that how cool to have a career that, that's the kind of stuff you create, right. And I always say engineers. Look, at the end of the day all we do, we just create stuff. We build stuff whether it be Google the website, whether it be a Ferrari car, whether it be a Boeing airplane, whether it be an I-pad, and I-touch right. Software and hardware, that's what we do, we're creators, we're builders. So that's a piece that's exciting to me. I'm a little excited, I got to go to E3 which is of course the big conference this year, has to spend a little time there. In addition, have to see Microsoft's new Kinect, which of course is new tall. To me you know I would of prior to see thing that I would said the Wii. I think the Wii is very interesting piece of technology. I think its bringing back the sense of intergenerational game play. And again technology for technology's sake is not interesting to me but technology as a means to do interesting things like intergenerational play, very exciting. That takes that to the next level where you have Kinect where your whole body becomes the controller. Right, so you jump up and down on the screen the avatar jumps up and down. This is big stuff this is exciting stuff. I will say in the world self-serving but I think what we just did with the group wall, the digital Mosaic. [inaudible 09:01] is part of the kind of technology that to me is exciting, really pushing what the web can deliver. That level of interactive that frankly up to recently I would say you really only got from desktop software. Lucy: You know I saw Kinect at the Microsoft Facility Summit; it was interesting very, very interesting technology. Larry: Wow, you know, Krista, I thought when I fist met you at First Robotics, when you and I were both judges and of course, Lucy and her husband who were very involved also. But you mentioned Lawrence Livermore National Labs; about 20 years ago, they were a client to mine. Krista: What a small world. Larry: So I wonder if we met there. Krista: Actually, I was at Lawrence Berkley National Labs, something different then Lawrence Livermore. Larry: Oh, OK. Lucy: There all related to Lawrence. Larry: Is that the case. Krista: Actually there not, interesting a little aside the Lawrence was connected with Lawrence Berkley. In fact, his family has fought a long time to have his name removed from Lawrence Livermore. Because he really did high-energy research. He did not do bomb testing or development so a little aside. Lucy: That is interesting. Larry: It is and in fact when I think back there were very few women at all at Lawrence Livermore, very few. Anyhow you know here you are you got this techie background, you like solving problems in math and physics and all. Why you are an entrepreneur and what is about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Krista: You know I have not really thought about this it is a good question and the more I thought about it. I have been asked this before and one of the simplest reasons and I do not think probably unusual is my father was entrepreneur. I think there's always been a piece of me I really admire him and admire what he has accomplished. I think its something always in the back of my head that is a big dream. I also think, honestly I think it is in the water in the United States. I think we're born and bred on the idea that you can strike it on your own. You can really start your own company. It is an extraordinary thing about this country that makes me excited to be here. I think there's not that you cannot be an entrepreneur in other countries but its very favorable here. We have a very nurturing environment being an entrepreneur. But first of all, my father, I think some other things happened that were critical. I think the reason a lot of people aren't entrepreneurs is not that they don't want to be, but because it's too scary. You have a good job. You're getting good pay. Why would you leave that for something that, frankly, that most people fail. You go to making no money and very unsure. A different level of stress. Because now, really, the buck stops with you in a very real genuine way. And I think because of all that, most people don't make the leap. I had two pivotal events. And I think it's an interesting thing to share because it really validates how I think having mentors or people that believe in you can impact you. I met a very famous entrepreneur, Jerry Fiddler. He's actually the cofounder of Wind River. A company that he grew literally from his garage to a billion dollar company. And I was on a ski trip with mutual friends and he was there. And it was all week. And we were skiing together. And during the course of the week he got to know me. And by the end of the week he said, "I think you would be an amazing entrepreneur. And not only that, I think you would be an amazing CEO and entrepreneur." And I think that someone who you kind of look up to, validates you, and says that, it has a huge impact. And so, at that point, I knew I was going to do it. It was a matter of finding the right group to do it with. It's not true for everyone, but for me, it was really important to do it with cofounders. And I was at Xilinx for the time, and three other people who were at Xilinx, three other engineers, we all had had a lot of success at Xilinx. A very wonderful company Xilinx. And I got to lead some products that really made a difference to their bottom line and their company. And I felt like, wow, I think I can do this. I think I have some good instincts. One of the things I learned when I left Lawrence Berkeley Lab and went to industry, and went to Xilinx that I didn't know about myself was how competitive I was. And I was working on products. And this raging competitor came out of me. When we would lose design wins, I would be so angry. And I would say to the sales people, "What do you mean we've lost?" And they would say, "Well, Krista, you're products are only one of many pieces that factor into a win." And I would say, "What are you talking about? My products should be so good it should determine the win. I want to talk to your customers." And I would go to the customers. And I would say, "What could we have done? Could we have done anything?" And in fact, there were things. They said, if you did 120 of this bus, and you did dynamical lining. You know what? We would have given it to you. Well, we went back and we did those things. And in fact, [inaudible 13:40] at our customer and led to the success. But what I learned is that it's obvious. It's not like a lot of people don't know. But was listening to customers. How powerful that can be. Truly viewing what they want and the kind of success you can have from that. So I think that combined with obviously having seen a father that ended up having role model sort of confirm that they think I could be good at it. With sort of already having some product success within the company and feeling my instincts are good. I think this is something I could do. I think all of that came together to make me able to take that leap. That's a scary leap. I don't think anyone who takes that first leap to become an entrepreneur and start a company from scratch. I always see it as jumping off a cliff. In fact, the other three cofounders, I always said, "We're going jump off this cliff together, and here's what I know. If we hold hands, don't let go, ever. We'll succeed. If we hold hand and don't ever let go, we'll succeed." And I use that metaphor a lot actually. Even when we sold the business, I said that, "Look. You guys, we got to hold hands here. We're holding hands. We're stronger as a four than we are individually." I think that's true. Lucy: That's really awesome advice. And I want to point out Jerry Fiddler's encouragement as being something really important, especially to many women to start companies. That he saw a great skill and he encouraged it. And here we have Krista today, having done a lot of great technology, and a successful entrepreneur. I had cause to be in a room with him once. When he found out I was from Boulder, he came up and said, "Do you know Krista Marks? She's just fabulous. Do you know about Kerpoof?" Larry: Whoa! Wonderful. Lucy: So, he's definitely your fan. Krista: Well that's funny because I actually... at that ski trip, I said Jerry when I become an entrepreneur this means you have to be an advisor. That's what you're signing up for right? I had locked him in right then. Lucy: Oh, that's great. Krista: He was an advisor to Kerpoof. Lucy: So see, I think we know what makes Krista tick about entrepreneurship. It's great. So, along the way Krista you have obviously done some tough things in your career. Why don't you tell the listeners one thing that's especially tough that you've had to do? Krista: I'll answer that in two ways. The short answer is becoming an entrepreneur. By far. Just that single decision to leave the security of a good job. I was doing very well in the context of where I was, and take that risk. Career wise, that was the most radical thing I've ever had to do. I think there are two other things. I think if you become a manager, which I did when I went to Xilinx, I took on a manager role. So, I was managing a group of engineers in Silicon Valley and then eventually also in Boulder that were developing technology. And I think when you become a manger, one of the hardest things in any career, in my opinion, is the first time you have to let someone go. The first time you have to fire someone. That was so hard that I really questioned whether I wanted to be in a leadership role anymore. It really was that difficult. I think it's always a hard thing. I think the first one was the most traumatic for me. It really was very hard and yet really critical in that role. I mean I say if you can't take on that [inaudible 16:55] role, you shouldn't be in that role because the reality is as best as we try to vet people when we hire them, we don't always do a perfect job. So that was very difficult for me. I think the other thing that was tough for me, in terms of it took sort of a ton of brain power is we lead first, we're entrepreneurs. And we initially launched Kerpoof in January of 2007. And we actually didn't have a lot of traffic. And I think we and the founders really had a tough, very tough decision about, do we keep going or do we do something else. You have to understand that was such a radical thing to do. We, all our hardware engineers and software engineers, the software engineers developing for hardware. Really pretty much a high tech classic background and we're coming to not only developing for children, a consumer web space. I mean, we really could not have in many ways, left our domain more completely. And everyone we talked to just thought we were insane, everyone just though we had lost our marbles. You know, why were we doing it? Xilinx is the leader in a product called a field programmable gate array and why are you doing some of that gate array, are you crazy. And we were following our heart, which I think is critical but with that comes more risk, right? You don't know, you don't know. You don't have the context of this. There's risk with that, so. And then combine with when you launch the product. And of course we thought we launch it in and everyone and their mother would use it and that didn't happen. So, we decided to stick with it and at that point, really I think did some true market research. There are two types of market research. One is you find what you want to hear and that feels good. And one is you really, you've got to get the answer. You dig deep. You're looking hard for the answers. And when we did that we really learned some stuff. We made some fairly modest tweaks to Kerpoof. And at that point really started watching it grow, watching the traffic grow. And it's interesting, a lot of the time it's true for entrepreneurs. They often, too quickly throw everything away and completely do something different, when often a small course correction can have a big impact. So that was very, I don't know if that's what you're looking for but I think that's for me personally was a pretty tough decision. Larry: Well speaking of tough decisions and giving good advice, how about if you were sitting down right now and across the desk from you was a young person considering entrepreneurship. What advice would you give them? Krista: That's so funny because my nephew is [inaudible 19:20] is interested in becoming an entrepreneur, so I just did this. I just had a delightful meeting with him over coffee. And that's what he's asking me, right. What was my advice? So I'll tell you the truth because I just did this and that's what I just said. The first thing I said is, "Get a co-founder." One of the things and I talked to a fair number of people and they have a good idea and they're kind of on their own. And I think there's a lot of value, I actually think there's a lot of value and in fact there is research to back up that diminishing return on number of founders doesn't go down until after five. Sort of shocking. If there's a lot of assumptions around the five, I think the five have to be... you offer diversity to their offering different skill sets. But literally and figure the five founders. So one of the things I say because I think it was so critical to me in my success was having co-founders. It's at least one other person. Once a very practical thing, if you can't convince one other person to jump off that cliff with you, how good of an idea is it? [laughter] Lucy: That's a very good point? Larry: Yeah. Krista: Right? That's one [inaudible 20:22] of a idea. But it is such a scary thing. And I say it feels a lot scarier than it is. I think the interesting thing about being an entrepreneur, I was impressed. What was the big deal and the other side is that it's such a big deal. But at the time those decisions feel so big and just having at least one other person hold hands. So the first thing I said to him was he needs to find a co-founder and the good news for him is he has. The other is I actually think the number one indicators for success as an entrepreneur has nothing to do with talent and little to do with good idea. I truly believe that and this is kind of a radical thing to say, it has to do with being tenacious. You need to want it, you need to have the drive, you're going to be there and if it's not right, you're going to make it right. Like I said, I said to my co-founders, "As long as we hold hands. Look, we may be really slow, it may take us 10 years before we have success but we will get to success. That's a given, we're going to get to success. I don't know how long that will take but we're going to get there." So I naturally had the tenacity and the drive and I think you got to have that. If you don't have that it's too hard. You'll just give up because it's too hard. And it's too much of an emotional roller-coaster. Look, most of the time you're looking for people to say yes. Whether it be you're trying to sell something to someone or an investor and the majority of the time you get a no, right? No, no, no, no and then it maybe turns into a no. So it's tough, it's really tough. So if you didn't have that drive and tenacity because you're following your heart, you have a passion. Do you have like, "You're going to work on this day and night, night and day until it's right because you just have to. It's just in your blood, you got to do it." You got to have that. If you don't have that then I sort of think good luck because this is not an easy thing, I think, to succeed. So you have to have kind of had that drive and passion. I think it says the obvious but one of the things I go back to the co-founder. I think it's a very interesting relationship with the co-founder. I almost liken it to a marriage though it's not a marriage but it's literally subjected to that much stress. And so you really, ideally the people that you co-found with you know pretty well, you really trust them, you're really comfortable with them. Because I think if you're not, if the trust isn't there, if that relationship isn't there, I find it hard to believe it would hold up to the kind of stress that is typical for a new entrepreneur. There's exceptions to these. I'm very much shaped by my own experience, so certainly take it with a grain of salt. The two core things in terms of once you decide to be an entrepreneur that I think have shaped me and I believe in, is build value first. One of the things that served us really well is, I felt like if we built value, we would succeed. Instead of focusing on, can we make a million billion dollars? Can we be bought by Disney? Instead of focusing on anything that might be a success scenario, just focusing on building value. So, look, we build this digital drawing tool for online for kids, let's build it really well. Let's make it great! I don't know that that will come with success, but I know that if we keep building value, we'll get there. The correlate of that is to follow your heart. I also think being an entrepreneur is really hard, so even when people are saying, "You are nuts! What do you know about kids? What do you know about the consumer's space?" If that's where your heart is... It's so hard, right? It can't be a means to an end. You have to enjoy the process. And we did. We would develop things for kids, they'd bring kids to the site, they would play with them. We may have been, in the early days, really kind of struggling, but that brought so much joy. Right? Building value, seeing [inaudible 23:56] kid liking it, feeling like, hey, we're on to something! I think part of that was really this fight. To a person, everyone's advice that we were crazy... We really did follow our hearts. Lucy: Yes you did. We had the pleasure of working with Kerpoof a little bit, and it was a great deal of fun. So, Krista, this advice is wonderful advice, and from it you can derive certain personal characteristics about Krista. For example, passion, and competitiveness, and tenacity. But also listening, valuing what the end customer, in this case kids - what do they need? Truly listening to those requirements. What other personal characteristics do you have that you think have given you advantages as an entrepreneur? Krista: Besides tenacity, which I think is a big one - drive, tenacity - I think... To me, this so overwrites everything, but it's very easy. Think of it as audience. Because it's particularly true for technologists, I just think we love technology. We just do, and so it's very easy to get caught up in the technology and forget the customer. It just doesn't matter how cool whatever you're widget is if no one else cares about it. Really identifying who your audience is, who your customer is. I really think focusing, and then being able to listen to your customer. I think sort of that's in general a characteristic of a good entrepreneur. They genuinely want to build things that people are going to use. That maybe isn't as true for a business to business. But I would say even in the business to business kind of entrepreneur at the end of the day the corporate clients that you're going to have or the business clients you're going to have. What do they want? What are their pain-points? What are they struggling with? I just recently talked to a really neat entrepreneur, but I felt like they had 10 ideas. I mean they were all good, but it was hard for me to feel they could all do well at once. I really, my advice to them, personally was just take one, focus on it, do it extremely well, and then grow that, expand that. I think there are a lot of ideas. So one of the characteristics of entrepreneurs that is very valuable is being able to narrow and focus in a very clear way. And sort of to know that focus should become bigger and when it should become narrower. That's a really critical skill. Larry: With everything that you do Krista, and I know you're busy well about 48 hours a day, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Krista: It's such a [inaudible 26] question for me, because I feel like it doesn't apply as well to entrepreneurs. And the reason is, I think typically when people talk about work life balance, there's very much this notion that work is something that you do because you need to see a paycheck. And so you want to just to turn it off, and not worry about it, and go. And I think when you follow your heart and you're doing what you're passionate about you realize it's 24/7, but it's a different kind of 24/7. And it doesn't mean it's not tiring, it doesn't mean it's not going to cost to your family and friends, certainly. And this is [inaudible 27:02] somewhat true. First becoming an entrepreneur, and even now being part of Disney I don't see as much of my family and friends. But in part that's because I love what I do. I want to do it. I love what I do. But that thing said, we did feel like they were diminishing returns and not being somewhat careful of burnout. And when we became a company we all agreed that we'd take one day off a week. We didn't always honor that. But I think we have the notion of trying to do that, of really trying it one day a week, which was typically Sunday. That know you're coming to the office. That we'd spend time with our friends and family, we'd rejuvenate, go hiking in the mountains, whatever. And certainly that helped. But, again, it is a finer line I think when what you're doing, particularly in entrepreneur it does become all consuming. It's funny one made the analogy. And I thought it was such a good analogy that in many ways being an entrepreneur, starting a company is much like having a child. And if you ever meet a new parent they're obsessed with their child. They want to show you pictures of the child, they want to talk about their child. They're really not interested in anything else in the world, right? There could be earthquakes, and there could be things going on, and they're just oblivious, right? And, that's their first year bubble of new child. And, entrepreneurs are a lot like that. I said - I always joked, you know, that - that the only family they spend a lot to time with - In the first couple of years of my being an entrepreneur, of starting Kerpoof, were people who were into Kerpoof. If you were into Kerpoof, then we could have a good conversation. If you didn't want to have a Kerpoof, I didn't really have much more I wanted to talk about. So, there is sort of a - And, there is an all consumingness that may not happen to everyone. It certainly happens to some entrepreneurs. I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. You know, I think it's part of doing something extraordinary. It's part of succeeding. I think to answer your question really in the most succinct way, I don' think I do bring a lot of balance to my life. But, I am trying to do a little better and not because I - to do it for it's sake, but because actually I do think that your relationships with your family and your friends are very important to the whole of your life. And, if you neglect it too long, obviously that's at a cost. So, not to say that I don't think those things need to be considered and nourished. And, I think I have neglected them, for sure. And, I am - I making up now for that. Lucy: Well, I learned how to speak Kerpoof. Larry: Yeah. You did. You did. Krista: You did. You did. And, we got to talk. Lucy: I learned how to speak Kerpoof. And, listeners should also know that Krista is very generous with her time in the community with First Robotics, and certainly with NCWIT, and other groups. So, we definitely appreciate that as well. So... So Krista, the last question - You've achieved a lot. You know, you - I'm sure - have things that you want to accomplish in the future. Why don't you tell us a bit about what's next for you. Krista: You know what? One thing that... I don't know. I feel ostensibly believe life is extremely long. I think people say life is short and they're just wrong. I think it's long. I think we have the ability at least in the United States for - Many people have the ability to do many things in the course of their life if they're interested. So, I'm 43 now. So, I believe as many things as I've done to date, I've will, at least if not more, just have found it wiser to do as many more. So, I think life is very long. I also don't tend to be a long-term planner. I never have. I think it's kind of hog wash - much more interested in today and - and short term. So, for me what I know for sure is I feel very passionately about making sure...I really would love to see Disney stay in Boulder. I would love that - how ever long that takes. And, that could take a decade. But, I would love to see Disney remain in Boulder as a presence in Boulder. I think it's an extraordinary company. And, I think they have a real need for the kind of talent... we have in Boulder-technical talents - and also in Dimmer, actually inside Colorado. People don't realize the creative talent. But it is the fifth state in the top five in terms of the number of creative people that are here - artists and creatives - and so that combination of creatives and technologists. I actually hate that word "creative" because I think engineers are creative. But anyways, that's still the term that's used. Creatives - so animators and artists and the kind of amazing engineering talent and technical talent that we have here. That combined is very special. So it's not just an act to have Disney here. I think Disney can actually flourish here. I think we can continue to add something important to what they're trying to achieve with digital media. So that's one goal. Also, and I think this is happening but I really believe that we are changing the face of the Internet in some meaningful way for kids. I think that historically the large companies that frankly own the kids audience. The reality is kids go to very few sites. Nick.com, Disney.com obviously are the two big ones. Then there are a number of other players. Club Penguin certainly is one. But there are only a small number of sites. So what you want is for those sites to offer engaging entertainment but also offer participation, interactivity, and the ability to design because one of the things that's unique to the computer that's not true for a mobile device at least today, and it's certainly not true for a TV, is you can't design. So the computer is this unique platform. I think that, not those mobile platforms won't also be this, but those platforms you actually can participate, right? So to me this large piece of having a place and do that kind of dedicated creativity is a step towards we just move in a direction that nobody would think of doing otherwise. If you create something for kids, you just wouldn't imagine not offering some level of genuine engagement, some level of genuine participation, if it is computer-Internet based. That would just be an obvious step. I don't think we're there yet, but I think we're moving there. One of our competitors - actually it was interesting - I just noticed launched a very modest, but albeit a little center dedicated to creativity on their site, a site you wouldn't anticipate that from. I just thought that was so exciting, right? To me, you know you're leading when people are following. If you're leading in a place that's interesting for kids, then that's very exciting to me. I guess to me that's what's next. Lucy: We vote for that, and we vote for Disney in Boulder. Larry: Yeah, you bet you! Lucy: Absolutely. Well, thank you, Krista. This was very interesting as always. We really appreciate it and want to remind listeners to look for this interview at W3W3.com and also NCWIT.org. Krista: Oh, and thank you, Larry and Lucy. It's really my pleasure to be here. Larry: It's great, and of course we're going to have to follow up on you again. Lucy: Thank you, Krista. Krista: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Krista MarksInterview Summary: "When I went to college, I didn't even know about technology or pursuing a career in technology," says Krista. "Fortunately when I got to orientation for college, I sat next to a student who said she was going to major in electrical engineering. 'What is that?' I said. And she said, 'I know that if you really like math and physics, it's the best major to have. I said, 'Oh my god, those are my two favorite things! I would like every student to be aware of the available opportunities when they're choosing a career. I did end up there and loved technology. In fact, from that point on I really wanted to be involved in designing technology. I spent the first eleven years designing custom electronics, and got to work around the world." Release Date: August 2, 2010Interview Subject: Krista MarksInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 33:56

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with ML Mackey CEO and Co-founder, Beacon Interactive Systems Date: May 10, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with ML Mackey [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I'm happy to be here. Lucy: Absolutely. We have this great interview series with women who have started IT companies, many of them multiple companies, across all different sectors. Today, I'm really excited because our interview is going to be with a woman who has worked in both the private and the public sector. I don't really think we've talked to anybody who has worked with the government in the same way that our guest has worked with. So, today, we're talking to ML Mackey who is the CEO and Co-founder of Beacon Interactive Systems. I was really interested in Beacon because it does the workflow kind of things. If you look at their history with private industry, things around customer service and email management and great companies that they've worked with like IBM and MetLife and others. ML, then, that company into working in the government sector working on the performance of its workforce. So, the DOD. And, I'm thinking, oh, that's something taxpayers should really dig, you know? [laughs] Larry: [laughs] Lucy: Performance management of the federal sector. So, welcome ML. We're glad you could join us. ML Mackey: Thanks. Thanks for having me. Lucy: So, first of all, why don't you just give us a little bit of an update on what Beacon's up to. ML: Well, we're a 16-year-old company. We provide software to our customers that helps them get their work done easier and easier, regardless of what that work is. Like you said, we did private sector. And, now, we're doing the public sector. It's a fascinating place to be right now in the federal sector, and specifically in the DOD, where we work. It is kind of a bold statement, but we say to some of our friends we're trying to help the federal government perform more efficiently. [laughs] Lucy: [laughs] Well, I shouldn't laugh, I mean... ML: How's that for a book? Larry: Please. Lucy: [laughs] I was going to say, please! Larry: It has to work. Lucy: Yeah, please do. [laughs] Please do. ML: Let's hope we're successful. And, a very small piece of that, I must say. But, it's kind of fun. Right now we are mainly selling to the Department of Defense. We sell primarily to the U.S. Navy. We have two products that we sell to them. One is in the equipment maintenance space, and it's called TURBOWORK. It's all about helping the maintainers perform equipment maintenance more efficiently and effectively. The second product we have stemmed out of that work. It's a collaborative program management software called T3, the Technology Transition Tool. It's used by the Navy to better manage their portfolio of R&D investments. Lucy: Well, you're absolutely right. There's so much going on in the public sector these days, especially with technology. I was just reading about it. There's an 80-billion-dollar-a-year budget... Larry: [laughs] Lucy: ...in the federal government for technology spent, which is just an amazing amount of money. So, I'm glad you're working to make sure it's spent more efficiently. Larry: We want you to succeed. ML: [laughs] Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. So, ML, why don't you tell our listeners a bit about how you first got into technology and where you see some of the hot technologies today. ML: You know, I thought about this question a little bit beforehand. And, I thought what would I tell them? I wanted to say something very philosophical and profound and deep. And, I'll tell you what, I got into technology because I really wanted to make money. [laughs] Lucy: That's a good reason. Larry: Yeah. Yeah. ML: I was pretty sure that teaching ballet, which I loved doing, wasn't going to be the lifestyle that I wanted to live. So, I said I think I'd like to be able to be independent. So, I applied for a scholarship in electrical engineering because they gave the most electrical engineering scholarships out. I'm already convinced I knew what electrical engineering was when I applied for it. Turned out I got the scholarship. It also turned out quite luckily for me that I really enjoyed what I was learning about. Engineering is a fascinating profession. Understanding what makes things work and how to understand science and figure out how to apply it to real-world needs is a fun and exciting place to be. So, I stumbled upon the place that I needed to be and was happy to be there. Larry: That's great. ML: I got into technology. Larry: I like that. I like that. ML: I like to think it was more purposeful. It was just someone watching out for me, you know? So, that worked out really well. Did a lot of hardware design, some software design. Got into running a business, very much an engineering kind of approach to how we run a business and how we started it. The technologies that I think are cool right now. I think software is a fascinating area to be in. And, I think the convergence of information from both physical resources as well as people is fascinating. I think there's a lot of work to being done with sensors that we've only tapped the beginning usefulness and productivity from that I just think is fascinating. And, I think understanding that in terms of how it integrates with the real world and how people work and interface with that information is really what drives our company. Larry: Well, that's fantastic. ML, having the public sector background, I have to ask what is it about being an entrepreneur that drew you there? And, what makes you tick? ML: I think the reason that I'm an entrepreneur, and I would say the same thing for my partner. The reason we started a business is we said we like to do things. We like to make things happen. We like to create things. We like to be around creative and smart people. And, we like to make an impact with what we're doing. I think we also wanted to make money, too. [laughter] ML: So, it seemed like starting a company was a great combination for all of these things. I think what makes me tick now about being an entrepreneur is the adrenalin, is the challenge, is the opportunity, is the creativity. It's the great people I get to work with at my company. It's the interesting customers that we get to work with. It's never dull. It's always something interesting and new. And, the ability to help guide that and stay true to finding interesting things and doing meaningful work is a real driver. Lucy: Along the way on your entrepreneurial journey, oftentimes we find people have been influenced by others. Sometimes we call them mentors. Or, sometimes we call them role models. Or, sometimes they're co-founders or what have you. What can you tell our listeners about the particular people that influenced you? ML: Well, I can tell you I'm blessed and totally lucky to have found a brilliant mentor for me in the last, I'd say, eight or nine years who worked with me. A tremendously smart, intelligent woman who was interested in sharing what she knew and helping me grow into being a better businesswoman. That was a real benefit, and I hope that every young woman can find someone like I found in Ruth. So, that was a benefit. I found her just by working together and us clicking and finding our way to each other. It's turned into a very nice personal relationship as well. I have to say that I'm not sure that I had women role models until that point. There was occasionally someone that I saw here, occasionally someone that I saw there. I think what helped me specifically was that there wasn't a preconceived set of notions or ideas about how business works or what it takes to be a business person. I know my partner, he practiced his signature from the time he was five years old because he knew he was going to be a businessman like his dad. So, I think he had a role model that he would aspire to. I think I just naturally gravitated to this profession. But, anything that we the community can do to put role models out for our kids is a great thing. It's interesting to be able to see the kinds of experiences that you could have. The kinds of choices that you can make in defining what your career will be. Lucy: I have two sons, and they've been practicing their signatures like their father. And, you can't read any of them anyway. Larry: [laughs] Very good. Lucy: Yeah, they look like little squiggly lines to me. ML: My daughter said to me, "Mommy, I think Daddy" -- my husband is my business partner -- "I think Daddy only has one letter when he does his signature. The rest is just a line." Lucy: [laughs] ML: I said oh, he practiced that, honey. [laughter] Lucy: I know, it's true. And, just as an offhand remark, it seems like I've often wanted to do some research on this issue of signatures, but that's for another day. Larry: Yeah, really. ML: There's a whole science to that actually. Lucy: Yeah, to be sure. Larry: I have four daughters, and half of them are... Lucy: Do they practice their signatures? Larry: I don't know if they did. I think so because two of them it's very readable and looks really gorgeous. The other ones are messy like mine. So, oh well. Lucy: Oh, well. Larry: Now, with all the things you've been through, ML, and the successes and everything else, what is the toughest thing that you've ever had to do in your career? ML: Some people might look at my career and say the toughest thing I had to do was quit my very interesting, well-payed job in order to start the company. Or, you may look at signing leases or some of the difficult things of stepping into a new space and finding a new market. But, I have to tell you, by far the most... All those things were fun, by the way, and interesting and exciting. The thing that stands out among all of our experiences as the most challenging was surviving the economic downturn in the software industry in the 2000 to 2001 time frame. That was just a terrible, traumatic and very difficult time to get through that, I have to say, I'm very pleased we are on the other side of. And, I'm going to find some wood quickly to knock on. That was difficult for a variety of reasons. I think primarily the reason that was so difficult for an entrepreneur like myself is that there was so much that was out of my control. It was so drastically bad, and there was such a long period where we weren't able to feel successful. In hindsight, there were many things that we were doing that were wildly successful and allowed us to maintain, and then to grow, the value of our company again and grow the IP and grow the team back up. But, that was a really difficult time. Having said that, I think every business is going to go through something difficult. So, now I know we've been through it and know some of the steps and some of the things I'd do again if we were in a difficult spot and some of the things that I wouldn't do again. [laughs] Net-net it's all positive. But, that was by far the most challenging experience we had. Lucy: In fact, those tough times, they give you sort of a second kind of intuition, and in terms of looking to the future, too. You might spot things sooner. That was a tough time... Larry: Yeah, it was. Lucy: ...early 2000. That was tough. Larry: We felt the pain, too. ML: We bootstrapped our company. We started in a little rent-controlled apartment on Beacon Street in Coolidge Corner Brookline here in Massachusetts. So, we never lived large when we started. We knew how to bootstrap and we knew how to be lean. And, it still was just a really difficult time. But, you get through something like that, and you appreciate what you have moving forward. Every customer is good news. Every contract is good news. And, they're especially sweet now for us. Lucy: Exactly. And, I think that's great advice for any entrepreneur to hear. ML, I know you mentioned you do work in STEM education. You're very interested in issues related to science, technology, engineering and math. So, as it relates to entrepreneurship, if you were sitting here with a young person and giving them advice about being an entrepreneur, what would you tell them? ML: There are two things that I would say are the most important things to tell someone who's thinking about starting their own business. The first is be true to yourself. Be true to what you like to do. [laughs] I can remember, I was graduating from school and I thought oh, I'm an electrical engineer. This is great. I'm going to do electrical engineering. I don't have to figure something out. Then I got closer to graduating and I went, oh my God! What does an electrical engineer do? [laughter] ML: [laughs] And, I talked to a friend of mine who was wildly successful, founded a few companies down in California and just really doing fantastic. I said hey, Andy, how do you get a job? Both my parents were public school teachers. He said, well, you find what you like to do and then you do that. And I was like, come on. Seriously, how do you get a job? [laughs] That's not really going to help me. In hindsight, it was one of the best pieces of advice that I've gotten in my career. And, one that I would highly recommend for anyone thinking of doing something in entrepreneurship. Or, even just as they're plotting their own individual career path. And, that is find what you like to do and what drives you. For example, I like technology. I really like knowing how things work and making new things. I also like people. I'm the kind of person that likes to go to a party full of new people and understand who's there, get to know them, see how they know each other. I like going into customers and understanding how they get their work done. So, we build collaborative software. It's technology about how people work together. My partner likes technology and he also likes business and clarity in business and really making the right value happen from your business. So, our collaborative software systems are not social networking systems. They're collaborative software systems that help you get your work done. So that, one, you can get it done more efficiently, and two, you know what's going on in your organization. So, we stayed true to what our core values are and what our expertise is while we shifted markets from private sector to the public sector. Which was precipitated by the 2002, 2001 downturn in the industry, as I talked about. We stayed true to what our core expertise was. And, we found a way to understand where the federal money would go to small businesses and how to do research and how to get connected into our Department of Defense customers. There were quite a few solicitations of them, but we stayed true to what our expertise was and what we'd be able to accomplish. And, it's become very successful in the process. Lucy: I think that's great. ML: Stay true to what you do. Lucy: Exactly. And that's great advice. It kind of leads me to a follow-up question around just some words you might use to describe yourself. What characteristics do you believe make you a successful entrepreneur? ML: So I'm going to give you the main word and then I'm going to track back to one other thing. Because I've done a disservice to anyone listening. The second and possibly most important that you have to learn as an entrepreneur that I would tell a young person is learn to sell. Learn how to sell. Learn how to sell. Learn how to sell. Don't say, I have a good quality, I have a good product, I can run a company. All of that doesn't matter if you can't sell your product to a customer. So I wanted to close off that last piece and make sure there are two things. One, stay true to yourself. And two, learn how to sell. And the word that I would give you to this question that you just asked me about what are the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur or what has been successful for me is tenacity. You've got to be persistent. You got to choose your path. You got to say this is what I want to accomplish and I'm going to just stay to it. I'm going to approach it from different vectors if I can't accomplish the direction I'm going in. But you've got to be tenacious. Larry: Well you've got a couple of children. You're growing a business. You're doing all kinds of really neat things. How do you ML, bring balance to your personal and professional lives? ML: You know that's an interesting question. So I'll sort of answer it in two different ways. One, I was given an award by an organization up here and I was speaking to all of the entrepreneurial characteristics, and I said to the group, and I said of all these characteristics I've told you about being entrepreneurial, by far the most entrepreneurial venture that my partner, and I have done is parent our two small children. So family life pulls us...I want to use the word balance, but I don't know that balance is the word that really fits. So the second part of my answer to your question it's more about work-life integration. And balance implies cordoning off. And one place I do work and one place I do home and one place I do, oh, God forbid, a hobby. Someday maybe I'll get to that. Larry: [laughs] ML: Part of that, it's more about how you integrate all the facets of who you are so they flow and overlap well with each other. So, my children know the office space but they don't spend too much time here. My kids' friends know that we have a company and understand that sometimes when we've made a sale, oh, good, we just sold to the navy. We just sold software to every ship in the navy. And my kids driving home from school, and their friends went, oh, that's so cool. So that's about an integration without a line that's tough and hard between the two spaces. But it's a continuous balancing act, I should use the word of that integration. Lucy: Well we hear that from a number of successful entrepreneurs. That in fact integration is a better word than balance. I personally believe it is as well. Having raised two kids and being a corporate executive is exactly the same thing. There's no hard line in the sand. I think that's important. ML: You know what I think is fascinating around companies as well is they are starting to understand that in terms of flex time and hours, and commitments, and how you deliver upon your professional commitments as well. Which I just think is a fascinating new area and we'll see some changes in the next five to 10 years. Lucy: I think so too, and we're seeing some data with our work here at NCWIT, around these issues being really important to men and women. That they have the ability to have this kind of work and personal life integration if you will. An certainly in the technology space, one would like to hope that it would be possible. For sure. Maybe using some ML software. Larry: What an idea. What an idea. Lucy: [laughs] What an idea. So ML, you've really achieve a lot. What's next for you? What can you tell our listeners? What do you see coming down the road? ML: More of the same. The spinning out other companies. Going in different directions. It's just fun seeing the products you've created. They sort of take on a life of their own. So then its how do you leverage them that momentum and how do you grow that into something interesting. Growing our team is on our future. That's really quite interesting as well too. It's great to come to work everyday and have a group that's interested in what they're doing and engaged and energetic about what they're accomplishing. So I think just more of the same. Lucy: I have sort of an off the cuff question just to end in. ML: Oh, God. Lucy: Of course. Just to kind of end the interview with. Like if you were giving advice since you are one of our very few interviews about working with the public sector to other entrepreneurs that might want to become involved with the public sector, what would that be? ML: The best advice I could give anyone looking to get involved in the public sector that has not been in the public sector is to have a healthy respect for how different the business is. We completely revamped how we operate our business, how we mange our business, how you engage your customers. I would suggest that...what was the number you gave at the beginning of the interview on federal technologies? Lucy: Eighty billion. Eighty billion dollars a year in IT spent. ML: Yeah, and people look at that number and go oh wow, all I have to do is get a piece of that. There are stunning roadblocks to knowing how to work with the federal government. And just as simple as, which is not simple at all, of how do you get under contract? So, you have a solution, you have a perspective buyer, you have funds available. How do they even get that to you? So there are a lot of roadblocks there, none obvious. Having said that, there's a tremendous opportunity to be innovative and to leverage commercial sector expertise in innovative ways for what has been a very traditional business area. I'm speaking specifically in the software now. There's a lot of opportunity there to really drive value and do something important there. So I would say to anyone, the advice I would give is absolutely look into it. It's a tremendous capability. There's a lot of R&D as well as straight product sales that are possible with the federal government. But just have a real healthy respect for that it is not what you've known in the private sector. And to pay attention to characteristics and different business models. Lucy: That's great advice. Larry: It is. Lucy: I think our listeners will appreciate that. I know we've seen it from the non profit side, working with the government is very different than our work with corporations for example. Very, very different. ML: Find some of just non intuitive. Lucy: Yep. Totally. Really, thank you for your time. We really do appreciate it. And I wanted to remind listeners where they can find this interview. At w3w3.com. And also ncwit.org. Larry: Perfect. Lucy: Alright. Thank you, ML. Larry: ML, thank you so much. ML: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: ML MackeyInterview Summary: Explaining why she became an entrepreneur, ML Mackey says, "My partner and I like to do things, we like to make things happen, we like create things and be around smart creative people and we want to make an impact with what we are doing. It seemed like starting a company was a great combination for all these things." Release Date: May 10, 2010Interview Subject: ML MackeyInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:05

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Ellen Siminoff President and CEO, Shmoop University Date: June 1, 2009 Ellen Siminoff: Shmoop University Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, or NCWIT, and this is one of a continuing series of interviews that we're doing with really just outstanding women who have started IT companies. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi, Larry and welcome. Larry Nelson: I am so happy to be here. This is going to be a very interesting interview. As we get into it Ellen is going to see that there's some similarities between us. Lucy: Well, that's a pretty scary thought. Larry: Yeah, it is; isn't it? Lucy: Ellen, run. Today we are interviewing Ellen Siminoff, and she is the President and CEO of Shmoop University. Now, this site is something that our listeners really must go and see. They have a great mission. Shmoop is an education Website, and their goal is to make everyone lovers of literature, history and poetry. I went there last night and started looking around, and I really like the idea of their Book Club where they review books and even have questions for teachers to use with books, and I thought it was really fascinating that people creating their content, master's degree students and Ph.D. students, really looking for great original and creative content to help students and teachers. I found a little humor on the site as well, so it really cracked me up. Shmoop guarantees better grades. There was an asterisk next to it, and it said: "not an actual guarantee." Anyway, welcome, Ellen, we're really happy to have you for this interview. Ellen Siminoff: Thanks for the great review of this site. That was great. Lucy: Well, we're really happy to have you and before we get into the entrepreneur questions, I really wanted to know how you came up with the name, "Shmoop," and what's going on with the company. Ellen: Well, I started the company with my husband. Shmoop is a Yiddish term for trying to move something forward a little bit. So, my husband's grandmother always used to say to him, "Shmoop this, shmoop that" so we're trying to move education and learning forward a little bit. Larry: Shmoop, I love it. Lucy: I love it. Down in Louisiana we used to say we were carrying somebody from here to there, even though you're actually driving them. Now, we can say we shmoop around. Larry: I'm for shmooping. Lucy: I'm for shmooping. Well so, Ellen, how did you first get into technology? You are using technology in the delivery of your company, obviously, and so our listeners would really like to know what you're looking at as particularly interesting technologies today. Ellen: I got into technology because I was really interested in media, and media became very important to technology. I started a different company with my husband many, many years ago. It was about 18 years ago, and we were distributing television programming in eastern Europe and that made me love the media industry. Then I went to the Los Angeles Times, and I started running their online Classifieds. This was really early. It was like 1994 when the Internet, and if you remember Prodigy and CompuServe and AOL were all fighting it out. I started realizing that technology could be used to deliver media in a really interesting way. Larry: Wow, that's terrific. Remember, I warned you up front that there's something that we have in common. First of all, on your Website there's so many things I like about your Website, but I am also, like you, a lover of chocolate. Ellen: All right. Larry: I'm a cheese head. I used to live in Wisconsin. Ellen: All right. Larry: And I still struggle with golf, so I think that's enough similarities, right? Ellen: Those are great similarities, but have you been shot? Larry: No, but I almost shot my dad when we were hunting once. Lucy: Have you been shot? I'm sure there's more to that story. Larry: It's on the Website. Lucy: Oh, I better go look at that part of it. Well so, Ellen, I was sitting here thinking about technology today. Do you see any particular technologies on the horizon that you think are pretty interesting? Ellen: I'm a big lover of the Kindle. I think the approach Amazon and, obviously, some others in that space have taken about taking a text book and providing a much easier way for students to get their information. I think it's fabulous. I think, first of all, we don't need to have orthopedic problems from carrying around back packs loaded with books, and second, text books are really expensive. They has to be a less expensive way to deliver the same amount of material, so I'm really excited about that one. Larry: Yeah, I am, too. Now that they've got the new, big one, I like that even more. Ellen: As I get older, the bigger print would be fine. Lucy: I see them on planes more and more now. Ellen: Yes, I actually always bring mine every time I travel because, why lug a book around? Larry: Right, you bet. Well, I get the part about technology and all, but why are you an entrepreneur, and what is it about you that makes the entrepreneur part of you tick? Ellen: Well, I think entrepreneurs are people who would be just dreadful employees... because it's chosen for us. For me, I have always sort of gone with smaller companies that I like the people and the idea. When I started Yahoo, we were just a handful of folks, and we thought we were changing the world. Hopefully, we did to some extent. I started up Fischer Frontier which subsequently became the largest search engine marketing firm when it was just a couple of guys with a really neat math algorithm. Shmoop, my husband and I came up with in our back yard. So, for me it's about the idea and the people and the excitement of creating it. The other benefit of being an entrepreneur is you have very little bureaucracy. When a decision needs to be made, you sort of look around at your four or five key people and you resolve it quickly, and that's exciting for me. Lucy: So, along your path you're a serial entrepreneur and you've had a lot of success along your path, who has influenced or supported you? Who are your role models? Ellen: Well, if it hasn't become clear, my husband has been really supportive which I think is great. We've worked together a number of times, and he's pushed me more than I probably would have pushed myself. I have phenomenal parents who basically told me dream big and we're your number one fans, whatever you want to do. So, they've been great, and I've had some terrific teachers along the way. Back to the Wisconsin thing, I had a great eighth grade teacher at Mapledale Elementary School who told me, "You might be pretty smart. Think about what you might want to do in life". I was in eighth grade, and I still remember that conversation. Lucy: Isn't it amazing that you do? That kind of influence on young people by teachers, it really sticks. Ellen: It's amazing. We actually have a page on Shmoop, a teachers' page, that we literally went to the Ph.D.s and Masters I alluded to before and all of us here at the office have said, "So which teacher influenced you the most?" We wound up with this great list of our favorite teachers and how they impacted our lives. And I think that every person who's reasonably successful can identify one of the teachers who made a big difference to them. Larry: Oh, that's fantastic. You know, you mentioned you and your husband. My wife and I, we've started 12 different companies over the years, and it's an extra little plus that as an entrepreneur you can do that. Ellen: That's great. That's inspirational. We have a few more to go. Larry: Well, OK. I'm just a kid, but... Ellen, what is the toughest thing that you have ever had to do in your career? Ellen: Oh, I think the toughest thing anyone has to do is ask someone to leave a company when that person is doing a good job, but they're somehow... morals or conduct or behavior goes against what you want your company to do. I think any CEO or hiring person will tell you, that's the hardest call you ever have to make. Lucy: And, in fact, I think we've done about 50 of these interviews, and that comes up over and over and over again, I think, along with having to leave a company you don't want to leave. Ellen: Yeah, transitions are very hard. I think transitions in life are very hard, and transitions in companies are very hard. The reality is, there's a certain number of years when you're productive to a company, and even if you're doing a good job, you reach a certain comfort level, and sometimes it makes sense to bring in some fresh blood. Lucy: I think that's right, if for no other reason that your network's been tapped out, or something else, that other people can bring in new thinking. So, this gets us into our next question. I think this notion that transitions are hard is really insightful. What other things would you tell a young person or anybody about entrepreneurship, and what kinds of advice would give them? Ellen: I think there's two things I would tell someone. The first is a practical thing, which is, do something you love, and do it with people you love or like, and all good things will come from that. I can't tell you the number of people who turn down great opportunities because their friends told them it was a bad idea, or it didn't fit in the sort of boxes that they had been taught in business school about how to evaluate an idea, or someone told them the business is going to be bad. So, you've got to, a lot of times, go with your instincts, and go with the businesses that make sense to you, and that you doing it, and with people you like, and then I would bet the percentages are in your favor. The second idea I would have for someone is a little less practical, but more of a gut instinct thing, and that is, don't worry so much. I think if you work hard, and you get a little bit lucky, and your timing is good, you will find good opportunities. If I had known how much fun I would have had doing different things, I wouldn't have worried so much along the way. Larry: Wow. Lucy: Is there a Yiddish word for, "Don't worry so much?" Ellen: No, I don't know that one, but I'll have to call my dad. Lucy: I think it could lead to a new company name. Ellen: I always think of, hakuna matata, right? Lucy: Yes, that's right. Exactly. But, I think you're right. Ellen: It's not Yiddish, but it should be. Larry: You got it. Lucy: It probably should be. Larry: Well, I've got to ask another question here that pertains to everything we've talked about so far, but we're now looking at you. What are some personal characteristics that make you a successful entrepreneur? Ellen: I think it's relentlessness, right? I think anybody's who's willing to face in the Internet world zero wages, zero revenue, you know, and a blank sheet of paper, I think yes, you have to have a certain passion, and relentlessness, and drive, and be internally focused, that you don't need someone every day telling you, "This is a great idea. You're going to do great." You've got to just have it from within and be laser-focused on executing. Lucy: I'm just writing this down. I mean, I think the laser focus is exactly right, and the relentlessness, you know, we've heard before, as well. Some people have said even, "stubborn," or... Ellen: I don't know that I would necessarily always write stubborn, because there's a fine line between being crazy and being brilliant. Lucy: That's true. Ellen: Most of the people will tell you that their original idea was not always their final idea, so you need to have a balance of having great conviction in what your doing, but being flexible with what the environment is telling you. Lucy: So, you had a very successful career starting companies, and obviously when you start a company, I'm sure you put everything into it, and give it your all, and people often want to know, well, how then do you balance that with a personal life, if, in fact, balance really exists? Ellen: Oh, I believe in balance. I think you set limits. I think that working smart is a lot better than working every hour of every day. I think being efficient matters. I've seen people take so much time to do something, where that could be done a lot quicker, and I sometimes think when you have more things to do, you're more focused about the things you have to get done. In terms of balance, you just have to. Nobody goes to their grave saying, "I wish I would have worked harder." Lucy: Absolutely. Ellen: I have a great family. I run half-marathons. I have deadly, struggling golf game, and I think the Spectaculars are the most fun, coolest organization on earth. So, you've got to get out there and do other thing, and I think you have a better approach to work when you do. Larry: That's some excellent advice. Gaining balance, or whatever that is, is one of the most difficult thing for new entrepreneurs, but they've got to somehow, as time goes along, really build that balance into their life. Ellen: Oh, you're so right. And you've gone on with your life, so it's especially... I do know couples where one of them doesn't like to come home and talk about work or the other doesn't. We just incorporate it in our lives. Lucy: There's an integration process there, I think. Ellen: Yeah. But at the same point, there are points, you know, my husband... you know, sometimes people are amazed that they'll say something to Dave, and he'll say, "Well, I don't know about this, that's in Ellen's area." And they think that all we do 100 percent of the time is only talk our business stuff, and there are sometimes many days we don't even discuss anything "businessy." Lucy: Well, that's so healthy, and also, you find things that way. Sometimes you find things when you just open up like that, that relate to the business that you never would have seen if you were just working all the time. So, that's very powerful. So, Ellen, you've achieved a lot, and we like to find out from the people we interview what's next for you. You obviously have a new company and so you'll probably be putting a lot of time into that, but anything else you'd like to share, either what's next for you, or what's next for Shmoop? Ellen: Well, I think for Shmoop, I think we've done a really good job on lit., and history and poetry. We're going to do more in civics and get some of the math and sciences up there, because I think it's really important to be able to read, write, and do arithmetic. So, we've got to add the third stool. Lucy: Well, we'd really like to talk about computing. Ellen: Oh, wow, that would be great! Lucy: Well, thank you so much. I just love your site. Larry: I love your site, and I just want to say this one thing. Lucy referred to this, but she buried it a little bit. Right off of your Website, one headline there that really caught my attention said, "Shmoop wants to make you a better lover." Lucy: Of literature. Larry: Well, then, in parenths. Lucy: Oh. Larry: "Of literature, history, poetry, and writing. I'm just getting in the complete line." Lucy: Oh, OK. Ellen: Well, you know, if you just become a better lover, that'd be OK, too, but we'd like you to like lit., history, and poetry. Larry: Oh, a fellow cheese head for sure. Thank you so much, Ellen, for joining us today. Ellen: My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Larry: And by the way, you listeners out there, make sure you pass this interview on to others that you know would be interested, and they can find the entire thing, and download it at any time at ncwit.org, as well as w3w3.com. Thank you for joining us. Lucy: Thank you. Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Ellen SiminoffInterview Summary: Entrepreneurs are "people who would be just dreadful employees", says Ellen Siminoff. For those who go the entrepreneurship route, however, the appeal is in "the idea and the people and the excitement of creating something." Release Date: June 1, 2009Interview Subject: Ellen SiminoffInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 15:42

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Lisa Rau Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Confluence Date: April 27, 2009 Lisa Rau: Confluence Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women in Information Technology, or NCWIT. Today we're interviewing Lisa Rau, the CEO of Confluence Corp., as part of our NCWIT series "The Entrepreneurial Toolbox," and Lisa's going to talk to us today about everything you want to know about working with non-profits. We thought it would be especially interesting for this series to take advantage of Lisa's extensive experience working with non-profits and how they use technology and how it applies to social entrepreneurship. So, welcome, Lisa! Lisa Rau: Thank you! I'm glad to be here. Lucy: And with me today is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hello, I'm happy to be here. This is going to be an exciting interview for us because while our Internet radio show is strictly business, we do integrate various things where we help support non-profits and do interviews and provide links and so on, and so I can't wait to talk to Lisa. Lucy: Well, Lisa is a real role model in computer science. She has a Ph.D. in computer science and undergraduate degrees in EE and also has been in the IT industry for over 20 years. And she has extensive experience, as I mentioned, working with non-profits and I recently had the experience to chat with Lisa about this. So, very excited to talk to you about the non-profit space! Lisa: Great! Lucy: So, Lisa, tell us a bit about Confluence. What do you do? Lisa: Well, our mission is to provide information technology support and focus, of course, on the non-profit sector, and that's a wide variety of different kinds of things that's really based on what the non-profits have been asking us to do. Lucy: How did you come to focus on non-profits? What led you into that type of business? Lisa: Well, that's a good question. Many years ago, I had met a friend and a colleague who told me about his work providing technical support to non-profits and he was describing the wonderful people and the organizations and their mission that he interacted with and how rewarding he found the work was, and so when I next found myself in between jobs, a bunch of things all came together and that's where we came up with the name "Confluence." It was a "no time like the present" kind of thing and wanting to work for myself as an entrepreneur after 15, 20 years of working for someone else, wanting to create something of value, and then I had one of my close friends and colleagues, Jeff Sullivan, agree to come on board with me. We just jumped in. Larry: That's interesting. You've got to be certainly following your heart with a bunch of passion at that same time. Lisa: Absolutely. Well, of course we did our due diligence to make sure that there was a sound business model and that there really was a need for what we were thinking of offering, but since we couldn't be the do-gooders, we thought the next best thing was to help the do-gooders do better. Larry: Well, you know, they say there's quite a movement, almost a groundswell, of people really wanting to give back to the community. Of course, they've got to make a living and everything. So, for our listeners out there, could you explain the difference between working for a non-profit versus a for-profit? Lisa: Well, it ended up being different than I expected it would be coming from the for-profit world as I did. Of course, the non-profits are really focussed on their mission, and my experience has been that they tend to be less able or interested in investing in technology. I've been doing this for over eight years now. Most non-profits are really small, also. I think 90% are under a million dollars in revenue, so the majority of these organizations are just very small, so their use of technology is more limited and they also tend to have less in-house expertise. And they don't have, for example, a CTO, so they're going to turn to other outside organizations like ours for strategic support. And tech support providers in the for-profit world, there's a role for a CTO, but we as providers to non-profits have to be more versatile and strategic to provide a wide range of advice to them. Lucy: I have a follow up question to that. I also now run into more people now who are doing what I would consider non-profit work in a for-profit business model. So, do you see much of that, Lisa, sort of like "doing well by doing good for others." Do you see that type of business model very often? Lisa: Well, there's two types of business models that I've seen, and one is the classic, more social entrepreneurship where the idea is to use the profits for social benefit, or to leverage profits made in a for-profit business for philanthropy as in the Google Foundation and the Gates Foundation and so on. But I see a real role for traditional for-profit firms to support the non-profit sector. It's a very hard business because they don't have a lot of money and they are so small, but it does allow you to both come up with a sustainable business model, because that is a requirement for for-profit businesses, which I think is a better way to address the technology needs than having non-profit technology providers that may not have to provide a sustainable service. Lucy: Listeners to our podcast series will remember that we interviewed two non-profits, Witness and Kiva and their founders, and were really excited about their use of technology in a non-profit delivery. In Witness's case, it's the use of video to expose social atrocities around the world, and Kiva is microfinance. So, Lisa, where do you see the most innovative use of IT in the non-profit space? Lisa: Well, I think those are both really good examples of innovative use of technology, but from a bang-for-the-buck perspective, I think that what those systems really do is just get into more of the cultural mainstream and raise awareness for social causes and the potential for technology to assist with social causes, rather than the bottom line amount of money, for example, that's going to go through Kiva, or the real change that's going to happen just one by one. So, I think that the opportunity for social change is much more to create an environment as part of our culture that non-profits and social-oriented ventures are worth supporting and whether it's Green or whatever your passion may be. We have seen some other innovative uses, the Kiva and Witness that you cite are certainly very well-known ones. We've done a bunch of really fun things, like one of my favorites is for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. We created a little application where you send a nugget through on a Google Maps kind of integration across 50 states and whoever gets their little chicken nugget across the 50 states wins, which was kind of a fun use of technology. Lucy: Cute. That's cool. Larry: Right. Have you ever done anything with Ashoka? Lisa: I have interacted with Ashoka. I haven't worked for them. Our company hasn't worked for them. I know a number of people who work there, actually one of my clients is from Samaritan Inns went over there to work for them. They're wonderful leaders. Larry: Yeah. All right, now what are some of the challenges, Lisa, that non-profits should be looking out for as it relates to IT? Lisa: Well, the main one is that a lot of people offer non-profits free or a low-cost donations. Sometimes the organizations think that because it's free they should try to use the technology, and it's very much a buyer beware. The other challenge is just that they don't really have as much internal expert advise, the smaller organizations, in selecting the right technical approach or managing technical projects. So, because these are often outside the organization's expertise they can be risky. We see a lot of overpaying, simply due to a lack of technical expertise or a lack of real experienced managing technology projects. So, I think a little bit of real expertise can go a very long way, and would be a good investment for organizations trying to think strategically. Lucy: So, the biggest mistake a non-profit can make in IT is? Lisa: Well, I think probably not spending enough, being "penny wise and pound foolish," I'd think, the most common mistake. I don't know if that counts as biggest. The biggest in terms of dollars is probably choosing the wrong software system. Lucy: Probably worse is having some money and spending it poorly. Lisa: Exactly. That's a lot of that "penny wise and pound foolish" mentality. I also think not understanding the strategic importance of technology, and how with the right investments you can save money for your mission just fearing technology and not trying. Lucy: Absolutely, the case. Well, now you've worked with lots of non-profits, and now I want you to put yourself in the seat of somebody starting a non-profit. What would you do first? Lisa: Well, the first thing I'd do would be really look around to see who was doing what else. I've noticed independent of our technology focus that there's just a lot of duplication out there. A lot of people startup non-profits because they want to do something that they love, and they don't really care if someone else is already doing that. So, it's a fairly inefficient delivery system. So, I would want to make sure that my non-profit was addressing a real gap in service and dealing with real needs. I would also want to outreach to other partners, and really try to work collaboratively with the other members of the environment. Larry: Boy! Lisa, this has been a great interview, and it's really a pleasure. Since you're the expert, what is the question or so that we haven't asked that we should have asked? Lisa: Well, certainly starting a business is very, very scary. I think it was the best decision I ever made. I certainly have never regretted choosing to do something with the potential for meaning. It's been extremely gratifying from that perspective, but very scary. Even though the non-profits are a very difficult business to work for, because again they are small, it's incredibly rewarding to see what they're doing, and being a part of the wonderful works that they're doing. Lucy: So tell us, in closing, where is Confluence heading? What's the future for you? Lisa: Well, we're still growing, which is good news in this economic downturn. We're always looking for good people. We've been forming a lot more partnerships this year with other for-profit companies to provide complimentary services. The main thing from a technology end that we've been doing recently is we've been implementing a bunch of new Websites, a lot of focus on the social networking, what's the so-called web 2.0 technology? That's been a big part of what we've been doing recently. Of course, just as any business grows, we've been changing and we're looking at internal reorganization. It doesn't sound too sexy, but that's the reality of businesses as they grow. They have to change. Lucy: So, say a bit about the social networking and how non-profits can and should take advantage of that new channel. Lisa: Well, it's another one of those kind of buyer beware areas, because there is so much buzz. A lot of what we do is just explain to our clients what that really means and what their options are. A lot of them want to dive right in and have a lot of little widgets on their Website to interact with their audience, but there's no one there to monitor that or to feed it to make it a vibrant community. So, it ends up kind of a detraction. So, we're very much interested in ensuring that what gets deployed is appropriate for the environment and not a field of dreams. We have seen a lot of movement towards that. It's been a little slower, but non-profits are all about building community outreach, advocacy, education. These are all things that social networking can be very instrumental in. Larry: So, if I understood you right, it's better to have one or two widgets that you can really work with, rather than the whole group of 7-10? Lisa: Absolutely. I've even seen organizations try to start small with just say a blog, and they're not able to keep that up, because they don't realize that the technology is the easy part. It's the organizational part, where someone actually has to write the blog, and post it, and review comments, and so on, that has to be on there to keep it fresh and worthwhile. Lucy: Well, that's really true for us at NCWIT. We find that we have lots of distribution channels, and keeping the content supplied to those channels is really quite tough. It's more than a full-time job. Lisa: That's exactly what I'm talking about, and building things smartly so that they're not overrun with spam, and not insecure, and so on. Lucy: Well, so maybe in closing, let me ask this; so I'm the CEO of a non-profit, and in advising me, where would you tell me to start in technology? What would be the first thing to look at or the second thing to look at? What kinds of things do you often say to people like me, as it relates to this example? Lisa: Well, I'm a very big fan of a process that we do, not just self-serving there, but it's a strategic technology assessment that comes in and interviews all of the stakeholders and inventories all of the assets. That process can give the organization a complete understanding of where the opportunities are, so they that can then prioritize them and come up with a specific plan for the next couple of years. That really helps a new organization to get started. Lucy: That sounds like a good process. Larry: Yeah. It sure does. By the way, starting in March 2001, it's kind of like starting in March 2009, economic wise. Lisa: Exactly. Lucy: Oh, starting over. Yeah. I got it. It took my brain a little while, but I did finally get that. Well, Lisa thanks very much. It was great talking to you. Lisa: Thank you. It was wonderful! Larry: It was a pleasure. Once again, Lucy, I don't know how you and your team line up all these magnificent people, but NCWIT.org, you've got some wonderful connections and interviews, but lots of information. I must say that it's a pleasure for w3w3.com to host, and also to have a special channel for all of these interviews where you can tune-in 24/7. Make sure you tell your friends about it, and by the way, Tweet about it if you would like. Lisa: Tweet about it, only if Lisa says it's OK. Man 1: Is it OK, Lisa? Lisa: Sure. Larry: All right. Lucy: OK. Thank you very much, Lisa. Lisa: OK. Thank you both. Lucy: That was great. We really do appreciate it, and I'll be in touch. Larry: All Right. Lisa: OK. Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Lisa RauInterview Summary: Lisa Rau wanted to create something rewarding, something of her own, something of value when she created Confluence. As she discusses here, entrepreneurship is scary but incredibly satisfying: "with the risks come the rewards." Release Date: April 27, 2009Interview Subject: Lisa RauInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 15:53

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Anu Shukla Founder & CEO, Offerpal Media, Inc Date: February 7, 2009 Interview with Anu Shukla Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, the CEO for the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT. This is part of a series of interviews we're doing with outstanding women entrepreneurs who have started IT companies. They have just so much wealth of experience and passion around entrepreneurship to share with us. With me is w3w3.com's own Larry Nelson. Larry Nelson: Oh yeah, well she's making fun of me right now. Lucy: Yeah, I know, I know. Larry: Yeah. We love what we do because working with the organization and the contacts you have is fabulous. Lucy: Well, we're very excited to work with w3w3 and today, we're really excited to be interviewing Anu Shukla who's the founder and CEO of Offerpal Media. Now, this is really a great, great Website. People need to go check this out. Anu, though, is a Serial Entrepreneur. This is just her latest endeavor but it's really interesting because it uses an innovative Engagement Marketing model. Users win points for filling out surveys and doing other things and at the same time, it matches it up to advertisers. So, it's a win win-win for everybody and really works towards monetizing the web even more through advertising. So, Anu, tell us a little bit about Offerpal Media and what Engagement Marketing models are? Anu Shukla: Yes, thank you so much, thank you. First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show and I am also very excited about Offerpal Media. And as you mentioned, I'm a Serial Entrepreneur but I have to say this is probably the most exciting venture I have been involved with. Offerpal Media, as you mentioned, is a Virtual Currency Modernization Service. So, what this means is and I'll just put it in plain English for everybody, is if you use FaceBook or MySpace or if you play games, any kind of online casual games or role-playing games or MMORPGs as they're known, you play for free, basically. At a certain point, you want to advance your level in the game or you want to move faster or you want to procure weapons or you want to unlock custom features for your Avatar or you want to send virtual gifts to people. That will require you to conduct a microtransaction with that particular game or Website and you can either, take out your credit card and pay for things or you can use a service like Offerpal. Offerpal really matches the consumers up with the right advertisers. If you take one of their advertising offers which are generally, let's put it in the category of good deals, then, you would not only get a good deal from the advertiser but you also get the virtual currency points. You can send a premium gift or card, virtual gift or card as well. What happens then is that it's win-win, win situation for everybody. You have the consumer, they got points on their favorite game so they can advance and engage further with the game. The advertiser got a qualified customer or lead and the publisher got some revenue so they can continue to enhance and make the game even more engaging for their consumers. Offerpal facilitates that service through our platform and we take a portion of the revenue for doing that. Sorry for the long-winded answer but at the end of it, it's all about benefits and I just wanted to end up with all the benefits that we provide. Lucy: Well, I thought, I thought it was really interesting. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Some of the users around dating and poker and my son's a poker player so maybe he's used it. Anu: Yeah, most of the free to play poker games will give you a certain number of chips everyday but once you sit down at the table to play with five of your friends, all virtually. Let's say that you lose all your chips, you don't want to wait until the next day to play with them and so you are going to have to buy chips for a small amount of money or you can take one of these advertising offers and both of those scenarios are facilitated by Offerpal. In fact, all kinds of poker franchises use Offerpal and you'll see us showing up at the button in various games and Websites as earn bucks or earn poker chips or earn currency button. And, when you click on it where we come up with all the list of advertising offers and payment options. Lucy: Very cool. You know, Anu is a visionary and, in case you couldn't tell? Larry: Yeah. Lucy: In the area of Online Personalization and Marketing Automation and she, one of her former companies was Rubreck which was acquired by Broadbase so when we talk about her being a Serial Entrepreneur, it, quite a big deal. Larry: A big deal. Lucy: A big, big deal. So, Anu, you have a real track record with technology and so how did you first get into technology and obviously Engagement Marketing model is a petty cool technology. Do you see any other technologies today that you think are especially innovative? Anu: Sure, it was a bit, that was a series of questions so first of all how did I get into technology? I guess it was luck of the draw because I graduated with my MBA from Ohio and I happened to know somebody, which is lesson number, always remember to network. Just through my network, I knew somebody who had a small company here in California, in Silicon Valley and that was my first job out of, fresh MBA grad within a technology company and a start up. So, I've stuck with both of them ever since because it was personally, intellectually, and financially very, very rewarding. And it's something I really liked so that's how I ended up in technology. I really have an MBA. I have an undergraduate degree in history so it wasn't that I had none, done a lot of programming courses or even I was a competent hardware engineer or anything. But, I ended up in marketing job, this high-technology company starting with semi-conductors and moving on to databases and development tools for programmers, pretty technical in a B to B environment. So I worked for about six companies, all start ups, all of which were either acquired in a financially good, on good terms or they went public. So, after having done it about six times, I said, maybe I should do a start up myself rather than always working for other people's start ups. Because it was so rewarding, I think I've seen the process enough times, I'm comfortable. The area that I selected was Marketing Automation for a business to business environment because, guess what? I had been doing that for about 15 years. I had been a marketing executive in a business-to-business marketing environment for high technology companies. So I created some software for my peers, which is other marketing executives in the business to business environment that were selling technical products. That's how I started Rubreck which was a Marketing Automation software company that really pioneered the category of marketing automation. I had dealt with the problems of running a budget and using the Internet to communicate with my customers, all the nuances that come in to B-to-B marketing environment. And I've put that into software and made it into a company called Rubreck which was acquired about 19 months later by a publicly-traded company so it was a good financial exit for my investors and myself. That's how I set up a track record as an entrepreneur and was able to then get funding for my subsequent ventures including Offerpal. With Offerpal, what is so exciting about Offerpal and here's where we get to the technology opportunities that are emerging and remain. It was really that Offerpal was riding, the idea, the concept of Offerpal Media was really riding a few different and interesting waves. One of the big trends right now is social networking. A lot of people are spending time on FaceBook and on MySpace and on other social or community networking sites. Offerpal allows applications that work on social networks or social networks themselves to actually make money from all the visitors that they get. This we called Net Monetization and so that's an interesting and important problem. Everybody's spending time on social networks, how do you make money so that it's viable? We are an extremely important and viable option for making money on social networks, we're publishers. The second thing is the rise of the freemium model and so the freemium model is really, I don't know if you read the latest book called "Free." I think it's by the same author, I'm forgetting his name, went blank but it's all about how everything is free, but it's not really. Really, the model is all about getting a lot of consumers to engage with your product or service and that leads to up-selling and cross-selling. That's where you really make your money. The freemium model is really emerging in gaming, in online gaming so people are engaging, they will play, this has really expanded the universe of people who will play online games because they can actually engaged and try it for free. Offerpal is the center of monetization for the freemium model in online gaming and so that's an important trend that we're riding. And the third is the rise of virtual currency. Virtual currency is much more advanced in its usage and its popularity in Asian countries like Cyworld in Korea, which is a social network, all that income from virtual currency. Also in China with companies like Tencent and Xiao Nei which are all social networks that created billions of dollars of revenue from virtual currency. The virtual currency model is really being applied in European-based properties now and again, with it, the center of monetizing, virtual currency as well. Being that we're riding these three important waves, it's no surprise that we've seen some measure of success. And it also opens up lots of avenues for technology innovation in all these three areas. Larry: Mm-hmm, wow. I guess. Lucy: Pretty interesting virtual world. Larry: Is that ever but you and I are here right now. Lucy: Well, maybe. Larry: Yeah, maybe. Larry: I think it's pretty obvious why you became an entrepreneur but what is it about being an entrepreneur that makes you tick? Anu: Well, I think that entrepreneurs, I really feel that I'm on a mission every time I start a company. It's a really, a big problem that I'm trying to solve and I really love the people that I work with. Because of the nature of start-ups, the risks involved, the intensity and the tenacity that you have to have to be part of a start-up, you actually meet and work with like-minded people. So, essentially I like working with the people that work in my company but also with the industry at large, the kinds of people you meet are a reflection of what is important to you. I think, that's what really drives you, the process of creating something from nothing, the whole unknown that you are about to conquer and that along the way you're working with people that are like you that share the similar drive and passion and intensity. I think that's what makes an entrepreneur tick and once you officially hang out your board and say, "I'm in business, I'm a start-up. " Then it really becomes all about your responsibility to your, the things that you have to prove and the things that you have to do and the responsibility you take to the employees who leave their jobs and come and join you in your quest, you want them to be part of that success. Your investors, who believe in your idea and based on a business plan, plunk down millions of dollars. Then it's about proving to them or coming through for them. I think it's a combination of feeling a sense of pride and responsibility and also the creative process. Lucy: They're great answers. Being an entrepreneur is certainly all those things. You do have to have a good bit of intensity. For sure, to be an entrepreneur so, tell us about mentoring. You mentioned when we first started chatting with you that networking was important. We've heard over and over again that mentoring is important to an entrepreneur so tell us your take on mentoring. Anu: I think mentoring is very important and I'm coming from the perspective of somebody who hasn't really benefited from a lot of mentoring, official or structured mentoring. I think the reason I didn't benefit from it was because I wasn't very open to it and I've now realized that I could have benefited more, really been better in many ways had I actually been open to mentoring from other people. This is different, it's a different take that you will hear because a lot of people would say, I didn't find mentors or my mentors didn't have time for me. I didn't go looking for mentors and the ones that I did run into, I wasn't very open to their advice because I just felt that I knew it all. That's not actually correct so in hindsight, if there's one thing I've learned is that mentoring is really important. You have to actually find the right mentors that you can benefit from, and then you have to be open to listening to their advice and actually making behavior or strategy modification based on what you're learning. You always have to make up your own mind but if you're open, then you would listen to inputs from others and I'm getting a lot better with that now. Lucy: That's so interesting that you say that. I personally equate to that myself. It took me a while to get used to, in taking advice and not just taking advice but asking for it and then welcoming it. Anu: A lot of people, it is easier to approach mentors with a completely different expectation. I will have people approach me saying, "I really want you to mentor me," or "are you available to have lunch with me," or whatever. At the end of the day they're immediately looking for, can you help me find a job or can you give a career advice? It's very narrow, the scope. It's more about networking for referrals rather than mentorship. If you're really seeking a mentor, you should be prepared that they're not there to find you a job, they're not there to write you checks for your most recent venture although that maybe coming up sometimes. They're not just there to refer to other people so you can advance your business. They are there to understand what are your weakness and what are your challenges and give you specific advice on how to improve yourself and also as a sounding board for issues that you're facing. I think if you approach mentorship that way, your mentor will feel better and you will get a lot more than if you just get one referral to a business partner or a venture capitalist. Lucy: That's an excellent distinction between mentoring and networking and I'm sitting here thinking, if you were talking to a young person besides that particular piece of wonderful advice. What else would you tell them about entrepreneurship because I do think people make so many mistakes about mentoring and networking and all of those things, what other pearls do you have? Anu: Sure. I've come across two types of entrepreneurs. One is, the entrepreneurs who come across a business idea that they try out against all odds and they see certain signs of success. They just are so enamored and passionate about it, they can't wait to do it and they just jump headlong into doing it. Usually, they're right, actually, and they end up as young prodigies with huge business enterprises. That is one type of entrepreneur and what's really important in this is to have somebody who's smart enough to see an opportunity but also with blinding passion and drive to pursue it. Also, I keep in mind that not everybody will end up with a huge, an instinct that was completely correct, a great execution so they end up with a huge success at a very young age like the Google guys, right? Or the Yahoo guys, these were young people, students that found something and they said "oh this instinctively make so much sense. I love it" and then they went out and executed nearly perfectly for huge, huge gain-changing things. I'm just giving this as an example of a profile of an entrepreneur and how people come about it. So, it's important for young people listening in to see, am I that person? Am I a young person who has just come across this wonderful idea and I believe in it so strongly, I really want to pursue it and it's really, really important. The end result of this is really important. If you talk to the Google guys or entrepreneurs like the people who founded Google, yeah, they'll tell you that it was so compelling to create a better technology so people could find things more easily on the World Wide Web. It was such a huge idea that they had to pursue it and I was part of their academic curriculum but they saw the commercial viability and the benefit that could come about from it. If there are young people listening in that they have that, they should pursue it, they should, absolutely should pursue it. I don't think that good entrepreneurs are made when they just come out with, "I'll do anything, I just want to make money." I don't know, I think you have to be committed, really be passionate about the subject matter that you're pursuing or the idea you're pursuing. If it's a good idea and if you're really passionate about it, the money will come. That should not be your primary motive. Larry: Mm-hmm, very good. After getting your MBA, you went one company after another that all were successful. You've had successful companies but in this process, what is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Lucy: The toughest thing that you do in your career, is to make two kinds of moves at the same time. The two kinds of moves are, you are moving away from your subject matter that you know and you're also moving away from the functional model that you know. And you're trying to get into another company or start an enterprise in a completely different area at the same time; you're not going to be the functions. Let's say, you want to move from marketing to sales and you want to move from semi-conductors into software or into, make a bigger, you want to move from retail sales into technology sales. My advice is, that's a tough thing to do and I've done it a couple of times and I was able to make it work but it was certainly difficult to do. I would say, if you try to make one move at a time, it's probably easier. If you move from retail to technology, you may want to stick in sales rather than try to change your function from marketing to engineering at the same time. Lucy: It is hard to do that, two things at one? Anu: Yeah but in all fairness, I want to go back to the question? Lucy: Sure. Anu: That's a tough thing to do and I had to do it a couple of times. The toughest thing that I had to do was, in one of the start-ups that I did, realize= a year into it that it was never going to be a big idea. Lucy: Yeah. Anu: So I needed to change it and I needed to change it radically. I needed to change it now in half the venture money that I had to do this, the enterprise in the first place because I had spent half of it on, essentially a wrong idea, for the wrong time. And so, I had to take my little company down from 30 people to five people, going to a room and reinvent it and reinvent it on the time calendar, on a clock. That's the toughest thing because innovation doesn't come on a timer. And in having to abandon what you are so passionate about and move into another. That is the toughest thing I've ever done. Lucy: We've heard that a number of times, that they're very consistent, downsizing, laying people off, leaving an idea behind that you felt passionate about. Anu: Yeah, really, it's hard to downsize of it but really, the worst part is abandoning the idea that you, you went out you had an idea. You were so passionate about it. You were able to sell people to put money into it and you have to sell people into joining your company and you have to sell the initial customers into buying it. Then, you have to turn around and say, it was not the right idea and we're going to abandon all of it and start over. That's really hard. Lucy: We like to ask people as part of this interview series, words that describe your personal characteristics that you believed gave you advantage as an entrepreneur. We hear things. I won't bias your answer. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: What characteristics do you think really you have that make you a successful entrepreneur? Anu: I think a high tolerance for risk is one. Lucy: Mm-hmm. Anu: The second is a good vision about where the market is now and where it's going so to be able to really apply the creative process towards the right things, moving in your idea. You have to have some vision about where you are now and where you could be and how markets would emerge. Being able to spot those trends, I think, early enough and being able to do something about it. I think those are things that help me create the right ideas or change it or polish it into the right ideas so being open to the idea that, that idea was good. It probably needs some polishing and then adaptability. Being able to adapt to change because change, ups and downs, do happen and they happen very, very frequently. Being able to adapt to that, I think, has also made me, this part of my entrepreneurial achievement or satisfaction with the process because I'm prepared to accept those changes. Larry: Wow, that's wonderful. It's easy to tell that you're a very busy executive. How do you bring about balance in your personal and your professional lives? Anu: Yes, that is something I don't think anybody has the perfect answer to and I suffered a lot especially after I had my children between the whole, horrible feeling of guilt. Why was I working and not spending more time with my children because certainly I didn't need to work. I could have spent all my time, 100 percent, 24 hours a day with my kids. So, why wasn't I doing that? And the reason is I just think I'm a better person when I don't. The reason is I think, I'm a better person when I'm engaged in entrepreneurial activity which I love and enjoy and have passions about, at the same time, I allow enough time and energy to raise my children and be with them. I determined for myself that I was not going to be able to do just one or the other, I had to do them both. So then it gets to the question of how do you balance the two? I think that with me, especially with this additional demands on my time, with the family situation, what I learned to do was to really hire and it became a necessity, it's something I wanted to do all along, but now, it just became completely, completely something that I couldn't live without which is to hire a great team and not micromanage them. I did focus a lot on surrounding myself with bright people and letting them, enabling them and empowering them to make independent decisions and not getting in their way, not micromanaging it so that's one thing. The second thing is, actually, it's more mental than anything else which is realizing that there are going to be times where you're going to be the best mother in the world and there are going to be times where you're going to be the best chief executive in the world. And those two don't necessarily happen on the same day. Lucy: That's amen, great. Anu: When you realize that, you said, OK there are some Parent-Teacher meetings and things I will just not miss, that's it, I'm going to be there. I don't care what great business opportunity I'm going to lose by doing that. I'm sorry, that's what I had to do. And there are times where my kids are just going to have to know that Mom is in New York for a conference and she'll be gone for two days so, I'm sorry, I won't be there. Those are the, you just have these tough choices and just live by them. Lucy: I'd say that was pretty close to perfect answer. It's wonderful. You did really achieve a lot in your career and you have, I'm sure, a bright future. Give us just a few words about what you see as next for you? Anu: I just think that, I realized a while ago because as you know, I've been fortunate enough to work with some great teams so that we will all have some measure of success. And so, I think that when do you feel you've had enough is a personal choice for everybody. This is my third start-up and I still don't feel I've had enough and so I just let my internal center guide me as to when is the time to call it quits to change and right now, that isn't the time. And I'm not trying to put this on a time calendar or a schedule as well. Right now, I just love what I'm doing so I look at what's next for me and I think what's next for me right now is to make Offerpal Media, to focus 100% on Offerpal and make it as big a success as possible. That's where my vision ends right now for that piece of it and of course, it does not end ever with my kids. It's all about, how can I do more things with them and how can I engage with them more, how can we do more things together, what's good for them and so on and so forth and how much I like to be with them and that never ends. I'm focused on that and then, when I do think beyond, after Offerpal reaches some kind of a successful conclusion for me personally, what do I do next? And I can't really think of what, if I'll do another start-up or not. I'm just not there yet. I do think that it would be fun to have, to do something completely different such as go to Washington, D.C. and serve in some capacity over there or my favorite of all times is to be a talk show host. Lucy: I love it. You can help us with these interviews. That would be awesome. Anu: I was thinking more television. Lucy: OK, all right. We may have to move it. Larry's been doing television lately and so there you go. Anu: Yeah. I see, that's, I've always thought that would be a lot of fun. I watch people like Charlie Rose and I think he has the best job in the world. He gets to engage with all these people and really get into the heart of things so that's what I think about it. Maybe some career in that talk show, host-type environment. Larry: We'll follow you. Lucy: We will. We'll be right there. We really do appreciate your time. These have just been very insightful answers and really appreciate it. I want to remind listeners where they can find the interviews. Larry: In w3w3.com. Lucy: W3w3.com. Larry: It's one place. Lucy: And also at the NCWIT Website, www.ncwit.org. So thank you very much. We really appreciated it. Anu: Thank you so much. Bye, bye. Lucy: Bye. Larry: Bye, bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Anu ShuklaInterview Summary: Anu Shukla and her co-founder Mitch Liu brainstormed the idea for Offerpal in response to a good cause: helping friends donate to a favorite cause by participating in offers. They built an application to connect clicks with causes, made it vailable to a variety of other applications, and watched as the idea took off. Release Date: February 7, 2009Interview Subject: Anu ShuklaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 29:21

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Dina Kaplan Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer, blip.tv Date: December 22, 2008 Dina Kaplan: blip.tv [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT and this interview is part of a series we've been running for a couple of years now in which we interview women who have started IT companies and we learn just fabulous lessons from these women. And we're very excited today to be interviewing Dina Kaplan. With me today is Larry Nelson on w3w3.com. Welcome, Larry. Larry Nelson: Oh, I'm happy to be here. Believe me, I love the topic that we're going to be talking about. Lucy: Well, and with us is Dina Kaplan. Dina has had a very interesting career all the way from being a news reporter and I know is our first interviewee who has won an Emmy Award. Dina Kaplan: Oh, is that right? Oh, my. Thank you. Well, it's an honor to be here. So, thank you for having a good memory to have dug that up. Lucy: Well, Dina is the CEO and co-founder of Blip TV which is a very interesting site and provides a valuable infrastructure for the video blogging community and has some very interesting episodes on there. I had fun watching 'Drinking with Bob.' Dina: Actually, this is high brows weekend I have to say. Lucy: Is this high brows you get? Dina: I'm just teasing. Lucy: Well, it's really a great site. So, welcome. We're really happy that you're here to share with us today about entrepreneurship. Dina: Thank you, Lucy. And thank you, Larry. It's really great to chat with both of you. Lucy: So, we really wanted to ask you first how did you first get into technology? What caused you to make that jump between being a TV news reporter and now you're founder of a technology company. Dina: Right. It's a definite jump from the traditional media to the new media. I had worked at MTV News as an associate producer producing stories about the very early days of the Internet, about music and about politics. Then, as you mentioned, became an on-air TV reporter. And now, I'm definitely firmly in the new media world. So, I would say, first of all, that it's a big jump from the mindset of a traditional media person to a new media person. But, you'll notice that that word 'media' is still in both of those terms and I think that's very important to mention. We definitely at Blip.tv on TV view ourselves as a media company and I believe that for a lot of these new media companies, or digital media, whichever term you prefer, if the technology is good enough which, hopefully, it is, at a certain point, it feeds away and you think more about the media than the technology that enables it. If you go back a few decades, NBC, and CBS and all those broadcast networks that we now think of media companies, back in their early days, they were considered technology companies. So, I think we'll see that same transition happen with the new media companies. But, I will answer your question and I will say that it's incredibly rewarding to be at a new media company that's not betting on hits and banking on hits. And essentially, having the authority to give a green light or a red light to a project. So what Blip.tv is a very democratic network where anyone can upload a show and if it's good, the show will amass hundreds of thousands or, potentially, even millions of viewers and can also have the opportunity to make money as well. You're never going to have that type of democratic platform with a traditional TV network because just by their nature, they need to invest in hits, and bank on that and hope that something is really huge because there's a limited number of bandwidth over those airwaves. So, part of the reason that I jumped over to new media that it met with my values and my beliefs that anyone who's talented should have a chance to succeed and it shouldn't be up to one programming chief to decide what gets a green light and what does not. Lucy: Well, it's a great value proposition for sure. Larry: It certainly is. Dina, would you mind just giving us a quick differentiation between YouTube and Blip.tv. Dina: Sure. Blip.tv is essentially a media company that has 3, 000 active shows on it. They are uploading an average of four new episodes a month, so about one new episode a week. And on that, we get overall for the whole mackerel of all of those shows, we've got 62 million video views a month and I should add that that goes up about 11% a month, month over month and has for the last twelve months straight. So, whereas YouTube has lots of great content, they have viral videos that may be a one off video that's funny or amusing, or it might be a trailer from a new film that's coming out. They might have some broadcast programming. They might some original shows. They have a huge and wonderful variety of clips. Blip.tv is much more like a television network that's on the Internet. So, the only thing that we have on Blip is original, serialized shows that have loyal and persistent audiences that are building up over time. And they have brand names. So, the people that are creating shows on Blip, many of them think of this as a business, not as just a hobby and it's a very different mindset than the mindset of someone that's just going to do one clip and hope it gets a lot of views, but really just do one thing. Lucy: Well, it's an exciting company. You have a lot of passion just like lots of entrepreneurs have which leads me to my next question. Why are you an entrepreneur? What about that makes you tick? Dina: I have to say there is nothing better than calling up a show creator and saying, "Hey, you know what? This show that you have been toiling over and doing one new episode of every week for the past year," or for some people, even a few years, "Hey, we just brought in a sponsor for your show and you're not going to make money doing that." That is an incredibly rewarding feeling and, look, if we succeed at Blip.TV, which really just means that the shows are succeeding. We are hoping to create a new media and, in some ways, a true new media type which is that anyone who has talent, and an idea for a show, and a camcorder, or a digital camera, or a very well shooting cellphone can create a show that could be every bit as good as a show that you might see on broadcast television or on cable. So, I really fundamentally believe in what we're doing. It's exciting to be part of a team, and there are five founders of Blip, so I'm one of five founders. But, the only female founder, relevant in terms of the topic of this show to feel that we've created this and we built this up from nothing to having 62 million video views and we're sending out lots, and lots and lots of checks to content creators every month is an incredibly rewarding feeling. So, I absolutely love it and the other thing that I love, which is going to sound funny to you guys, but I like the idea of being part of the functioning New York economy and part of the functioning American economy. I love that we're hiring people. I look forward to even paying some taxes. It's a great feeling to be contributing value. To content creators, hopefully lots of entertaining content for millions and millions of viewers. And then, just to be part of the whole functioning economy and building value in that sense is something that I'm very proud of. Larry: Dina, whether it be a mentor or someone who was a great role model for you, who is the person that probably influenced or supported you most in your career path. Dina: The person that I think of first when you ask that question is Jerry Layborn. The first thing she did when I did not even know her, but I graduated from Wesleyan University. I'm not on the national board of Wesleyan. So, I'm involved in the school and a huge supporter of it. She didn't attend there. But, I believe it's her husband attended there and one of her kids attended there. So, I knew she had that connection. So, I emailed her out of the blue and said, "Hey Jerry. My name is Dina Kaplan. I'd love to work at MTV. I know that you're working at Nickelodeon, which is part of that ViaCom family. Would you maybe forward my resume to someone over at MTV News?" And without knowing me, she agreed to take a call, and then she agreed to take a meeting and she ended up getting me a job. Or, helping me, I should say, get a job at ViaCom and I'll never forget that. But then, just as importantly, or perhaps even more importantly, when Blip was starting, we were doing a number of small deals. We were bringing on some content creators, we were doing some distribution deals, we were syndicating content to iTunes, to blogging platforms such as Word Press, Type Pad and a few others. But, we had no revenue deals. So, I remembered this Jerry Layborn connection, she, at the time, was running Oxygen and I happened to be at a cocktail party that she was at. And someone at the party asked me, "Dina, I love to support women entrepreneurs. I know you're starting a young company. Who at this party would you like to meet?" And I said I'd like to meet Jerry Layborn. So, she walked me over. She said, "This is Dina Kaplan. She's starting a company that runs video on the web and you guys should talk." And Jerry said, "Can you come see me tomorrow?" I said, "Yes." She said, "Here's my number. Call me. I'll block off whatever time it is that you can come in." So, sure enough, she did and I came in the next day. And I pitched her on, essentially, enabling content that they needed for Oxygen that would've required some money from them. It was a big meeting for us. It was very important. We walked out of that meeting and she said, "We're going to close this deal. We are going to make sure you get some revenue for the company." And I envisioned my job as being - enabling the next generation of women who were working in media to take leadership roles. So, sure enough the deal closed. Sure enough, that deal enabled us to get a much bigger deal with CNN and eventually the whole Turner brand. And I am not sure that Blip.tv would have taken off if it were not for Jerry Layborn. So, I will always be grateful to her and her mentorship for the rest of my life. Lucy: It really sounds like she gives a lot to entrepreneurs. Dina: She is incredibly supportive of women. She's wonderful person and all that I can hope for is the opportunity to pay that forward to many other women who are coming up behind all of us. Lucy: Well, that gets me to the next question around advice to young people around entrepreneurship. If you were sitting here with a young person and giving them some amount of wisdom about entrepreneurship, what would you say to them? Dina: I think that the most important thing is two key bits of advice. One of which is to just do it. If you have an idea for a company, you should not belabor the thinking about whether you should jump into this or not for years on end and ponder every possible scenario. There's something to be said for just getting started and I am definitely putting my money where my mouth is, or however that expression goes, because once we had the idea for Blip, we literally launched the company three days later which brings me to the second point of advice, which is that it's very important to build your business by getting feedback from your customers. So, we launched Blip. Our product was not great when started and we knew that it wouldn't be. But, what we did do was identify thought leaders in the audience that we were seeking to grow from which was content creators; people producing original web shows of which there were about five to ten when we started. But, we sought out the best ones and we asked for their advice and said, "What should we do, and what do you need and how can we help solve problems for you?" And we just iterated the product. At that point, we were doing new releases every two weeks. So, we learned from them. It was very much of a grassroots, bottom up development rather than saying, "OK. We thought about this for five years. Here's the product. Take it or leave it." So, I'd say start, and then iterate and constantly listen to people and learn from them. Larry: Dina, with all the things that you've been through and everything else, what would you say is probably the toughest thing that you had to do in your career? Dina: I think the toughest thing is figuring out time management and figuring out how to balance your priorities. I should mention that one of the tough things should not be questions about values. I think that, as an entrepreneur, you have opportunities to make very short term moves that would be greatly, say, financially beneficial to your company or greatly drive up your number of users. But if, in any way shape or form, anything you do ever compromises your ethics, that should not even be a consideration. So, we are so proud of the way that we are running this company to try to, just essentially, say, "All we're doing is supporting shows." So, we have no goals for ourselves for Blip other than trying to make life easier for really talented producers on the web. So, that makes a lot of decisions really easy. In terms of the tough scenarios, it's just trying to prioritize your time and trying to stay in very, very close touch with your customers, and just always being really humble and really knowing that you're never going to have all the answers. Whatever it is that you're looking at, there's someone out there, there's a group of people that know that area of expertise incredibly well because they're doing it all the time and you're probably doing 50 different things. So, as much as you can engage the experts in every aspect of your business and continue to learn from them, listen a lot and not talk too much, then I think you'll be in pretty good shape. Lucy: What personal characteristics do you have that you think make you a successful entrepreneur? Dina: I think one of the things is listening and engaging people. As an entrepreneur, you have this tendency to just put your head down and work, and work something like 18 or 19 hours a day. You have all of these things that require your time at the office whether it's setting up your P&L or getting the whole pro formas projected out for the next ten years correct, to getting all your bills paid, making sure the product works. All of these things that require you to be in the office. But I believe it's as important to be out within the community that you're serving so go out, go to cocktail parties that are related to your space, go to tech meetups and video meetups. Those are some social elements that are important to our community. And then in terms of advertisers, go to advertising meetups, take every meeting that you can with advertisers when you're just beginning to bring in revenue from brands and from agencies. Another part of our world is distributors. So we need to spend time with iTunes and find out what's important to them, and the folks at AOL Video and Yahoo Video, and all of the other great video destination sites. So I have a tendency to be pretty social and to enjoy engaging in dinner parties and cocktail parties, and just spending a lot of time listening to people. And I think that that's very valuable to your business. It's going to be valuable when you want to raise money - it's much easier to raise money from people you know than to make cold calls - and it's also going to be valuable when you do business development deals. I will say that almost every startup will be part of an ecosystem. It's very hard for a startup to just exist on its own. So for us the early players in that ecosystem were WordPress, Typepad, Flickr, iTunes, a number of other distribution platforms and then also content creators. And we had to get out there. We had to hang out with them. We had to be in a position where those folks trusted us both personally and also trusted our product. So I think the inclination to engage with people and learn from them is a helpful aspect when you're starting a company up. Lucy: Absolutely, and you know with all the interviews we've done, I think this is the first time someone has answered this question this way. Larry: Yes. Lucy: And it's a very important observation. Larry: Yes, and obviously meeting Jerry Labon at one of these networking events, cocktail parties, I think that was a fine example. Dina: Yeah, I mean that was a huge turning point. And if I think about other very crucially important deals that we made for Blip early on, we did a pretty early partnership with Google AdSense for Video which is their video ad product. And that relationship was forged through someone that I met at a conference, sitting at a big lunch room around an eight person table. And we struck up a conversation, and it took a few months to close that deal but we ended up closing that deal which was lucrative for Google, I'm not going to say hugely lucrative, we're a small blip on their radar screen at this point, but it was a beneficial relationship for them. I think they actually tested that product on Blip before they did on YouTube. And it was incredibly important for us. If I look back to almost ever early business development deal that we did, it was through someone that I or someone else from Blip met at a conference, or at a digital media meetup, or at a digital media party, et cetera. So it is definitely important to be a part of the ecosystem that you're in. And then I'll add, you also clearly need to spend time on the product, and you need to spend some time in the office as well. Larry: And that's a fact. Dina, you've already accomplished a great deal. Here you've got Blip.tv, 62 million viewers per month and that number is growing constantly. What's next for you? Dina: So the next thing for us is to vastly expand our distribution platform. So we have this belief at Blip that every show created for the web has what's called a total potential audience, and you are never going to reach that total potential audience on one site. Why is that? That's because a music lover in Britain may only want to watch their video on Bebo, so we have to get our videos to Bebo.com. And someone that's old school Internet user may only want to go to AOL Video, so it's very important for us to make our content available on AOL. Other people just love their MySpace of Facebook pages, so we need to make our content available there. So what you'll see in 2009 is Blip.tv announcing a number of significant distribution deals to get our content into every nook and cranny of the web, and then some places off the web as well. We've already announced deals with Tivo, with Sony Bravia and with Fios, but we'll have some other deals as well. The second thing that we are going to focus on in 2009 is making things a little bit easier for advertisers to "buy" web video content. Right now it's very difficult for them to make buys because they need to come up with one type of creative for one side, a different type of creative for Blip, a third type of creative for another publisher. So we're going to be working with a number of other video destination sites and a number of the top web show creators such as Michael Eisner's team out in LA called Tornante, DECA Group which does this great show called "Boing Boing," another show called "Project Lore," "Momversation," and others. 60Frames and other key producers such as those to figure out, how we can come up with standards so that it's much easier for advertisers to make buys across multiple shows, on multiple platforms. And then there are some other tools that we are going to be collaborating with other folks in our ecosystem on to essentially streamline the whole system of buying for advertisers. Lucy: That's going to be a busy year. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: And we really do appreciate your time. This has been really a great company. And I wrote myself a little note here that you are democratizing TV. [laughs] Dina: No, that's exactly right. I mean if you really wanted to have a show on the air in the past - I mean a big show that has say, millions of viewers to it - you'd have to knock on the doors of NBC or Bravo or Sony Studios and just pray that you would get a deal. Now, you can just do the show and you can build up huge viewership for it and you can make money too, and do all of that not having a boss, not having a network chief telling you what to say or how to wear your hair. So I think that's an incredibly exciting thing for us and for talented show creators. But I think it's a little bit of a nervous time for the traditional networks in trying to think, how we compete with the massive content that's on a platform like Blip. Lucy: Well I have an idea for a show: "I Love Lucy." [laughs] Larry: Oh. Lucy: That's just a little joke. I'm sure someone took that one already. Larry: I love it. Well one of the things that I really appreciate is the fact of what you're doing. Pat and I, we have had w3w3.com talk radio for 10 years now, and things sure have changed over that time. Lucy: Yes, they have. Thank you, Dina, so much. Dina: Thank you, thank you for your time. It was wonderful to chat with both of you. Larry: By the way, you listeners out there, make sure you pass this interview along to others that you think would be interested. They can listen to it on... Lucy: NCWIT.org. Larry: And w3w3.com. Lucy: Thank you, and thank you Dina. Dina: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Dina KaplanInterview Summary: blip.tv wants to provide a great service for great shows. A new class of entertainment is emerging that is being made by the people without the support of billion-dollar multinationals. blip.tv's mission is to support people by taking care of all the problems a budding videoblogger, podcaster or Internet TV producer tends to run into. They take care of the servers, the software, the workflow, the advertising and the distribution, leaving clients free to focus on creativity. Release Date: December 22, 2008Interview Subject: Dina KaplanInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 21:46

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Jessica Jackley Co-Founder, kiva.org Date: September 29, 2008 Jessica Jackley: Kiva Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is one in a continuing series of interviews that we are doing with women who have started either IT companies or organizations that are based on information technology. We are very excited that we have Jessica Flannery here today from Kiva to talk to us. Also with me is Larry Nelson, from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: It's really a pleasure to be here and I must say we are getting tremendous feedback from not only adults who are having their children listen to some of these interviews, but some of the employers that are looking for more women and more technical people to get into the business which is sometimes a very good step to becoming an entrepreneur. Lucy: Also with me today is Lee Kennedy who is a Director of NCWIT and a serial entrepreneur herself. Right now, her current company is called Tricalix. Hi Lee. How are you? Lee Kennedy: Hi Lucy. Hi Larry. It is so good to be here. Larry: It is. We are the three L's, right? Lucy, Lee and Larry or something. Lucy: Or something. Welcome Jessica. We are very happy to have you with us today and the topic that we are going to talk about, I mean, you're fabulous social entrepreneur, and I think that this whole area of micro-finance and what Kiva is doing is just fascinating. And as part of this interview, we all went and spent time on the Kiva site and just really got lost in all the wonderful stories that are our there. So welcome. Jessica Flannery: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Lucy: Well, for our listeners, I'm sure everybody knows but it bears repeating that Kiva is the first peer to peer micro loan website. It really demonstrates how the Internet can be used to facilitate these meaningful types of connections between people who want to lend money and entrepreneurs all over the world especially in developing countries, how we can all help each other really move the economies ahead. It's a really fascinating website. So Jessica, why don't you just spend a minute and tell us a bit about Kiva. Jessica: Sure. You said it very, very well and very concisely. We are the world's first person to person micro lending website so anybody in the world can go onto the site, browse business profiles and entrepreneur profiles really I should say. Whether that person is a farmer or selling small goods in their village or a seamstress or a restaurant owner, there are all different kinds of small business. And you can lend as little as $25 to that entrepreneur and over time you get updates on that business and then you get paid back. Larry: Wow! Lucy: Well, and Kiva is a fairly young organization. I read someplace that you started a bit of a hobby website and it just exploded. Jessica: Yeah. It's been a very, very busy last four years. Four years ago, I learned about micro-finance and decided that's what I want to do. I quit another job and I went to East Africa for a few months to see it up close and personal. While I was there it was impossible not to be deeply moved by the stories of success of people that I was meeting. People who had used often just a $100 to change their lives and lifted their families out of poverty. So, I became really excited about these stories and wanted to share them with my own friends and family. And as I did that, my husband Matt and I kept asking not just "Oh, this is great. Micro-finance works, but wow, how do we, and our friends and family, how do we enable people to lend money directly to these individuals we're meeting?" So, it started out with a very specific way, very specific context with individuals who we had met face to face in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda who we wanted to help. We wanted to participate in their amazing stories, and we wanted to see them get to the next level. So what we did was basically Matt came to visit me during his time in East Africa, and then he went back home, built our website. We emailed our friends and family and said "Hey, we have seven businesses in Uganda that we'd like to lend a total of $3,000 to. Do you want to pitch in?" Then overnight that money came in and we sent that along to Uganda. We had a six month kind of beta round with these seven entrepreneurs in Uganda. After the six months they had repaid, we took the word beta off of our website and that launched us. And that was just in October of '05, so not even quite three years ago. Our first year was $500,000 a month, the second year was $13.5 million more, and today we're just around $45 million, and we haven't even finished our third year. So it's grown very rapidly. Lucy: And you have an incredible payback on the loans, incredible payback percent. Jessica: Yeah, it's in a high 90 percentage. That's representative of a micro finance alone, not just our site. Lucy: But wow, that's just and incredible history and such a good cause as well. One of the things that I noticed there was a Soft-tech video on YouTube that I watched that I thought was very interesting. Where you mentioned that you all created the tool that Kiva uses really to match lenders and entrepreneurs without really knowing how the world would use it to your previous story. This gets us to our first question which is around technology, and I thought you would have a really interesting spin on this. You know, how in general do you see technology helping missions like those of Kiva? Slightly different than potentially a four-profit business but you have incredibly interesting uses of technology. So what do you see in the future? Jessica: Kiva does a lot of different things, but our mission is to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty. The real key there is to connect people. The money transfer is very interesting, and technology obviously helps that happened, but what really we care about is this connectivity. Loans happen to be a great tool for poverty alleviation as well as connectivity. I mean, if you lend me something and I have it and I'm fully giving it back to you, you're going to pay a little bit more attention usually, than if you just donate something and I tell you how that's going forever and ever. That back and forth communication is obviously free or a lot less expensive. It's quick. It's real time. You can see on the other side of the planet how this person is waiting right now today for that $200 that's going to allow them to start their business. So there are all these elements, but then technology makes it faster, more efficient, less expensive and just overall easier to have that human connection happen. Very specifically while I said the money is not the point, it's a great tool for a lot of things. For example, we've had a lot of help from great technology leaders out there that we've been able to leverage. So PayPal, we're the first non-profit to have PayPal generously agree to provide free payment transactions. So we have literally zero variable costs for sending these little bits of money back and forth all around the planet every day. Lucy: Well, one thing too, I'm a technologist so I'll get off this question in just a minute. I know Larry and Lee are looking at me like "Let's move off the technology." But I do have one more thing to observe here, because this is a different kind of interview than we've done. There is a whole growing area called ICT for D which is Information and Communication Technology for Developing World and one of the things that I have read that you either have done or will do is you make an offline browser so that people can conserve power on their computer, sort of a low energy kind of browser so they don't have to be always plugged in. That's an example of the type of technology around ICT for D that you have to start thinking about the climates and the situation and the resources that people have all around the world. Jessica: It's been very, very interesting for us to see, even how sometimes we'll have really wonderful generous lenders say, "Hey, I also want to donate financially or otherwise." And let's say they send a great batch of brand new video cameras for us to send out to the field. Well, sometimes actually a lower tech solution is better, because of the technology that's available in the field. So maybe we don't need the highest quality photos, the highest res photos, maybe a lower tech solution is better. That's been interesting to watch, just figuring out really what's the best and what's the most appropriate tools to get the job done. Lee: That's exactly right. Lucy: So, we normally ask what it is that you love about being an entrepreneur, but since you're working with entrepreneurs it would be great to hear about the stories from the entrepreneurs out of Kiva, as well as what it is that love about this whole environment and the entrepreneurship. Jessica: OK. This is a really good question. What I found is the idea of being an entrepreneur, I think that's really attractive to a lot of people. I think there are some, I don't want to put value judgments on it, good or bad, better or worse, but I think sometimes it has to do with freedom or this idea of being your own boss, or something like that. For me, my introduction to business and my entrepreneurship at all was in Africa seeing people who were gold hunters, or subsistence farmers, or fishermen, or people who were basically entrepreneurship to them was doing what they needed to do every day to survive. It was definitely not an option. They had to do the next thing, figure out the next step to get closer and closer to their goal to find food, and they could survive that day. It was very hand-to-mouth sort of entrepreneurship. It wasn't what we usually think of in Silicon Valley as entrepreneurship being super innovated perhaps or anything like that, but in context it was as innovative as anything else in Silicon Valley would have been, and as much entrepreneurship as anything else that you would see in other places of the world. For me, it's funny. I guess yet that it's true, when you look back at what we've done in Kiva the last four years, great! We have been social entrepreneurs, but we didn't go out thinking, I definitely thought over the years, over the last few years, "Oh, social entrepreneurship. How great! I want to do something like that." Then what happened is you have to get specific. You have to start with something specific. So, we started to do Kiva, a very, very specific mission of Kiva, and then retroactively we're like, "Oh, yeah. I guess that's what we're doing. It's pretty entrepreneurial, isn't it?" It came down to, "We have this mission, and we're going to do whatever we need to do everyday to make it happen. We're going to be scrappy if we need to. We're going to iterate. We're going to put things out there that maybe aren't even perfect. We're going to keep moving, and everyday say, 'What can we do next to meet our goals?'" That's what it felt like to me to be entrepreneurial. I think it's really been informed by the people that originally inspired us in the first place, and these micro-entrepreneurs all over the world. Lucy: You know what? That's just what entrepreneurs do. Everyday they're looking around, trying to figure out what they can do better. Do you have a story or two that you can share with some of the entrepreneurs that have taken loans and been successful, and then paid the loans off? Jessica: Sure. I mean there are so, so many. It's actually one of the hardest questions I get, because really I mean every one of them is amazing. If you want an amazing success story, I can tell you for example there was a woman that really was one of the very first people I ever met in East Africa. She did such amazing stuff. She had started one business, like a charcoal selling business. She had gotten them $800. For that initial business, she did like the equivalent of what a multi-national corporation would do, like all the principals were there. She started the one business, and then she diversified. Then she expanded, not from her local market, she went to markets in other trading centers and other villages. She extended beyond her geographic region. She started five other small businesses of all different types. I mean really things that you really wouldn't think would be related. What she did was she got practice, and then she got very good at seeing market needs and seeing opportunities. So, she had the capitol after time, and she was able to say, "Huh." I think of a very small caring business that you could start with $200 or $300. I think that's what made it. So she did that, and she did the next thing, and the next thing. She just blew me away, because you knew that had she just been dealing in another environment with bigger numbers, she would be the head of a huge multi-national corporation that was doing all sorts of different things really well. So, people like that just always blow me away. I would say truly, it sounds like a bit of a cheesy answer, but the real truth is any story that you read on the Kiva site, there's something to learn, there's something to appreciate, and there's something good. I think say, "Hey! Good job there, " to the entrepreneurs for doing it, because each person is taking a risk even just in accepting a loan, and putting themselves out there and saying, "I'm going to try. I'm going to try to do things differently. I'm going to try and make my life better, and life for my family better." Just taking advantage of that opportunity is something I think should really be applauded, and in and of itself is really a triumph and a great thing, a great thing to see happen. So, that's the hardest question to answer, because all of the entrepreneurs that you can see, I truly find inspirational in something. Lucy: Well, thank you for sharing that. That really is inspirational. Lee: Well, the other thing, and I'm sure somebody has already tumbled to this, there's a business book in this. When you said that she was making all the right entrepreneurial business moves, there's got to be a lot of nuggets of wisdom in there. Larry: You had mentioned offline Jessica, that you are involved with Ashoka? Jessica: Well, yes. I mean, I have found a lot of inspiration in Ashoka over the years, and sort of been introducing the idea of social entrepreneurship through Ashoka. Additionally, he has been honored with the Ashoka Fellowship very recently. We're really excited to be part of that community. Larry: Congratulations! Let me get on with another question here. Who has been either a role model or a mentor in your career, in your life? Jessica: Oh, my goodness! Now, that's the hardest question. I feel like I have been so blessed and so surrounded by encouragers. I mean, can I say like my top five? Larry: OK. Jessica: My parents first and foremost have always given me... Actually, it was really funny. I watched the Emmys last night. I actually don't have a television, but I was with and brother and sister-in-law in L.A., and we were watching the Emmys a little bit. She was saying something funny. She was like, "Thanks to my mom and dad for giving me confidence, that was to the portion that was my looks and ability." It was like "that's what my parents said." My parents first and foremost made it without question an obvious thing, that I could do anything I wanted to in the world. So, that was kind of the foundational piece in a very supportive family. There's been a few others. When I heard Dr. Hamadias speak, his story spoke to me like no others had at that point. That's what propelled me to quit my job and go off and try to figure out micro-finance for myself, and try to do something like what he did, like walk around meet people, listen to their needs, and help. So, he gave me a huge inspiration. Then I guess, the other person I'll mention is Brian Reynolds actually gave me that opportunity to go. He is the Founder and Executive Director of a really great organization called "Village Enterprise Fund." They give $100 grants to entrepreneurs for business creation. They really start people on the very first string of the economic ladder. These are actually folks who are doing such risky things like their systems filing that "If it doesn't rain, everything is lost." Really, really small businesses, who their commissioners wouldn't take a loan probably because they would be not in the right position to do so. Their organization is amazing. I basically met with Brian right around the time I decided I was going to figure out a way to work in micro-finance. He really gave me that opportunity. He listened to me, kind of met me where I was and said, "Hey." Even though I had no skills that I could really name. I had studied philosophy and poetry undergrad. I had done event planning, and administrative things in my job. I really didn't have a lot to go on to say "look, this is why you should hire me, and let me go do micro-finance," but he gave me that chance. On that trip. out to East Africa with Village Enterprise Fund, that's what changed my life, and that's where we had the ideas for Kiva. So, I am absolutely grateful for him, among many, many other in my life over the last decade. There's a lot of people. Lee: Well, that's the good thing about entrepreneurship as well that there are lots of other good people around to encourage you, and to offer wisdom. One piece of wisdom that we've been getting lots of interesting answers too on this particular interview series is the toughest thing you've ever had to do. So, we're curious. What is the toughest thing so far, that you've had to do in your career? Jessica: That is a really good question. I would say without a doubt that it has been...really tough to... you know when you do something that you care about so much, and also something that is like with the social mission I think, it becomes your baby. It becomes like your...I don't know there all these analogies, your right arm, you just feel so attached. It has been a challenge I think to do the work life balance thing in any way because you just feel so driven, so consumed by it, and you want to spend all your waking hours on it, but that can be unhealthy and actually lead to burn out and that sort of thing. So finding the right balance has been probably the biggest challenge and also being removed enough to make objective decisions. You know, it's always a challenge when you are so in love with the work that you get to do. Lee: So speaking of personal and professional balance what do you do to bring balance with all the entrepreneurs you're trying to help, and the changes on the website, how do you manage that? Jessica: Well, I think it's just about kind of knowing what your priorities are and knowing what your boundaries are of what you can control and what you can't and then just working away. I think it is just a daily reminding and daily recalibration saying, "OK, here is what we are about. Here's what we can do. Here's what we can't do and let's just keep moving forward." I think another trick too is just checking yourself often to make sure you are not making decisions others fear or panic in any way. We haven't really... we're an interesting state where we haven't had a competitors per se really, and we don't even think that way. But if we were forced to look at other kind of collaborative organizations out there as competitors, even if we saw them as such, I think it would be the wrong move to be driven to make any sort of decisions, or move to out of the place of fear. Just like it is in life, just kind of knowing who you are, and what you're about, knowing who you're not and just doing that, like the trying to respond to what else is out there or what someone else is doing. I think staying true and pure to your own mission is what it is about. It will make you stay sane. Larry: You have actually kind of covered part of the question I was going to ask you and that is, you've done so many things Jessica and you work with all kinds of people around the world but if you were right now sitting down in front of a young potential entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Jessica: OK, I have the privilege of getting to do this quite a bit. This is the number one thing I would say, two things. Follow whatever you are really passionate about. It can be something that doesn't make a lot of sense like what do you do when we were passionate about the stories, how do you follow that? We loved them, we celebrated them, we read them ourselves, we laughed, we cried, we just got into those stories and then by sharing those stories, the thing that we are passionate about with the people that we were passionate about, our friends and family, that led to some really great stuff. So just follow as best you can, the stuff that you are passionate about would be number one. Two, if you're going to do something and start something and you really believe that's kind of what you were meant to do next, I would say don't be afraid to start small. In fact, that is really the only way to begin. I just finished my MBA at Stanford. I can't say enough good things about that place and that community. It was amazing. Additionally, it's a place where it is easy to think big very quickly and say "let's go change the world in these huge huge ways and let's have..." you know you don't want to start something unless it's scalable and unless it is going to touch three million people in its first two years or whatever. Easy to say think big or go home and what's your plan for scalability? You need to know that right now. I would say to a budding entrepreneur, don't be afraid, to be very, very specific about what you want to do, and how you want to begin. You should definitely think long term, too. But goodness, it's not a bad thing to start small, and in fact I really really believe that is kind of the way you have to do it and just do a little plug. There's a wonderful man who I would consider a mentor and certainly someone I have looked up to and learned a lot from. His name is Paul Polak, and he wrote a book called "Out of Poverty." He really talks a lot about being in contact like designing whatever you are designing, particularly if it's a program, or a service, or a product to serve the poor, go be with the people that you want to serve. Go get to know them as individuals and design things for individuals not this group of statistic of statistics or the masses. Go meet real people, design for them, start with the, serve them, and then see how you can grow things. That would be my recommendation, don't be afraid to start small and be really passionate about what you are doing because that's the way good things happen. Lucy: Dare I say that that I am old and wizened woman but you know your advice about starting small and don't be afraid to do that, it feels a lot like something I've come to view as being true. You just often don't know what the next turn is going to be. You have to live it a while, and see how things change and mature, and then be opportunistic about which way things are going to go because you often don't see the end. Jessica: Oh, yes and you can't. Lucy: You can't. Jessica: You actually probably sometimes cannot see the next step. It is totally impossible until you make the first one. Lucy: That's fine and that's actually part of the fun, isn't it? Larry: It is part of the fun. It's also by the way a big part of the book that I'm just finishing. Lucy: Oh, you had to plug your book. Larry: "Master and change," yes. Lucy: You had to plug your book. Larry: Oh well. Lucy: Well so I think we have a book here. So I have to ask you though, is there such a big about entrepreneurism and Kiva about teaching the basic elements of entrepreneurship? Jessica: No, not yet, but I think there are about 20 books we can write with them, different angles, different experiences, Web 2.0, the power of connecting people, what have we learned about business from the entrepreneurs out there? There's a lot of potential. Lucy: Oh, absolutely. I look forward to it. Jessica: Yeah, me too. Lucy: You've already really achieved a lot. It's quite inspirational to talk to you and kiva is just such a great organization. What's next for you? We just talked about how sometimes you can't see around the corner, do you have any long term vision that you want to share with our listeners about what's next? Jessica: No, I don't, but I will say that something that's been crazy is just this feeling that... I mean this is like my life dream. You read my favorite business school. I would say it was from three years ago. I would say it was basically someday maybe maybe I will get to be a part of something like this. I feel like the luckiest person in the world and to think that there could be other things in the future just blows my mind. I feel overwhelmed even thinking about it but overall in the most positive way because I already feel like this is my life. If my life ended tomorrow, I would be very a really thankful, happy person because I feel like I've gotten to see my dream kind of come true. Everything else is icing on the cake. What I am trying to do is to stay open to possibility, and learn, and read, and talk to people, and stay open to observing what is going on out there. I am thankful for kiva, and I am thankful for whatever the future hold, but yeah I'll let you know when I know. Larry: All right. Lucy: That has to be the most inspirational thing I have ever heard. I mean just to hear the passion in your voice and the excitement, it gives me goose bumps. I'm happy for you. I hope other people benefit from all the work that you are doing. Jessica: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. I just feel very very lucky. Larry: Wow, Jessica I want to thank you for joining us today. This was marvelous plus. Jessica: Thank you. Man 1: By the way you listeners out there, would you pass this interview along to others who you think would be interested. We will make sure that we have a website link to kiva. Say your website. Jessica: It's www.kiva.org. Larry: Sounds wonderful. This has just been great here we are with the National Center for Women and Information Technology. You are doing some great stuff by bringing these messages out for people who are doing wonderful things. Thanks. Lucy: Well thanks and listeners can find these interviews at www.ncwit.org and at w3w3.com. Larry: You bet. Lucy: So thank you very much. Larry: Thank you. Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Jessica JackleyInterview Summary: Jessica is a remarkable social entrepreneur who is Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of www.kiva.org -- the first peer-to-peer micro-lending website. Kiva connects lenders with entrepreneurs from the developing world, empowering them to rise out of poverty. Release Date: September 29, 2008Interview Subject: Jessica JackleyInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 25:02

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Lee Kennedy CEO and Co-Founder, Tricalyx, Inc. Date: September 17, 2008 Lee Kennedy: TriCalyx [music] Larry Nelson: This is Larry Nelson with w3w3.com, Colorado's voice of the technology community. We link people's organization to unique and valuable resources. And we are at a very valuable resource today. We're here at the National Center for Woman and Information Technology, NCWIT, and of course we've got the boss here, Lucy Sanders. Lucy Sanders: Hi, Larry. Welcome. Larry: And you've got a very special interesting guest. Lucy: That's right. Lee Kennedy, welcome. Lee Kennedy: Thank you. Lucy: CEO of TriCalyx and serial entrepreneur at that, but here's what we like also about Lee, she's also on the NCWIT Board of Directors and gives that a lot of her personal time and woman in IT entrepreneurship, so extremely excited to be interviewing you today. Larry: And I'm sure everybody knows, Lucy you are the CEO of NCWIT. Lucy: I guess that's right. On any given day. Larry: On any given day. Lucy: On any given day. Larry: You've got a great team here too. Wonderful board and the things that you do are just absolutely phenomenal. I'm just happy to be a tiny part of it. Lee: Me too. Lucy: Well, thank you. Larry: Lee, just give us a little overview about what your company does and what it is. Lee: TriCalyx is a company that helps people grow their business online on the web. So we do everything from software development, building people web applications, online marketing, search engine optimization, anything to help them grow their business. Larry: Search engine optimization is becoming more and more popular. Is that something you feel is just an extra add-on or is it pretty essential? Lee: I think it's part of your basic marketing. If your product and your company can't be found on the web, you're at a real disadvantage from your competition. Lucy: What do you think about some of the social networking software? How are you seeing that working into how people want to grow their business on the web? Lee: That's a great question, Lucy, because a lot of companies are trying to figure out how they can grow their business doing advertising or being present on social networks. And it's still in that early phase where there's not a clear path on how to do that. Lucy: Well, it's a popular topic for sure. Larry: That's for sure. Lee: It is popular because there's millions and millions of people that spend time on Facebook and all the other social networks, but for the most part, most of those people are there to talk to their friends, and not look at advertisements. Larry: Now, Lee, you've got a very interesting background. You've been CIO for WebRoot Software. I know you've done a bunch of work with Brad Feld and some of his troops. What made you then really want to become an entrepreneur? Lee: Yeah, it really starts back as early as being an early girl. My dad was an insurance agent and I remember going around the neighborhood selling these little first-aid kits that he had. [laughter] Lee: I can't even remember why I was doing it, but I just loved getting out and starting businesses. I would even go to the local Salvation Army and bargain with them with their prices for things. Lucy: Get out of here! [laughter] Lee: I'm not kidding you. Lucy: So, it sounds like the sales part of this was intriguing. The marketing piece? Lee: I've always loved the sales and marketing and then my background is technology, which I loved because I just found it where there was always so many puzzles to solve. Lucy: It sounds like your parents had something to do with indirectly with starting you on this entrepreneurial path. Who else has influenced you? Lee: Well, I don't know if it was -- who influenced me to be an entrepreneurial, but my sister was definitely a bit influence on my life. She's 12-and-a-half years older and has always been the most fabulous person I've ever known, just can do anything, is smart, never let's anything daunt her on her path. Larry: Now would you consider her a role model or a mentor? Lee: She was a role model because I always saw her go after whatever she wanted and achieve it. Lucy: You were at WebRoot in the early days. What did you learn there as an entrepreneurial? Because that's been a success story. Lee: Yeah, I've been at a number of other successful startups before WebRoot, so I felt like a learned a lot at those companies, but the thing that was probably the most interesting at WebRoot was, when I came into WebRoot we were a small 20-person company, just a few million in revenue. But the market of spyware and anti-spyware was just about to boom, and I think all the experience I had told me it was like, "This market was hot and we have to go for it." And so, once I was hired, they had me build an enterprise division, it was our number one goal to get that product out there, to get the reseller base, to get the customers as fast as possible, because we knew that first-to-market was going to be the winner and that's what we were. We were able to capture that market right when it exploded. Larry: With all those experiences, let me ask this: what's probably the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Lee: That question, as you know, I've been on the other side of these interviews. Lucy: Selling first aid kits? Lee: Yeah! [laughter] Lee: That was tough. I didn't like that. There's a lot of things that were tough. A lot of the people we've interviewed talked about having to let people go or fire them, and that's definitely a hard one. Nobody likes to be fired and it's a terrible thing to fire people, but there's been a few other things that we really, really hard. I think cold calling is the worst thing on earth to have to do. And I had to do that in some of my early sales job. The other thing that was really, really tough was leaving a phenomenal job that paid well and had a great reputation and going and being nothing and starting my own business. Because you're in a position of power and security and then to just start something from scratch takes a lot of courage, and that was a tough thing to do. Lucy: What about cold calling did you find hard? Lee: There's a lot of things: rejection, the hanging up of the phone on the other end. But I guess it was the monotony. For me, it was just over and over, picking up the phone and expecting something different to happen, when most of the 99% of people didn't want to hear from you. Lucy: It's a bit like nonprofit fund-raising. [laughter] Lee: There we go! You keep hoping the answer will change. Lucy: No, somebody told me once and I carried this in my heart that a "no" is a just a first step to "yes." Lee: Yeah! Lucy: And they don't really mean "no" until they've told you "no" three times. Lee: Yeah. Lucy: And so, that's one of the things I've really had to remember. So, Lee, after all these different experiences, and you're sitting here with somebody who's considering being and entrepreneur, what kind of advice would you give them? Lee: You know, throughout my career, some of the best experiences I've had were working -- one of the companies was called Net Dynamics, and we sold that company to Sun Micro, and I have to say some of my best experiences came from that company, and it was working with some of the most talented people I've ever worked with. They were all smart and energetic and aggressive. In one year, I probably learned more than 10 years than at some of the other companies, because we were just doing everything right and learning from each other and making changes. What I suggest is, if you can get out of college, try to work with the brightest company, the smartest people, and get great mentors because they can all help you learn a lot quicker. Lucy: Don't you find that you're in that kind of situation where you're working on a great team, that you often don't know at that moment that that is a fabulous team? Sometimes you have to stop and be grateful for that because you get 10 years, 20 years down the road and realize, "That was really -- we had it all together there." Lee: I knew. I knew they wore, because I had been at a number of companies. I was, oh gosh, in my early 30s then, and I knew. I have never worked with such a great team, whereas in some companies you'll have some bright people but you'll have some people who are really slow and it's hard to get things done. It was just a great learning experience. Larry: Brad Feld -- who's quite a supporter of NCWIT also -- I interviewed him a few weeks ago and he pointed out with his team, the team he has over there at the Foundry Group and these are people he wants to work with the rest of his life. And so I think that's quite an extraordinary thing. Lucy: That's high praise! Larry: Boy, I'll say. Lee: Yeah. Larry: Isn't that the truth. Lucy: Maybe he'll hire me! [laughter] Larry: Me too! Lee: Maybe for life! [laughter] Lucy: For life! Larry: You're going to make another switch? No. You mentioned earlier, that you are got this marketing piece and you're also a techie, it sounds like kind of an interesting balance. Are those the characteristics that make you a strong entrepreneur? Lee: I think it helps a lot being in the field I am because in starting TriCalyx, I was fortunate in that I helped start a lot of businesses and knew all the marketing and knew how to get out and do the sales. But also having the technical experience, it's great because you can really talk from a first person perspective. It gives you more credibility with the people you're meeting with. Lucy: I'll add in another one for you because you mentioned it earlier, but I thought it was important enough to perhaps return to it, and that's this notion of reinventing yourself. You said it was hard, but you've been quite successful in doing it over and over and over again, which leads me to think of two things. One is, just because it's hard it means you shouldn't and can't do it, and that the reinvention process is so necessary for learning. It's really important to start over and not always to be so entrenched. Lee: That is such a good point, Lucy, because out of all the experiences, I think I value the learning piece the most. And probably in the position I am in now, I am learning more than I've learned in years, and I love it. I get up every morning so excited and it can be something as silly as in an application I learned how to do something on the technical back end. With my partners, they're laughing because I'm excited about learning about HTML and learning a bit of PHP. And they're like, "Oh, you really are a nerd!" Larry: In the past interviews with L, L and L - that's Lucy, Lee and Larry - the subject came up about how do you bring balance to your personal and professional lives. And of course the three of us have heard a wide range of replies. What's yours? Lee: I'd have to say having an ex-husband that is phenomenal as a dad. He's really helped me to having a career, because having three kids, that would of been impossible if I had a traditional husband that worked lots of hours and expected the woman to pick up the slack. And it's been just the reverse. He's really been a fabulous dad and helped out when I was working long hours. Stressful... Larry: We haven't heard that one before. Lucy: No, but I would say that would make a big difference! Larry: Yes, exactly. Lucy: That's for sure. So, you've achieved a lot with lots of companies, lots of learning. What's next for you? Can you see past TriCalyx or are you still in there writing code and having fun? Lee: No, we already have a plan. We want to keep TriCalyx, the aspect of TriCalyx being a service business but we also want to have an off-shoot business that is a software company, that has a service on the web. So we've been writing some code and bouncing some different applications about and hopefully we'll launch that later this year. Larry: Wow, well, we'll have to interview her again. Lucy: Again. Well because you're Lee, I want to ask you one final question that we don't usually ask people. Lee: I feel special. Lucy: Yeah. You give back a lot of your time to worthwhile causes here in the state of Colorado, and perhaps you can just spend a minute and say why that's important. We have found that entrepreneurial community is quite generous, here locally with their time and in this space. Perhaps a word or two about giving back? Lee: Yeah, my career was mostly in Silicon Valley up until seven years ago. I moved here to Boulder and one of the things that was so, so refreshing about moving here is about the spirit of giving back. I was amazed at how many people introduced me to other people and would spend hours of their time in trying to get me networked into the area. It just made me feel like, "Gosh, what a wonderful environment to raise and live with my kids" So, I wanted to do more of the same. The other thing is, being a woman in technology, earlier in my career and through college, there weren't a lot of other women. I was in engineering and I've always felt like it would have been so nice to have women to talk to, to have as a mentor. So I've made it a real point ever since I got out of college to be a mentor and to help with other women who are coming up the technology route and hope I can help them make decisions or give them advice on the way. Larry: Great advice, wow. Spread the wealth. Lee: Yeah. Lucy: Well, thank you for that too. And thanks for spending your time with us. You know, it was past due that we interviewed you, so this was really fun. Larry: It was fun turning the table. I love that part. Lee: Yeah. Larry: Well, this is Larry Nelson with w3Ww3.com, here at NCWIT, that's the National Center for... Lucy: The National Center for Women and Information Technology. Larry: Exactly right. Lucy: You can just say NCWIT, and that's just fine. Larry: NCWIT.org. Lee: And you can find these podcasts at www.NCWIT.org and www.w3w3.com. Larry: That's right. And download it as a podcast and you can also post on the blog if you'd like. Lee: There you go! Larry: Thank you, guys. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Lee KennedyInterview Summary: Lee's got some great advice for getting kids interested in IT and entrepreneurship. In fact, you might want your kids to listen to this interview. Release Date: September 17, 2008Interview Subject: Lee KennedyInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 14:19

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Jean Kovacs Senior former Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances, Sterling Commerce. Currently, she serves as a Partner at Hillsven and Chair of the HBS Alumni Angels. Date: August 19, 2008 Jean Kovacs: Sterling Commerce [music] Lee Kennedy: Hi. This is Lee Kennedy and I'm on the board of NCWIT, the National Center for Women & Information Technology, and I'm also a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Tricalyx. I'm here today with NCWIT and we're doing a series of interviews that we're having with just fabulous women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors all who have wonderful stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. Today with me I have Lucy Sanders and Lucy is the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Hi, Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hello. Lee: I also have Larry Nelson who's from w3w3.com. Hi Larry. How are you? Larry Nelson: Hello. I'm a serial entrepreneur, too. So, I love this series. Lee: Well, great. Larry, also tell us a little bit about W3W3. Larry: Well, we're an Internet based radio show, and we host and archive everything. We've been doing it actually since 1998, but we have hundreds of shows that we do a podcast with also. But, we love to focus in the high tech arena. Lee: Great. OK and just to get down to it, today we're interviewing Jean Kovacs. Hello, Jean. Jean Kovacs: Hello. How are you? Lee: Just great. We're happy to have you here today. Jean is the former CEO of Comergent Technologies and she also had a number of senior positions at Sterling and other companies along the way. And Jean has a wonderful background and we're excited to have her here today. Jean, before we start in, did you want to just tell us a bit about Comergent? Jean: Comergent was started in 1998. We focused on e-commerce for the enterprise. So, we sold software to enterprises who wanted to sell over the Internet. So, our customers were companies such as Cisco, Best Buy, JCPenney. We had a lot of bio medical companies selling devices over the Internet. So really, any large enterprise that wanted to sell their products or sell their services over the web. Lee: Great. So, why don't we go ahead and jump into some of the questions we had for you. Looking at your background, you've worked with a number of different technologies. What are you thinking are some of the really cool technologies today? Jean: I think the whole area of social networking is extremely exciting. I think the potential there is really untapped. I see more and more people using it, and I see more and more enterprises and people in business using it. So, I think that's an area that we should all be looking at. I also think anything around mobile devices. When you travel, especially outside the US and you just see how people, basically, live on their cellphones. I think there are going to be a lot of applications and ideas around that; how you make the cellphone be the center of the person's universe. Many of these people don't have PCs at home or people, you hear now, don't even have land lines. So, anything that runs on a mobile device, I think, is also a very interesting area. Lee: Well, and mobility is a topic that we've been hearing a lot about in this interview series. It really is quite a hot industry sector, for sure. So, tell me a bit more about the technologies and social networking that you're thinking about. What strikes you as being the most adventuresome there? Jean: I look at it and say there's a lot of adventuresome ideas out there. But, being someone who's built a couple of companies -- took one public and sold one -- I look at how do you take an adventuresome idea and monetize it. So, I think that's the big question mark. How do you run these as businesses and make money so you're impacting people's lives? I think a lot of the Web 2.0 technologies that are being used are very exciting and you see just last week or the week before, they announced that Facebook users exceeded MySpace and sites like Linked In and you're seeing these become now more and more used in people's daily lives. I used to get two or three Linked In requests a day. Suddenly, over the last week or two, I'm getting Facebook requests. And so, I think you'll see it's not just young people. It's people that are starting to use this in their daily lives. Lee: I think social networking is really an interesting area as well and we see young people using that quite a bit. You mentioned that you've built a couple companies, you've taken some public. So, you've seen a lot as an entrepreneur. What we'd like to ask you is why are you an entrepreneur? Jean: Wow. That's a great question. The first company that I started, which was back in 1990, in a way I almost fell into it. I was with a company. We were looking at selling through the channel. It was a Unix software company and there weren't any Unix channels. And I remember going to some venture capitalist friends of mine and saying, "Is anyone doing this?" And the VCs would say to me, "No. But, tell me more." So, I started thinking about it more and putting together a business plan. Literally, at one point, a very dear friend of mine said, "We are very interested in this. But, you're not going to fund it unless you have a male partner, preferably one with gray hair." Now, this is back in 1990. So, it was a long time ago. Things are very different now. And so, I went out and found someone who was interested in started a company, and we got excited together about it and we went out and raised money. But, it was - I never set out and said, "Ooo. I'm an entrepreneur. Let me go find an idea." I was in a company that needed something in the market that wasn't there. I think that's a really big difference. I think it's a good thing to think about. I've seen too many people think they're entrepreneurs and they go off trying to find something. And I think look for the idea first and then look into yourself and say, "Am I the person that can turn this idea into a reality? And can I deal with the good times and the bad?" It's not all about being the guy that's made $2 billion. There's a lot of ups and downs. So, you really need to have that tenaciousness to get it done. Larry: I like that. Find a need and fill it. Jean, let me ask this. You've been with huge companies. You've been part of buy outs and you've venture capitalists and everything. Along the way, who are some people or a person in particular maybe that has really had a major influence with you? Jean: Larry, that's a great question and I can't think of anyone. It's interesting. In many ways, I learned more from bad managers than I did from great managers. Lucy: That is so true. Jean: And don't worry, I'm not going to say any of those names on the air. When you have a bad manager, you drive home at night and you think about what happened, what you would do differently, how you would never do that to your team and you process it. I don't think when we have a great manager, you drive home thinking about, "Oh, wow." You probably intuit it, but you don't analyze it as much. And so, in many ways, I think it was the managers that weren't so great that I learned a lot more from and just made mental notes from. Lee: That is so important. We haven't had that observation made yet on this interview series and that is so important because it's important to almost take an anthropological mindset with some of these things and think about a bad manager maybe certainly is a bad manager and perhaps a thorn in your side. But also, somebody that can teach you what not to do. Jean: I know. It's a funny thing. But, it really does work. So, all you bad mangers out there, keep managing away. Lee: Yes and we're just going to be studying you. Jean: Well, and it's a little bit similar to learning from your failures and mistakes from somebody else's failures. Lee: That's right. Well, that's very sage advice. Lucy: Well, I guess, sort of along that line one of the questions for you is in your career you've done a lot of really interesting things. What would you say is the toughest thing you've had to do? Jean: Clearly, we started Comergent in 1998 and developed the product. Cisco was our first customer. We raised an amazing amount of money in 2000, more than we ever thought was possible and then, we hit the downturn. Now, the good news is that we never went crazy with the money, but we did come to a point in time where we needed to restructure the company. That was the hardest thing we ever had to do. We decided to do it differently. We met with the people that we were going to let go. We told them what was happening. We also met with the people who weren't going to be letting go and said, "Hey, the guys in the next room are your co-workers. They're your friends. We're not going to do this, march them to their desks and let them collect their things and sort of skulk on out. They're going to take whatever time they need, take them to lunch and do whatever you need to help them. Nothing has changed except we need to economize a bit, and we're going to try to hire them back as soon as we can. And, you know, we hired back probably 70 or 80 percent. We didn't let go that many, less than 20, but we hired back most of them over the next year. So, we all learned as a company, but it was a very tough thing because at any small company you develop relationships. Lee: In this series of interviews I think laying off people has been the number one challenge for everyone. It's nice how you did it in a real human way. Jean: Yeah, because you know it's no fault of anyone. The person that gets let go, it's not because they're the weakest or they did something wrong. Often, it's the dynamics of the business and where you decide to reduce head counts. And so, it just drives me crazy when I see companies go through that, and they march the people through the office and stand there while they clean out their desks. We really said, hey, these are our co-workers. We're going to treat them with respect, today, tomorrow and we're going to do our best to grow the business and bring them back in. And everyone that we could bring back in we did. Lucy: That is so important. I'm sure we all know of people who were let go in the way that you mentioned. That is very dehumanizing, and so not only is the person out looking for a new job but they often have a crisis of confidence. Jean: Right. Lee: And it can really be a horrible thing for the culture and the morale of the people that are left, and that's why some companies have such a hard time starting back up again because people are feeling like, oh when is it going to be me? Jean: Right. We were very open through everything, so it's not like it was a surprise and a big ax came down and we took probably 15 percent of the company out, and that was enough and like I said, I mean, it was a good lesson for all of us. Fortunately, a lot of people-where we know of one company in our space that did like seven or eight. Everyone was waiting for the next one, the next one, the next one. Lucy: And I think, one thing that I'm taking from this as well, in those hard times you do learn a lot, and you learn a lot about dealing with people. If you were sitting here with young people and giving them other advice about entrepreneurship, what advice would you give them. And Larry and Lee, I believe it's right. You're the chair of the board of Build. Is that correct? Jean: Yes, it's non-profit. Lucy: Non-profit that really focuses on underserved kids and getting them interested in entrepreneurship. We're especially eager to hear your answer about this. Jean: I think part of what makes a great entrepreneur is positive energy and tenaciousness. There's very few companies, you know, I'd say probably less than one percent, where you just hit the ground running and everything works and the market was ready and you never have an up or a down. You never had a day where you thought you were going to close a sale on and you didn't, or the product you thought would be ready to ship wasn't, or you were going to get X number of users and you didn't. So, part of it is just his tenaciousness and saying, "OK, what have we learned? How do we keep going?" It's the most important part. And how do you keep your team focused and feeling good about it? Lucy: That's really true. Those are definitely qualities that you have to have because I've never seen any startup that didn't go through times where you had to be tenacious. Jean: Right, and that makes you better. I mean in a weird way it polishes your ideas, and it hardens the team, and fine tunes thing. During the bubble, we did see quite a few companies that just had an idea and through something on the web, and went public. Very few of them had the type idea -- we used to say it's the three P's, the P2P -- pass way to profitability, as opposed to B2B and B2C. All of a sudden the market dropped out, and they didn't have the technology, or the customer base, or the market need really understood. So it was a lot tougher on the company in some ways I believe. Lucy: Definitely. One of the other things that we've seen and heard from many of the entrepreneurs we've talked to is that building a company can take your heart and soul, and lots of hours. How have you found you've been able to balance into your personal life as well as your professional life? Jean: I don't have. [laughter] Lucy: I love that honest answer! I've heard that from people. Jean: It's very tough. It is 7/24, and I think the only way to do is to have a spouse who is understanding, and who is as committed as you are, and to have some kind of a support infrastructure, whether it's relatives or nannies or neighbors, or something, because when you're doing the start up it's 7/24. Often the biggest breakthroughs you have are 11:00 at night or 8:00 at night, when you're still there and someone walks into your office. You start talking, and suddenly something pops or the weekend. So it really isn't for someone who goes, "Oh, yeah. I want to have this balance." I've never been able to find it myself. Lucy: We've often spoken about it as also being integration. A balance often indicates that things are done in equal proportions, but finding a way to integrate the various aspects of your life becomes important when you are in those 7/24 situations. Jean: I actually like the term 'integration' a lot more than balance, because you're right. Balance sort of suggests that you're going to be there for every kids birthday, and every school play, and every time you want to, and it's just not going to work out. Lucy: It's not. Yet I also think that kids also value seeing what you do at work, and learning from what you're dong. So, there are big lessons there as well. Jean: You know what? I think daughters especially. I want my girls to see that I go out and work. We talk about business things at home. I think it's healthy for them. Lucy: Yeah. So, see my sons when they were little would go in the lab with me. We'd be testing the multimedia communication exchange at Bell Labs. One of my sons designed a logo for it on the whiteboard, while he was bored. [laughs] But it was fun, and they still remember it. Jean: Yeah. Lucy: So, Jean, you've really achieved a lot. We're very curious to know what's next for you. Jean: I think you know that I left. I sold Comergent to Sterling Commerce, which is a division of AT&T. I stayed there a year-and-a-half to do the integration. I just recently left. Right now, I've been asked to be on a couple of boards and advisory boards, and I've been meeting with a couple. In fact, this afternoon I'm meeting with some entrepreneurs who have an idea. In the fall, I'll probably start talking to a few venture capitalists, and maybe work with companies in their portfolio. So, no startup again. I've done a couple, but I think I want to work with a bunch of different companies. Lucy: A diverse portfolio. Larry: Wow! Well, we're going to do a follow-up on this one, for sure. Jean: Well, it's fun because I'm seeing a lot of different ideas and learning a tremendous amount. It's really exciting to me to see what's happening out there, especially, as I said, in the mobile space and the special networking space. Lucy: Well, Jean, thank you for talking with us today. I'm sure our listeners are going to glean a lot of good advice and information. Larry: I'm going to vote for "learning from bad managers." Lucy: Me, too. Larry is writing a book. I think that this should be a chapter in your book, Larry. It's not too late, is it? Larry: It's called "Mastering Change" and I think that would really fit. Lucy: Learning from the black hat manager. Jean: Great! Lucy: So for listeners out there, you can find our other podcasts at W3W3.com, as well as NCWIT.org. Larry: Alright. Thank you much! Jean: Thank you so much. Lucy: Thank you, Jean. Thank you so much. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Jean KovacsInterview Summary: Jean Kovacs is the Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances for Sterling Commerce, responsible for driving global strategic alliances, including the AT&T strategic relationship, and all corporate marketing and communications. Release Date: August 19, 2008Interview Subject: Jean KovacsInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:30

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Anousheh Ansari Chairman and Co-founder, Prodea Systems, Inc. Date: October 12, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Anousheh Ansari BIO: Anousheh Ansari earned a place in history in 2006 as the fourth private explorer, the first woman private explorer, and the first astronaut of Iranian descent to visit space. Back on Earth, Anousheh returned to her job as co-founder and chairman of Prodea Systems, a company that hopes to dramatically alter and simplify consumers' digital living experience. Prior to founding Prodea Systems, Anousheh served as co-founder, chief executive officer and chairman of the board for telecom technologies, inc. The company successfully merged with Sonus Networks, Inc., a provider of IP-based voice infrastructure products in a deal worth approximately $750M. To help drive commercialization of the space industry, Anousheh and her family provided title sponsorship for the Ansari X Prize, a $10 million cash award for the first non-governmental organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. This feat was accomplished in 2004 by legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan. A living example of the American dream, Anousheh immigrated to the United States as a teenager who did not speak English. She immersed herself in education, earning a bachelor’s degree in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University, followed by a master's degree in electrical engineering from George Washington University. She has an honorary doctorate from the International Space University which she was honored with while she was on board the International Space Station. She is currently working toward a master's degree in astronomy from Swinburne University. Anousheh is a member of the Association of Space Explorers and is on the advisory board of the Teachers in Space project. She has received multiple honors, including the World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, DFW International Community Alliance Hall of Fame award, the Working Woman’s National Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, George Mason University’s Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, George Washington University's Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, and the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Southwest Region. While under her leadership, Telecom Technologies earned recognition as one of Inc. magazine's 500 fastest-growing companies and Deloitte & Touche’s Fast 500 technology companies. She currently works to enable social entrepreneurs to bring about radical change globally, with organizations such as X Prize, ASHOKA and the PARSA Community Foundation. Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT. And this is one of a series of interviews we are doing with women who have started IT companies. We've heard some wonderful stories from some very fabulous women, and we have another great interview in this series today. With me is Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Larry, why don't you tell us a little bit about w3w3? Larry Nelson: My wife, Pat, and I started the Internet radio show, w3w3.com, in 1998. We archive everything from photos to articles and all of the interviews. And this NCWIT hero series, I tell you, is one of the most exciting projects ‑‑ period ‑‑ that we've ever worked on. And it's getting a great deal of response from both business and government, as well as education. Lucy: Well and we're really happy to have you here today, and we're also very grateful that you are syndicating this series on your site as well. Also with us is Lee Kennedy, NCWIT board director and serial entrepreneur herself, having just started a new company called Tricalyx - helping all of us use the web better for our businesses. So, welcome, Lee. Lee Kennedy: Thanks, Lucy. These are really fun to participate in. Lucy: Well today, we have a great interview with Anousheh Ansari, the chairman and cofounder of Prodea Systems. I took a look at the website of Prodea Systems, and it's just got the coolest mission. It's a new company. It's focused on the home, on the digital environment within the home. Everything from voice services and networking services in the home to parental control and maybe child control. That would be all right, too. And home automation. Anousheh has the coolest title, Larry and Lee, I have to tell you. Because not only is she chairman and cofounder of Prodea Systems, but she also has the title of "first private female space explorer." Larry: All right! Lucy: So Anousheh, we are really happy to have you here. Welcome. Anousheh: Thank you. I'm happy to be on the show. Lucy: With that, we'll just get right to the interview. We have a lot of questions to ask you about entrepreneurship and technology. Lee: So Anuosheh, one of my favorite questions is to hear how you first got into technology. Was it something through your childhood, or there was a moment in time that it all started being so interesting? And then we'd also love to know, what do you think are cool today, as far as the technologies that are out? Anousheh: I always loved science and math growing up. I was born in Iran; I grew up there and then came to the United States when I was about 16 years old. And I thought that this was my opportunity to get involved with something really cool and great. And that's why... When I graduated from high school, at that time the field of telecommunication and electrical engineering was the hottest field, and it was growing and a lot of technology was being developed back then. And that's why I chose electrical engineering as my career and ended up getting a bachelor degree and a master's degree in electrical engineering - and basically built a career in telecommunication dealing with planning and developing the future networks that would allow communication technologies to be enhanced. This is what we see today. And I think that's one of the coolest things today with the Internet, the use of Internet by the entire population ‑ as part of education and just on a daily basis for communication. I think that has been one of the coolest technologies that has been developed, and it has in the past decade. Lucy: Anousheh, you cofounded Telecom Technologies in the early 90s, when you were doing some of the early work on voice over IP and soft switches. Anousheh: Exactly, yes. Lucy: That was a pretty exciting time. We were working on that in Bell Labs, and so we followed your company. So it was a great effort and very entrepreneurial. Anousheh: Yes. One of the things that really gets me excited and makes me start up companies is the fact that you can basically build something new, try to introduce a change in a way that people are used to doing certain activities, and basically create something out of scratch that doesn't exist and would revolutionize whatever it is that you are trying to do with it. So that's part of the reason I love being able to be a technologist and being in this field, and also being able to start up companies that introduce these types of new gadgets into the market. Larry: That's a great segue into a question I've got. Here you are, Anousheh. You're the first female private space explorer. All kinds of opportunities. A wonderful background. And there's always the risk, as well as the adrenaline rush about being an entrepreneur. What is it... You were just beginning to talk about some of the reasons why you are an entrepreneur. And what about being an entrepreneur makes you tick? Anousheh: Well, being an entrepreneur means that you are sort of inventing something new. You're giving birth to a company. You're giving birth to a new product, a new service. And that's always exciting. And to me, I don't like to just have a repetitive life where I do the same thing over and over. I love to be able to learn something new, explore something new. I'm an explorer by nature, and being an entrepreneur allows me to explore new opportunities and technologies. And that's the best part of it. But also, being an entrepreneur I love to help people, and I think through the products that we develop in my company, we will be able to help a lot of people. Whether it's help them to get over the difficulties of a technology and use it. This is what we do with my new company at Prodea. Or helping employees, creating new jobs, new opportunities for people that work in my company. So all along, whether it's creating something or just building a company and giving others the opportunity to build a career, I think it's exciting to be at the helm of these types of activities and that's what makes being an entrepreneur really exciting for me. Lucy: Well and your new company is in a great niche, I have to say. We're shopping for a new washer and dryer now, and we can actually put it on the network in our house. Larry: Oh, wow. Lucy: I'm not sure what I'm going to say to the washer and dryer. But Anousheh, maybe you can help me out with that. Anousheh: The technology we're developing is geared toward taking advantage of all these new smart devices that are being built for the home. But one thing we realized was that we wanted everyone to be able to take advantage of this new technology and use it. But it is sometimes complicated. A lot of things are based on PC, and some of our parents, for example, are not really excited about using PCs, and it's a drag for them. So, it doesn't have to be that way. Technology doesn't have to be difficult to use or complicated. We feel technology is something that's there to make your life easier not more difficult. So what we've done is we've decided to make all these technologies very simple and easy to use. And as much as possible let you use your TV and your remote control to interface with everything smart in your house and manage everything versus having to deal with a computer. Lucy: Well, it really does sound like a great company. And like I said, it really does fill a great niche for people, especially some of the things like data backup and other things that people put a lot of time and effort into their computers and then they lose it all, for example if it crashes. So it's a great value proposition. In this series, we are very interested in asking people about their role models or people who really encouraged them on this path toward entrepreneurship. Can you tell us a bit about who influenced you? Anousheh: I have to say the biggest influence in my life has been by husband, who is also my partner in the business. We started our companies together, and he's always been there encouraging me to take on new challenges in my life. And when I do take them on, he's right beside me supporting and helping me through all the difficult time. So having a really good partner, whether it's a good friend, someone in your family or a spouse, is always the greatest thing to have when you have a new challenge that you're facing. Lucy: That's great. There's not many of us that have a partner that's right along in our career. Anousheh: That's true. I've been very fortunate, because sometimes it's difficult to work with your spouse. But in our case, it's a great working relationship, and we have complementary skills which makes it easy to work together. So I've been very fortunate in that regard. Lucy: So on the flip side of that, when you think about your career, what's been the toughest thing you've had to do? Anousheh: Being an entrepreneur and starting new companies require a lot of sacrifice. Sacrifice that you have to make. Because in order to be really successful, your company becomes your life. And then you have to really dedicate your time and energy fully to this endeavor that you start. And doing anything less than that means that you're doing yourself and your employees a disservice. So, it does require a lot of sacrifice of your personal time and personal hobbies and things that you enjoy. At least for the period of high growth that you experience at the beginning of a company's life cycle, you have to be ready to make a lot of time sacrifices and personal sacrifice. Lucy: I think that that is really good advice that you would give to a young person who is considering entrepreneuship: that you be prepared for those type of time sacrifices and be prepared for the amount of dedication it takes to be an entrepreneur. If you were sitting with a room of young people and giving them any further advice about entrepreneurship, what else would you tell them? Anousheh: Maybe just continue on! I don't want to make it sound like it's really bad or difficult to be an entrepreneur. It does require commitment. It is hard work, but it is also highly rewarding. So when you can look back and see yourself building a successful company. When you see your employees happy and excited about the success of the company. When you introduce something new, a product in the world that gets really high marks and everyone loves using it and raves about it. It is very rewarding, and you will feel very good about it. So my advice to everyone is find something that you love to do and you are passionate about ‑ you enjoy. Because if you're not passionate about something, it's very difficult to be dedicated to it. So find something you enjoy and love and you're passionate about. And then dedicate all you've got to make it a success. And if you have those two things, I think with your passion and dedication, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish. Lucy: So when you think about yourself and your personal characteristics, what do you think has given you the advantage to be an entrepreneur? Anousheh: I think one thing that has helped me maybe is being an immigrant and coming to the United States. I had to basically build a new life for myself, and adjust very quickly to a new environment, new culture, learn a new language. So I think a lot of the fears and risk averseness that people may have develop living in a comfortable lifestyle and having everything be provided to them as they grow up. That sort of went away from me and made me sort of a person that would be willing to take risks and face the challenges and not be afraid of failure. Because being an immigrant and staring life over, you learn to be a survivor and how to face your challenges and basically overcome them. And that has been a great skill set that I've developed and has helped me in my career. Larry: I have a lot of empathy ‑‑ Pat and I both do ‑‑ for you moving into a new country. I understand you did not know English before you moved here. Is that true? Anousheh: Yes, that's true. Larry: And we've owned businesses and lived in five different countries. And other than Australia, the other countries didn't speak English. So I really had quite a learning lesson to go through. Pat and I, we've owned our own business together for 35‑plus years. So I just want to let you know, there's hope down the road. Larry: So with that, this is my litte segue into... How do you balance your busy, busy professional life along with your personal life and your family and everything else? Anousheh: It's difficult to balance it, but you find little things that basically take the stress away and help you refocus and get energy you need to face your new challenges on a daily basis. Of course, spending time with family is always good. I love the outdoors, so if I get a chance to go out and hike or bike around, that's always great. If I don't have time to leave, just listening to some music that I love reenergizes me and gives me that break I need to go back to whatever it is I'm doing. You have to find things that are accessible and doable in your busy life and try to fit some time in your schedule to just have time to yourself and be able to recoup and refocus. Larry: It's amazing, some of the things that you pointed out remind me of Lucy's favorite way of calling it ‑‑ not balance, but integrating. Anousheh: Absolutely. You have to find ways of integrating what you like into your business life. And it's difficult at times, but I think over time with experience, you learn how to do it. Lucy: I want to maybe inject a ninth question, even though we promised we'd only have eight. I think our listeners would probably love to hear a few comments from you about your insights from your space travel, especially since it's very relevant to the topic of adventure and entrepreneurship and technology. Anousheh: Just to give you a little bit of background. Even though my career was in telecommunications, one of my greatest passions since I was a little girl was to fly to space. And when I came to the United States, there were difficulties that I was facing because I was an immigrant, didn't have citizenship. So I couldn't become an astronaut, but I never gave up on that dream. And I told myself, and I believed, that one day I would be able to fulfill that dream. And my career in electrical engineering and being an entrepreneur is what ultimately helped me realize that dream. And it was a wonderful thing to be able to realize it while I had just celebrated my 40th birthday. It was a great sense of accomplishment and an experience that has changed my life and will be with me forever. It's given me a new perspective on life. And it helps me every day. For me, one of the things I do ‑‑ when you were talking about balancing your personal life and doing things you love ‑‑ when I'm very stressed out and I can't get out and I need to do something, I just close my eyes and try to remember what it was like to be in space and to float around. And that sort of brings back all of those good sensations and good memories, and it helps me to get through the day. Lucy: Well I know, for one, I'll be watching you, probably in your next company, doing something with space. Anousheh: I hope so too, because it's one of those things that when you do it once, it's sort of like an addiction. You want to be able to fly again, and I hope that I'll get a chance to fly again to space someday. And I'll let you know. Maybe the next company. Lucy: Maybe then they could take a 53 year old woman with her. Anousheh: There's no age limit. As long as you're young at heart, you can fly to space. Lucy: That would be so cool. Well Anousheh, you've really achieved a lot in your career. What's next for you? We know space travel is next. Anything else? Anousheh: There's a lot of things happening in my life. Of course, our company is in the very early stages and growing very rapidly, so that takes up a lot of my time. But I have also a personal passion for space and making sure that the space industry ‑ or the private side of the space industry ‑ grows and provides opportunity for people like myself who love to fly to space to do it. That's why I'm involved with the X PRIZE Foundation and creating opportunities to expand the whole private sector in the space industry. Also, global education is something that is important for me. Because I believe that our future is going to be built by our young generation. And being able to give them the best opportunity to gain all the knowledge they need, and to be able to use their imagination, and be able to maintain that imaginative mind they have when they're four or five years old and carry that imagination throughout their life. And be able to use the knowledge they gain from their environment and create something better ‑ something new and a world that's really peaceful and safe. That's something that I dream of, and I'm trying to do my part in making sure that environment is available to our young generation. Larry: Anousheh, I would like to just personally thank you, and I'm sure this is from all of us. The inspiration that came along with not only you being the first female private space explorer, but the idea of what you had to all go through behind it. From not understanding English, and working in a new country, and really exploring your passions between math and IT. And it's just been a great story that we will continue to carry that flag for. You're super. Anousheh: Thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you guys today. Larry: By the way, you listeners out there, first of all, this will be on the NCWIT.org website. That's www.ncwit.org. And of course, we'll also have it on our blog and our podcast at w3w3.com, where you can download it 24/7. And Lee and Lucy and Larry ‑ the three Ls ‑ we want to thank you so much, Anousheh, for joining us today. Anousheh: Thank you. Larry: Thank you so much. Lucy: Thank you. Bye bye. Larry: See you soon. Anousheh: Bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Anousheh AnsariInterview Summary: On September 18, 2006, Anousheh Ansari captured headlines around the world as the first female private space explorer. Release Date: October 12, 2007Interview Subject: Anousheh AnsariInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 19:45

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Lucy Sanders CEO and Co-founder, NCWIT Date: June 4, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Lucy Sanders BIO: Lucy Sanders is CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and also serves as Executive-in-Residence for the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She has an extensive industry background, having worked in R&D and executive positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs for over 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multi-media communication and customer relationship management.) In 1996, Lucy was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow Award, the highest technical accomplishment bestowed at the company, and she has six patents in the communications technology area. Lucy serves on several boards, including the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) Board of Trustees at the University of California at Berkeley; the Engineering Advisory Council at the University of Colorado at Boulder; the Denver Public Schools Computer Magnet Advisory Board; the Advisory Board for the Women's College Applied Computing Program at the University of Denver; and several corporate boards. In 2004 Lucy was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Engineering at CU. Lucy also is Conference Chair for the 2007 Grace Hopper Conference, having served as Program Chair for the conference in 2006. She is currently serving on the Information Technology Research and Development Ecosystem Commission for the National Academies. Lucy received her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively. Larry: This is Larry Nelson, and I am so pleased that I'm a part of helping get this new campaign kicked off. We have with us today Lucinda Sanders. Lucinda is the CEO and co‑founder of NCWIT, here at the University of Colorado. Welcome to the show, Lucinda. Lucy: Thank you Larry. You can just call me Lucy if you'd like. Larry: Oh, I'd love the more comfortable. All right. Lucy: All right. Larry: Now this is the real kick‑off for the NCWIT Entrepreneurial Interview series. So we are just getting this kicked off. And Lucinda, you have such an interesting background. We'll get into some of that. We are going to take a closer look at what this series is really all about. I'm very excited. Let me ask this question. It's a basic, but a very important question. How did you first get involved with technology? Lucy: I first got involved in technology by learning to program computers when I was in college. From there, once you learn how computers worked and I got a computer science degree and out into industry and started to see how you could use technology and computing to solve real world problems for people. And so I would say I really came at it from a very traditional way, through the education path, and on through getting a graduate degree in computer science as well. Larry: Let me take a quick leap here. What technology today do you think is really cool? Lucy: Well, I really like radio tags. You know RFIDs? I think that technology ‑ first of all, it's very difficult, not the radio tag itself, but dealing with all the data that radio tags can potentially send when they pass readers. And so, the use of those and not just basic inventory systems, but for example, you could use such a radio tag on frozen food and then it has a recipe on it that can talk to your microwave oven and then cook the food automatically when you put the food in the microwave oven. Your radio tags can be used for lots and lots of things ‑ and fairly creative things as well. Larry: That really is cool. Now, Lucy, in this series we are going to be interviewing a number of entrepreneurs. But also, we want to take a look at the entrepreneurial aspect, because you are a Bell Labs Fellow. Let's see if we can take a look at that. How do you operate as an entrepreneur as well as what got you involved with that? Lucy: Well, inside Bell labs, I was always working on the leading edge projects and in fact, inside big companies like Bell labs or AT&T or Lucent, its often the case that small teams form that are a lot like entrepreneurial companies. Now they don't have to go out and raise capital. You don't necessarily have venture capitalists, but they do have to attract budget within the company to move the product ahead. And they frequently have small teams, really too small teams to get the product done. And they really are in many ways, entrepreneurial in nature. So, I always had those kinds of projects. For example, working on the very first risk‑based processing PBX system and operating system; all the way though Internet commerce and working on voice over IP and multimedia collaboration systems. I always gravitated toward those types of projects. I've loved them. I love them still and in fact, NCWIT is almost like that kind of a start up project. Larry: Yes, it is. Lucy: Its entrepreneurial, its socially entrepreneurial, but those kinds of projects where you don't know the answers, where it's not routine operational or maintenance, where you really are creating something from nothing and using the creative talent of people, I think, is what really excites me about that. Larry: That's one of the interesting aspects. Many people who are hearing about NCWIT for the first time, could you give us just a little overview about what it is? Lucy: Sure. NCWIT stands for the National Center for Women and Information Technology. We are really focused on getting more girls and women into information technology in its broadest sense ‑ into use of computing for all types of applications. We really work across the whole pipeline, K‑12 through entrepreneurial careers, which is one reason why we're so excited to be sponsoring this interview series with really fabulous women and IT entrepreneurs. Larry: Yes, we are really looking forward to it. I've seen the list and it's fantastic. Let me see if I could just dig a little bit deeper here, Lucy. What is one of the toughest things that you have had to face in your career? Lucy: Well, probably one of the saddest, I would say tough times was downsizing the team or shutting a location. We went through periods of time where we would buy companies and integrate them, integrate the technology, and integrate the teams. Sometimes you had to make the tough choices about which locations needed to be shut down and people had to be laid off or let go. That's always tough. You lose a lot of sleep over that kind of a decision. It's in the best interest for the business and yet from an individual's perspective, it's certainly quite difficult. Whenever I face that, I really try hard to do the right thing, find people jobs, make sure they could transfer other places or that in the local economy there were places that could take them as well. So, when we did have to face that kind of decision, we did it with as much grace and humanity as we could. But that's easily one of the toughest things that I've ever had to do. Larry: You know, one of the things that if you talk to any really IT pro or an IT one of those people who are really out there, the word mentor or role model comes up all the time. Who are some of the people in your career that influenced you? Lucy: Well, one person who influenced me that I've never met, but I modeled myself after him to some degree because he was the very first chief technology officer I have ever seen, ever heard about using that title and that was Eric Schmidt when he was at Sun. Of course, we all know he has gone on to Google, but I really liked what he did in terms of getting out there and explaining technology and how he was expansive in his thinking about technical solutions and he really was somebody who I looked at and thought, I'd really like to be a chief technology officer. In fact, I did become one and I love that role. So, in one way, I think he influenced me quite a bit although he wouldn't know me from the man on the moon. Larry: That is interesting, indeed. Lucy: He totally influenced me and I had a number of mentors inside Bell Labs that I thought were just outstanding. I think I've talked to you before how the culture at Bell Labs really supported mentoring and women and I had a number of mentors who really taught me a lot. Larry: It might not be looked at from the outside so much, but your position here with NCWIT is really just like an entrepreneur. So let's imagine you were sitting down right now talking to a young girl, a young woman who is thinking about maybe getting into a field and being an entrepreneur. What kind of advice would you share with them? Lucy: Well, so often when you are just starting something out, it's very ill‑formed because in fact is doesn't exist. And so, I guess my advice would be to just live with that. Know what you know and try to test it with everybody. Go test the heck out of it. So if you have an idea for a company or you have a way to explain what you want your nonprofit to be doing, you do your best story and then go tell it, and tell it over and over and over again, get input. And think expansively about it, because quite likely it'll be very different in a month or two months or six months as you go out and do that, but don't be afraid of not knowing the answer. I think so many people stop themselves because they can't see clearly between where they are and where they want to go. And in fact, I would maintain that that's exactly the kind of job you want, where you sit with what you have, and you make the best possible case, and you just keep improving it as you go. I think with NCWIT we have had people, not so much anymore because we are really tight on our story, we know exactly what we're doing and we can explain it in 10 minutes, you know, the famous elevator pitch, but we had a few people when we first got started who just wouldn't come along because they couldn't see clearly what it was going to be or where it was going to go. They couldn't get with the vision. So I think entrepreneurs need to be exceptional at this. Larry: I couldn't agree more. Here you are, I mean, you are busy, you travel around the country, you meet with all kinds of groups and individuals from entrepreneurs to larger organizations. How do you bring balance to your personal and to your professional lives? Lucy: Flexibility, a flexible schedule, being able to schedule things when you pretty much want to do them. So it's not uncommon to see me working until midnight; it's also not uncommon to see me taking off in the middle of the day and going to see my kids play soccer or doing what they're going to do. Was it Best Buy that had a story on the un-tethered workplace? It's not so important when you do your job and work, or where you do it, but that you do it. Now, obviously that can't get taken to the total extreme. Often you need to have schedules and meet with people and be attentive to that, but I think having that kind of flexibility in my day is what makes it all work out. Larry: Don't you go out there and jog every now and then too? Lucy: I jog all the time. I run every day, although I'm a little slower than I used to be, but I can still get out there and go a good four or five miles. Larry: Excellent. Lucy: And running's great. Gardening's great. My husband and I like to ‑ my husband's a great cook ‑ and so we like to eat. I guess that doesn't bring balance, it might bring a few pounds. Well, you know, hey. Larry: You know, I think it was just a week or so ago, I think Brad Feld said, "I think that Lucy Sanders just passed me." Lucy: He did not. Larry: Oh, didn't he say that? Oh, Okay. I thought he... Lucy: The day I pass Brad Feld is a day to celebrate. Larry: Yeah, you bet. Woman 1: I have a question. You have two boys. Lucy: Yes. Woman: So how do they look at you in the broader scope of women? Lucy: Interestingly enough, I think that kids of their age still aren't at the place where they see that there is any difference in the way people act and they don't want to admit it. The way they look at me is, I think, I'm just Mom. So we don't really talk about any under‑representation issues or anything else. Now, I would say that they are, I think they're proud of me. I think they have seen my career and what I've done, and I think that it motivates them. I could be wrong, you could interview them. Larry: Lucy, let me ask you this question. What do you feel gave you the advantage to get in the position that you're in today as well as all the way through your IT experience? Lucy: Well, I really am very relentless, not relentless in a bad way, but I go at it over and over and over until I find what I want. So I don't want to say I'm patient, because I'm really very impatient, but I'm very... Larry: Persistent? Lucy: I'm persistent. I'm very, no, my husband says I'm very relentless. Larry: Oh, really? OK. Lucy: And I am relentless in business. So I really do look at every no I get as just the first step to a yes, that they didn't mean it. Larry: Wow. You sound like Thomas Edison. Lucy: I think that that's important, I think, it has been important to me. The other thing that I think has been important to me is that I work incredibly hard. I put in a lot of hours and I have extremely high standards. And I have high standards for myself first, and I have high standards for others later. And at the same time, I have incredibly high forgiveness, so if the bar is high, then there should be a safety net and people should not be made to feel bad if they can't quite climb over that high bar. It's just that if you set it really high, then there's always going to be learning. So I think some of those perspectives have helped me in giving me a bit of an advantage. Larry: Wow. I like that. That is usable, powerful, motivating; that's really good. You know, by any standards, you have already accomplished a great deal in your life. And I know you've got a lot of things probably down the road that you'd like to do, but give me a little piece of near‑term, what do you see for yourself in the near‑term, and then maybe longer down the road? Lucy: Well, near‑term, I think, speaking about NCWIT, we have spent about two and a half years really building the foundational infrastructure for NCWIT. By that I mean we've got about 100 organizations, corporations, universities, nonprofits that are part of our alliances. We've built a technical infrastructure to support them; we've built a best practices infrastructure to support them; and project management meetings and workshops to support them. And now it's time to really start to drive the utilization of that infrastructure and to create series like this interview, series to really work on reform within our organizations. So that's in the short‑term for NCWIT. I mean, you can imagine building out a national infrastructure takes a little time. And I do think that people will commit to reform within their organizations once they see the infrastructure's there to support that. So we're at that point right now; it's an exciting time for us. The longer‑term, I don't yet know. I'm still really in the startup of NCWIT, so I'm pretty blind to everything else and I can't see that far out. Although I do know this: I really love technology. I don't think I'm through inventing technology yet, but I don't know what that looks like. Larry: We're going to follow up on that and find out. Lucy: Okay. Larry: Wow, Lucy, this was a fantastic piece of information. We're really looking forward to the series, the entrepreneurs interview series for IT and women. This is going to be just great. And what's the website that they can go to check out other stories? Lucy: It'll be hosted from the NCWIT website, www.ncwit.org. Larry: Sounds perfect. Lucy, thank you so much. Lucy: Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Lucy SandersInterview Summary: Lucy Sanders is start-up CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology. She is a former VP at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs, and holds six patents. Release Date: June 4, 2007Interview Subject: Lucy SandersInterviewer(s): Larry Nelson Duration: 13:35