Podcasts about lucy oh

Join co-hosts Annie Liontas and Lito Velázquez in conversation with LitFriends Lucy Corin & Deb Olin Unferth about their travels in the Sahara, ancient chickens, disappointments, true love, and why great books are so necessary. Our next episode will feature Melissa Febos & Donika Kelly, out December 22, 2023.   Links Libsyn Blog www.annieliontas.com www.litovelazquez.com https://www.lucycorin.com https://debolinunferth.com LitFriends LinkTree LitFriends Insta LitFriends Facebook   Transcript Annie Lito (00:00.118) Welcome to Lit Friends! Hey Lit Friends!   Lito: Welcome to the show.    Annie: Today we're speaking with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth, great writers, thinkers, and LitFriend besties.    Lito:  About chickens, the Sahara, and bad reviews.    Annie: So grab your bestie   Annie & Lito: And get ready to get lit!   Lito: You know those like stones that you can get when you're on like a trip to like Tennessee somewhere or something, they're like worry stones? Like people used to like worry them with their thumb or something whenever they had a problem and it would like supposedly calm you down. Well, it's not quite the same thing, but I love how Deb describes her and Lucy's relationship is like, “worry a problem with me.” Like let's, let's cut this gem from all the angles and really like rub it down to its essential context and meaning and understanding. And I think essentially that's what like writers, great writers, offer the world. They've worked through a problem and they have answers. There's not one answer, there's not a resolution to it, but the answers that lead to better, more better questions.    Annie: Yeah, and there's something so special about them because they're, worry tends to be something we do in isolation, almost kind of worrying ourselves into the ground.   Lito: Right. Annie: But they're doing it together in collaboration.    Lito: It's a collaborative worry. Yes, I love that.    Annie: A less lonely worrying.    Lito: It's a less lonely place to think through these things. And the intimacy between them is so special. The way I think they just weave in and out of their lives with each other, even though they're far away from each other.   I think there's a romantic notion that you're tuned into about Lucy and Deb's trip to the desert. Do you want to say something about that? There's a metaphor in it that you really love, right?    Annie: (1:52) Yeah. Well, so I remember when we first talked about doing this podcast and invited them, we were at a bar at AWP, the writer's conference. And they were like, oh, this is perfect. We just went to the Sahara together. And I was like, what? You writers just decided to take a trip together through the desert? And they said, yeah, it was perfect. And they have adorable photos, which we of course are going to share with the world. Um, but it felt like such a, I mean, the fact that they would go on that kind of adventure together and didn't really plan ahead, I think it was just Deb saying, I really want to go to the desert. And Lucy saying, sure, let's go. Which feels very much a kind of metonym of their friendship in some ways.    Lito: Absolutely.    Annie: (2:42) Yeah. That they wandered these spaces together. They come back to art, right? Art is a way for them to recreate themselves and recreate their friendship. And they're doing such different things on the page.    Lito:  Oh yeah, no, they're very different writers but they do share a curiosity that's unique I think in their friendship, then unique to them.    Annie: Yeah and a kind of rigorousness and a love for the word.    Lito: (3:10) Oh and a love for thinking and reading the world in every capacity.    Annie: Tell me about your friendship with Lucy because you're quite close.   Lito: I was at UC Davis before it was an MFA program. It was just a Master's. After undergrad, I went to the master's program because I wasn't sure if I wanted to be an academic or do the studio option and get an MFA. I loved how Lucy and the other professors there, Pam Houston, Yiyun Li, showed us the different ways to be a writer. They couldn't be more different, the three of them. And, I particularly was drawn to Lucy because of her sense of art and play and how those things interact.    Lito: (03:59) And here was someone that was extremely cerebral, extremely intelligent, thinking through every aspect of existence. And yet it was all done through the idea of play and experimentation, but not experimentation in that sort of like negative way that we think of experimentation, which is to say writing that doesn't work, but experimentation in the sense of innovation. And. Lucy brought out my sense of play. I got it right away, what she was going for, that there is an intellectual pleasure to the work of reading and writing that people in the world respond to, but don't often articulate. Lucy's able to articulate it, and I admire her forever for that.    Lito: (4:52) And perhaps I'm not speaking about our friendship, but it comes from a place of deep admiration for the work that she does and the way she approaches life. You have a special relationship with Deb. I would love to hear more about that.    Annie: (5:04) Yeah, I think I've been fangirling over Deb for years. Deb is such a special person. I mean, she's incredibly innovative and has this agility on the page, like almost no other writer I know. Also quite playful, but I love most her humanity. Deb is a vegan who, in Barn 8, brings such life to chickens in a way that we as humans rarely consider. There's an amazing scene which she's like with a chicken 2000 years into the future. Also, I know Deb through my work with Pen City, her writing workshop with incarcerated writers at the Connally Unit, a maximum security penitentiary in Southern Texas.   Lito: How does that work? Is it all by letter or do you go there?    Annie: (5:58) Well, the primary program, you know, the workshop that Deb teaches is on site, and it's certified. So students are getting, the incarcerated writers, are getting now college credit because it's an accredited program. So Deb will be on site and work with them directly. And those of us who volunteer as mentors, the program has evolved a little bit since then, (06:22) but it's kind of a pen pal situation. So I had a chance to work with a number of writers, some who had been there for years and years. And a lot of folks are writing auto-fiction or fiction that's deeply inspired by the places they've lived and their experiences. It's such a special program, it's such a special experience. And what I saw from Deb was just this absolute fierceness. You know, like Deb can appear to be fragile in some ways (06:53.216), and it's her humanity, but actually there's this solid steel core to Deb, and it's about fortitude and a kind of moral alignment that says, we need to do better.    Lito: We have this weird connotation with the word fragile that it's somehow bad, but actually, what it means is that someone's vulnerable. And to me, there is no greater superpower than vulnerability, especially with art, and especially in artwork that is like what she does at the penitentiary. But, can I ask a question?    Annie:  Sure.   Lito: Why is it so special working with incarcerated folks?    Annie: (7:27) Oh, that's a great question. I mean, we need its own podcast to answer it.   Lito: Of course, but just sort of the...    Annie:  I think my personal experience with it is that so many incarcerated writers have been disenfranchised on all levels of identity and experience. Voting rights, decent food, accommodations, mental health, physical, you know, physical well-being. And we can't solve all those problems necessarily, at least all at once, and it's an up, it's a constant battle. But nothing to me offers or recognizes a person's humanity like saying, "tell us your story. Tell us what's on your mind. We are here to hear you and listen."  And those stories and they do come out, you know, there have been other programs that have done this kind of work, they get out in the world and there's, we're bridging this gap of people we have almost entirely forgotten out of absolute choice.  (8:27) And Deb is doing that work, really, I mean she's been doing that work for a long time and finally got some recognition for it, but Deb does it because she's committed.   Lito: That is really powerful. Tell us your story. Tell us your story, Lit Fam. Tell us your story. Find us in all your social media @LitFriendsPodcast or email us at LitFriendsPodcast@gmail.com   Annie: We will read all your stories. We'll be right back with Lucy and   Deb.   Lito: (09:00) And now, our interview with Lucy Corrin and Deb. Lucy Corin is the author of two short story collections, 100 Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses and The Entire Predicament, and two novels, Everyday Psychokillers and The Swank Hotel. In addition to winning the Rome Prize, Lucy was awarded a fellowship in literature from the NEA. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English in the MFA program at UC Davis.    Annie:  Deb Olin-Unferth is the author of six books, including Barn 8, and her memoir, Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Deb is an associate professor in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She founded and runs Pen City Writers, a two-year creative writing certificate program at Connally, a maximum security prison in southern Texas. For this work, she was awarded the 2017 Texas Governor's Criminal Justice Service Award.   Lito: (09:58) Annie and I thought this up a year ago, and we were talking about what is special about literary friendships and how writing gets made, not as we all think, totally solitary in our rooms alone, but we have conversations, at least I think this way. They're part of long conversations with our friends, our literary friends and living and dead, and you know, all times, in all times of history.   But the idea here is that we get to talk to our literary friends and people we admire and writers who are close friends with each other and friendships in which literature plays a large role.   Annie: (10:37) Yeah, and I'll just add that when we first floated the idea of this podcast, you know, your names came up immediately. We're so in awe of you as people and practitioners and literary citizens, and we love your literary friendship. I mean, I really hold it dear as one of the best that I know of personally.    Lucy, I think of you as, you know, this craftsperson of invention who's always trying to undo what's been done and who's such an amazing mentor to emerging writers. And Deb, you know, I'm always returning to your work to see the world in a new way, to see something I might have missed. And I just, I'm so moved by your generosity in your work and in your life's work with Penn City and elsewhere, which I'm sure we'll have a chance to talk more about.   Annie: (11:30) But I think I recall the first day I realized how close the two of you were when Deb told me that you all were taking a trip to the Sahara. And I was like, oh, of course, like, of course, they're going to have desert adventures together. Like, this makes so much sense. So I hope we'll, you know, we'll talk more about that too.    Annie (11:53) But we're so grateful to have you here and to have you in our lives. And we're going to ask you some questions to get to know a little bit more about you.    Deb:  Sounds great.    Lucy: Thanks.    Deb: It's great to be here. It's really great to see everybody.    Lito: Thank you so much for being here. Deb, will you tell us about Lucy?   Deb: (12:16) I mean, Lucy's just one of my very favorite people. And I feel like our friendship just started really slowly and just kind of grew over a period of many years. And some of the things that I love about Lucy is she is, well, of course, she's a brilliant genius writer. Like, I mean, no one writes weird like Lucy writes weird and no one writes like more emotionally, and more inventively and some of her books are some of my favorite books that have ever been written. Especially her last two books I think have just been such just major literary accomplishments and I just hold them so dear.    (13:05) And as a friend some things that I really love about her is that she will worry a problem with me that's just bugging me about like literary culture or about writing or about, you know, just it could be anything about aesthetics at all. And then she'll literally talk to me about it for like five or six days straight without stopping. Like we'll just constantly, dinner after dinner, like, you know, if we're on a trip together, just like all day, like I'll wake up in the morning and I'll be like, here's another piece of that pie. And then she'll say, oh, and I was thinking, and then we'll like go off and work and then we'll come back at lunch and be like, "and furthermore," you know? And by the end, I remember at one point we were doing this and she said, this is a very interesting essay you're writing. And of course, like it wasn't an essay at all, but it was just like a way of thinking about the way that we were talking.   (14:06) And then she is hilarious and delightful and just like so warm. I don't know, I just love her to pieces. She's just one of my favorite people in the whole world. I could say more, but I'll stop right there for a minute.    Annie: Lucy, tell us about Deb.    Lucy: (14:24) Yeah, I mean, Deb, I mean, the first thing, I mean, the first thing you'll notice is that Deb is sort of effortlessly enthusiastic about the things that she cares about. And that's at the core of the way that she moves through the world and the way that she encounters people and the way that she encounters books.   (14:44) I'm more reserved, so I'll just preface what I'm going to say by saying that like, my tone might not betray my true enthusiasms, but I'll try to list some of the things that I think are special and extraordinary about my friend Deb.   One is that there's this conversation that never stops between the way that she's thinking about her own work and the way that she's thinking about the state of the world and the way that she's thinking about the very specific encounters that she's having in daily life. And so like moving through a conversation with Deb or moving through a period of time with Deb in the world, those things are always in flux and in conversation. So it's a really wonderful mind space to be in, to be in her presence.   (15:35) The other thing is that she's like the most truly ethical person that I am close to and in the sense that like she thinks really hard about every move she makes.   The comparison I would make is like you know Deb is like at the core like, the first thing you might notice about Deb's work is that she's a stylist, that she works sentence by sentence and that she always does. But then the other thing she does is that she's always thinking hard about the world and the work, that it never stays purely a love of the sentence. The love of the sentence is part of the love of trying to understand the relationship between words and the world.    (16:15) And, and they're both an ethics. I think it's an ethics of aesthetics and an ethics of trying to be alive in as decent way as you can manage. And so those things feed into the friendship where she's one of the people who I know will tell me what she really thinks about something because we can have a baseline of trust where then you can talk about things that are either dangerous or you might have different ideas about things or you may have conflict.    (16:47) But because of my sense of who she is as a person, and also who she is with me, we can have challenging conversations about what's right about how to behave and what's right about how to write. And that also means that when the other parts of friendship, which are just like outside of literature, but always connected, which, you know, about your own, you know, your other friendships, your, the rest of your life, your job, your family, things like that, that you wanna talk about with your friends. Yeah, I don't know anybody better to sort through those things than Deb.    And it's in part because we're writers, and you can't separate out the questions that you're having about the other parts of your life from who you're trying to be as a writer. And that's always built into the conversation.   Annie: (17:40) I knew we asked you here for a reason.   Lito: We'll be right back.    Lito (17:58) Back to the show.    Annie: I'm hearing you, you know, you're both, you're sort of really seeing one another, which is really lovely. You know, you're, Deb, you're talking about Lucy wearing a problem with you, which I think conveys a kind of strength and... Of course, like I'm quite familiar with Deb's like strong moral anchors. I think we all are and truly respect, but I'm just wondering, what do you most admire about your friend? What do you think they give to the world in light of this portrait that you've given us?   Deb: (18:28) Lucy is a very careful thinker, and she's incredibly fair. And I've just seen her act, just behave that way and write that way for so many years and it just the quality of it always surprises me.  Like I mean, there was a writer, most recently there was a writer who's been cancelled, who we have spent an enormous amount of time talking about and trying to figure out just exactly what was going on there. And I felt like Lucy had insights into what had happened and what it was like on his end and what about his culture could have influenced what happened. Just all of these things that were.   (19:36.202) It was so insightful and I felt like there's no way that I could have moved that moved forward that many steps in my understanding of what had happened. And in my own like how I was going to approach what had happened. Like there's no way I could have done that without that just constant just really careful thought and really fair thought. Just like trying to deeply understand. Like Lucy has an emotional intelligence that is just completely unparalleled. That's one thing I really love about her.    Another thing is that she's like up for anything. Like when I asked her to go to the Sahara with me, I mean, she said yes in like, it was like not even 12 seconds. It was like 3 seconds, I think, that she was like, yeah.   Annie: You need a friend who is just gonna go to the Sahara.    Lucy: Deb, I don't even know if you actually invited me. The way I remember it is that you said something like, Lucy, no one will go to the Sahara with me. And I said, I would go to the Sahara with you.   Lito: That is lovely.   Lucy: (20:53) It's in Africa, right?    Lito:  Was there something specific about the Sahara that you need to go over for?   Deb:  Yeah, I mean, there was. It's a book I'm still working on, hopefully finishing soon. But it's mostly it's like...I just always wanted to go to the Sahara. My whole life, I wanted to go to Morocco, I wanted to go to the Sahara, I wanted to be surrounded by just sand and one line. You look in 360 degrees and you just see one line. I just wanted to see what that was like so badly, stripping everything out, coming down to just that one element of blue and beige. I just wanted that so much. And I wanted to know that it just went on and on and on and on.   (21:48) Yeah, and you know, people talk a big talk, but most people would not go. And so at one point I was just kind of rallying, asking everyone. And then Lucy happened to be in town and I just mentioned to her that this is happening. And then she said, yeah, and then we went for like a long time. Like we went to Morocco for like over three weeks. Like we went for like a month.    Lucy:  A month.    Deb: Yeah, crazy. But she's always like that. Like whatever I want to do, she's just up for it. I mean, and she called me up and she's like, hey, we want to come to Austin and like, go to this place that's two hours from Austin where you can see five million bats, right? Five million bats? Or was it more? Was it like 20 million?    Lucy:  That's right.    Deb: It was like 20 million bats and a lot of them are baby bats. It's like mama bats and baby bats.     Lucy: Yeah, like it's more when there's the babies.   Deb: (22:46) And yeah, and you were like, I want to come with them as the babies. Yeah, we like went and she just like came and Andrea came, and it was just absolutely beautiful.    Lucy: Well, you were just right for that adventure. I knew you would want to see some bats.    Lucy: Well, I could I could say a couple of more things about what Deb gives the world.    Annie: Sure. Love it.    Lucy: So some of the things that Deb gives the world and though when I listen to you talking about me, I realized why these things are so important to me, is that you have a very steady sense of who you are and a kind of confidence in your instincts. That I know that some of the ways that I worry things through are really productive and some of them are just an ability to see why I could be wrong all the time, and that can stymie me.    (23:48) And one of the things that I love about you and the model that you provide for me in my life is an ability to understand what your truth is and not be afraid to hold onto it while you're thinking about other people's perspectives, that you're able to really tell the difference between the way that other people think about things and the way that you do.   And it doesn't mean that you don't rethink things, you constantly are, but when you have a conviction, you don't have a problem with having a conviction. And I admire it enormously. And I think it allows you to have a kind of openness to the world and an openness to people who are various and different and will challenge you and will show you new things because you have that sense that you're not gonna lose yourself in the wind.    Deb: Mmm. That's really nice.   Lito: I am in awe of everything you've said about each other. And it makes me think about how you first met each other. Can you tell us that story? And why did you keep coming back? What was the person like when you first met? And why did you keep coming back to each other? Do you want to tell Lucy?     Lucy: Yeah, I'll start and you can add what I'm missing and... (25:06) tell a different origin story if you want. But I think that what we might've come to for our origin story is that it was one of the, one of the early &Now Festivals. And the &Now Festival is really great.   Lito: Could you say what that is? Yeah, say a little bit about what that is.   Luch: Oh, it's a literary conference that was started to focus on small press and more innovative—is the term that they used at the time anyhow—innovative writing as a kind of response to the market-driven culture of AWP and to try to get people who are working more experimentally or more like on the edge of literary culture less mainstream and give them a place to come together and have conversations about writing and share their work.   So it was one of the early ones of those. But I think it was, I think we figured out that there were like, yeah, there were three women. It was me, you, and Shelley Jackson. But it was, there were not that many women at this conference at the time. And we were, and I think we were noting, noting our solidarity. Yeah. And that, that's what. That's like some of the first images.   But I knew we were like aware of each other because in some ways we have tended to be up for the same jobs—Deb gets them—up for the same prizes—Deb gets them first, I'll get them later. And so I see her as somebody who's traveling through the literary world in ways that are... I mean, we're very different writers, but as people... You know what I mean? But I still... We still actually...come from a lot of the same literary roots. And so it makes sense that there's something of each other in the work that makes us appeal to overlapping parts of the literary world.   Deb: Yeah, I definitely think that there was in our origins, not only do we come from the same sort of influences, and just things that we admired and stuff, but I also feel like (27:28.018) a lot of our early work would have appealed more easily to the exact same people. As we've gotten older, our work isn't quite as similar. We're a little more different than we used to be. But there's still enough there that, you know, you can see a lot of the same people admiring or liking it.   But I was remembering that first time that we met, you playing pool. And we were, so we were like at a bar and you were like, and you were playing pool, and you had like just had a book out with FSG, I think, or something. I don't know if I even had—   Lucy: FC2. Very different.   Deb: FC2. That's right. FC2. And the FC2 editor was there. And I don't think I even had a book out. I don't remember what year this was. But I don't think I had any kind of book out. All I had was I had nothing, you know. And I was just so in awe of FC2 and the editor there, and you there, and like you could play pool, and I can't play pool at all. And it was just, it was—   Annie: Lucy's so cool. Yeah, she was cool. She was cool. And Shelly Jackson was cool. And it was like all the cool people were there and I got to be there, and it was great.   And then, yeah, and then I think how it continued, I don't know how it continued, we just kind of kept running into each other and just slowly it built up into a really deep friendship. Like at some point you would come through town and stay with me.   (29:25.782) And we moved, we both moved around a lot. So for a while there, so we kind of kept running into each other in different places. We've never lived in the same place.   Lucy: No, never.   Lito: How have you managed that then? Is it always phone or is it texting, phone calls?   Lucy: Well, we'll go through a spate of  texting.   Deb: Yeah, we do both. I think I like to talk on the phone.   Lucy: Yeah, I will talk on the phone for Deb.   Annie: The mark of a true friendship.   Lito: (30:01) Time for a break.   Annie Lito (30:12.43) We're talking with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth.   Lito: How has literature shaped your friendship then? Despite being cool. What kind of books, movies, art do you love to discuss? You can name names. What do you love talking about?   Deb: Well, I remember the moment with Donald Barthelme.   Lucy: That was what I was gonna say.   Deb: No, you go ahead.   Lucy: Well, why don't?   Deb: Oh, okay, you can tell it.   Lucy: I mean, I'll tell part and then you can tell part. It's not that elaborate, but we were, one of the things that Deb and I do is find a pretty place, rent a space, and go work together. And one time we were doing that in Mendocino and Deb was in the late stages of drafting Barn 8 and really thinking about the ancient chickens and the chickens in an ancient space. And we went for a walk in one of those very ferny forests, and Deb was thinking about the chickens and among the giant ferns. And I don't know how it happened, but Deb said something with a rhythm. And we both said to each other the exact line from Donald Barthelme's "The School" that has that rhythm.   (31:34) Is that how you remember it though? You have to tell me if that's how you remember it.   Deb: That's exactly how I remember it. Yeah. And then we like said a few more lines. Like we knew even...    Lito: You remember the line now?   Lucy: I mean, I don't... You do. If you said it, I could do it. I'm just... I was thinking before this, I'm like, oh God, I should go look up the line because I'm not going to get it right, like under pressure. It was just in the moment. It came so naturally.   Deb: It was one of those lines that goes... (32:03) Da da da-da da, da da da-da-da. There's a little parenthetical, it's not really in parentheses in the story, but it might be a little dash mark. But it has, it's something like, "I told them that they should not be afraid, although I am often afraid." I think it was that one.   Deb: I am often afraid. Yeah. And then it was like, we just both remembered a whole bunch of lines like from the end, because the ending of that story is so amazing. And it's, so the fact that we had both unconsciously memorized it and could just like.   And it was something about just like walking under those giant trees and having this weekend together. And like we're like marching along, like calling out lines from Donald Barthelme. And it just felt really like pure and deep.   Annie: It's I mean, I can't imagine anything sounding more like true love than spontaneously reciting a line in unison from Barthelme. And, you know, you both are talking about how your work really converged at the start and that there are some new divergences and I think of you both as so distinct you know on and off the page. There's like the ferociousness of the pros and an eye towards cultural criticism and I always think of you as writing ahead of your time. So I'm just wondering how would you describe your lit friends work to someone, and is there something even after all this time that surprises you about their writing or their voice?   Lucy: I mean, what surprised me recently about Deb's voice is its elasticity. I came to love the work through the short stories and the micros. And those have such a distinct, wry kind of distance. They sort of float a little separate from the world, and they float a little separate from the page.   (34:10) And they have a kind of, they have a very distinct attitude and tone, even if the pieces are different from each other, like as a unit. And that's just really different than the voice that you get in a book like Barn 8 that moves through a lot of different narrators, but that also has just a softer relationship with the world. Like it's a little more blends with the world as you know, it doesn't stay as distant. And I didn't know that until later.   Vacation is also really stark and sort of like has that distinctiveness from the world. And so watching Deb move into, you know, in some ways like just more realistic, more realistic writing that's still voice-centered and that still is music centered was a recent surprising thing for me.   But I'm also really excited about what I've read in the book that in the new book because I think that new book is sort of the pieces that the bits that I've read from it are they're marking a territory that's sort of right down the middle of the aesthetic poles that Deb's work has already hit I mean the other thing is that you know Deb does all the genres. All of the prose genres. Every book sort of is taking on it is taking on a genre And the next one is doing that too, but with content in a way that others have been taking on new genres and form. And so...    Lito: I love that. And I like that it's related to the music of the pros and sound. I feel like musicians do that a lot, right? There's some musicians that every album is a new genre or totally different sound. And then there's artists who do the same thing over and over again. We love both those things. Sorry, so Deb...   Deb: So I love how complicated Lucy can get with just an image or an idea. I just feel like no one can do it the way that she can do it. And my like her last in her last book, which I love so much, we're just brought through all these different places and each one is sort of (36:31.29) dragging behind it, everything that came before, so that you can just feel all of this like, pressure of like the past and of the situations and like even like a word will resonate. Like you'll bring like, there's like a word on maybe page like 82 that you encountered on like page 20 that like the word meant so much on page 20 that it like really, you can really feel its power when it comes on page 80.   And you feel the constant like shifting of meaning and just like the way that the prose is bringing so much more and like it's like reinterpreting that word again and again and again, just like the deeper that you go, like whatever the word is be it you know house or home or stair or um you know sex, whatever it is, it's like constantly shifting. (37:40.952) And that's just part of like who Lucy is, is this like worrying of a problem or worrying of a word and like carrying it forward. And so yeah, so like in that last book, it just was such a big accomplishment. And I felt like it was like her best work yet.   Lucy: So I will say, try and say something a little bit more specific, then. (38:09) Like I guess in the sort of 10 stories that I teach as often as possible in part because I get bored so easily that I need to teach stories that I can return to that often and still feel like I'm reading something that is new to me is the title story from Wait Till You See Me Dance and that story is a really amazing combination of methodical in its execution, which sounds really dull.   But what it does is sort of toss one ball in the air and then toss another ball in the air and then toss another ball in the air. And then, you know, the balls move, but you know, the balls are brightly colored and they're handled by a master juggler. So it's methodical, but it's joyful and hilarious. And then, and then, and you don't   And the other thing is that Deb's narrators are wicked and like they're wicked in the way that like… They are, they're willing to do and say the things that you secretly wish somebody would do and say. That's the same way that like, you know, in the great existential novels, you love and also worry about the protagonists, right? They're troubled, but their trouble allows them to speak truthfully because they can't help it. Or they can't help it when they're in the space of the short story. It's that like, you know, the stories are able to access—a story like this one and like many of Deb's—are able to access that really special space of narrator, of narration, where you get to speak, you get to speak in a whisper.   Annie: You get to speak in a whisper. That's beautiful, Lucy. You get to speak in a whisper.   Lito: We'll be right back.   Lito: (40:15) Welcome back.   Annie: I'm wondering about what this means, you know, how this crosses over to your own personal lives, right? Because of course, literary friendships, we're thinking about the work all of the time. But we're also, you know, when I think of my literary friendship with Lito, I think of him as like a compatriot and somebody who's really carrying me through the world sometimes. I'm wondering if there was for either of you, a hard time that you went through personally, professionally, you know, whether it's about publishing or just getting words on the page or something, you know, um, you know, family related or whatever, where you, um, you know, what it meant to have a literary friend nearby at that time.   Lucy: I mean that's the heart of it.   Deb: Yeah, I mean for sure.   Lucy: One happened last week and I'm sort of still in the middle of it where you know my literary mentor is aging and struggling and so that's painful for me and who gets that? Deb gets that.   The other one, the other big one for me was that the release of my last novel was really complicated. And it brought up a lot of, it intersected with a lot of the things going on in my family that are challenging and a lot of things that are going on in the literary world that are challenging. There were parts of that release that were really satisfying and joyful, and there were parts of it that were just devastatingly painful for me.   And, you know, Deb really helped me find my way through that. And it was a lot, like it was a lot of emotional contact and a lot of thinking through things really hard and a lot of being like, "wait, why do we do this? But remember, why do we do this?" And Deb was the person who could say, "no, you're a novelist." Like things that like I was doubting, Deb could tell me. And the other thing is that I would come closer to being able to believe those things because she could tell them to me.   Annie: Lucy, can you talk a little more about that? Like what did that? (42:27.126) What did that look like, right? Like you talked about resistance to phone calls, and you're not in the same place.   Lucy: It was phone. Right, it would be phone or it would be Zoom or it would be texting. And then, you know, when we would see each other that would be, we would reflect on those times in person even though that wasn't those immediate moments of support and coaching and, you know, wisdom.   Annie:  And that requires a kind of vulnerability, I think, that is hard to do in this industry, right? And I'm just wondering if that was new for you or if that was special to this friendship, right? Or like what allowed for that kind of openness on your part to be able to connect with Deb in that way?   Lucy: I mean, I think I was just really lucky that we've had, like even though we have really, I think, only noticed that we were close since that Morocco trip. Like that was a little bit of a leap of faith. Like, "oh my gosh, how well do I know this person and we're gonna travel together in like circumstances, and do we really know each other this way?" But the combination of the years that we've known each other in more of a warm acquaintance, occasional, great conversation kind of way towards being somebody that you, that you trust and believe and that you have that stuff built in.   And, you know, that over the years you've seen the choices that they've made in the literary world, the choices they've made in their career, when they, you know, everything from, you know, supporting, you know, being a small, being small press identified and championing certain kinds of books over other kinds of books. And like those, just like watching a person make choices for art that you think are in line with the writer that, watching her make choices in art that are in line with the writer that I wanna be in the world makes it so that when you come to something that is frightening, that's the kind of person you wanna talk to because she's done that thinking.   Deb: Yeah, I mean, I feel like there are like so many things that I could say about that. Like one thing is that the kind of time that I spend with Lucy is really different from the kind of time that I spend with most people. Like most people, (44:51) they come to town and I have dinner with them. Or I go to like AWP or whatever and we go out for dinner. Or maybe I spend like one night at their house like with their partner and kid or something, you know. But Lucy and I, we get together and we spend like four days or something all alone, just the two of us, you know, or a month or whatever. And we don't spend a ton of time with other people. And so there's, but then we also do that, but just like not very much.   And so there is something that just creates, like that's a really good mode for me. It's a, that's like the way that I make really deep friendships that are kind of like forever-people in my life. And I've always been like that. And so, but not a lot of people are willing to sort of do that with me. Like, I have so many acquaintances, I've got like a million, I feel like I could have dinner with someone just about any night, as long as it's only like once every few months or something, you know, but I don't have people who are willing to be this close to me, like spend that kind of time with me one-on-one. And the fact is like, they're not that many people that I really feel like doing that with.   And you know, every time Lucy and I do one of these, I just come away feeling like I thought about some really important things and I talked about some really important things and I saw some beautiful things because Lucy always makes sure that we're somewhere where we can see a lot of beauty. And so that just means so much to me. And it's like, and so for me it creates like a space where, Yeah, I can be honest and vulnerable, and I can also tell her, if I can tell her things that I don't tell other people, or I can be really honest with her if I feel like, if I'm giving her advice about something, I can just be honest about it. And so it's really, really nice.   (47:07) I mean, the other thing is like, we're so similar. Like we've made so many similar life choices. And we've talked about that. Lucy and I have talked about that. Like, you know, we both chose not to have kids. We live pretty, like we're both like kind of loners, even though we have partners. Like I think our partners are more like, they just kind of would, they would prefer that we.   I don't know, I shouldn't probably say anything, but I know that Matt would prefer if I was not quite as much of a loner as I am. Yeah, so I look at Lucy and I see the kind of person that I am, the kind of person I wanna be, so if I have a question, I mean, it happens.   Lucy mentioned a couple of things. I have... You know, she's had some pretty major, major things. I have like little things that happen all the time, and they just like bring me to tears.   Like there was this one moment during the pandemic when I was like driving across the country by myself. I was like in Marfa, and I was trying to get to California and I had like a toilet in the back seat. Remember when we were all doing that kind of thing?   Lucy: It was really amazing.   Deb: It was so crazy.   Lucy: But Deb, not everybody had a toilet in their back seat.   Annie: I know. I need that now.   Deb: It still comes in handy.   Annie: I'm sure.   Deb: (48:43) And I was in, and yeah, Lucy is amazing. She'll talk to me on the phone, but Lucy will do because I love to talk on the phone and I love to Zoom. Lucy does not. So she'll tell me in advance, okay, I will talk to you, but it's gonna be for like 20 minutes or I'm gonna have to get off like pretty soon.   But she Zoomed with me and Marfa and I just didn't realize how upset I was about this one rejection that I'd gotten. And it was a really small rejection, I don't know why it bothered me so much, but I just like started crying and like I was like way out in like so many miles from any so many hours from anyone I knew and you know the world was going to shit, and I'd gotten this like tiny rejection from a magazine like a little like I had it was the page was it was like a piece that was like a page long or something, and Lucy just like knew exactly why I I was so upset, and just was able to talk to me about what that meant to me. And just refocus me to like, "look, you don't have to write those. You don't have to be that writer. You don't have to do that." And it was so freeing to know that I didn't always have to be, I don't even know how to describe it, but it was meant a lot. And things like that happen all the time.   Annie: (50:15.265) That's such a wonderful model of mutual support.   Lucy: We'll be right back.   Annie: Hi Lit Fam. We hope you're enjoying our conversation with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth, and their love for the word, the world, and each other. If you love what we're doing here at LitFriends, please take a moment now  to follow, subscribe, rate, and review our podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just a few minutes of your time will help us so much to continue to bring you great conversations like this week after week.  Thank you for listening. Back to a conversation with Lucy Corin and Deb Olin Unferth.     Annie: I'm also aware that we're working in an industry that's a zero-sum construct. And, you know, Lucy, you were sort of joking earlier about... Deb winning all of the awards that you later got. But I am curious, like, what about competition between literary friends when we're living in a world with basically shrinking resources?   Lucy: I feel competition, but I don't really feel it with my literary friends. Does that make sense? Like, I'll feel it with my idea of somebody that I don't really know except for their literary profile, right? But when someone like Deb gets something, it makes the world seem right and true, right? And so that's not hard to bear, right? That's just a sign of a good thing in a world that you're afraid isn't so good.   Deb: I guess I feel like if Lucy gets something, then that raises the chances that I'm gonna get something. I'm gonna get the same thing. Because if we're kind of in the same, like we both published with Grey Wolf, we both have the same editor, so we've multiple times that we've been on these trips, we've both been working on books that were supposed to come out with Graywolf with Ethan. (52:16.3) You know, so I feel like if Lucy gets something, then the chances go up.   Like there was just, something just happened recently where Lucy was telling me that she had a little, like a column coming out with The Believer. And I was like, "oh my God, I didn't even know that they were back." I'm like, "man, I really wanna be in The Believer. Like, I can't believe like, you know, they're back and I'm not in them. I gotta be in it. I said that to Lucy on the phone. And then, like the very next day, Rita wrote me and said, "Hey, do you want to write something?"   And so I wrote to Lucy immediately. I was like, did you write to Rita? And she was like, "no, I really didn't." So it's like, we're in the same— Did you, Lucy?   Lucy: No, I didn't! Rita did that all by herself.   Lito: You put it out into the universe, Deb.   Annie: Lucy did it. Hot cut, Lucy did it!   Deb:  So we're like, we're like in the same, I feel a lot of the time like we're kind of in the same lane and so that really helps because like, I do have writer friends who are not in the same lane as me and maybe. Like I'm not as close, but maybe that would be, but if I was as close, maybe that would cause me more confusion. Like I would be like, you know, "geez, how can I get that too? Or it's hopeless, I'll never get that, you know? So I just don't do that thing," or something. So that's really comforting.   Lito: What are your obsessions?   Lucy: Well, I mean-   Lito: How do they show up on the page?   Lucy: I feel like it's so obvious with Deb that like, you know, Deb got obsessed with chickens, and there was a whole bunch of stuff about chickens. First there was a really smart, brilliant Harper's essay where she learned her stuff. And then there was the novel where she, you know, imagined out the chickens (54:19) to touch on everything, right?   Annie: Then there was a chicken a thousand years in advance.   Lucy: Right, and then there's a beautiful chicken art in the house, and there's, you know. And I'm sure that she's gotten way more chicken gifts than she knows what to do with. But then the Sahara, like, you know, she was obsessed with the Sahara and you'll see it in the next book. It's gonna be— It's not gonna be in a literal way, right? But it'll be like, you'll feel the sand, you'll feel that landscape.   So I don't know, like I feel like the obsessions show up in the books. I mean, are there, I mean, this is a question like, Deb, do you think you have obsessions that don't show up in your work? We both have really cute little black dogs.   Deb: (55:07) Oh, not really. I mean, but I do get obsessed. Like I just get so, so like obsessed in an unhealthy way. And then I just have to wait it out. I just have to like wait until I'm not obsessed anymore. And it's like an ongoing just I'm like, OK, here it comes. It's like sleeping over me. Like how many years of my life is going to be are going to be gone as a result of this?   So I'm always like so relieved when I'm not in that space. Like Lucy's obsession comes down to that, with her language, that she's like exploring one idea, like she'll take an idea and she like worries that over the course of a whole book and that she'll just it's like almost like a cubist approach. She'll be like approaching it from so many different standpoints. And that is like, I mean, Lucy is so smart and the way that she does that is just so genius. And so I feel like that's the thing that really keeps drawing me to her obsessions, that keeps bringing me back to that page to read her work again and again. And yeah, and that's how she is in person too.   Lito: Why do you write? What does it do for the world, if anything?   Lucy: (56:37) I know I had a little tiny throat clear, but I think it was because I'm still trying to figure it out because I feel like the answer is different in this world order than it was in earlier world orders. Like when I first answered those questions for myself when I was deciding to make these big life choices and say, "you know, fuck everything except for writing," like I was answering, I was answering that question a different way than I would now, but I don't quite have it to spit out right now, except that I do think it has something to do with a place where the world can be saved. Like, writing now is a place of respite from the rest of the world where you can still have all of these things that I always assumed were widely valued, that feel more and more narrowly valued. And so I write to be able to have that in my life and to be able to connect with the other people who share those kinds of values that are about careful thinking, that are about the glory of the imagination, that are about the sanctity of people having made things.   Annie: Lucy, I need that on my wall. I just need to hear that every day.   Deb: I mean, I feel like if I can think about it in terms of my reading life, that like art changes my mind all the time. Like that's the thing that teaches me. Like I remember when I was a kid, and I lived right near the Art Institute of Chicago, and I remember going in, and they had the Jacob Lawrence immigration panels, migration panels up there that was like a traveling exhibition. And I had none of that information. I did not know about the Great Migration. I just didn't know any of that. So I just remember walking from panel to panel and reading and studying it, (58:47.952) reading it and studying it and just like getting like just getting just it was like a It was such a revelation and I just learned so much and like changed my mind about so many things just in that moment that it was like I'll never forget that.   And I feel like I, I totally agree with Lucy that the reasons that I write now and the reasons that I read now are very different than they were like before, say 2015, or something. But that, that maybe it has its roots in that sort of Jacob Lawrence moment where, you know, just I read these things and it's, I like, I love sinking deep into books that are really changing my mind and like teaching me about the world in ways that I never could have imagined, and I love that so much and I… I don't know if I have that to offer, but I really try hard, you know. Like I tried that with the chicken book. I'm kind of trying that, I hope, in this book that I'm trying to finish and— ha finish!—that I'm trying to get through. And so I think that that's why I think that art is so important.   I don't know if that's truly why I write though. I feel like why I write is that I've always written, and it's like I love it so much. Like I just, sometimes I hate it, sometimes I hate it for like a whole year or whatever, but it's just, it's so much a core of who I am. (01:00:39) And I just, I can't imagine my life any other way. It's just it's just absolutely urgent to me.   Annie: Yeah, urgent. Yeah. I think we all feel that in some way.   Annie:(01:01:04.374) Thank you both for talking to us a little bit about your friendship and getting to know a little bit more about how you started and where you're at now. We're going to move into the lightning round.   Lito: Ooooo Lightning round.   Annie: (01:01:16) Deb, who were you in seventh grade? Who was I in seventh grade? In one sentence, oh my God, the pressure is on. I was unpopular and looked, my hair was exactly the same as it is now. And I wore very similar clothes.   Lucy: (01:01:44) I was a peer counselor, and so I was like the Don who held everybody's secrets.   Lito: Beautiful. Lucy.   Lucy: It saved me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have had a place in that world.   Annie: Makes so much sense.   Lito: Wow. Who or what broke your heart first, deepest?   Lucy: I mean, I would just say my mom.   Deb: I guess, then I have to say my dad.   Annie: Okay, which book is a good lit friend to you?   Deb: Can I say two? The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein and The Known World by Edward P. Jones.   Annie: Excellent.   Lucy: My go-to is White Noise. Still. Sorry.   Lito: No need to apologize.   Lucy: Yep.   Annie Lito (01:02:27) Who would you want to be lit friends with from any point in history?   Lucy: For me it's Jane Bowles.   Deb: Oh, whoa. Good one. She would be maybe a little difficult. I was gonna say Gertrude Stein, then I was like, actually, she'd be a little difficult.   Lucy: What a jerk!   Deb: I think Zora Neale Hurston would be fun.   Lucy: Well, yeah, of course. For sure.   Annie: We were gonna ask who your lit frenemy from any time might be, but maybe you've already said.   Lucy: Oh, right. I accidentally said my lit frenemy instead of my lit friend.   Annie: Yeah.   Lucy: Mm-hmm.   Deb: (01:03:08) A frenemy from any time?   Annie: Any time. Yeah, it doesn't have to be Jonathan Franzen. I feel like most people will just be like Jonathan Franzen. But it could be any time in history.   Deb: I mean, if you're gonna go that route, then it would probably be, um, like...   Lito: Kierkegaard.   Deb: I don't know, maybe Nietzsche? If you're gonna go that route, if you're gonna go like, like existential philosophers.   Annie: (01:03:34) That's great.   Lito: That could be a podcast too.   Annie: Just like epic frenemy. The most epic frenemy.   Lito: (01:03:35)  Well, that's our show.   Annie & Lito: Thanks for listening.   Annie: We'll be back next week with our guests Melissa Febos and Donika Kelly.    Lito: Find us on all your socials @LitFriendspodcasts   Annie: And tell us about an adventure you've had with your Lit bestie. I'm Annie Liontas.   Lito: And I'm Lito Velazquez.   Annie: Thanks to our production squad. Our show was edited by Justin Hamilton.   Lito: Our logo was designed by Sam Schlenker.   Annie: Lisette Saldaña is our Marketing Director.   Lito: Our theme song was written and produced by Roberto Moresca.   Annie: And special thanks to our show producer Toula Nuñez.   Lito: This was Lit Friends, Episode 2.

(sorry i missed a couple of weeks - been crazy busy)   Quail Seed A timely tale of marketing and social networking. [Saki was often way ahead of his time!] Announcer - Jennifer Dixon Mr. Scarrick - John Lingard Jimmy - Will Watt Lucy - Tanja Milojevic [Lightning Bolt Theater] Boy - Reynaud LeBoeuf Man - Anthony D.P. Mann [Horror Etc.] Miss Fritten - Robyn Keyes Mrs. Greyes - Jennifer Dixon Mrs. Gordon - Judith Moore Gloria - Beverly Poole Other women - Julie Hoverson Music by Kevin McLeod (Incompetech.com) Picture by lucias_clay, found with help from Bill Jones.   Quail Seed Cast: Announcer Mr. Scarrick, shopkeeper Jimmy, Assistant Lucy, Jimmy's girl Boy Man/Beard Miss Fritten Mrs. Greyes Mrs. Gordon Miss Jones Miss Smith Gloria Mrs. Lipping   SAKI OPENING MUSIC SOUND      SHOP DOOR, BELL, FOOTSTEPS LUCY     Hello?  Helloooo? JIMMY     [close]  Morning, Lucy! LUCY     [startled gasp]  Jimmy! There you are.  Bit... empty in here, isn't it? JIMMY     [heavy sigh] A bit. LUCY     But where are all the Christmas shoppers? JIMMY     Shh!  Whatever you do, don't ask that in front of Mr. Scarrick.  You'll quite set him off.  LUCY     Oh! JIMMY     It's all right, he's out at the moment. LUCY     [impressed] He left you in charge? JIMMY     [heavy sigh, morose]  Only in the certainty that there won't be a stampede on our services. LUCY     That bad, eh? JIMMY     Quite. SOUND     DOOR, BELL, FOOTSTEPS Miss Smith     Hello? SOUND     QUICK STEPS JIMMY     Yes?  How may I assist you? Miss Smith     [nervous] Oh, I was -um- just looking for a railway timetable?  I'm going up to the city-- [breaks off] JIMMY     Sorry.  Clean out.  Perhaps next week. MISS Smith     Ah.  Thank you. SOUND     FOOTSTEPS, BELL DOOR LUCY     You might have made a sale! JIMMY     She just wanted to look. LUCY     You don't know that. JIMMY     [bitter admission] She's the fourth today.  Everyone would rather take the train to town and shop in a big department store than [quoting] bother to take advantage of the convenience-- SOUND     DOOR BELL MISS Jones     Hello? JIMMY     ...and that's five. MUSIC SOUND     PUB SCARRICK     The outlook is not encouraging for us smaller businesses. SOUND     POURING DRINK SCARRICK     These big concerns are offering all sorts of attractions to the shopping public which we couldn't afford to imitate, even on a small scale--reading-rooms and play-rooms and gramophones and Heaven knows what. BOY     [normal, commiserating] People like shiny objects. SCARRICK     And they don't care to buy half a pound of sugar nowadays unless they can listen to Harry Lauder and have the latest Australian cricket scores ticked off before their eyes. MAN     Seems like quite a trip for sugar. SCARRICK     With the big Christmas stock we've got in we ought to keep half a dozen assistants hard at work, but as it is my nephew Jimmy and myself can pretty well attend to it ourselves.  In fact, I've left him in charge.  I've never done that before. BOY     I'm sure he'll be fine. SCARRICK     [drinks] It's a nice stock of goods, too.  I could run it all off in a few weeks time, but there's no chance of that--not unless the London line was to get snowed up for a fortnight before Christmas. MAN     [musing] How you gonna keep them home on the farm? MUSIC SOUND     SHOP DOOR, BELL MRS. GREYES     --so tedious, but there it is, and what else is one to do? MISS FRITTEN     We shall simply wait for the next--  SCARRICK     May I help you ladies? MRS. GREYES     Oh!  [evasive] Really, we just stopped in to see about --- about-- MISS FRITTEN     Bootlaces.  MRS. GREYES     Bootlaces!  Yes!  I've been in dire need of some-- SCARRICK     [hearty] Of course.  Over on the left wall, near the back. MRS. GREYES     Of course.  [whispering]  You knew he'd try and sell us something if we came in here!  Bootlaces indeed.  I already have more laces than boots! MISS FRITTEN     At least if we do make a purchase, they're small enough to carry when we go to-- MRS. GREYES     Shh! SCARRICK     Finding everything? MRS. GREYES     Oh, yes.  This is the best ... um... anchovy paste.  Just what I was looking for. MISS FRITTEN     Just lovely! SCARRICK     Perhaps you ladies could help me.  I was thinking of adding a little entertainment to the shop. MRS. GREYES     Oh? SCARRICK     I did have a sort of idea of engaging Miss Luffcombe to give recitations during afternoons; she made a great hit at the Post Office entertainment with her rendering of 'Little Beatrice's Resolve'. MISS FRITTEN     [very uncertain] Oh, that would be ...just ... lovely. SOUND     DOOR OPENS, BELL RINGS ODDLY SCARRICK     What? SOUND     ODD FOOTSTEPS ENTER SCARRICK     [excusing himself] Your pardon. SOUND     SCARRICK GOES TO THE COUNTER MRS. GREYES     [whispered] Perhaps we should just do our shopping here. MISS FRITTEN     But I'm in my best hat! MRS. GREYES     Shh! Shh!  Look at that! MISS FRITTEN     What an odd looking boy.  Brown as a nut, but we've not had sun in weeks! MRS. GREYES     And those clothes.  Like something out of the Arabian nights! SOUND     CLANG BOY     [accented now] Six pomegranates, please, and a packet of quail seed. MISS FRITTEN     What's the bowl for? MRS. GREYES     To carry the pomegranates? MISS FRITTEN     Why not a string bag? MRS. GREYES     Allergies?  Shh! SCARRICK     [business as usual]   Here you are.  We have some lovely pomegranates. MISS FRITTEN     He doesn't even look surprised! MRS. GREYES     The boy must have been here before. SOUND     COIN SKITTERING, CAUGHT BOY     The wine and figs were not paid for yesterday.  Keep what is over of the money for our future purchases. SCARRICK     [formal and serious] As you wish.  SOUND     BOY LEAVES, DOOR SHUTS SOUND     SKITTERING OF LADIES FEET MISS FRITTEN     [to Scarrick, hinting] A very strange-looking boy? SCARRICK     [final]  A foreigner, I believe. MRS. GREYES     Does he shop here often?  Surely there can't be much call for ...quail seed... at this time of year. SCARRICK     It takes all sorts. SOUND     DOOR OPENS SOUND     HEAVY OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS MISS FRITTEN     [gasp] MRS. GREYES     Oh!  [covering her consternation]  Oh, I forgot those bootlaces!  [hissed] Come on! SOUND     THEY SKITTER AWAY MAN     [accented] I wish for a pound and a half of the best coffee you have. SCARRICK     [wary] Certainly sir. MRS. GREYES     Look at that beard! MISS FRITTEN     Like a comedy Russian. MRS. GREYES     No, more like an ancient Assyrian. MISS FRITTEN     Who do you think he is? MAN     [suspicious] Has a dark-faced boy been here buying pomegranates? SCARRICK     Can't say that I've seen anyone like that. MRS. GREYES     Oh!  [muffles self] MISS FRITTEN     [whispered]  How could he! SCARRICK     [offhanded] We have a few pomegranates in stock, but there has been no real demand for them. MAN     My servant will fetch the coffee as usual SOUND     COIN SKITTERS, HEAVY FEET START TO WALK AWAY, THEN STOP MAN     [very importantly] Have you, perhaps, any quail seed? GREYES AND FRITTEN [gasp] SCARRICK     [unhesitating] No.  we don't stock it. SOUND     FEET WALK AWAY MRS. GREYES     [whispered] What will he deny next? MISS FRITTEN     And I always believed Mr. Scarrick to be such a truthful man.  Heavens! He just presided at a lecture on Savonarola. SOUND     DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES MRS. GREYES     Don't let's bother about the 3.12.  Let's dash, and talk this out at Laura Lipping's MISS FRITTEN      Perhaps we should buy a few things first.  Since we're here. MUSIC SOUND     TEA MISS FRITTEN     [recounting lusciously] Turning up the deep astrakhan collar of his long coat, the stranger swept out of the shop, with the air of a Satrap proroguing a Sanhedrim. MRS. LIPPING     Do Satraps prorogue? MISS FRITTEN     [coldly superior] Have you ever seen one that didn't? GLORIA     I don't even know what a Sanhedrim is.  Is it a dance? MISS FRITTEN     It is a simile and hardly matters.  Or do I mean an allegory? MRS. GORDON     And the boy? MRS. GREYES     I should have though him Greek, but after seeing that beard-- MRS. LIPPING     They could have been unrelated. MISS FRITTEN     Unrelated?  And both asking for "quail seed"?  Mark my words.  There's something afoot. MRS. GREYES     What bothers me most is this unprecedented streak of falsity in our local grocer! GLORIA     I've never known Mr. Scarrick to prevaricate like that before! MRS. GREYES     It's the influence of that artist that took the flat above the shop.  Mark my words.  [importantly] Bohemian. MRS. GORDON     [tragically] I shall never again be able to believe what he tells me about the absence of colouring matter in the jam. MUSIC SOUND     DOOR, BELL SOUND     BROOM LUCY     Jimmy? JIMMY     Here. LUCY     Goodness, it looks like a tornado touched down. JIMMY     Fabulous, isn't it? LUCY     But, what happened? JIMMY     This afternoon, from tea onwards, we had a constant stream of shoppers.  LUCY     Is this something to do with the odd individuals who may or may not have been in this afternoon? JIMMY     [overly innocent] Whom do you refer to? LUCY     Come on!  It's all over town.  People talked about it at tea, and more people talked about it at supper.  I expect they're all talking about it over Bridge even as we speak.  The dark young man and the Beard.  JIMMY     Sounds a bit like a music hall act. LUCY     [speculatively] Yes... yes, it does.... MUSIC AMBIENCE     SHOP [MANY CUSTOMERS] MISS SMITH     Is this the freshest jar of pickles? JIMMY     Miss?  I suppose so. MISS SMITH     It looks a little dusty. JIMMY     That would be my fault-- SCARRICK     [commanding] Jimmy!     JIMMY     So sorry, must jump. MISS FRITTEN     [whispered]  Do you think they will return? MRS. GREYES     I have it on good authority someone's rented that house at the far end of Plummergen. MISS FRITTEN     But why should they come all this way to shop? MRS. GREYES     [knowing] Plummergen drapers don't stock quail seed.  MISS FRITTEN     [getting it] Ah! SOUND     REGISTER NOISE SCARRICK     That will be three shillings and four pence. SOUND     COINS MRS. LIPPING     I'm looking for something interesting for a savory.  Have you any-- SOUND     GENERAL HUSH MRS. LIPPING     [nervous] --any, um-- SCARRICK     [as if nothing is amiss]  I have some pickled olives.  Imported from turkey. MRS. LIPPING     Yes, anything. SOUND     JAR SET DOWN, CASH REGISTER SOUND     JABBER BEGINS AGAIN SOUND     DOOR OPENS, BELL, JABBER SLOWLY DIES AWAY. SILENCE SOUND     BOY WALKS IN. SOUND     BOWL SET DOWN. SCARRICK     [normal]  What can I get for you today? BOY     I require a pound of honey. SOUND     BREATH BEING LET OUT ALL OVER BOY     and - [quieter] and a packet of quail seed. SOUND     GENERAL INTAKE OF BREATH, GIGGLE QUICKLY MUFFLED SCARRICK     Very good, sir. SOUND     CONVERSATIONS, FORCED LAUGHTER, BUT MUTED, LISTENING MISS FRITTEN     [excited whisper] We might be living in the Arabian Nights. MRS. GREYES     Hush! Listen! SOUND     THINGS PLACED INTO BOWL, BOWL REMOVED, BOY STARTS TO LEAVE. SOUND     QUICK FOOTSTEPS JIMMY     [hurried, fraught with meaning] We have some very fine Jaffa oranges.  Around behind here. SOUND     QUICK SHUFFLE OF FEET SOUND     DOOR OPENS, MAN STRIDES IN. SOUND     GASPS SCARRICK     [unperturbed]  What may I get for you today, Sir? MAN     A pound of dates and a tin of the best Smyrna halva. MISS FRITTEN     Halva?  What is that? MRS. GREYES     It comes from Smyrna - that's figs, isn't it, Smyrna is? GLORIA     Who would want dates AND figs? MRS. LIPPING     Hush. SCARRICK     There you are.  MAN     hmm [evaluating noise]  Yes. SOUND     COINS DROPPED MAN     Has the dark-faced boy, of whom I spoke yesterday, been here to-day? GLORIA     [stifled squeak of excitement] SCARRICK     We've had rather more people than usual in the shop to-day... but I can't recall a boy such as you describe. SOUND     [gasps] MRS. GREYES     [satisfied] Didn't we say? MISS FRITTEN     It's too too terrible. MUSIC TEA MRS. GREYES     It is deplorable that anyone - particularly someone in a position such as Mr. Scarrick -should treat the truth as an article temporarily and excusably out of stock. MISS FRITTEN     More quail seed!  Those quails must be voracious!  [realizing]  or else... perhaps it isn't quail seed at all. MRS. GREYES     I believe it's opium, and the bearded man is a detective. MRS. LIPPING     I don't.  I'm sure it's something to do with the Portuguese Throne. MISS FRITTEN      More likely to be a Persian intrigue on behalf of the ex-Shah.  The bearded man belongs to the Government Party. The quail-seed is a countersign, of course; Persia is almost next door to Palestine, and quails come into the Old Testament, you know. GLORIA     [exasperated] Only as a miracle.  [knowing] I've thought all along it was part of a love intrigue. MRS. LIPPING     I distinctly saw a snarl of baffled rage as the man departed, sandwiched between that heavy moustache and upturned astrakhan collar. GLORIA     I can't imagine that that boy is the guilty party here.  Much more likely he's simply perishing of love for someone - perhaps the daughter of the beard, but the match is quite unsuitable-- MISS FRITTEN     Honey and pomegranates - of course!!! MUSIC SHOP, NIGHT, QUIET SOUND     DOOR, BELL JIMMY     [calling from off] Closed! LUCY     I know, mutton head. JIMMY     Oh, Lucy! SOUND     BROOM DOWN, STEPS LUCY     Another busy day? JIMMY     The busiest.  Another day or two of brisk trade and we'll be--[cut off with a gasp] SOUND     KISS LUCY     [laughing] I was here today, you know. JIMMY     [uneasy] Oh? LUCY     [indulgent] You were quite the hero.  Hustling that poor young man off behind the biscuit tins in the very nick of time. JIMMY     [flustered] Well, I have a good view of the street from my post at the cheese and bacon counter. LUCY     [pouty] Jimmy.  Have you EVER known me to gossip? JIMMY     You, Lucy?  I don't think so. LUCY     Quite a vote of confidence. JIMMY     I didn't mean that-- [sigh] No.  No I've never known you to gossip. LUCY     Let me in, then!  Perhaps there's something I can do to help? MUSIC PUB SCARRICK     It was quite marvelous!  And we sold out of that blasted Halva. MAN     It looked crowded, but were they actually buying? SCARRICK      They bought and bought - some came back three or four times, just to have an excuse to linger.  BOY     "Oh, I forgot" and "silly me, one more thing." SCARRICK     exactly.  Even those women whose purchases were of modest proportions dawdled over them as though they had, uh-- MAN     Brutal, drunken husbands to go home to? SCARRICK     [chuckles] I've even had to take on a couple of extra assistants for tomorrow. MUSIC STORE - BUSY MISS FRITTEN     What do you think?  Is this bowl anything like the one that young gentleman carries? MRS. GREYES     Nonsense.  His is brass.  Or bronze, perhaps.  That one is copper. MISS FRITTEN     Still, it's got a lovely patina. MRS GORDON     Ducks? SCARRICK     [distracted] Pardon? MRS GORDON     Ducks?  I found a lovely recipe for Bombay duck, and was wondering if a domestic duck would suffice. SCARRICK     I suspect that ducks are much the same the world over-- [small gasp] SOUND     DOOR OPENS, BELL GENERAL EXPECTANT HUSH MRS GORDON     oh! SCARRICK     You'll excuse me. SOUND     BOY'S FOOTSTEPS, SCARRICK MEETS HIM SCARRICK     Sir?  BOY     Yes? SCARRICK     [overtly confidential]  I must warn you-- SOUND     [gasps] SCARRICK     [as if saying something else] We have run out of quail seed. MRS GORDON     Oh nO! BOY     [shocked and disappointed] Oh.  I should-- I must-- SOUND     SCUTTLING FEET JIMMY     [excited]  We do have some much finer oranges today, if you want to step over here. BOY     [dramatic gasp] SOUND     BOY RUNS MISS FRITTEN     [whispered] Watch the door! SOUND     DOOR SLAMS OPEN, BELL SOUND     OMINOUS FOOTSTEPS MRS. GORDON      [voice over] I found my self sub-consciously repeating "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold" under my breath. SCARRICK     [very tense]  Ah.  Coffee again today sir?  Perhaps figs? MAN     I am looking for-- LUCY     [in disguise, foreign sounding]  Jaffa oranges, I think. MAN     What? MRS GREYES     [voiceover] She slithered out of the aisle like the lady in the lake. LUCY     Your Excellency does his shopping himself? MAN     [suspicious] I order the things myself.  I find it difficult to make my servants understand. MISS FRITTEN     [voiceover]  How ever did we miss a mysterious veiled lady, right in the midst of us all? LUCY     I was saying... They have some excellent Jaffa oranges here.  [tinkling laugh] SOUND     HER FEET TAP AWAY TO THE DOOR, BELL MAN     [considering] Hmph.  MRS. GORDON     [gasp] MAN     You! SCARRICK     [tense] Yes? MAN     You have, perhaps, some good Jaffa oranges? GLORIA     [voiceover] Everyone expected an instant denial on the part of Mr. Scarrick of any such possession, but before he could answer‑‑ BOY     No! SOUND     RUNNING FEET, DOOR, BELL MISS FRITTEN     [voiceover] Holding his empty brass bowl before him he dashed into the street. His face was masked with studied indifference SOUND     THE VOICEOVERS START TO FADE INTO TEA MRS GREYES     Overspread with ghastly pallor! MRS. LIPPING     I would call it blazing with defiance. GLORIA     How defiant could he be!  He was so terrified his teeth chattered! MRS. GORDON     I distinctly heard him whistling the Persian National Hymn. MISS FRITTEN     But the bearded man - his face was a mask of abject terror! MRS GREYES     I thought he would dash out after the boy, but he just paced to and fro like a caged animal - seeking an outlet for escape. GLORIA     He couldn't take his eyes off the door. MRS GORDON     Did he ever come back for his purchases?  Or send his servant? MISS FRITTEN     I've not had the nerve to ask Mr. Scarrick.  The whole thing was so ...  overwhelming. MUSIC LUCY     It was so overwhelming.  Trying not to laugh while watching all their faces. JIMMY     You did a fabulous job. LUCY     You like me in a veil? JIMMY     I can think of a veil I'd like to see you in. LUCY     [interested, pleased] Really? JIMMY     Mm-hmm  [yes] SOUND     KISS MUSIC PUB SCARRICK     I can never thank you fellows enough. MAN     We enjoyed the fun of it.  [laughs, then  talks like beard]  And the figs. BOY     It was a welcome vacation from posing for hours for 'The Lost Hylas' MAN     You just have to sit still.  I'm the one who has to make you look good. SCARRICK     What do I owe you? MAN     No, no.  It was far too entertaining.  BOY     We did get all those lovely pomegranates. SCARRICK     At any rate... I insist on paying for the hire of the black beard. END

Today we are talking about the 2004 film starring Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler about Adam's character, Henry, who is afraid of commitment until he meets Lucy who is repeating the same day over and over again due to a head injury.  Henry: Appreciate your time. Not everybody would have stopped like you. You're real sweet. Lucy: Oh, yeah. Thank you. Henry: Okay. Lucy: Okay. [Henry pretends to get electrocuted while jump-starting his car] Henry: Hah! I can't believe you fell for that! Lucy: Well... my grandfather died while trying to jump-start a car... Henry: Oh... I'm so sorry. I was just joking around. Lucy: I can't believe you fell for THAT! Some of our favorite parts of this movie are: A Dancing Walrus How delicious SPAM is Another film crossover  Special thanks to our editor Geoff Vrijmoet for this episode and Melissa Villagrana for helping out with our social media posts. Next week's film will be Blue Crush available on Apple TV for 3.99 Subscribe, Rate & Share Your Favorite Episodes! Thanks for tuning into today's episode of Dodge Movie Podcast with your host, Mike and Christi Dodge. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe and leave a rating and review. Don't forget to visit our website, connect with us on Instagram, Facebook,   LinkedIn, and share your favorite episodes across social media. Give us a call at 971-245-4148 or email at christi@dodgemediaproductions.com

JUST B returns with RE=LOAD and we're still processing the disrespect, Seventeen release their first all english track Darl+ing, and it's real emo hours at the NYAF HQ as Big Bang come back with Still Life! Listen as we discuss what happened in the KPOP world this past week!Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode and don't forget to follow our social media and let us know what you think.Check out our Airtime show The Khisme live every Saturday!https://airtime.app.link/Kpop-Fancafe-NYAFTime stamps:7:25 - ASTRO's MJ enlisting7:54 - Naeun leaves Apink8:43 - Lay leaves SM12:55 - ACE's youtube hacked15:21 - EPEX controversy23:02 - Jessi - ZOOM25:25 - Mark Tuan - save me27:06 - DKZ - Cupid28:33 - GHOST9 - X-Ray30:50 - Just B - RE=LOAD36:49 - Dreamcatcher - MAISON39:35 - IVE - LOVE DIVE42:55 - ONEW - DICE44:36 - Suho - Grey Suit45:30 - BIG BANG - Still Life51:55 - Daybreak & LUCY - Oh-eh56:11 - Seventeen - Darl+ing1:04:05 - Songs of the WeekListen here!Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...iHeartRadio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-no...Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4OL4qPj...This week's playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6MzExUR71rMHJX6JM0Vb7L?si=4a9542e28cf54b42www.twitter.com/NYAFangirlswww.twitter.com/HollaItsCarowww.twitter.com/heyitsteeteewww.twitter.com/deekaydiwww.twitter.com/HollaItsCynwww.notyouraveragefangirls.com

Forward and backward are not stable concepts. The curtains close, a mask is shattered, but we're still here. Wren helps a lost soul and meets some familiar ones. Thank you all so much for listening, and special thanks to guests Jess Syratt of Nowhere, On Air and Shannon Strucci of Critical Bits and more. (CWs, spoilers: bullying, derealization, implied dysphoria, brief fire and engine sounds, alcohol, smoking)     *audience shuffling and chatting, dies down* LOST FISHERMAN: “Good evening, dear audience. Tonight we present to you the final act in a series of strange events. The detective this evening will be played by Wren once more, with the receiving clerk reprising the role of the vanished. I will be your chorus. When you see me again, it will all be over. When I return, you will not be ready, but it must end as all things do. Until then, please enjoy the show. “A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me” WREN: The vault wasn't so much an actual vault, but–as you've no doubt surmised–a cave. Like the cave I had encountered before, where Lucy served me breakfast. Where I cried over eggs and toast. Maybe just a different part of the same cave, even. All around me, stacked and scattered throughout the yawning caverns was dead mail: letters, packages, objects covered in grime and dust. The light from my phone only revealed a harsh circle in front of me, leaving much of the vault in total darkness. I felt things stirring in that darkness whenever I turned away. They gathered behind me, at my sides, spiraled gaseous tendrils around my ears. But they dissipated any time I faced them. I flipped through folders and sifted through cabinets and baskets full of decomposing paper. I found many strange stories among the mundane cruft. Some stories I had heard before, some I had not. These pieces had little in common: from different parts of the country, different times, different people. Many followed a similar thread, though. Something under the office's purview, my purview, appeared in each: a moth here, an alien worm there. Just little hints of the ineffable, the sublime radioactive backdrop that most people tune out. This damp hall was where my furry friend would have ended up, had I not saved them from that fate. I panned the pulp silt for gold, trying to find any clue I could sink my teeth into. I went further and farther back, in time and in space. The older files were kept ever deeper in the cave. I was in the middle of reading a peculiar letter regarding an ill-tempered neighbor when my boot struck a vein. Masonry. Not the deep brown rock surrounding me, but a gray slab shaped by human hands. Around the base of the stone was a shallow puddle. I looked up and there I saw an angel. An angel in gray, its features blurred and worn by time, its form smudged with black. Had the angel been there the whole time, or had it just appeared a moment ago? I leaned closer and inspected its surface. All across this sculpture–from the top of its head to the base–were dark fingerprints. I gently slid the letter I was carrying through one of the tacky prints. The black substance followed, sticking to the paper. Simply looking was going to get me nowhere. What use is a detective that only uses one sense, anyway? I held the tacky substance close to my nose and inhaled. Fire, smoke, machinery. This thing was covered in scorched oil. The angel's hands were clasped to its chest, and I could tell there was something within. I recalled a story I had heard about a sculpture of similar kind. About a disappearance and a hanging thread. I had to know what was held in its hands. As if already planting its roots in my mind, the angel's stone fingers unfolded, and there it proffered an egg, no bigger than a chicken's. I dared not touch the angel, this seraph bathed in the blood of the ancient earth. I took a step back and shuddered. At this rejection, many fish fell around the angel, all dead and frozen, slapping hard against the cave floor. Then, from the deepest recesses of my consciousness, there came a sound: steel wire hanging high above a field of corn. The lines shivered in the breeze and sang like clockwork sparrows. Metallic spring sprung forth in a curl of light and noise. An electrical pylon, its arms spread wide, so wide it held the whole state to its chest. Transmissions from everywhere and nowhere collected in the still air inside its ribs. It blew a whispered kiss through the heavy bent stalks, through iced cities and rolling foothills. It blew a kiss as loud as the trumpets of revelation, and spoke in a hundred tongues of electric rapture: “The next time you see me, you will be dead. And when I come, you will not be ready…” All of my training, all of my will and wit was for naught in the face of it. And in my mind were two diverging paths, two images in a cracked mirror. One was the face of god, of satan, of bosses and kings, of whips and chains, of a thousand bodies clawing and tearing their way to the top of a pyramid of their own kind. I saw the end of history, a prison of gold bars. I saw an ant on fire under a magnifying glass, carrying this flame back to its colony. In the other I saw a face I thought I had seen before, strong hands held and strong hearts holding fast against the unceasing tide. But this second image was hazy, uncertain. No way to tell what was to come, but at least something was to come. I was not prepared to face this pyramid of corpses on my own. I had yet to contend with a force of this magnitude before, and have yet to still again. So I ran. I ran blindly, avoiding every rocky spire and pitfall as if possessed. I ran until my lungs burned cold and my throat was a sandpaper bellow. I may have run for all time, the ant ever fleeing the flame, were it not for a flickering glow oozing from a bend in the path ahead. I slowed my jog and warily closer to the light. Beyond the turn I came to its source: a small television set, hissing with static, resting atop a vcr. Nearby were stacks of tapes. I heard no chase being given behind me, so I closed my eyes hard and just let myself breathe. Once my chest ceased its convulsions, I picked up one of the tapes at my side. There were no official markings or symbols: not mass produced media, these were home movies. And along the spine of each was a different date, but the same name: Lucy. *** Sound of vcr Some collage of sounds here *** The video I saw on the screen was odd, clearly taken on a camcorder, but its point of view didn't make any sense, and seemed to shift scenes at will. There were birthdays, static, soccer games, color bars, a lakeshore, hissing, a hundred domestic scenes. Then the video slowed and focused on a single point: a specific space and precise time. And here there was a lone child, 10, maybe 12. She sat alone in her room, the low sun filtering golden through the falling leaves outside. A breeze snuck in through the cracked window and stirred the cotton balls on her bed. She held one hand out in front of her, a tiny brush in her other. Once the dark blue paint had been applied to her nails, she rested her hand on the sill to dry. Static She was in the woods, laughing and kicking at sticks and stones. She was alone, but content. She climbed a wide oak, chipping a bit of her fresh polish on the rugged bark. From the low branch she stood and surveyed her quiet kingdom. Not far from her perch, she saw the cave. She had heard stories about it from others at school, rumors of danger in this cave. She heard that people had gotten lost there, or lost parts of themselves. That there was something within that would eat you alive. She heard these rumors, but didn't fully believe them. Usually she stayed clear anyway. Just in case. This day, however, she was old enough to know better but still young enough to feel invincible. So she went in. *** This child snuck into the shale chasm and strained to see in the dark. She took a few steps forward and stopped, startled by the echoing of her own footsteps. She could hear her breathing on the air growing shorter, heavier as the cave whispered it back to her. This wasn't enough to deter our brave little explorer, however. She gripped the strap of her backpack tight to her shoulder and trudged inward, farther away from the circle of daylight that dared stick show its face in the cave. Before long, she heard different sounds ahead. Anonymous low voices, clinking and hissing. She thought about turning back, but wasn't sure which way back was. The voices and clanking grew louder, and a flicker of light drew her attention. She saw fire spark to life. Glowing embers floated in the dark like tiny red eyes. These eyes, these sounds, she thought, must belong to a great beast with many heads and many eyes, glass knives for fingers, blowing fire in the deep. She stepped on a loose rock during her ingress, the movement of which clicked and clacked down the stone corridor. She froze, and a great circle of light struck her. The beast had her in its horrible sight. She strained to see through the awful beam. She held her hand over her eyes and tried to speak, to apologize to the great creature, to say she was sorry for disturbing its home. But peals of laughter interrupted her. More beams of light flickered in front of her, and she saw that the many heads of this beast were actually attached to tall, lanky bodies–human bodies–leaning awkwardly against the shale in baggy shirts and shorts. The lights weren't the dread traces of a monstrous eye, but simple flashlights. And the floating embers weren't red eyes, but lit cigarettes, the kind her uncle smelled like. There were four of them in all: teens who snuck into the cave for a little underage drinking. Though teenagers could be just as fearsome as some beasts, she had learned. She lowered her hands as the laughing died down. One teen boy pointed his ashy smoke at her hands, snorted and spoke some words she didn't understand yet but would some years later. The kinds of words that curse a person, that haunt their dreams and sink in icy fangs when they're at their lowest. No, she didn't understand the words at the time, but she felt their dripping intent. She knocked over one of the half empty beer bottles and fled the cave, leaving only a thin line of tears in her wake. She sat on the uneven rock of the cave's entrance and kicked her heels against the dirt. She looked down at her fingernails, rich cerulean inexpertly applied like waves whipped up by a storm. She grabbed a piece of loose shale from the ground and chipped at the polish on her left hand until there was nothing left but little scratches. And then she vanished, and this lone figure became two: a mask, and an invisible hand to hold it. *** There were other tapes, too, footage of a first kiss, driving exams, awkward names. College, empty pockets, kaleidoscopic tigers licking their stripes and worms inhaling copious ether. And jobs, so many jobs, so many painful jobs that weakened the back and hands. Breakfast joints, transmission towers, a post office. A letter, an angel, a tower, an engine. A promise, split in half: a face sold for a seat in the boardroom. The last image I saw before the tape jammed in the vcr was a fuzzy lighthouse. Then the cathode ray spat black and white fizzling particles over the cave wall. And in this, I knew clarity. At this time, I knew where Lucy was, who she was, but not yet how to get to her. I thanked the glowing television and ventured beyond it. Fresh air soon tickled my skin, and led me to the mouth of the vault–the cave–and I stepped once more into the cold blue sun. I was surrounded by trees, and all around me was quiet. To my right, a leaf jumped from its branch and made a slow descent to the forest floor. I felt a gust stir my hair from behind my ear. Things here in the land of the real had begun moving again, which meant… I rushed aimlessly through the trees, desperately searching for an opening in the canopy. I needed to see it, I needed to be sure. And sure enough, in time I did see it: the giant hand above was once again resuming its thunderous plummet to the earth. I spun around, hoping someone else would be there, someone older, wiser, maybe, someone who knew what to do, whose job it was to fix this sort of thing. There was no one under the denuded trees but me. That's when it dawned on me, perhaps much later than it should have. It was my job to fix this sort of thing. I had been called to this middle of nowhere, ohio branch for a reason. The boss wanted me here, and not just to talk about Lucy. There was more. I keenly felt the same pain that lone child did. I felt the looks and the comments and the barely-stifled giggling. I felt the carceral hex of the conjurers of orthodoxy. I felt the box they taped me in. Luckily, tape is temporary, and cardboard soft: it only appears to be a prison if you let it be so. I ripped at the tape, set fire to the box, and came out real and raw and wreathed in black flame. And I felt that I was here to help Lucy do the same. You see, Director, the moral arc of this world doesn't bend toward anything. History isn't an arc, or a line, it's a tapestry of ever expanding silk. And unlike an arc, there is no end to this tapestry. Even if we won here, even if everything went just right, the tapestry weaves on, eons before we were born and millennia after we're dead. There are a thousand knots and tears and creases all the way down. But this didn't dissuade me. No, it opened my eyes. All the feats of our past weren't accomplished by a few great men, ordained by the universe to bend history by hand. It was threads like us that made it happen. Though I may be just one thread among billions, every thread composes the whole, and the more threads that intertwine, the stronger we become. In times like these, we threads must act together, act decisively, to prevent the weave's destruction. We must hold the things we cherish close, yes, but also smother the flames that singe our edges. No half measures, no hesitation, no waiting. We must offer our hands in love, and offer fists in kind for our jailers. We cannot survive on one of these alone. This, Director, is what I believe is at the core of it all: there can be no love too fierce for ourselves, for each other, and no fury too fierce for our oppressors. No one will come to save us–no one will embrace us–but ourselves. I looked up to the hand in the sky. Though it was now a fist, perhaps it could be opened. I held my hand aloft and called her name. The stone hand in the sky relaxed as it fell, its fingers extended. If you looked at it at just the right angle, we lined up perfectly. I held the falling hand in my hand, gently and sweetly. The cold stone turned to skin, and the missing second came to an end. *** The biting wind and rain of Aisling was no more, replaced by yellow leaves sailing on stiff curls of wind. I saw the cave in front of me, a child sitting at its entrance with tears streaming down her face. I gently called her name and her head rose. She seemed confused, didn't expect anyone else to be there. But the way her eyes widened told me she recognized me. Somehow she knew who I was, and why I was there. I placed my hand on her head and tousled her hair lightly. I told her I would be right back, and stepped into the cave. I could feel red heat bloom in my face, and my fists clenched into white circles. The adolescents who had teased this child were still children themselves. They had much to learn about the world, about how to be human. I would forgive them this trespass and hope that Lucy would too, some day. Though they were children, sometimes children require instruction, and I was eager to teach. None but those of us within the cave know what was said next, and I will not reveal it here nor anywhere. Needless to say, some important lessons were learned that day. By the time I left the hollow again, I had calmed down. I unclenched my jaw and let out an extended breath. Lucy noticed my posture soften, and she too relaxed. She looked up at me from her spot on the loose shale. WREN: “Are you ready to go home?” She silently wiped the drying tears from her cheek. I took her hand and helped her up. She stood for a moment, gripping my hand tight, then nodded. We walked through the woods quietly. No one else was around today, no hikers, no one walking their dogs. We listened to the whistle of the air fluttering through the sparse leaves and the percussive crunch of sticks breaking under our boots. We eventually came to the end of the woods, beyond which was a narrow gravel road. Lucy released her hand from my grasp and made for the treeline. The dark boughs and branches of the trees overhead leaned and bent around her, pulling away in semicircles. The limbs formed parted stage curtains around her. Under her feet, roots twisted and twined, laying themselves as planks beneath her. An audience waited with baited breath beyond. She turned back at the edge of the sylvan stage one last time. She smiled as she waved goodbye, and walked beyond the wooded theatre into the unknown. I tried to peer beyond the webbed drapes, but all I could see were points of light near the ground, shining my direction. I stepped up to the edge of the stage myself, took a bow, and returned where I belonged. *** I found myself exiting the vault door, once more inside the inverted lighthouse. The hanging ice that had been occupying its ceilings and clinging to its walls had almost entirely melted now, and the oppressive atmosphere was clearing. In the center, the engine had vanished. In its stead was a white rotary phone, and strung around its cradle was a mask of a dead president. I waited for the inevitable haunting ring for a second, a minute, an hour, but nothing came. The room was silent save for the occasional drip of water. There would be no call for me. I had to make one myself. I dialed a familiar number. The line rang only once, and then the call was answered. There was no greeting, however, just a single plaintive line. “You can take the mask off now, Wren. I'm ready to go.” I placed the receiver gingerly back on the cradle. Next up was untangling the mask's elastic strap from the phone cord. Once freed, I held the plastic face in front of me. A cheap, ugly mask from a halloween store, sunbleached from sitting out too long. I peered through its empty eyes and felt bile rising. I knew in that moment that I could put on the mask. That things would be easier if I did. That I had one last chance to take over the Office. One last chance to be the Boss. One last chance to be at the top of the pyramid. I threw the mask to the wet floor and crushed it underfoot. It made a sickening crunch as I twisted my heel. The fragile mask snapped and broke apart beneath me. In the same instant, I felt a seismic rumble in the earth. The lighthouse shook, and its walls began to crack. I stomped again, and again, and again, just to be sure. And with each stomp, the walls of the lighthouse crumbled further and fell heavy around me, allowing fresh sunlight steal into the chamber. When I finally lifted my foot, the plastic face was nothing more than fragments, loose change. The lighthouse had been reduced to rubble. I was exposed to the wintry weather again, standing in the open air near the shore of lake Erie. I scanned the clouds above for any indication of the falling arm, but there was no trace of it. The town around me, the specter that once haunted this coast, was leveled. Bits of debris blew in the lashes of wind and sleet. Much of the scrap of this place was being pulled and washed away by the advancing tide, as if the lake itself was reclaiming this rancid land. And so the inverted lighthouse was gone, the hand was gone, Aisling was gone, and all that remained was me, alone among waterlogged wreckage and rising slush. Well, not totally alone. Along the cold broken shore of the great lake, I found a friend. Alas, it was a friend who couldn't commiserate with me due to their lack of vocal chords. The little creature's fur was soaked, yellow beak chipped, but they survived their encounter with the frozen beasts. I brushed the beads of ice from the fur as best I could. My phone was completely dead by now, so I wandered to the edge of the former town. We sat in the frosty grass by the side of the road under a rocky overhang. No sign of my car, of course. It figured it had been swept away with the rest of the place. We leaned against the wet rock for a time, the chill creeping in once the adrenaline wore off. “Well friend, we best hope someone drives by before sundown and we can hitch a ride.” I kicked at the loose gravel lining the road. “Otherwise, we might be in for a tough night.” I sat with legs folded, one arm out with thumb extended. The other arm cradled the little mechanical creature. I let my head hang. I was exhausted and getting colder by the second. The rhythmic patter of the light rain swept me into an unsettling dream. But as I struggled against sleep, something stirred the air. A rumbling engine. I winced at first, still dazed, but reminded myself that the terrible machine was gone. This had to be something else. The source of the rumble had pulled up in front of me. It was an old cutlass–my cutlass! My precious jalopy!--idling a few feet away. In the drivers' seat was a young woman I didn't recognize. Her dark hair curled and danced in the storm, her eyes obscured by big reflective sunglasses. LIZ: “Hey, is that you little bird? We've been looking for you.” Though I didn't recognize the face, I knew the voice. The shadow on the other line. WREN: “Liz? Oh my god, you made it! And you…stole my car! Okay!” LIZ: “Hey, just be grateful we got here before you turned into a popsicle. Hop in, we've got some insurance money to collect.” There was another in the car as well, a woman in the passenger's seat. I sidled into the back. LIZ: “I've been legally dead for, what, a year now? I think I deserve a payout. Plus I've got an expensive plane ticket to buy. Let's get you warmed up. Blast the heat, Ash.” Liz sped down the slick roads a little faster than I'd have liked, but still, I really was grateful. WREN: “You have to tell me everything. I'm dying to know what you went through on your side.” Now in cases like this, Director, it's important to take in more than just the events. You need a feel for the atmosphere, the scene, the unseen. You'll recall that forward and backward are not stable concepts: the past outlines the future, and the future colors the past. If I were an animal, maybe I would be the scrappy songbird, or the oblivious beetle, but recent events leave me feeling uncertain. Perhaps I was the hawk after all. Or simply a beetle playing at being a hawk. Only time would tell. For now, I was alive, and that had to be enough. *** WREN, on tape: So the town was leveled, and the engine hasn't been found since. Is that all? Okay, I'll send her in next. Thank you, Director. *** Office ambience, phones going off in the background, quiet indistinguishable chatter. WREN Now that the director's debriefing is over, It's nice to finally meet you face to umm…face, Conway. LUCY Oh, Conway's my last name, actually. Call me Lucy. WREN Well, Lucy, it's nice to know there's another one of us in the office. LUCY Another what? WREN You know. Another Gay. LUCY, with a slight laugh Right. Well, speaking of this office, I'm actually leaving. WREN Oh yes, my assignment at this branch is over, as well. At least once I finish the mountain of paperwork regarding your case. Then I'll be heading out west for a while. A matter surrounding a few odd streetlights calls to me. It'll be nice to see the ocean again, too. LUCY No, I mean I'm LEAVING leaving. I don't think I can deal with any more of this psychedelic bureaucracy stuff. WREN, disheartened Oh…I understand. What are you going to do? LUCY I'm honestly not sure. I'm tired Wren. The radio station is gone, the DLO is not for me. Don't want to go back to the gas station or the Waffle House if it can be helped. I'll be kissing my health insurance goodbye, regardless. Might try my hand at painting. If war criminals can find peace in it, maybe I can too. WREN That sounds lovely. I wish I could do the same. But the reality is that this is what I'm good at, this is where I feel at home: surrounded by things no one else sees, hearing things no one else should, dipping my toes into pools I've been warned not to disturb. I don't really fit in elsewhere, you know? I don't have a community. Too weird for queer spaces, too queer for weird spaces. It is what it is. Maybe I'll have better luck finding commonality outside the midwest. LUCY I sure hope so. Well, good luck to you, then. And thank you. You helped me find my way out of the dark. Find myself. You could've given up anytime, but you didn't. You put your hand out even after I bit it. Metaphorically speaking. WREN Think nothing of it. After all, we have to stick together if we want to continue onward. It's a dangerous world for us at the best of times, and we are not in the best of times. LUCY True enough. By the way, I got these for you. To thank you. Even after all this, I don't know you that well, so I made an educated guess. Hope you like flowers. A silent moment passes. WREN What a lovely gesture. Say, Lucy: d-do you have any plans this evening? I was considering stopping by the Song Bird one last time. A little drink, a little song, a little dance. Would you like to join me? After what we went through, I feel like I should make more of an effort. To put myself out there, to make friends. I can show you around if you've never been. And maybe we could take some time to finally get acquainted. LUCY, hesitant Oh. Um, that's mighty nice of you, but I ought to skip this one. I've got to have my cubicle cleared out by 5, and I…well, I wouldn't want to impose on your good time. WREN, disappointed I see. Then best wishes to you, and I hope we meet again someday under more auspicious circumstances. LUCY ...you too. Stay safe out there, Wren. WREN And you stay you, Lucy. Wren steps away from the desk. Another moment passes. Then Lucy drops the box on the desk. LUCY H-hey Wren! You know what, to hell with this. I'm done wasting my time dithering: let's dance. Let's sing. Let's pretend things are normal for a couple hours. I'm buying. What'll you have? WREN Corpse Reviver number two. LUCY Do…do they serve absinthe there? WREN As if I'd patronize a bar that didn't. LUCY Fair enough. But you're not allowed to laugh when I whiff the high note in Life on Mars. WREN I wouldn't dream of it. LUCY To the Song Bird it is. Outro music begins, seems like the end of the episode. All is resolved. But the music eventually fades to an eerie drone. LUCY, cautious Hey, Wren. WREN Yes? LUCY, with some fear ...we're still here. WREN Yes, I won't be leaving until next week. LUCY, anxious Well, I just thought…we finished what we started, didn't we? We're back at the office, the Boss is gone, the shadows are free. You took a bow, the curtains closed, you got you roses. This should be it. Why are we still here? WREN Of course we're here, we haven't left yet. Are we taking the bus to the Song Bird or should I drive? LUCY No, no. I just. I feel like something is…When you started this job, did they tell you much about it? Why we were doing any of this cataloging and recording? WREN Not particularly, no. I investigated the matter on my own, but I was stonewalled at every turn. LUCY Same with me. And do you know who hired you in the first place? WREN What are you getting at? No, I don't remember his name. It's been a while. LUCY, with growing concern Neither do I. Now that I think about it, I'm having a hard time remembering when I started working for the office. WREN, concerned for LUCY Lucy, are you all right? Do you feel light-headed? Just take a breath. Remember that odd radio station I told you about? The drone of the astral plane? Tune into that. LUCY, now starting to panic I'm forgetting something. Something big. Wren, tell me this: how did we get here? Back to the office, I mean. Literally. WREN I…we walked from the parking lot…right? LUCY Maybe. But are you sure? You're not, are you. You're not sure how we got back. You're not sure because…because nobody saw it. WREN, trying to help I'm not sure I follow. Lucy, you're sweating. Here, sit down. A chair is pushed back, squeaking on wood. LUCY, making a terrible realization No. I need to think. This is like…deja vu. ‘Now she walks through her sunken dream to the seat with the clearest view.' Wren I…I think I've seen this before. WREN Wait. What do you mean?. How could you have...Oh my god. I think we…I think I miscalculated. There was an…unexpected variable in my equation. A remainder. I should have seen this sooner, how did I miss it? This anomaly…It vexes my thesis. Damn it all. I should have seen this. Not now. LUCY, feeling impending doom The man under the stage. He's the one doing all this. WREN “All the nightmares came today, and it looks as though they're here to stay.” There must be so many. Like a winter morning full of constellations. It's almost beautiful. Lucy, I know this may sound like a joke, but I promise you I am deadly serious. This is vitally important, perhaps the most important question I've ever asked in my life. I want your full attention, ignore everything else. Look me in the eyes. Feel my hands. We're still here. Now tell me: what do I look like? LUCY, realizing there's nothing to see Wh...Wait, I…I can't… WREN Please…let us– The scene instantly changes to the shore of Lake Erie. A man is casting his line into the cold water. The line goes taut, reeling begins. The fisherman has caught something big. A heavy object is pulled ashore. LOST FISHERMAN: Now I am speaking to you as in a dream. I told you that when you saw me again, it would all be over. And that when I came, you would not be ready. That reality is but a veil, a scent on the breeze. So easily dismissed if you know how. It's the dream that lingers. It's the nightmare you still remember. Now, I want you to think real hard on what I'm about to ask you: What's my name? What were you doing before you heard this message? Now look at the clock. Can you read it? What time is it?” An engine sputters to life and roars. THE END

Dialogue modèle : Bonjour ! Vous venez aussi pour le cours de français ? Lucy : Bonjour ! Pedro : Bonjour ! Vous venez aussi pour le cours de français ? Lucy : Oui, et vous ? Pedro : Oui, moi aussi. Pardon, je m'appelle Pedro. Et vous ? Lucy : Je m'appelle Lucy, enchantée. Pedro, Enchanté, moi aussi. On peut se tutoyer ? Lucy : Oui, bien sûr ! Pas de problème ! Tu… tu es espagnol, non ? ou mexicain ? Pedro : Presque… Je suis chilien ! Et toi, quelle est ta nationalité ? Tu es anglaise ? Hollandaise ? Lucy : Non, je ne suis pas anglaise, je suis danoise. Pedro : Super ! tu habites ici, à Aix-en-Provence ? Lucy : Non, je n'habite pas à Aix, mais à Marseille. J'habite avec une amie française, elle est étudiante en traduction à l'Université. Et toi ? Pedro : Moi, j'habite avec ma famille : ma femme et mon chien ! ha ha. Nous n'avons pas d'enfants, mais nous avons un chien ! Lucy : Mais, c'est très bien ! Moi, j'ai un chat ! et sinon …. tu travailles ? Pedro : Oui, je suis jardinier. Et toi ? Lucy : Je suis interprète. Pedro : Génial ! Tu parles beaucoup de langues, alors ! Lucy : Euh oui …. Je parle allemand, anglais, russe et danois, bien sûr ! Pedro : Et français aussi ! Tu parles très bien français ! Lucy : Oh, merci ! Toi aussi ! Tu parles très bien … oh le professeur est là ! Bon, ben bon cours ! Pedro : Merci ! Bon cours à toi aussi !

The trainer's guide to teaching clients the fundamentals of health What does it take to make clients healthy? Is it just movement, or is it more?  And is there a way we can make pursuing health for our clients simpler? Make the coaching process simpler? That's why I'm juiced up to bring you Lucy Hendricks for this week's talk.   In this podcast, you'll learn: What it really takes to keep your clients healthy How to create a gym culture that values health, sleep, nutrition, and more What are the pillars of health? Which three habits should brand new clients focus on in their first year of training How mindful movement can give you all the benefits of yoga without the drawbacks Why you should use the "rule of 3" with your exercise cueing The benefits of creating a consistent approach with your clients Why coaching the general population is important What is the future of healthcare? Check this interview out if you want your coaching to be simpler and all-encompassing! Click here to watch the interview. Below you'll find the show notes and modified transcripts. Learn more about Lucy Hendricks Lucy's website can be found here. Enhancing Life Virtual Gym (get 2 weeks of mindful movement free!) here.  Instagram: lucy_hendricks Bio Lucy Hendricks is a gym owner, coach, educator, and speaker who not only takes a holistic approach to personal training but is known for her ability to take complicated topics and making them digestible for fitness and rehab professionals. She helps coaches who have clients that have been hindered by movement limitations get back to what they love. Show notes Here are links to things mentioned in the interview: Seth Oberst - He's an awesome PT who specializes in trauma work. You can check out a course review I did on him here. 90/90 Hip Lift - An exercise commonly used in movement prep. Crozat Appliance - This is the appliance I have in my mouth for palatal expansion. Modified Transcripts Zac: When I say "Personal Trainer," what does that mean to you? Lucy: Just a joke of a career. Zac: Really? Why do you think it's a joke of a career? Lucy: Because I feel like it's based on a really faulty foundation of all this from the start of how we get people in the industry, how we train them, what expectations we give them, how we train them to do their job and the expectation of what they're able to accomplish with people's health. Zac: You know, when you reflect back on your career and how you got started in this industry, did you ever get hit with that like, I'm working with some people and it's like, "Whoa, this person needs a whole lot more than what I learned in my beginning phases of my career."? Lucy: I wouldn't say there was one time where it hit me. It was more of reflecting back on the first five years of my career. Always feeling like a fraud. Because right from the very beginning I started getting invited to podcasts, seminars and people always ask the question, "What do you do to get your clients results?" Which I always hated because I was really good at getting people to lift without pain. But when people say "Results," they insinuate that you got them, their fat loss results, sleep results, just got them healthy. And for the first five years, I always avoided that question or didn't really answer it, beat around the bush, and went to the strength training without pain. And then I realized that the expectation that personal trainers are able to get people to the end result, which is completely healthy, is really unrealistic because no one has the skillsets for that. Building a gym that appreciates holistic fitness Zac: What kind of things did you first shift to that were outside of strength training without pain? Lucy: I would say the functional medicine world and those concepts of working on your sleep, eating real food, at the time gluten-free, sugar-free, trying to go back to what your ancestors ate, and stress management, which I didn't really understand either other than promoting people need to chill out. Zac: Of course, take a chill pill. [caption id="attachment_13364" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Although I personally prefer red pill (Image by digipictures from Pixabay)[/caption] Lucy: It should be less stressed. And telling people that meditation is important, but never actually getting them to do it. Maybe a handful of people tried it or tried other stress-relieving activities, but there was never a process. It was more trying to create the culture where we believed in all these other lifestyle factors that needed to be addressed, but never actually had a system for it. Zac: And I know you like to have a systematic and consistent approach you might say. So, once you ironed out the kinks, so to speak with somebody approaches, as opposed to just say, "Try and relax" when it comes to stress management or meditation's important, sleep's important, but not having those processes in place. What was your process like of making that more systematic in your community that you train? Lucy: I wouldn't take this as advice, but we first started out with workshops. So, I remember we did the first sleep workshop probably three years ago and no one had signed up. So I gave away eight semi-private or something crazy without thinking, just wanting them to come so bad to the sleep seminar, believing if they worked on their sleep, they'll get better results. And then they'll stay longer, which the money won't be an issue. And clients knew that that was a horrible business choice, so they ended up coming, but never picked up the sessions. People did buy blue-blocking glasses, the sunlight lamp, and started walking in the morning and started turning off their overhead lights at night. So, it did change a little bit and some people got results. What really went well was the following year. We did a sleep challenge and we didn't want to attach the winning to results just because everybody's so different. And that's one thing that makes it so hard is you can't really control the outcome in a group setting unless you had one on one coaching, but that takes so much attention and skill sets that most trainers don't have to control a bunch of other aspects that influence someone's ability to get results. So, what we ended up doing was we attached the outcome to participation. So, everybody had a checklist of, I think, 12 things that correlate to sleep hygiene or influence sleep hygiene. And you had the check, I forget so many each day posted on Facebook. And each time you posted a picture, you got your name and a chance to win an Oura ring, which is like a $300 ring. And that worked really well. A lot of people got amazing results better than I thought they would. People who struggled to get up in the morning were able to get up in the morning with no problem. People started drinking less coffee. People started going to sleep faster. We had another client who started pushing herself harder with running. So, she felt that she was working out too hard, but really, she wasn't recovering enough. So, when she started sleeping better, she found herself being able to push harder in the gym. So that was really cool. Zac: I think it's cool that instead of focusing on the outcome, you focus on the process. Because with something like meditation, I know you did a meditation challenge as well. How do you define a successful meditation? Whereas you were able to get people to focus more so on just habits people need to do to be healthy. What constitutes healthy sleep? And it's these keys. And I mean, that's fascinating that you're able to get the buy-in on that. You had good retention rates with that as well? The whole challenge? Lucy: With the challenge? Yes. Zac: It seems like once you take the outcome, so to speak out of the process, it's like people still feel successful. And I think that's absolutely brilliant. Lucy: And people are competitive. So, the minimum was you have to do X amount, but then sure enough, the first person that filled out the entire sheet went on there and got a bunch of praise from us on Facebook. And then other people started going through the entire sheet as well. A lot of people kept up with some of the routines. But anything that pushes the needle in the right direction when it comes to health. And that's what we try to teach people is you can do just about anything and you will get results. So, what we try to do is at least establish the basics of all these other life factors. So that way, we can start pushing the needle in the direction of better health and more sustainable results. The pillars of health a beginner client should achieve Zac: What are some of the key habits you want a new client to exhibit within the first year? Lucy: If I were to pick three, I would say getting a movement routine, which can also mean exercise routine, where they're consistent and they enjoy it. Where it's no longer a struggle to attend the gym. So now you don't have to sit there and "Do I really want to go, or should I just skip this week?" So once going to the gym once or twice a week becomes an easy choice, that would be something that I would want in the first year. The next two would be finding a meditation practice and getting them to teach themselves to be present and train their body to pay attention to what's going on inside and with their thoughts. And the third thing I would say would probably be walking and spending time outside. So, if I were to pick three of those would be the three. Zac: Why in your eyes are those three the most important? I think the movement practice makes sense because that's where people are coming to you for. But as a trainer, that is our bread and butter. So, what about the other two? Why do you think walking is important and why do you think meditation is important and the first things that you put? Lucy: Movement and exercise part is our bread and butter. If that wasn't a priority, then we probably wouldn't have clients. We are really good at getting people to enjoy exercise. I think a reason why people can't stay consistent on a schedule is because they don't enjoy it. We focus on making training feel good. The second one is building a meditation practice, training themselves to pay attention because a lot of people have either maladaptive beliefs, catastrophic thinking, unhealthy behaviors that really are impacting their ability to get healthy. And if you can't sit there and the present moment and pay attention to your thoughts, or even recognize that you have the behaviors that you're doing or practicing in or the self-awareness. [caption id="attachment_13365" align="aligncenter" width="500"] And if you meditate just right, you too will become psychedelic! (Image by 3333873 from Pixabay)[/caption] Self-awareness is the first step to changing any type of behavior, thought, or lifestyle that you're wanting to work on. If people don't have that, it's so hard to even change anything. Our goal is sustainable results. Meditation helps build the foundation required to change all of these thoughts and behaviors that people are having. Walking is to get people moving throughout the day. And that helps with our number one goal, which is getting people consistent in the gym. What we find is if people can walk and move outside of the gym, they're able to recover faster from their workouts. That makes their workouts feel better, they progress a lot faster, which gets them excited. If they're not moving outside of the gym and they're only exercising and only moving at the gym, then these people will progress a little slower. So, it motivates them less. Zac: With the meditation in particular, because inevitably, especially when someone's starting out, you are going to fall off the wagon in some way, shape, or form. And having the self-awareness component and the ability to bring it back to whatever it is you are focusing on, probably helps them get back on track sooner than not. Lucy: Oh, 100%. And then that's what you need. You need the awareness to see the patterns of "When I stopped sleeping and I don't pay attention to X, Y, and Z. When I don't do my movement routine, or when I don't do my morning routine of reading, getting my coffee, doing my meditating, I now notice that I go to the gym less, I start bingeing at night." So, having this awareness of where you dropped off and what are the things that you need to do to get back is everything. Because if you don't have that, you don't know why you failed. So, it was just, "I failed. I suck." And then that's it. So, you don't even have the keys to even get back to where you were, Mindful movement Lucy: So, the idea of the mindful movement service that I created started out when I attended Seth Oberst's class. [caption id="attachment_13366" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Ahh the gold ole days[/caption] Zac: Yes. Lucy: Where he first introduced the idea of how the body and stress and trauma interact together. And how trauma and stress influences what you see in the body. And how you can use a movement practice, meditation practice, and even things like yoga to impact someone's stress or trauma. And how both of them are really connected. So that was when I first got introduced to that idea. And I worked with him online where he did some of his work with me, and then I took a yoga class. I am an ex-gymnast and super flexible, strong, and I take cues well. And yoga was very therapeutic for me. It was a time for 45 minutes for me to only pay attention to what was going on in my body. The muscles that I felt stretching, the muscles that I felt working, the cues that they were telling me to do, I was paying attention to that. And I got immense benefit with it when it comes to the struggles that I was having with my mental illness. But then I noticed that the people that really benefit from it are people like me who are really flexible, take cues well, are strong and have a background probably in gymnastics, ballet, dance, or ice skating. Zac: You got to express to yourself what you already knew how to do in just a unique way. Lucy: Yes. At the same time, I was starting to see the stuff that I was doing with our clients from a different perspective, because I train a lot of people in pain and who have an auto-immune disease. When they would try to cancel on me because they had a flare up, whether their back flared up for the fifth time in a few months or their Hashimoto's flared up. So, they were really fatigued. I would try to get them in the gym anyway. And instead of their full-on workout, I would let them do breathing exercises for about 45 minutes. So, with the information that I had and the outcomes that I was noticing, I thought for the longest time that because they did all the breathing exercises from a biomechanic standpoint, they were feeling really good because we just increased all these movement options. Which there's some truth to that, for sure. But I think I was giving biomechanics way more credit with the information that I had. Although I never did those breathing sessions myself, my client reactions were very positive, so I kept doing it. Sometimes they would even ask for those sessions because they enjoyed them that much. And they would take me aside and like shake my hand or like hug me. Like, "Thank you so much for letting me come in and do that." So, when I learned about stress and trauma and all of that stuff, and I took the yoga class, I realized maybe it's not all biomechanics. Maybe they felt so great because they just meditated for a whole entire hour. Zac: Yes. Lucy: And when they stopped paying attention to their body, there I was reminding them, "Keep tucking, keep reaching, don't lose it, keep exhaling." Because I'm very detailed with my coaching. And that's when I started thinking that I could create something or a service that gave me what yoga gave me with the detailed coaching and the way I see the body, which is really good at meeting people where they're at, who don't move well. People who don't take cues well, people who are deconditioned, people who are uncoordinated with their body, people who can't handle multiple instructions at once, which is about everybody. Which is most people. And that's when I kind of blended both of those worlds and created a service called mindful movement. Zac: You've essentially made yoga so much easier to execute for a lot of different people, which allows those less flexible people to get similar benefits. because you get a wide variety of clients. Have you noticed if mindful movement carries over into the gym? Lucy: Their ability to take cues. Zac: So, it's made your job even easier, even though you already make it easy with your coaching? Lucy: It's crazy. I can just sit down and not do anything. And I've been talking to them about it all week. Last week. "Will someone mess something up because this is way too easy?" So, we started the service last year, during the meditation challenge. It has since evolved from then; from the one-on-one sessions, and then into actual classes once the pandemic hit. Zac: What's a typical session like? So, you got, say, it's the first time someone is attending your mindful movement. What does that entail? Lucy: Oh, I would say it's very similar to like a strength training session with two or three try sets. We pick three different exercises, go through them. I don't do reps. I do more for time just because everybody moves at a different pace. It's a lot of the same cues that I use on the training floor, which, if you're watching this, it's focusing on the stack position, focusing on all of the skills or being able to coordinate your body in a way where you're achieving certain positions and certain moves. [caption id="attachment_13193" align="alignnone" width="810"] The only way to talk to Zac[/caption] I'm introducing one cue at a time and that's all they're paying attention to. And that's why, what I said before, it's making my job easier because that's all they have to focus on is that one cue. So, an example of that would be one that I like to start with is in the supine position with their feet in a 90/90 position. Usually, when you introduce this exercise, people try to put everything together all at once: "Okay, tuck here and I'll fully exhale and I'll keep the ab tension and reach and don't shrug and don't lose a tuck." It's usually a complete failure. Or it's not a failure because you're really good at coaching, but the client is not competent in that move. You might've gotten them there, but they don't even know how they got there. Zac: Yes. They need you to complete the tasks.. Lucy: I did that in the past so much, and it was probably an ego boost of like, I just got this person in this position. But then when I asked them "How was that?" They're like, "I don't know what just happened." Or they you them, "Where did you feel that?" And they say, "Oh, I don't know. Let me do that again." Zac: Yes. Lucy: So, with mindful movement, what I ended up doing was retracting all of those cues and introducing one cue at a time. And it's the example, the 90/90 position legs don't do anything. All they're focusing on is that full exhale. So, it's in through the nose, full exhale, and I'm telling them the count, try to get the 10 seconds and then just breathe in however. And then back over and over again. Breathe in through your nose, full breath out. And the goal is, each exhale you're going further and further and you're trying to count to like 10 to 12 seconds. And that's all they're focusing on. The way I see it is like taking a dance class. It's, you're focusing on like taking a step forward and taking a step back and taking a step forward. And you're just really getting used to like what that feels like. And then I build up on top of that. And so that's the first set. The second set, I tell them to do the same thing, "Full exhale, at the end of the exhale, you should feel some abs. So, hold that air out and even say in your head, holding onto the tension and then letting it go." And then that's what they're focusing on for, I think probably two minutes that I let them go. Zac: So, you don't even mention Ab tension at all with the first round. It's just like the component of exhaling getting air out. And then you're building on top of that? Lucy: Yes. Or I might check in like, towards the end, like "Everybody feeling abs at the end?" Because they're holding their air out. And I just get that confirmation of they are feeling abs. And if someone is like waving their hand saying, "No," I'll try to address it there. Like "Try to exhale a little harder. So, if you're not feeling abs exhale harder." So, I'm getting the steps that are required to get me to the end goal, which is a full exhale with the ab tension and then breathing underneath that tension. So, they do that for the first set. Second set, they're doing the same thing holding for five seconds. And I also give them the right expectation. Like "This is going to be uncomfortable. If you feel uncomfortable, you're doing it right." Which I think coaches fail with that as well. So, in their head, they're literally differentiating. And I tell them, that's their focus of holding onto the tension and then letting it go. Holding onto the tension and letting it go. So same thing. Like "Step forward, step back." Because when people can hold onto the tension and breathe in, usually the reaction is like, "Did I do it right?" Because they have no idea. So, the third round, same thing: "Holding onto the tension, but this time keep the tension." They should know what that tension feels like, because they just let it go for like two minutes. So, breathe underneath the tension and then back to the full exhale. So, I'm building up to that end goal. Usually in that triset, I'm also doing pelvic tuck where they're only focusing on "Rolling up the hips, feeling hamstrings and letting go. Rolling up the hamstrings or the hips feeling hamstrings and letting go." And sometimes I'll put those together. It's whatever I'm feeling, I usually do it on the fly, depending on who's in class. Zac: Kind of your style. Lucy: Yes. Zac: Say you got a bunch of newbies, which I would assume you're triset with them be one move to focus on the tuck, one to exhale, then reaching for the third. Once you have all that built up, then what does the second try set look like? Like if someone gets it with those, do you try to combine or do you focus on other things? Lucy: I will usually move on to things like all fours. So, we'll either do some inverted quadrupeds or quadrupeds tucking, and where I tell them "The three main things that you're doing in the entire class, which is training your body to pay attention and being coordinated with your body." Which is also a huge thing. Instead of telling them "You're learning how to do things right." They're focusing on a cue that I'm giving them. "So, I want you to do something a certain way. I want you to roll your hips instead of picking up your hips. So, you have to pay attention to that." I'm giving them a visual to pay attention to. Deflating their body, inflating, peeling, melting, and then I'm also giving them a feeling. So, if they're doing it the way I'm asking them to do it, I should be calling out the right muscles. https://youtu.be/7SQQeEuTPo0 "You should be feeling your abs at the end of the exhale, or you should be feeling your glutes and hamstrings at the top of the tuck." I'm telling them what to pay attention to. After we do the things like supine, reaching, exhaling, I usually move on to quadrupeds where I'm telling them to pay attention to their back pockets. So that's one of my favorite Quadruped tucking where they're inhaling, pulling the back pockets down, exhaling, pulling the back pockets back up. And I do, which is also taboo for people who are into breathing extension. So yes, don't freak out. I do let people arch their back, but this is what I say. I tell them to "Work with what you have." Because I do want people to be able to arch their back and be okay, even if it's a little bit uncomfortable. So like, this is what the class is for, is being able to move your body and be fine. We're not loading it. What I say is "Work with what you have. Move as much as possible. As long as it feels good." So, for me, it's going to be very extreme. I can arch my back all the way and then tuck all the way. But someone who's a little stiff. I don't want them to look like me and I don't want them to think that they need to look like me. They're working with what they have and I'm telling them, "You are differentiating between tucking and untucking. Your back pockets are either down or they're up. So, if you get distracted, where are the back pockets? Either up or they're down." And then I'll move into some supine, like putting it together, like supine reaching like an ISO dead bug and working with that. And then a lot of squatting. Zac: Squatty squats. I'm sure. [caption id="attachment_13367" align="alignnone" width="810"] The only way to squat![/caption] Lucy: Yes. Squat holds. Where they're focusing on the same thing, the same move that they've been practicing, the same exhaling, the same feed. So, I'm just telling them all the things to just pay attention to. And we progressed from there. Zac: This is nice. You give an external cue, back pockets. You give an internal cue, tuck your hips. And then you almost get like an inter receptive cue. Like, "What am I feeling within me?" And that's good because if someone doesn't hit one and two, they might hit three and then they'll know that they're doing it correctly. So, I think that's really good to build in that redundancy because it makes your job easier. Lucy: Yes. And what I learned actually recently, I've always done the three things. But now I see it or I can see why it works. Apparently, people need three things to see a pattern. So, if you can describe something three different ways, then they can almost see the big picture of - if I just say "You're reaching your chest away from your hands." Like that might not mean anything. But if I give it three different ways, like "Picture the space between your hands and your rib cage, getting away from each other. Think of your upper back getting wide. Think of everything being pushed back." And then you're kind of painting the picture so they can see the cue. Because they don't know anatomy, they don't know anything. Zac: No. They don't. Lucy: And they're not aware of their own body. So, you're trying to just bring the awareness to them. Zac: Well, I imagine it probably reduces the frustration. I've ran into coaching someone and asking if they feel a specific area. They'll say, "Well, no." And then they think they're doing it wrong. But if they're feeling the sense that they're doing this movement, or they're envisioning this thing happening, it was within their bodies and you can almost point them towards, "Well, those are activating when you do that. If you can sense that your body's doing that, then you're winning! Side note. How pissed were you when you found out that the rule of threes was a thing and not something you came up with? Lucy: Really pissed. Zac: There's nothing original, happens to me all the time! Lucy: Yes. I had books on it. Zac: Really? I've heard of rule of thirds in the video. Or when you're doing PowerPoints where you need to have like two or like three things filled on the PowerPoint and they leave one spot blank. A consistent approach to coaching Zac: Why is a consistent approach to movement and training so damn important? Lucy: It develops a training model that produces clients that are so independent, making your job really easy. You create a training experience where people can socialize and you can catch up with clients because they don't need to be babysat. I noticed all of these benefits when I went to the extreme thinking that neutral spine was the only way people need to be lifting because that's the safe way to lift. Even though I was wrong in that aspect of seeing the body that way and not fixating too much on biomechanics, I couldn't ignore all the benefits from that approach. So, I had to figure out how to continue to have this approach and not have all these negative aspects? Because one of the benefits is the client independence, which is crazy. The other benefit is people can get strong, but not be so consistent in the gym, because everything looks very similar, even though an offset step up is different than a goblet hold step up or a higher step up with a zercher hold. It's still very similar. Even though we're loading different tissues, we're loading similar moves and similar tissues. So, people can get strong and also experienced novelty. I can have a step up increase in weight, but then have different variations in step-ups. Same thing with squatting. If I build a consistent squat that looks the same pretty much every time, I am going to be able to progress that person by doing different types of squats. That's how we're able to have people who've been strength training with us for nine years and they're still being challenged. And we are still able to find things that they struggle with. And then two, it's not just about weight. You have all this sense of accomplishment throughout your training program every six weeks, that's not just attached to how much weight you're doing. If we have an exercise that needs to be done a certain way, you now have a goal. Well, half kneeling cable pull down, needs to be done with me keeping my half kneeling position, me pulling down without shrugging without arching my back. So, I have to keep all of these things and do it this way for the next six weeks and feel that gets stronger, feel more coordinated or more efficient. https://youtu.be/1x_Qc-41wEs Even though technically you could totally do more weight if it was just a seated cable pulled down, but our clients don't see strength training that way. They see all these different exercises like a skill that they get to learn. And I kind of paint that picture like, "Ooh, half kneeling cable pull down. That's what you get to learn and get stronger in for the next six weeks." Even though it's not going to be as challenging technically as a seated cable pull-down where you can totally get more volume and more weight. Zac: This challenge coincides with what you're trying to build with your mindful movement. It's mindful movement under intensity, staying attunded with your body while lifting heavy weights. With you having consistency with your coaching, that it allows for people to not just want to work with you, but with other trainers who think similarly. Lucy: Yes. It allows you to share clients. And you can still be your unique coach and have your own personality and people will have favorites. But the problem that a lot of people run into is you cancel when your favorite coach goes out of town and that's what you don't want to happen. That used to happen to us. If I would go out of town, people wouldn't want to coach with Dave, or he went out of town, his people didn't want to be coached by me. So being able to have this consistency of how you provide a training experience and how you coach things needs to be pretty consistent. The importance of working with people in pain or autoimmune diseases Lucy: It just feels really rewarding to provide a training experience that people who otherwise wouldn't like to lift at all or had never stepped in the gym or never thought of themselves as lovers of exercise, get them to enjoy a training experience. Or get them to say things like, "I can't believe I like coming here or I can't believe it rained and I didn't cancel." I get them to that point. I get these people who have never stepped in the gym or have had horrible experiences and they literally say they hate exercise. And I know that in a month or two or three, however long it takes, they're going to be a different person. I don't tell them that just because no one's going to believe it. But I know. Zac: You can see the vision down the line and they're focus right now. Lucy: Yes. And the joke that I tell some of my clients, because the people that we do attract are very similar. It's so cool that we have people who would much rather be at home with their spouse, drinking wine or smoking a bowl and watching TV and eating pizza. But instead, they're here training twice a week, every week, pretty consistently. Sometimes they fall off because work of deadlines and shit happens. But we created an experience where those types of people are here. Not the gym rats, the meatheads, the people who enjoy fitness, the people who are advertised to join the industry. It's everyone else, regular people. The future of healthcare Lucy: I would want to redefine what it means to be a personal trainer or what it means to be in this industry. And redefine what it takes to be healthy. Because I think come to more of an agreement where perfection is not the goal and being healthy doesn't mean that your diet is perfect, you're always sleeping well, that you never do any drugs, that you never drink, that you never have times where you come in, hung over, that you have times where you spend too much time with your friends on the weekends. Zac: Play video games too long. [caption id="attachment_13368" align="aligncenter" width="500"] We all have our vices (Image by Rafael Javier from Pixabay)[/caption] Lucy: Yes. You eat too much pizza. You travel too much and you don't take care of yourself or you went on too many vacations. So, we're like, what do we mean to be healthy? And redefining that. And then creating a environment, like a gym environment where that's what we push for, where we understand that people are social creatures, we understand that people cope in certain ways. And just because we think it's unhealthy, it doesn't mean that people should be shamed for it. Like what's the difference between you drinking too much caffeine, which most trainers do, and then a client smoking weed? Or drinking a glass of wine at dinner? Like what's the difference there? Zac: Or drugs. Lucy: And also understanding that there's so many factors in someone's life that personal trainers have zero control over. So, all we can do is support them. Because I think the idea now is if you see something that's out of your scope or a roadblock that's preventing your client from getting results, like sleep apnea or severe mental illness, the idea that you can just easily refer out and things are taken care of is like from a fantasy world, because that doesn't happen. One, people might not be able to afford it. Two, they may not even do it. I've asked someone to get a sleep study five times and with three different people and they won't do it. But I still have to train them. Or someone might have severe mental illness and they're already seeing a therapist, but they're still struggling. Or people are still in back pain, even though they've gone to the Mayo clinic, Cleveland clinic, seen multiple physical therapists, pain management doctors, they're still in pain, and I still have to train them. So, looking at all these other factors and realizing that we don't have control over that. So what we have to do is learn about them, understand how it works or how it's impacting our clients and just figure out how to support them best and create a service that meets them where they're at. Sum up Exercise, meditation, and walking are the first three areas a brand new client should focus on. Mindful movement involves breaking down specific movement components to eventually progress through the weight room. A consistent approach to coaching similar movements qualities allows for smart progression, variety, and better transfer between trainers. The future of healthcare involves meeting clients where they are at and supporting them in any way they can.

Today, Lucy Branch talks to Louisa Forbes about her public sculpture. Louisa blends themes of religion and mythology into her classical figurative sculpture and is inspired by the idea of a connection with people thousands of years ago. She has exhibited extensively and has permanent public works in many places including Churchill and Trinity College in Cambridge, Chelsea Old Church, and St. Thomas' Hospital in London. Louisa discusses her creative journey in becoming a professional sculptor, her inspiration and love of bronze. Join us and BE INSPIRED BY SCULPTURE. You can find images of Louisa Forbes' work and a transcription of the interview at the Sculpture Vulture Blog - SCULPTURE VULTURE If you are looking for a new novel and LOVE sculpture, then you can get a free copy of one of my novels about the dark side of the art world from Sculpture Vulture. This podcast was brought to you by Antique Bronze Snippet From The Interview: Lucy: I began our discussion today by asking her if she'd always been creative? Louisa: Yes, basically, in a word. I mean, I started when I was little. I was the fourth child, and I think to amuse myself apart from anything else, I used to go down to a stream at the bottom of the garden and play with the clay. And it just...when I started actually producing things with it and presented them, I got a rather exciting reaction from people. So I think that was an attention seeker as a child, how it started. Lucy: Well, mud pies are always such fun, but I've never produced anything that was worthy of any merit, not with mud, anyway. And so, was there anyone else in the family quite interested in making things? Louisa: My grandmother, my father's mother was a very eccentric lady who was a Girton girl and studied Classics, but she also went to the Slade in about 1907. Lucy: Oh, incredible. Louisa: And she was there around the time of Augustus John and Professor Tonks. And so I used to go to her when I was stuck trying to draw an ear or something, and she used to, sort of, give me the classical basis of drawing. But, sadly, she obviously passed away. She was quite elderly, I think, when she had her children, so she was a pretty old lady when I knew her. But she was very interesting. Lucy: And so, was there a school influence as well? Was there a good encouraging art mistress or...? Louisa: That was my teacher, History of Art A Level. So, I did Classical Civilisation, History of Art, and Art A Level. So it took me from, sort of, 500 BC right up to 1955. Lucy: Covered all the bases. Louisa: There was a school trip with the History of Art lady who was a famous History of Art teacher. She was absolutely wonderful, called Susana Svoboda. And she took a gaggle of us awful teenagers off to Florence, bless her, on a couchette, can you imagine? Lucy: Incredible.

Storm Stories: Charlie's Victory (Part 1) - Charlie & Lucy WedemeyerStorm Stories: Charlie's Victory (Part 2) - Charlie & Lucy WedemeyerFamilyLife Today® Radio TranscriptReferences to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Storm Stories:  Charlie's VictoryDay 1 of 2 Guest:                        Lucy and Charlie Wedemeyer From the series:       Storm Stories:  Charlie's Victory Part 1        Bob: Lucy Wedemeyer was a young wife, a young mom with two small children.  She had married her high school sweetheart, the star of the football team.  Things were going perfect for Lucy until one day her husband came home from the doctor. Lucy: I mean, it was very obvious to me something was really wrong, and when he said that the doctor told him he had this terminal disease, I couldn't say anything.  I couldn't even respond.  We just stood there kind of clinging to each other. [musical transition]  Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, August 7th.   Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.  How does a marriage survive and stand strong in the midst of storms?  Stay tuned. [musical transition]  And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition.  When we began this week, when you told our listeners that the story they were going to hear was one of the top five all-time FamilyLife Today stories, and I think you're right.  I think what we've heard already this week has been powerful and profound.  But we thought we ought to revisit another one of those top-five moments before the week is over.  And so our listeners are going to get to hear another remarkable couple on today's program. Dennis: A great story of unsurpassing love between a football star and his adoring wife, Charlie and Lucy Wedemeyer tell a story that I think our listeners will never forget.  Charlie was a standout high school football star in Hawaii.  He ended up getting a scholarship to Michigan State University, where he had never seen a snowflake before being from Hawaii, and there he met Lucy.  They were married and not long after that he had become head coach of Los Gatos High School in Northern California in the Bay Area, and it was during that time he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, at least he was told by his doctor that he had months to live. Bob: And when we sat down and talked to them, it had been years since he had received that diagnosis, and Charlie was in a wheelchair, the only parts of his body that he could move were his lips and his eyes, and that's how he communicated with his wife, Lucy.  In fact, our listeners may be able to hear the ventilator that he's on.  They won't hear Charlie's voice, but Lucy will be able to share some of his thoughts and some of his words as she reads his lips and as she walks us through this incredible story. Lucy: Charlie was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease.  The doctors told him at the time of the diagnosis he had maybe a year to live, and Charlie's adding here, "The doctors didn't realize that Dr. Jesus had other plans for me." Dennis: Well, I want to take you all back to how you met because you met in Hawaii, isn't that correct, where you grew up? Lucy: Charlie and I met in high school at Punahau Academy on the beautiful island of Oahu under just a gorgeous blue sky and waving palm trees.  I mean, just the most romantic place.  He had just finished football practice, and I was standing in line at the bookstore – uh-oh, "No, no, no.  I was standing in line when I saw this gorgeous blond" – oh I like this – "walking up the steps, and I immediately fell in love."  Is that why you ran over to get in line?  I see. [laughter]  Dennis: Well, you, at that time, were a cheerleader, and he was a star football player – the player of the decade in high school? Lucy: Yes, he was, he was, in the '60s, yes, yes. Dennis: Well, it was in 1977, after you had been married for 11 years.  You'd had a daughter and a son that you were at the chalkboard, and you were having difficulty holding onto a piece of chalk, and at first it didn't seem that it was out of the ordinary that you were having to squeeze the chalk extra hard, but in the weeks that followed instead of two or three fingers you found yourselves really gripping the chalk, and some bad news came your way.  Lucy, can you bring us into those first conversations around that? Lucy: Charlie is saying, "At first I thought it was old football injuries, since I'd had so many."  He played not only high school and college but semi-pro there with the Lansing All-Stars for several years.  So it wasn't uncommon to think that maybe it was arthritis setting in or – he'd had a multitude of injuries all his career, and it was disconcerting, but Charlie just kind of said, "Oh, well, it's probably, you know, just those old injuries," and we really didn't concern ourselves with it that much at that point in time.  And Charlie's saying, "Until it became more difficult for me to button my shirts, to shave, and tie my shoes."  And, actually, what happened was the team doctor noticed some problems and started to ask Charlie and said, "Why don't we go up and have some tests done," and he took us up to Stanford University and ran us through some tests.  He said they were basically inconclusive, and we really didn't think a lot about it.  It's kind of funny, we, I think, preferred to bury our head in the sand at the time and just assume that it was part of his – part of the old injuries. Bob: Charlie, did you bring Lucy in?  Did you let her know you were having trouble with the chalk and buttoning your shirt? Lucy: "Oh, yes, in fact, she always had to correct all his math papers for his math students" and do all those things – the fine dexterity things.  But, again, we weren't – I don't think we were extremely alarmed, and our family has always been very close.  Any of Charlie's football games or basketball games when he was coaching basketball or playing softball.  We'd all be together.  The children were always there, a part of the scene. Dennis: Well, that Christmas season, the team doctor, who was a good friend of yours, paid your way back to the islands for all four of you to go back and see your family.  You were suspicious that he knew something that he wasn't sharing with you. Lucy: "Oh, yes," Charlie is saying.  "In fact, you are absolutely right about that.  When he made that generous offer, I thought something was distinctly wrong with me, and after watching that movie on Lou Gehrig's disease, I was convinced that that was what it was." Dennis: Did you ever ask the doctor why he didn't tell you earlier? Lucy: Yes, we did, Charlie did ask him, and really it came down to he didn't know how.  He did not know how to tell Charlie he was going to die, and it was very, very hard for him.  In fact, I was mad at him for a while because I had told him that when he did come upon a diagnosis, that I wanted to be there, that we wanted to be there together.  And the day that I called him about – or he happened to call us, and I mentioned about seeing that movie, and a lot of similarities, he said, "Oh, well, have Charlie stop by," and he'd talk to him. Dennis: Wasn't this February? Lucy: Yes. Dennis: So he'd kept it a secret … Lucy: Yes, for many months, many months. Dennis: What did Charlie do then? Lucy: Well, he stopped by the doctor's office, and I had told the doctor, I said, "Please, I want to be there."  And Charlie's saying, "Actually, one day when I was planning to go to the coaching clinic, I walked out of the gym, and he happened to be there and he told me that he wanted to see me in his office, and at that point I knew that something was wrong.  But when he told me what it was I really didn't believe him because I felt fine, and I looked fine.  And I didn't see how he could possibly be telling me this." Bob: Lucy, when a doctor comes to you and says, "Your husband's got a year to live."  I'm sure there's a numbness, there's a sense of denial.  It's hard – you go through a process of thinking, "This can't be true.  I'm going to wake up, it will be all over," but at some point the reality of that diagnosis sets in, and you begin to think, "What do we do?"  Tell us what you guys talked about at that point. Lucy:  Charlie's saying – oh, Charlie wanted to say that when he left the doctor's office that day, "I was driving home, and the more I thought about it, the inevitable, I thought that someday I wouldn't be able to see my children grow up and not be with my wife and I started to cry and, in fact, I actually drove right through a red light, and I had to pull over, and I was overcome with emotion."  It's very hard to go back.  Charlie is saying that when he got home and came in the door, I mean, it was very obvious to me something was really wrong, and when he said that the doctor told him that he had this terminal disease, I couldn't say anything, I couldn't even respond.  We just stood there kind of clinging to each other in bewilderment and from that point I remember kind of being in a state of denial, definitely a state of uncertainty and then he went off to the football clinic. [laughter]  I was so mad!  But I realized if that helped him keep focused, that helped him so he didn't have to dwell on it, and I got to sit home and worry about it. Bob: Yeah, I'm thinking that left you at home alone, didn't it? Lucy: Yes, yes.  And I remember the next morning when I opened the draperies, and I looked outside, and it was a gorgeous day.  I wanted to know why – why were the birds singing, why were people smiling and happy?  It's, like, wait a minute, something is very wrong here.  How can life just go on when we've just been hit with a ton of bricks? Bob: In that timeframe of those first few months after the diagnosis, did you wonder where is God in all of this? Lucy: Actually, we remember talking about the fact that the coach of the rival high school was also going through some extreme physical problems with his back and not really being able to diagnosis his problem, and so we kind of – I remember sitting up one night, and we kind of laughed, and we said, "Well, God must need some coaches," you know, "this is obvious." You know, I don't think we ever sat there and said "God, why me?"  Mostly because even at that moment, Charlie still looked fine.  There was no discerning sign of disease or, you know, the word "terminal."  It just wasn't there, and I remember at that point saying, "Charlie, you know, this is not just your disease.  This is our disease, and we're going to fight it together."   The only sad thing is, although, I don't know, it worked out quite well, but a lot of people said to us, "Well, you're going to tell the children, right?  You're going to tell the children.  You have to tell the children."  And I said "Why?  Why?"  What do you do?  Sit down with your six-year-old and say, "Hey, guess what?  Dad's going to die in a year."  We couldn't do that because we honestly believed we could fight it, and what I had to do in my own mind was believe that we were going to fight it one day at a time.  I couldn't think about the fact that one day he'd not be able to use his arms at all, or he'd not be able to walk, or he'd be confined to a wheelchair, he couldn't go to the bathroom by himself.  I didn't want to dwell on that, and so I just kind of erased it, and I can see now how the Lord helped us deal in those early days, and it was a very slow, methodical process – when Charlie could no longer use his right hand, he'd use his left.  When he could no longer walk, we had the wheelchair.  It was tough, but he was never willing to give up, and I think that's what strengthened me and buoyed me in trying to keep Charlie going. I do remember wondering, though, "How do you encourage someone that's just been told they're going to die?  What do you say?"  And so we sort of began what we now call "handicap humor."  And we began to say – Charlie was very fastidious, and still is, about every hair on his head.  And I said, "Well, dear, you know, if you had cancer, hey, you'd be bald, and wouldn't that be horrifying?"   And so it lent some humor there, and we began to bring back the humor, because for a lot of times, a lot of days, they were pretty dark.  The uncertainty just can be a real killer.  And even today whenever Charlie hears the name Dr. Kevorkian, oh, he really would like to have a chat with him, because there were times when Charlie felt that it was so hard on him and the family, and we had to rely on so many people to help us that he would – Charlie is saying, "I will always remember when I saw the physical and emotional strain I was causing my wife and my children that I told you" Charlie said to me, "maybe it would be better if I just died." And I can remember sitting next to Charlie when he voiced those words in a voice that was barely even then – oh, and Charlie's saying, "I will never forget your response when you said" – well, I'm going to tell you before I responded to what Charlie said, I had to take a deep breath and I remember sitting there saying, "God, please tell me what to say.  Give me the words," and I told Charlie that we'd rather have him like this than not at all. Bob: Well, we have heard today part 1 of a conversation that took place now more than a decade ago with Charlie and Lucy Wedemeyer and, by the way, Charlie is still alive and the miracle continues. But, again, this is a profound real-life story, Dennis. Dennis: And, Bob, I remember, as we were talking to Charlie and Lucy that I turned to them and quoted 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4, verse 16, because it's a passage of Scripture that really brings perspective to circumstances like only Scripture can and like they were facing.  I just want to read this to our listeners because it's a great reminder.  "Therefore, we do not lose heart but though the outer man is decaying, yet the inner man is being renewed day-by-day.  For a momentary light affliction" – boy – "for a momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal way to glory far beyond all comparison. While we look not at all the things, which are seen but at the things which are not seen, for the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.   And if – I just remember looking at them and thinking about the love story that we had heard that they've given us a great gift.  It was a gift of a reminder of what is eternal and of real value, and that's character.  That's our choice in the midst of circumstances when they're standing against us in the most fierce storm we've ever faced, and even though Charlie slowly lost his speech, his muscles weakened, and his outer man was helpless, yet because of his trust in God and Lucy's tenacious love, his inner man, her inner man, gained strength, and they found a source of strength in God and in the person of Jesus Christ.  And you know what?  That's the message for you, as a listener today.  Whatever you're facing, whatever you're up against, will you place your faith, your trust, your hope, in Jesus Christ?  I don't know where else you're going to turn.  I think the Wedemeyers have demonstrated there really is hope in no one else. Bob: Yeah, I think a lot of couples come to a point where they ask themselves, "Would our marriage stand up against something like this?  Is the commitment strong?  Is it bedrock to who we are?"  And I think they provide a personal example of what real love looks like in a marriage relationship – commitment, self-sacrifice, genuine caring about another person.  I know their story has been told in a book called "Charlie's Victory," and we have a limited supply of those books in our FamilyLife Resource Center.  If our listeners are interested, they may want to contact us to see how they can secure a copy of that book. But I also want to encourage our listeners to attend one of our upcoming Weekend to Remember Marriage Conferences this fall so that you can strengthen and pour into your marriage relationship because you don't know what the path ahead may bring for you, and it's building today that helps your marriage stand strong against whatever comes. You can find out more about the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference on our website at FamilyLife.com.  When you go to the website, on the right side of the home page, you'll see a box that says "Today's Broadcast."  Click where it says "Learn More."  That will take you to an area of the site where you can review a transcript of today's program, you can stream the audio online, if you'd like.  You can find out more about the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference and about other books and resources we have available to help couples pour this kind of a biblical foundation in their marriage.  Again, our website is FamilyLife.com, or you can contact us by phone at 1-800-FLTODAY.  We've got folks who can answer any questions you have about upcoming conferences or resources available, and they can make arrangements to get you registered or to send the resources you need to you.  Again, our toll-free number, 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY.  We have said many times here that one of the ways you continue to build a strong marriage relationship is by spending time together each day with God – spending time praying together, spending time looking at His Word, talking about what's going on in your marriage, in your family, and about God's priorities in those important arenas. And one way that couples can continue to grow closer to one another and grow in their relationship with God is by spending time in the daily devotional book that Dennis and Barbara Rainey have written called "Moments With You."  This month we are making copies of this book available for listeners when you make a donation of any amount to the ministry of FamilyLife Today.  We want you to feel free to request a copy of this book.  We're a listener-supported program so we depend on your financial support to be able to continue the ministry of FamilyLife Today on this station and on other stations all around the country. If you are making a donation online at FamilyLife.com, and you'd like to receive the book, "Moments With You," just type the word "You," y-o-u, into the keycode box that you find on the donation form or call 1-800-FLTODAY.  You can make a donation over the phone and mention that you'd like the devotional guide, "Moments With You," and, again, we're happy to send it to you as our way of saying thank you for your financial support of this ministry, and we appreciate your partnership with us. Now, tomorrow we'll hear more from Charlie and Lucy Wedemeyer about how a couple perseveres in the midst of incredible circumstances.  I hope you can be with us for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team.  On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine.  We'll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.  FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas – help for today; hope for tomorrow.  ________________________________________________________________We are so happy to provide these transcripts for you. However, there is a cost to transcribe, create, and produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com                 

Lucy: - Where’s my cat? Where’s my cat? Please help me! I’ve lost my cat! Jenny: - What colour is your cat? Lucy: - My cat is black. And he’s got big green eyes! Where’s my cat? Jenny: - I don’t know but I can help you. What’s your phone number? Lucy: - My phone number is 01305 668240.You can call my sister too. My sister’s phone number is 07904 886532. Jenny: - Oh, look under the car! Is it your cat? Lucy: - Oh, yes it’s my cat!! Thank you ! I’m so happy!!

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Jennifer Pahlka Founder and Executive Director, Code for America Date: January 2, 2012 [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hello, this is Lucy Sanders, CEO and Co-Founder of NCWIT, the National Center for Woman and Information Technology and with me today, Larry Nelson from w3w3.com. Larry, what's going on with old w3w3.com? Larry Nelson: Oh my goodness. We have so much fun, we interview so many people. We've even been doing it for 12 years now. I must say that this series is extraordinary for us, because what it does for young women, bosses, parents and the like, it's very good. So thank you. Lucy: Well, listeners will know, we ask women who have started tech companies as part of the series, pretty much the same eight questions and the richness of the answers never ceases to amaze me. Larry: Oh yeah. Lucy: I think today we are talking to yet another great entrepreneur in the technology sector, Jennifer Pahlka, who is the Founder and Executive Director of Code for America. Now, this is an awesome effort and I am going to describe it the way that Jennifer did in a recent talk. She says, "It's like a Teach for America or a Peace Corps for Geeks." Larry: Yes. Lucy: I just think that's so cool that people in government and city managers for example, who have projects that they think could benefit from web-based solutions and you can make an appeal to Code for America and get volunteer help to help build these projects out, really in some sense making government more open and giving citizens easier access to data. So, I think we are going to hear more about that. Welcome, Jennifer. We are so happy to have you here. Jennifer Pahlka: Thank you. I am very glad to be here. Lucy: This is not the first thing Jennifer has been. She is also a serial entrepreneur and has some extensive experience in gaming and media. Before we get off on your entrepreneurship discussion, Jennifer, why don't you tell us a little bit about the latest Code for America? Maybe you can tell us what projects like, "Adopt-a-Fire- Hydrant" are like? [laughs] Larry: Yeah. Jennifer: Sure, I'd be happy to. We are a pretty new organization, and we just finished up our very first fellowship year. We had 19 fellows work with us all year along and work with the cities, doing great projects. One of them is Adopt-a-Fire-Hydrant app, which came out of the fact the fellows go visit the cities for Fire Weeks in February and when they were there, our Boston team was treated to a massive Snow Apocalypse and one of the things they saw is that, the city is struggling just to clear the streets. They never really get to digging out the fire hydrant. But that the citizens were right in front of them and they could dig them out. So we created a little web app that allows citizens to claim a fire hydrant and agree to dig it out when it snows and the game dynamics on top of it that make it pretty fun. What's cool about that is that other cities who've seen this and adopted it as well. You wouldn't think that Honolulu has anything to do with Boston in terms of something like snow, but they have a similar problem. They need people to check the batteries in the tsunami sirens on the beach. Lucy: Oh my God. Jennifer: Too expensive for them to send crews around, checking them every week. So let citizens do that. Now it's also become Adopt-a-Siren and in Buenos Aires it's becoming Adopt-a-Park Bench and in other cities they are using it for other assets that are important to them. Lucy: Oh, it's so cool, because people who really care about being a good citizen are plugged in, in ways that they know they can make a difference and be helpful. Larry: Yes. Jennifer: Exactly, yeah. Lucy: Awesome. So, Jennifer, tell us a little bit about how you got into starting a technology company, like what got you into doing that? Jennifer: I wasn't a technical person. My first exposure to technology was actually in the video game industry, which is an incredibly dynamic interesting group to be in, because they are so creative and yet so at the cutting edge of technology. Video games are often breaking grounds in terms of graphics and sound, business models. It was a wonderful introduction not just to technology but community that's so creative and that made me really love technology. But doing conferences both in video game world and in the Web 2.0 world you are constantly talking to some of the smartest, brightest, most passionate people. You see that all of their efforts go towards building products or building services for companies that create a lot of value in our lives. But they don't really go toward building the public institutions that we all pay into and that we all believe should represent us. And so, as a result, without that talent, the public sector is really falling behind. I founded Code for America because I want some of the talent that I have seen over the course of my career in technology, think about building platforms for the public sector as well as the private sector. Start to close that gap between the innovation curve that we're all benefiting from in our personal lives and the way that government works. Lucy: How big do you think that gap is for the public institutions, just out of curiosity? How far behind are they? Jennifer: Well, there's that phrase, the future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. Lucy: Yes. Jennifer: That's very true in city government. You've got some incredibly innovative projects. You've got a lot of very innovative people doing wonderful stuff. For example, here in San Francisco, they put sensors in the curbs so they know what parking spaces are taken and what aren't and they've got some complex algorithms that change the pricing of parking in real time in order to optimize to have just one space open per block in San Francisco. If you live in San Francisco, you know how important that is. There's never any parking in San Francisco. But if you do that, you reduce the number, you reduce congestion, you reduce people driving around the block, it had some environmental effects. That's an example of people. There's many others like that. They're doing really great cutting edge stuff, but then you've also got tons of departments and, even within the same city, you'll have different departments that are still running their technology on Coball databases, stuff that's extremely outdated. Not with just bad technology or outdated technology that doesn't have modern develop per community around it, but also with just very outdated approaches about how to provide services to citizens that's stuck in an 80s and 90s model. So, it really varies. I don't want to discount how great some of the government technology leaders are these days, but there's a very long tail behind that that we need to catch up. Lucy: Well, and for all you listeners out there with Coball skills. [laughs] Larry: Yes, Lucy, are you talking about yourself? Lucy: Actually, I took Coball in college. [laughs] I'm thinking I could probably make more money doing that than what I'm doing. Jennifer: You've got some cities that are going to their local community colleges asking them to teach Coball now so that they can fill those slots, which I'm not sure is really the way to go, buy hey. [laughs] Lucy: [laughs] Now look, you've got to go after the age people who are thinking about retiring and lure them out you know, for sure. Larry: I'm thinking when they have to and then deter from that a little bit to get to our next question. Lucy: OK. Larry: Jennifer, why are you an entrepreneur and what is it about you that entrepreneurship makes you tick? Jennifer: I don't think I thought of myself as an entrepreneur, really, until I came up with the idea for Code for America. I think what's important about that to young women who are thinking about this is that you don't have to feel like you're branded an entrepreneur from the time you're 18. I came up with this idea when I was 39, and I suddenly felt that I could be incredibly useful to the world if I made this happen. It was really the power of the idea and the notion that no one else was going to do it, that made me start this organization. It certainly took some risk. I'm not a particularly risk adverse person and that's probably one quality that's important. But it was really feeling like this needed to happen and that no one else was going to do it, that made me start Code for America. Lucy: I love that answer. Larry: Yes. Lucy: I think it's great. Along that path when you started Code for America, did you have people influence you, or did you have mentors, or role models, or who shaped your thinking, if anybody? Jennifer: Well, early in my career I worked for a number of very strong, powerful but also so caring and nurturing women at the upper levels as media companies that I worked for. Actually, mostly one media company that went through a number of mergers and acquisitions. The president of our group when I was at the game that all the press conference is a woman named Regina Redly. I think the way that connect with technology, the way that she took care of her people all the way that she made the work environment as important as the work outcome, very much influenced me. Later on, when I was starting the idea of Code for America, I was very much inspired by Tim O'Reilly, the guy who's credit with the Web 2.0 and who's been a big thinker in open source. He continues now to be one of my mentors. I was also very inspired by Gwen Mellor who own the Sunlight Foundation D.C. She is a little bit more on the politics side. But someone who's very clear about the effects she wants to have in the world, very engaging, very kind and supportive person. Sunlight Foundation was initially the physical sponsor for Code for America because she actually very concretely helped Code for America get started and I'm very grateful to her. Larry: Good, wow, with all the things you've done. Lucy: So far. Larry: So far, that's right. I can't help but wonder what is one of the toughest things or the toughest thing that you ever had to do in your career? Jennifer: It's a difficult question. There's a lot of testing with the bum and bust cycles in technology. Certainly, when you have to lay people off, it's very painful because it's easy for them to take it personally. I've seen all this people well, moving on in so I'm less afraid of it than I used to be but it's hard to see people feel demoralized. I would have to say that now the hardest thing with Code for America is with very competitive process. We can only take 25 people a year right now to do our fellowship. We have 550 people apply. So when someone standing up and raising their hand and saying I want a Code for America, I'm going to move across the country work for some soft stipend, work long hours, and do this crazy thing. They're saying they want to do that and we say sorry you're not chosen. That's probably the hardest thing because you want to honor that instinct and that commitment and that generosity saying they are willing to do it. Lucy: Interesting, so as a side question, are you funded through donations then? Jennifer: Primarily, yes, from foundations, from corporations, from individuals. We also charge the cities that get a fellow team for the year a small participation fee so that it is not all on a charitable community. Lucy: It's a great effort. For all you listeners out there with big wallets... [laughter] Jennifer: Please. Lucy: Please yes. Jennifer: In your holiday giving. Lucy: Absolutely, so if you were sitting here with a young person and giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what would you tell them? Jennifer: I think the biggest thing I would share with an entrepreneur about an entrepreneur is to really care. You have to care about what you're doing. You have to deeply care about the problem you are trying to solve and think it's an important problem, and care about the people that you work with. If you don't really care deeply about your work other people won't and you won't be successful. That's the heart I think of this notion that we want to inspire the tech community, men and women to work on stuff that matters. If you really care you are much more likely to be successful. Larry: That's wonderful. Once again, all the things you've done and you did you start out to be an entrepreneur and now you've become one. What are the personal characteristics do you think that are giving you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Jennifer: A lot of people would talk about risk think that's an important when you do have to be able to take risk. I turned this organization with $10,000 in the bank for the Sunlight Foundation. That was it. When there was a lot more than was needed I quit my job, I didn't have any income for a while, that was important. I think personally for me I would have to say that my focus on a network in a community around what we do is probably in the most important. Somebody once said and I wish I knew who it was, "The time to build your network is before you need it." Lucy: Exactly. Larry: Yeah. Jennifer: I work in the conference industry. So my job was to know a lot of people and to have them care about the work we did and have them invest in the events that we did, in the content, in the ideas that we are promoting. I was lucky, and lucky that was what I was focused on for the first part of my career, because I did build a big network and I valued the people in my network very, very much. I am aware every day of how much the people who support our work and I am not just talking about our donors, though they are very important. I am talking about the people who come in and work, the fellows, the people who share our message on Twitter, whatever little thing people do because they care about our work. We exist because of them and I never want to take our network for granted. I think that's really helped build Code for America. Larry: Great. Lucy: Well, then that's so true about your network. You build networks, not necessarily with the intention that you are going to get something back from them, but because it's the right thing to do, to build those networks and to be in service to others and that's how the system works. I have seen so many people who really don't quite understand that. [laughs] Larry: Yeah. Jennifer: I think that's exactly why you need to build a network because you care about other people not because you want them to do things for you. Lucy: I know it's a little backwards just looking. Jennifer: No, I totally agree. Lucy: You're totally self-absorbed. So your starting Code for America, obviously you care very deeply about it. You are very busy with the getting a non-profit off the ground. I know it's really hard work. What is it that you do or what sort of tips can you pass along for balance between all the hard work and passion for Code for America and then your side life? Jennifer: That's an important topic for welfare for women, in particular, though I don't think should be for women in particular, I think it should be men and women. But it's always a challenge. It's been challenge for me before I started Code for America as well. There is a woman named Charlene Li, who runs Altimeter Group. She quit Forrester Group, but when she did, she blog something along the lines that's there is no such thing as work-life balances, its only disappointing and each party last which is a testament that you can see that that it is very difficult. I think I've seen this most effective for me is I have an eight-year-old daughter and my time with her is incredibly precious. I have her half time. When I am with her, I have the personal will, the power in me to actually turn off the vices, or if I have to respond to something else or tell her what it is and say, I am doing this. I am texting so and so for this reason and then I am going to turn my phone off. Knowing that that person needs me and that when I am paying attention to her, I get so much delight out of that interaction. It helps me create some boundaries between the work and home that I probably wouldn't have it, if I didn't have her. I am so grateful for my daughter in my life. Larry: I can relate to that. I have four daughters. Jennifer: Oh, you are very blessed. Larry: Yes. We certainly are. Jennifer, let me ask this. You've already achieved a great deal and we really appreciate and have a great deal of respect for the track you are on, but what's coming up next for you? Jennifer: It's funny, I don't think of myself as an ambitious person, but I do have some goals for Code for America that I would like us to see work not just in government technology at some point, but I think some of the approaches that we are taking to rebooting government should also be applied in education and that would be interesting for me. I don't know when or if it will happen, but I care a lot about education and I think that we could be putting more money into teachers and less money into administration if we find committees, principals that work, ++who you think was government. So that would be exciting for me, but beyond that I think hopefully what's next for me is more of work-life balance and I think that's really important. Larry: There you go. Lucy: Amen. Larry: Excellent. Lucy: And a great answer. Well, thank you so much for talking to us. Code for America, a great, great organization, growing and hopefully all you citizens, coders out there maybe can get involved. Thanks very much, I want to remind listeners that this interview can be found at w3w3.com and also at ncwit.org. Larry: You bet. Jennifer, thank you so much. Jennifer: Thank you very much for having me. Larry: Yes. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Jennifer PahlkaInterview Summary: Code for America’s Founder and Executive Director, Jennifer Pahlka describes her company as “Teach for America or Peace Corps for geeks.” Working in cities across the United States, Code for America is building a network of civic leaders who believe that there is a better way of doing things and want to make a difference using web-based solutions. Release Date: January 2, 2012Interview Subject: Jennifer PahlkaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 17:31

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Stephanie Boyle Founder, Rogue Paper, Inc. Date: August 29, 2011 [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women in Information Technology. We're working hard to make sure that more girls and women are introduced to the exciting potential of computing education and career paths. Part of what we're doing is this exciting interview series with women who have started IT companies. They're fabulous entrepreneurs. They all have such interesting stories to tell. today we're going to interview another one, Stephanie Boyle. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Oh, it's really a pleasure to be here. We like to focus, of course, on business and high technology with a special emphasis on young girls and women in technology. NCWIT has been doing a marvelous job. We're happy to be a part of it. Lucy: Well, and thank you very much for all the support that you give us with this excellent interview series. Now let me say a few words about Stephanie Boyle, the person we're talking to today. She's nothing less than a pioneer in the mobile Internet space as far as I'm concerned, having first helped shape the area as a founding member of Ericsson's Digital Media Innovation Center. Big brain thinking going on in this center, and it really helped to shape the whole mobile area. Now she is the founder of Rogue Paper, and she and her team deliver integrated mobile experiences to users. Now in the old days we used to call this convergence, but there's really a whole lot more exciting language and capability around the space today. I'm sure that Stephanie will be talking about that. But some of the things you can do now with the things that they're working on with Rogue Paper around co‑viewing a TV show and interacting with social media at the same time and integrating all of that. You're thinking, "That's really cool real‑time experience." But wait. There's more. You can actually do it with a rerun, where you can experience the whole power of what people said about the show or whatever movie and do it even when you are replaying or rerunning it. Just really interesting types of interactions going on right now and certainly leading to more engaging experience for viewers. Stephanie, wow! You've got a great company. Tell us a little bit about what's going on here. Stephanie Boyle: Thank you. Rogue Paper, we really started the business a year and a half ago with the mission of using mobile applications and technology to help enhance and drive traditional medium broadcast. Basically we are self‑proclaimed "TV‑holics"... Lucy: [laughs] Stephanie: ...and recognized [laughs] that we really wanted to not only watch television but really interact with the social sphere while we're watching these shows, that the content goes beyond just the primary screen. Really there is a second screen opportunity that can be interactive and augment the primary screen. There's a lot of really bad television being watched, but then [laughs] along with a lot of our guilty pleasures, which makes our jobs definitely a little bit more fun. But we really focused on how can we make the primary screen of television an interactive experience for users on the second screen, whether the second screen is a mobile device, a tablet, a desktop experience, or other things? We're trying to provide the users with second screen interactive content but then also provide media companies a way to reach these people already multitasking, who are already texting with their friends or IM‑ing or posting to Facebook or tweeting about what they're watching. It's really trying to bring the experience together as one single destination for a viewer and for the media companies to really have a holistic double‑screen experience. Lucy: That's really phenomenal. OK, I have a lot of guilty pleasures with TV, too. [laughs] One of them is American Idol, right? Stephanie: Right. [laughs] Lucy: When people are performing, and then people are tweeting or they've got things to say later in the blogs, and it's just not as much fun as if you could see it right then. Stephanie: Yeah. Well, and if you think about it, television has always been a social experience. It started in the 1950s. Maybe one or two people on a block had a television. It was really event driven. The people would come and sit together, and watch whatever was on the television and really talk about it together. Then as the technology innovations and as even socio‑economic things happened, we had VCRs and all of these second screens in the home, second televisions in the home, if you go into the seventies and eighties. Then the conversations started moving around the water cooler, so it was where people aggregated. It could be eight hours, 10 hours, 24 hours after the show aired. In the last two decades this has really moved into a digital landscape. I would say in the last five years or so it's really become back to real time because people aren't sitting together anymore. They're actually on their sofas or tweeting or talking, texting, or instant messaging. All these different mediums, but it's all really because, as a medium, it is social. Lucy: Yes, it certainly is. I remember the first time I saw a color TV in my neighborhood. It was Halloween. Larry: Oh! Lucy: I know. Stephanie: [laughs] Lucy: I was trick or treating. Anyway, back to you, Stephanie. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about how you first got into technology? Stephanie: Yeah. I was always interested in systems and the way things interconnect. I was of a generation that there was one computer in our elementary school to having them in high school and later. But wasn't necessarily as intrigued with the computers themselves as I was with the Ataris, the ColecoVisions, [laughs] the computer systems that we had at home that really could help me build games or play games. But always interested in how the systems worked and how people interacted with them. Actually, my mother was the first person to show me a computer in a way where she took it apart and had me put it back together. Lucy: Oh, that is awesome. Stephanie: Yeah. [laughs] While I'm not a digital native, I was exposed to technology as something that could be deconstructed to learn about and then put it back together. It definitely eliminated fear for me. It's always something that I felt was accessible, interesting, and intriguing. As time went on, I'm self‑taught in a lot of ways because of that because if I don't know how to program in HTML5, I'll have somebody [laughs] do it for me. Then I'll take it apart and try and change it and put it back together. But definitely I look to my mother as the person who eliminated that "technology is this strange and new" thing and made it instead something that was tangible and interesting. Larry: I wish I had known you a number of years ago when we needed something put back together. [laughter] Stephanie: Right. I remember being intrigued by this whole concept of my mother showing me the mother board in the computer. [laughter] Lucy: That's great. Stephanie: [laughs] I didn't really believe her that that was what it was called. Larry: Being the father of five I thought it should have been called a father board. But anyhow... Stephanie: [laughs] Larry: You've been through a great deal. You're really building an interesting company. What is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick, and why did you become an entrepreneur? Stephanie: Well, it's really interesting. I think the most exciting part of being an entrepreneur is the infinite blank canvas. Even when you have a product, an idea, a customer, anything, the next steps are never really clearly defined. Persistent problem‑solving and adjusting can be exhausting, but overall for me it's invigorating. It's how do we get to the next step? How do we keep moving forward? What ways do we need to be nimble and still meet our business objectives, our product objectives, our client objectives, the user objectives? It almost feels like the future is so undefined, and in that way I feel like it's really exciting. I often liken it to building a bridge while you're walking over it, which, of course, scares our business people to death. You should build a bridge on a [laughs] stable foundation. But what I mean by that is being an entrepreneur often allows you to be nimble enough to defy gratify and space as necessary. You're moving forward, but the future is undefined and you are still defining it. Lucy: Well, you're inventing it. I mean entrepreneurs are great inventors, right? Stephanie: Yeah, definitely. It's so exciting. Right now we share an office with actually four other startups. The collective energy is so interesting, just watching teams work together and just the steam coming off [laughs] the teams. It's exciting, and some of the things they talk about doing I think are impossible. I'm amazed at how those can be executed. Lucy: Well, now Stephanie, you mentioned your mother as having influenced you, really built your confidence, took the fear out of approaching technology and understanding it. Who else has influenced or supported you on your entrepreneurial career path? Stephanie: There are so many. I wish I had time to name them all. I can tell you the very first person who helped me grow as an employee or an executive or as a contributor to a team was by boss at Ericsson. Her name was Donna Campbell. She's a founder of Ericsson Cyberlab that was Ericsson's Digital Innovation Center. Donna had a very good and healthy way of looking at growth. We have a job that we have to do to make the trains run on time every day, but beyond that take time to learn more about this exciting new area that was mobile Internet or this new thing that has been so undefined because Telco previous to that the only content that existed was voice conversation, that people were talking to each other. It was just a voice channel. Then we were really looking at this next generation, which included data applications, content, anything. While we had all of our jobs to, what we would say, make the trains run on time, whatever that job was, she really challenged us to always think about learning about this new space and helping to define it. I sometimes even just with our team or our employees, I think I hear her voice in my head encouraging them to be as creative and also forward‑thinking and less constrained, that all ideas are really good ideas. Larry: I'm curious. With all the things you've done so far, not only with Ericsson but now with this newer type startup, what's the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Stephanie: [laughs] To be perfectly honest, it's probably less about my career itself and more about my personality. But I really believe that the toughest thing was really to learn to listen. That is in a big organization. That's with your own staff, employees, and partners, with your customers, with anything. I mean it's very easy to believe that you know what is the right way and to feel confident in your decisions and to try and push those things forward if you have a little bit of a bulldog personality, which I have. Still, I think the hardest thing for me to do is to really take a step back and realize that not only are all opinions really interesting and can spark new ideas for a collective group, but that you have to pay attention to what people are saying, and really listen. While that shouldn't be a tough thing in a career path, I think it adds growth as a human being, and applying that to my career. It's something I also believe that Donna really taught me, was that while maybe in the end your way is the right way, there are five, ten other people who can contribute and make it a better thing. Larry: Stephanie, we love your candor. Lucy: I have to say that this is such an important point. I can remember when I worked at Bell Labs that we took some amount of our imagination from "Rolling Stone Magazine." Who would figure? Stephanie: Right. Very cool. Lucy: Yeah. Around what we were doing with multimedia communication interfaces, and it came through this person who was sitting on the beach one day reading "Rolling Stone" on vacation. He brought the idea back to us at the Labs, and we at first didn't listen to him. Then we read the article. [laughter] Stephanie: It's interesting when you're really thinking about working through multimedia and technology, it's very easy as technologists to come from, "Well, this is the way it should work." It's really hard to think about, these are the other people on the value team, the people who create music. When you're thinking about all pieces of the value chain, it's really easy to focus on the technology. It's hard sometimes to remember that not only are, maybe, music companies involved, or people who listen, or all the other pieces along the way, to really bring them together. It's sometimes hard to get out of the tasks that we're doing today and think about the holistic view of the ecosystem. Lucy: I'll tell one other quick little story. At Bell Labs, in my organization, we finally realized that the Internet was real when a woman appeared on "The Donahue Show." Remember "The Donahue Show?" Stephanie: Yes. Lucy: OK. The sensation, of course, much more plain than it is today on some of those shows, but the sensation was that she was getting divorced because she had been talking with some other man on the Internet. They did a whole show. [laughter] Lucy: Stephanie, if you were sitting here with a young person and giving them advice about entrepreneurship, what advice would you give them? Stephanie: I actually think that the best advice I could give to anybody would be to take time to learn, to go and do internships, to find the salty dog in the organization who isn't always the oldest person in the organization, or the person who might be a little contrarian. Find those people and really learn about how you can work with them and how you can support them in all of their issues. I think internship is so important. I think coming to an organization with ideas is amazing. I think learning to collaborate and gain consensus amongst a huge number of people who are key influencers within the organizations are really, really good ways to learn how to contribute. I think becoming an intern in a larger organization, or even a smaller organization, and then making sure you touch all points of that organization, gives you a view of how an entrepreneur has to live. Some days I write business cases. Some days I do contracts. Some days I deal with end users. Some days I deal with angry clients on our side. Some days I'm troubleshooting why the applications have bugs in them. Really taking time to learn all of the aspects, all of the people in an organization, helps later to learn what it's like to be this utility person, which is all entrepreneurs. Some days you're accounting and some days you're dev, and all places in between. I think the best exposure is either (A) working in a big company where you intern, or working side by side with other entrepreneurs who pick up the six different hats a day, or even in an hour. Larry: I know a coming out of Ericsson and all, and that was great experience, but what is it about you personally that gives you the advantage of being an entrepreneur? Stephanie: I think I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I am a little bit of a bulldog. I think when people say that people are like their dogs, I have a very, very, very adorable and stubborn French bulldog named Weesie. I think we share some characteristics, in that when we I want to do something, or think that it's something that is good for the company, or for end users, or for the organization, I can't let it go until we get there. Whether we have to take five different routes to get to the same place, I really think that having a vision and sticking to it, but not sticking to how you get there, is really important in being an entrepreneur. To be flexible and learn how you can do it differently, or any of those things is really important, but just owning what you want to do and, hopefully, the outcome is really important. I think as a characteristic, and while I don't necessarily want to be considered a puppy with a sock. I am sometimes gnawing on that sock until we really can get to the vision. We're flexible enough to think that the vision can change over time and evolve. Definitely, especially within Rogue Paper, because this is a business we wanted to build, to make TV exciting for viewers, but then also just to help media companies to engage with their users and also to drive their core business, which is broadcast advertising. Really thinking about how to keep bringing eyeballs back for them. We'd done a few things to get it to change as time goes on. But I think definitely we always stick to this vision that we really think mobile can help drive traditional media. Lucy: I think it's great advice to think about sticking to your vision and being flexible with the way you get there. That's a powerful piece of advice. Changing gears just a bit, you're very busy, obviously. You're working hard on your company. I'm sure you have a wonderful set of friends and family around you as well. Larry: And a bulldog. Lucy: And a bulldog. [laughter] Lucy: How do you bring balance into your personal and professional life? Stephanie: It is very difficult. It's one of the bigger challenges, I would say, that most entrepreneurs have. I think the most successful are those to whom work is play, to some degree. If you love what you do and it bleeds into your personal life, it's not necessarily a hassle to do that. It's still that you're so excited about what you're doing and you're consistently thinking about it. In that way, there is not a huge difference in work life in terms of happiness. It's exciting to work at work, it's exciting to think about it afterwards. But it's interesting. Every company has growth phases. There's an innovation phase. You go through these big bursts of time when the focus gets really hard. I have an agreement with people in my personal life that in those two or three months, or in this growth phase, that I might be checked out a little bit. Then after that period goes, or after we solve a big problem, then I'm back at the dinner table and being an active participant in life. I would say it's not a burden on me, but it can be lonely for the other people in your life. Fortunately, the bulldog doesn't really notice as long as you throw the ball. [laughter] Stephanie: But it is a challenge. It's something that I watch people do around me. My business partner and co‑founder, she works nine hours a day full time, really hard during those times. Then she's able to really turn it off afterwards. It's something that impresses me and I admire, but at the same time, my brain is going at all times. I don't necessarily turn it off as well, or go as intensely during the day, but it is definitely one of the bigger challenges. But I would say in partnership, we just have to have agreements that this is a head sound period and I'll be back in two weeks, and a better participant. Lucy: I think that's an important point, that you can in fact give the people who are around you a heads up that this is going on and that you will be back. Stephanie: Right. I think it's definitely something that I learned through relationships and friendships, that what was scary was just going away, even though I knew I'd be back. Lucy: Right. Exactly. Just that simple communication seems like a pretty good tool for one's tool chest. Stephanie: It's not acceptable to miss birthdays and big events, but for the daily check‑ins, or the high‑intensity communication, I just kind of wave my hand and say, "OK, I'll get back to you in a couple of weeks. We're really powering through something." Larry: Stephanie, you might want to check with your mother before you answer this next question. [laughter] Larry: That is, you've already been through and done a great deal. What's next for you? Stephanie: Rogue Paper is actually my third business. The first one is really focused on technology. I actually taught Pilates and had Pilates studios. My life has changed in these big ways. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, that was a system. Pilates is a system, the human body is a system. I was always intrigued by that. This technology, co‑viewing and television, it's applying the same framework to a different type of thing. I would say I'm so excited about Rogue Paper. We're still just about a year and a half old. I feel like we're just really at the precipice of some really interesting things that we can do for media companies and for users. I think mobile penetration is really getting bigger. It's hard for me to think about too much of the future. Maybe I'm a little too comfortable with ambiguity, but I feel like there's so much I want to do now that is at the intersection of mobile media and entertainment. We're really excited about growing. I'm sure my mother would say, "children." Larry: [laughs] Very good. [laughter] Stephanie: "Grandchildren." Lucy: [laughs] Thank you so much for talking to us. You have such a great company, very interesting work. We wish you the very best for the future. We'll be watching, both from a business perspective, and probably we'll be using your technology as well. Stephanie: That is so exciting. Lucy: Yeah. Really. Thanks very much, Stephanie. I want to remind listeners that they can hear this interview at w3w3.com, and ncwit.org, as well as all the other interviews that we've done. Larry: You betcha. Thank you very much, Stephanie. Stephanie: Thank you. Have a great day. Lucy: Thank you, Stephanie. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Stephanie BoyleInterview Summary: As a self-proclaimed “TV-holic,” Stephanie Boyle founded Rogue Paper, Inc. to use mobile applications and technology to help enhance traditional media broadcasts and create an engaging double screen experience for viewers. Release Date: August 29, 2011Interview Subject: Stephanie BoyleInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 22:06

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 Sarah Allen CTO, Mightyverse Date: January 14, 2011 Interview with Sarah Allen [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of NCWIT, the National Center for Women in Information Technology. This is the next in a series of just great interviews with entrepreneurs who have started some really interesting companies and our interviewee today is no exception. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I'm happy to be here. This is an exciting series. Lucy: What's going on with W3W3? Larry: Well, we're interviewing all kinds of interesting people. Now, we don't interview only women, just so you know. Lucy: Oh, OK. Larry: Our interview not too long ago with Leonard Nimoy was fantastic. Lee Kennedy: You're such a bragger. [laughs] Larry: Yes. I couldn't help it. Lucy: Also with me is Lee Kennedy, who is a director of NCWIT and also a serial entrepreneur. Her latest company is Boulder Search. Welcome Lee. Lee: Thanks Lucy, always great to be here. Lucy: Today we're interesting a really busy, interesting person, Sarah Allen. She's currently the CTO and co-founder of Mightyverse. I went and played around at Mightyverse and you just must go. All the listeners must go to Mightyverse and play with it. I don't know, Sarah, if that's the right thing to say, play with it, or not, but I had great fun looking for languages and thinking about phrases. Basically what you've created at Mightyverse what you're calling a language marketplace. And you just don't see a pronunciation or hear a pronunciation, but you see people's faces actually saying it. It looks good on your mobile device. You can be anywhere and go figure out how the heck to say something. Sarah is primarily self-funding this company through some independent consulting work. And one other thing before we get to the interview, I wanted to say especially to our listeners who follow NCWIT and what we do, Sarah has started RailsBridge which is providing free workshops teaching Ruby on Rails aimed at women. Thank you for doing that Sarah and welcome. Sarah Allen: I'm very happy to be here. Lucy: Before we start, why don't you tell us a little bit about Mightyverse, over and above what I said, as a way of introduction? Sarah: Well, I think that it's fine to say that you played with it. I feel like playing is the best way to learn. We definitely want to create an engaging way to learn how to speak languages. And I'm really excited that we just released a collection of Hebrew phrases on the iPhone. So if you have an iPhone or an iPad you can go to the store and for 99 cents get a collection of Hebrew phrases. And we're really in a phase where we're market testing the mobile angle of Mightyverse. So you can see the full collection on the web but we're releasing a series of collections to get feedback from people about the mobile experience. Lucy: Well, people in the Bay area, I think you can show up and record your phrases and maybe even get a free lunch from Sarah? [laughter] Sarah: Absolutely. If anybody wants to come and record a phrase in their native language we'd be delighted to have you as our guest. Lucy: Sarah, you are quite a technologist, obviously you're a chief technology officer. But prior to your work at Mightyverse, you've worked in Shockwave and Flash and you were named one of the top 25 women on the web in 1998. So a very amazing technology career. How did you first get into technology? Sarah: Well, I started programming in Basic on an Apple II, back in the day when your computer would arrive with a manual that taught you Basic. I really taught myself from a book that shipped with the Apple at that day. And I got into it because my mom went into selling computers after being laid off from teaching in the public schools in the Boston area. And so, she brought an Apple II home and I taught myself. Larry: Wow. Lucy: Basic, I learned Basic in my high school math class. Lee: That's amazing. Had you done other kind of techie things before you jumped into that? Sarah: I think that that was the first really technical thing that I had done. I didn't see a big division between technical things and non- technical things. My dad had a philosophy where he would always teach both my brother and me everything that he did. He did handy stuff around the house and fixed cars. He taught us both math and different things. So I didn't really see that the computer was a really technical thing. I thought that building physical circuits was really technical and I thought that fixing cars was really technical. But I thought that it was just a toy. Lee: Yeah. Sarah: I knew it was a serious thing for my mom and for other people. I approached it as like this adventure, like "Oh, let's play with this thing." Lucy: Certainly from your position as a CTO, you're always assessing technologies and listeners are always curious to know which ones you see as being the most exciting. Sarah: Well, I think right now mobile is super exciting. But what's most exciting about mobile is the fact that we now have these huge data storage that we can access. We have cloud computing so that it's really easy to deploy services and to access data stores. We're starting to see a lot of easily interconnected web services. I think we're finally approaching what Tim Berners-Lee meant by the semantic web, this notion of having these services on the web that you can connect to and machines can connect to and make sense of. So, we're starting to be able to assemble fairly complex systems without building every piece ourselves. I think that's really exciting. Lucy: So it's clear how you got into technology. How did you get into being an entrepreneur? Sarah: Well I feel like I kind of stumbled into entrepreneurship because all through college I was a teaching assistant at this one class. And these two guys who TA'd with me and then we were head TAs. And we did a number of projects together, coding together. And they both hooked up with another friend of theirs and they decided to start a company. So this happened about six months before I graduated because I graduated in the middle of the year. So I did as like "Well, my friends are starting this company. I'll work there for the summer." And kind of fell into it because I got wrapped up in what we were doing and ended up really being a co-founder of that company. And that was CoSA, which was a company that created After Effects, which is now sold by Adobe. That really gave me the feel for what it meant to be involved in a startup company which otherwise I don't think I really would have understood how exciting that is and why I would have wanted to do it. Lucy: Tell us what it is about being an entrepreneur that you love so much. Sarah: Well, I really love creating things that don't exist and solving problems that either people don't see or they don't realize can be solved by today's technology. I think that's really exciting. The thing that convinced me to actually be a software developer, because I graduated from college... I graduated with a CS degree. But I didn't think I was going to be a software developer because I thought it was straightforward. I thought it was like doing crossword puzzles or Rubik's cubes. It's entertaining. But I didn't really take it seriously. I didn't see when I was in college the power of computing and how it can be applied to real world problems because everything seemed really obvious to me. So I figured anybody could do it. And then when I was working at CoSA, CoSA actually was a very small company. We also kept up tech support. And I remember somebody who was calling to ask me about a question who had bought our software said "I didn't think computers could do this." And I realized that I had a unique perspective that I never recognized before. Because of my experience, because of my skills, because of my unique world view, I can see things that I'm not the only person who sees. But the majority of the world doesn't and that's a real opportunity for me. That's kind of exciting. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Well you mentioned your parents. It was really neat how they had a way of helping steer you somewhat. But I want to talk about your career. Who are some of the people along the way that have supported your career, whether they be mentors or role models or whatever? Sarah: Early in my career I really struggled with not seeing women role models. That was really important to me. I felt a little isolated. I was often the only woman on my team. I did find men who were great role models. Harry Chesley, who created the Shockwave team and hired me at Macromedia, was the person I learned about the Internet from. He was the first person who I ever heard say that he wanted to work on open source. I asked him what he would want to do if he made it rich and could retire early and he said he would want to write software for free. And I thought that was really bizarre and now I understand what that means. Lucy: Yeah. Sarah: And my friend David Simons who I started CoSA with who still works on After Effects at Adobe. He's really always inspired me because he stays true to himself. He always respected me. And he always saw, I think even before I saw things in myself he saw them in me, in terms of what I could do. Our collaboration showed me how we could work together. And those kinds of relationships were really inspiring. It may sound clich�, but my husband has been incredibly supportive, I think another person who will see in me things before I recognize them myself. Having his support in picking through these career choices is super, super important. But after a while I started to get frustrated that I didn't have women ahead of me. I started to feel that maybe I didn't belong. Maybe this wasn't the career for me. Were some of the things happening that I didn't like because of my gender? I didn't know and I felt uncertain about that. I actually read this book about the 50 Nobel prize winners in math and science who are women. And I read an essay about Emmy Noether, who is a German mathematician who was actually the first woman to be paid to be a professor in Germany. But before that she did math because she loved doing math and she lectured under somebody else's name because she was so thrilled with the opportunity to talk to people about her ideas about math. She helped Einstein lay the mathematical foundation for his theories of relativity. Lucy: Wow. Sarah: She was just very excited to work with people who had respect for her so it didn't matter that she didn't get paid for it, that the rest of the world didn't acknowledge it because in her small circle, they all knew that Emmy was the person to go to when you had a math question. Then I looked around me and I saw that, OK, I have this group of guys who all respect me and we build great software. I was working on Flash video at the time, working with an amazing team. And I just felt like "Well, this is what I love to do. Forget all of that nonsense. I'm just going to follow what I love and the rest will take care of itself." Lucy: Well, that's a great story. I think, too, some of the work you're doing with Ruby on Rails giving women the confidence and skill set to get out there and to start contributing in a space is really going to also add role models. Sarah: It is my hope. Lucy: And thank you for doing that. So, we are going to turn now, away from technology and mentoring into sort of the dark side of the career. [laughs] And asking about the toughest thing you ever had to do so far in your career. Sarah: This is actually the hardest question. I am thinking about this interview. There isn't one thing. The hardest thing is really making decisions like the hardest thing for me, it may sound a little tried, is just making priorities, making decisions. I used to feel that they were right answers, and that if there were some negative consequence to a decision I made that then I have made the wrong answer. And what I come to realize is that every decision comes with risks and if am deciding am I going to do A or B or C, each thing has potentially negative consequences. And to make a decision with your eyes open and to say "OK I am going to do this and there might be some fallout and I might do it anyhow." I feel like I make those decisions 20 times a day running a company. I make new significant technical decisions for my neighbors who make strategic decisions, who make those life decisions. Should I be spending this much time on my career instead of my family? It's not really that kind of either/or but all the little decisions add up and they have consequences both good and bad. So, I think that's the hardest thing. Lucy : Well and sometimes, too, I think. You think if you don't do anything. There is no risk with doing nothing and not making decision, whereas in fact, right? Larry: Yeah. Sarah: That's the biggest risk. Lucy: That's the biggest risk of all. Sarah: I mean I think that, I probably instead of the most wide spread computer software that I've ever developed was Shockwaves where I wrote... Even though there were only four engineers in the project. I wrote a significant amount of code. I was involved with many, many releases of it. I don't think I got any real risk in developing that. I never did anything that I wasn't sure what's going to work. I really like the civilization in the late 90s. I have never really taken real risks in my career, and so later I started to try to take risks. I was able to do much more impressive things because they didn't know it worked the first time. But if you make a decision, you try to do something knowing that it might not work and litigate that. You can lay a path. You can set expectations that you are experimenting and then you are able to do things that are much more clear. Lucy: And that brings us to the next question when you think back about all the things you have done in your career, whether it's working with technologies, making decisions or what to do. If you are kind of sum it all that and give advice to somebody that's looking to get in to being an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Sarah: I have couple of pieces of advices. The number one piece of advice is to pick the people you work with first, it's more important than the project, the technology anything else. It's that you are working with great people that you respect for, that you can learn from, that they have respect for you and that you are going to have a great working environment. When I went to college, I would say pick your college class by the professor not by the subject. I feel that's completely true for your working environment. So if you think it's an amazing job but you are not sure about the people or an "OK" job with amazing people, take the OK job with amazing people because the amazing people will turn it into an amazing job. It's more likely your project is going to change than the people change. So, that's the first thing which I think is really important Lucy: And that's great advice. Larry: Yeah, you got it. Lucy: Very true. Sarah: The second thing is to really find your passion. Find the things that makes you tick, find the things that you love. What is the thing that you can do just forever and never get bored of? And that's what you should be doing. It can be very, as a young person, I didn't know what that was. But when I found it and I didn't recognize that when I found it that I kept following it. What's this thing that I am into? I would pick things. It felt like I was making career choices on a lark. But I would just follow my gut instinct about this. This feel is exciting to me and then in retrospect, I could see a pattern, but it was seven or eight years before I saw a pattern. But I was following what is it that drives me? What is that excites me and that lead me to where I am today. Larry: Very good, great advice. What are your personal characteristics that have given you the advantage of being the entrepreneur? Sarah: It's kind of a hard question because I feel like I'm such a different person than I was when I started being an entrepreneur and I feel that the things that made me successful now, they feel like there are very different things that made me successful then. But I think the common thread that runs through it is that it's creative work. At least this is my angle at it. In college, I got two degrees. One in computer science and the other in visual arts. I am at studio art. There are two things that I learned. One was in being creative, sometimes that blank canvass if you want enemy. You need edit the paper. You need to pour your creativity into and creativity is work, like creating that structure for yourself. Creating the path, getting yourself into the creative mindset is working at a discipline. The other thing is being able to receive and give in an affective critique. One of the things that you learned in Art 101 or whatever they called it is we did lots of drawings. Everybody would put their art in the wall and you were supposed to critique it. I would come and I would look at a drawing. It would be like Oh, my God. I can't believe that person just turn that in. [laughter] Sarah: And if you would say, the composition of the little jumbo but this quality of line really speaks to me. I like the gracefulness of that line and I learned to pick out the parts of a drawing that were really wonderful and disregard the thing that didn't turn out OK. And that made me not only be able to communicate more effectively but more importantly, see things that I otherwise wouldn't see. I think those skills lead me to be able to interact with people and hone my own skills in a way that to give me an advantage of an entrepreneur. Lucy: I think that's great. Was that your picture that she said about Larry? Larry: Maybe. Lucy: Maybe just a little? Sarah: I would never say. Lucy: No, never say. Larry: Thank you. Thank you. Lucy: No, never say but I just thought that was wonderful. Just to say it. Now, Sarah, you mentioned in your earlier question around decision making about is it the right time for me to be spending this time away from my family and working so much in my career? And so, get us to our next question about bringing balance to your personal and professional lives. Any advice you would like to give the listeners about that? Sarah: First off, I'm probably the worst person to give advice about work right now. Lucy: Go ahead. Yeah? Sarah: I do have a family. I love my family. I wish I could spend more time with them which is ironic because it obviously not a big enough wish to overcome my drive to do other things in my life. And so, in that way you have to have some kind of balance. You have to figure out how you are going to make peace with all of these things that you want in your life. I was very influenced by a woman. I don't know her name who gave a talk at Grace Hopper Celebration of Women Computing. I think it is 1997. Right around that time, I was either pregnant or about to be and it was that talk about having children and having a technical career in. For the first time I heard somebody who actually said that she thought that having a career in technology was an advantage for being a mother. I was expecting to hear all about compromise. But she said it was an advantage and she went through a lot of ways that it really helped her relation with her son. And, what she said was, "You can have it all, just not all at once." Lucy: That's a good way to put it. Sarah: That's what I try to do at my best. That when I am home with my family, I am there with them. Like I'm most successful when I can make time to do what I am doing and really do it fully and then decide that "OK, this is time I am not going to spend with my family. I'm going to spend it on other thing and really spend it at that. If you can do that successfully then I think you can have really great balance. But it is really challenging. But it is incredibly rewarding when it does work. Lucy: Sarah, we've really enjoyed talking to you. Just feels like you've got this Zen about you. So, tell us what's next for you? Sarah: Well, a lot of things. I am really excited about RailsBridge becoming self sustaining. I read a great book "The Starfish and The Spider." Its subtitle is the "Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations" I'm taking a bunch of lesson on that book in trying to create, help create or empower this group of volunteers and create structure around it so that it can just... The workshops can be self sustaining and don't need me as a leader. Or don't need any leader and they can just work by themselves. It's really exciting that's starting to happen. Also, I'm working to have my consulting company with this grown up around me. It started with just a way to fund my product development ideas but that also started to become a self sustaining company. And then, that will really liberate me to focus on my neighbors. I am really excited to spend more time writing code, spend time figuring out the hard problems around language or even better yet, figuring out the easy problems that are going to be most rewarding first. It's such a vast problem space but there are also so many things that don't require a lot of technology. I am excited about a problem which is as much a human problem as it is a problem for technology. Larry: Excellent. Lucy: Well, we are going to stay tuned, that's for sure. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Well, thanks very much Sarah. It was great talking to you. I want to remind listeners where they can find these interviews at w3w3w3.com and ncwit.org. Larry: We are really looking forward to it. We are going to follow you, Sarah. Sarah: Great, you can follow me on Twitter at my hacker identity. It's all sorts.com. Like the dinosaur. Lee: OK. Cool. We will be there. Lucy: Thank you so much. Sarah: All right. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Sarah AllenInterview Summary: Sarah Allen is a serial innovator with a history of developing leading-edge products, such as After Effects, Shockwave, Flash video, and OpenLaszlo. She has a habit of recognizing great and timely ideas, finding talented teams, and creating compelling software. Release Date: January 14, 2011Interview Subject: Sarah AllenInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 23:55

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Asra Rasheed CEO, RRKidz Date: October 25, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi this is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology or NCWIT. And this is another in a series of interviews that we're doing with women who have started IT companies. Just really fabulous entrepreneurs with lots and lots of great advice for people who are thinking about becoming entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3, hi Larry. Larry Nelson: I'm so happy to be here, this is a great series. Lucy: Well and W3W3 is a great partner and their podcasts are hosted on the NCWIT site as well as the W3W3 site. Also Lee Kennedy, serial entrepreneur and CEO and founder of Bolder Search, she's also an NCWIT Director. Welcome, Lee. Lee Kennedy: Thank you. It's great to be here. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Well, so we've got a person that we're interviewing today that really likes to play and game around. OK. I mean this is great. I think we're going to have a fun time with her, her name is Asra Rasheed and she's the CEO of RRKidz. And RRKidz develops and publishes engaging and interactive content for today's digital kids. And she really has had a very accomplished career as an entrepreneur and you'd say this, she's a serial entrepreneur like you are, Lee, very successful. And she loves gaming. She's actively been engaged with the women in Gaming International, something that is near and dear to NCWIT's heart. So Asra, welcome. Asra Rasheed: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today, it's a real pleasure to be here. Lucy: Well so tell us just a bit about RRKidz and what's going on, what's the latest. Asra: So RRKidz basically is a division of Burton-Wolfe Entertainment and Burton-Wolfe Entertainment was formed LeVar Burton. Some of you may know him from Star Trek, Jordie, and of course from Reading Rainbow. And Mark Wolfe is a producer who also worked on Terminator Three. So the two of them came together and they really thought that there was a need in the market for good quality fun learning experiences for kids and that's when they decided to launch RRKidz, January of this year. And I came on board as CEO of their company in April and RRKidz basically represents today's digital kids. We have an opportunity to educate this generation and future generations but what we see happening is that children now are spending less time in front of the television set and more time in front of devices such as their iPhone, online, and even their iPads believe it or not. So we're very excited to be able to bring explorative learning experience for kids but also more important, we want this to be the right place for parents and educators as well. Lucy: Well that sounds pretty exciting and maybe you'll be able to get William Shatner away from, what was it, Priceline? [laughter] Asra: Yes. Larry: And I interviewed Leonard Nemoy about three weeks ago, so. Lucy: Oh my gosh. Asra: Wonderful. Lucy: We're a Star Trek kind of crowd. Well Asra tell us a little bit about how you first got into technology. Asra: I have always had this fascination with technology. I'm a very creative entrepreneur. I love sort of drawing things and sketching things out and I became very fascinated with technology back in let's say 1999, 2000, when websites were sort of becoming the big thing. And I started exploring that market and I noticed there was a really big opportunity for companies, smaller companies and mid-size companies to sort of take advantage of the online space and they just really didn't know how to adopt the platform. And so I found that to be the sort of opportunity where I could help them design what they wanted to do but also bring in technology and tie the two together. And so in 2000, you know it was interesting, everyone was saying, "You have to be online, " and "Oh I just got this great website and I spent about fifty thousand dollars for it, " and I said, "Wow, you know that's an awful lot to be online." And what I did was I tapped into my resources offshore and created a development team which allowed us to bring costs down on developing websites. And so that was sort of my first entry into technology, certainly a learning experience for me. Lucy: Absolutely. Tapping into offshore development resources back then well, that was just starting to happen. Lee: And it certainly leads into our next question about being an entrepreneur and why you like being an entrepreneur. Because definitely tapping into offshore resources is pretty entrepreneurial. Asra: That's a good question. So, I always go back to saying that my entrepreneur spirit comes from my parents. Ever since we were kids, we all grow up in this home where both my mom and dad started their own companies and they're first generation immigrants here to the US. And I really admire them for what they did. They came here. They're educated here and they started two companies which were both very, very successful. So, my father would actually take me to his office every summer and I would have to sit there and take note on everything he did. He had a factory back then and that factory was based in Taiwan. So, that was sort of my first kind of exposure to offshore resources. I had a chance to get on to the assembly line, he manufactured for us lighting fixtures of all things. And even back then, I was trying to figure out how you could make that more exciting than just it being a light bulb. So, that was sort of my first entrepreneurial offshore experience. But in general, my mom as well, she started a company. She manufactured sil plants. She created silk flower arrangements and sold them to Price Club back then. So, I've always been surrounded by people who have been very entrepreneurial and they've also been risk takers which is sort of one of the things that you need to be when you are an entrepreneur. Lee: That is pretty interesting they're both sort of manufacturing companies. I'm just as a side note in Washington this week and there's a big discussion going on about building manufacturing capability again in this country really, really a big discussion. So, that is coming back around. Larry: Now, you mentioned your parents and the major influence that they have on you. Were there other people in your life that were very supportive and mentors along the way? Asra: Yeah, I have been very blessed to have such wonderful mentors along the way. It's been such an honor to work with some of the most successful people in my industry. And yes, I have several mentors. I actually have a group of mentors who I turn to anytime I have to make sort of a big decision professionally. One of them has been my old CEO at one of my companies. I Gotta Play, who has been my mentors for the last eight years and he has taught me so much of who I am today. And then of course, I've got different mentors. I think it is really important to have mentors who bring strengths in different areas. You developed that personal relationship over time. And you need to feel comfortable with them because you really need to be able to tap in to them when you are making decisions. And they shaped away I think. So, yeah, I've been very fortunate to be able to go to those mentors whether it is in technology, whether it is in production, whether I need help with and investment opportunity. I have a great sort of foundation, a platform of mentors that I love to access. Lee: I'm curious about you have a great set of mentors and you turn to them for advice. And I am just curious how you taken what you've learned from them and factored it in to how you mentor others today. Asra: Recently I have been mentor to a lot of women and women in games. And it's been quite satisfying, very fulfilling to me. I think what I have learned from my mentors is that I try to pass along is I want to be a good listener and I want to be able to be there. If they're good, challenging times. As an entrepreneur, we all know that we have our set of challenging moments and there are times where you need to be able to call upon your mentor and sort of say, hey, I'm going through this and it is frustrated and need your advice and direction on it. Something that I learned from my mentor is early on I was able to pick up the phone and be able to talk to them and discuss whether it is an opportunity or challenge, they were a little bit... I think the other thing off of that is you really need to be very transparent at your mentors. They are your friends to guide and you should be able to go to them with sort of anything that you'd like to talk to them about. That's important. A lot of times, anyone of these things that I learned was I was always fearful of sharing too much and I think that you should be open and be able to share whatever you can because that is where your goal is the most benefit. So their advice is their help. Lee: That's a really good point because sometimes the thing we're fearful of is the thing we need to figure out. You had just mentioned there were a number of tough things you had to do and some of them, you went to your mentors, what do you think has been the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Asra: There has been some challenging moments in my career and I would say by far, you know, one of the things of an entrepreneur, you start of with this idea. And that idea comes from you questioning sort of, "What if this worked like that?" or "What if there was this?" And then that builds into an idea and then you say, "Well, you know, there's an opportunity here for me in terms of space." I do know one of the challenging thing for me has been a lot of times, you all start this as your baby and many times, you're just fearful of changing or shifting direction. And there are times that you just have to in order for your business to succeed. So you know, my biggest advice to entrepreneurs is, you have to know when it's time to make a change and there are some tough times out there. So, if there times where you have to downsize as much as you don't want to. I remember, there was a time, I had to downsize my staff at I Gotta Play and I would say that was the toughest thing for me to do. And more recently, I think you just need to be able to know when it's time to make a shift in your strategy, in your direction. I think a lot of time what happens is entrepreneurs will sort of hold on to what they started, and often times, that may not scale. You need to know when to make a change. So those are the challenging experiences and of course I've learned from them. Larry: Let me ask you a different kind of question. You've been a mentor, a mentee and a mentor, but in addition to that, if right now, if you're sitting across the table with someone who's exploring the possibility of becoming an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Asra: I would say to them, to be committed to what you're doing and be passionate about what you have embarked on. Those are the two things that are absolutely required of an entrepreneur, commitment and passion. You have to have to drive to get to the challenges, to benefit what the success that this will bring you. Not all days will be good. And the other thing that I would advise would be, you know, a lot of times I speak with entrepreneurs and they have this great idea that I would say, before you embark on the start up do your research, do your homework, make sure there is a clear market opportunity. I would also strategize, build out a road map, you need to be able to sort of sustain yourself through this time because it can be challenging but so rewarding. So, that's the advice that I would give, and be passionate about what you do. Really it's not just about the money, that will come, but really be passionate about what you're doing. Lee: You're clearly very wise in the advice that you give. Just curious, if you could tell us, other personal characteristics of yours that you may give you advantages as an entrepreneur. Asra: For personal characteristics, I would say that I am very driven. I would also say that as an entrepreneur and more so as a leader, you have to be balanced and that's very important. So particularly, when you're dealing with other people, you need to be able to articulate yourself very well, be able to communicate your message and it really is all about relationships. I think one of my personal characteristics is I have been able to build relationships, build a network. That network that you build is so valuable, and I always say that you can know everyone out there in your industry but unless and until you make use of your network, you're not leveraging it. And I think that's one of the things that has helped me as an entrepreneur greatly. Lucy: Well, one of the things we're always curious about being an entrepreneur, usually is a pretty crazy life in general and how do you find balance, how do you bring balance between your personal and professional life? Asra: You have to find time for yourself and that's one thing that I learned very quickly as an entrepreneur was I found myself in front my computer all the time, I found myself working all the time and at some point, you burn out. You do get burned out and that's when I realized that I needed to make a shift in my lifestyle and I needed to make a more conscious effort about balancing my life. So for other things that I enjoy doing. I enjoy doing activities outdoor. That helps me sort of stay away from all of my electronic devices and that's difficult to do in this day and age. I really make a conscious effort to spend time with my family. That's important. It is tough to bring balance as an entrepreneur. It is a challenge and you have to prioritize what is important to you and it is interesting. You want to be the best in everything you do. You want to be the best as far as family is concerned. You want to be the best Chief Executive Officer and just know that it's OK to not make it to every single event that your child is at. And I would say that I struggled with that at the beginning and then I said, OK. I'm going to take a step back and I am going to prioritize and try to balance sort of everything that is going on. OK, I'll put my family provides a lot of balance in my life. Lucy: Well, so you are in a new position now, CEO of RRKidz. You really have achieved a lot. This is a bit of an odd question for someone who is in a new CEO position but let's just see if you have any thoughts about what's next for you or if the RRKidz position is going to be enough for a while. Asra: Well, certainly the RRKidz position is going to be enough for quite some time. I am really excited about RRKidz. It is an opportunity for me to do something that I've been very passionate about which is taking technology today and applying good content, trying those together and delivering it to kids. So, I am extremely excited about the future with regards to RRKidz. Yeah, I do see myself being a mentor. That is something that has been very obviously satisfying and fulfilling. I also enjoy advising a lot of different companies and I see that in my future. The reason why I enjoyed it so much I once was working with start up launch entrepreneurs and having been able, having the opportunity to see all the different things that people are doing. There is so much going on out there and it's really just fascinating to me to see how many people sort of recognize these different market opportunities and then embarked on a start up. I would love to sort of become an adviser. I don't know when that is going to happen but certainly not right now as what I have at RRKidz. Lucy: Well, I have... I'm sure our listeners are going to be interested in the answer to this final question which is I am just tackling on. It is not on the list but I am going to ask it anyway. Give us a little bit about the women in games international work that you are involved with. What does the group do and what is on their horizon? Asra: Sure, so women in games have been around for several years. The game industry is predominantly, it has been men and it is an area when I started my game company which was an online video game rental service. I started it back in 2002. And I was probably one of maybe a handful of women in the industry and it's very, very intimidating. It has changed and it continuous to change was that the entry of casual games and social games. We see more women entering into the space. We see more women becoming readers and executives. And we as women in games are sure to represent those women and we are here to advocate the inclusion of women in the game industry. That is something women in games as an organization that has been something very near and dear to me because I will tell you that in my years in the game industry it was quite challenging to be a woman in a minority. So, that is sort of what we are doing with women in games. The organization has been growing. There are more women that reach out to us every single day asking how they can get involve. We have chapters across United States and in Canada. So, we are very excited about the future of women in games and really just being the stage for women to be recognized for all of the contributions they've made to the industry. Lucy: Awesome. Larry: Yeah, great. Lucy: Thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate your taking time away from your busy schedule to talk to us today. And I want to remind or listeners that they can find this podcast at w3w3.com and NCWIT.org. Larry: And download it 24/7. Asra: Thank you. Larry: Thank you. Lucy: Bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Asra RasheedInterview Summary: Asra Rasheed describes herself as a very "creative entrepreneur ... I like to draw and sketch things out." As the daughter of two entrepreneurial parents, she credits her success to her upbringing and being surrounded by people willing to take risks. Release Date: October 25, 2010Interview Subject: Asra RasheedInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 19:55

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 Julia Hartz Co-Founder & President, Eventbrite Date: July 12, 2010 NCWIT Entrepreneurial Heroes [music] Lee Kennedy: Hi this is Lee Kennedy, board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. And we're here today as a part of a series of interviews that we're doing with extremely interesting entrepreneurs. These are women who have started IT companies in just a complete variety of sectors, and they all have just very cool stories to tell us. Today with me is Larry Nelson. And Larry is from w3w3.com. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi, I really am happy to be on this show. And by the way there are so many parents and so many managers and leaders that listen to this show. So that's why we're tapping into all these great entrepreneurs and leaders. Lee: Great. And we also have Lucy Sanders who is the CEO for NCWIT. Thanks for joining us Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hi Lee. Very happy to be here. And I wanted to mention that very often our entrepreneurs that we interview for this series are showing up more and more on the top 10. To watch the top 10 there, the most in this region, so the women we're interviewing are just top five entrepreneurs. Larry: You bet. Lee: Cool. Just to get right to it today we're interviewing Julia Hartz. And Julia is the co-founder and President of EventBrite. And EventBrite is the leading provider of online event management and ticketing services. Is just a really cool company, and Julia has brought the creative and energy of the entertainment business. She was at MTV formerly. Lucy: Oh wow.  Lee: Welcome Julia. Thanks for coming here today. We're looking forward to talking with you about entrepreneurship. Julia Hartz: Thank you. I'm really honored to be here. Lee: Wonderful. So can you tell us a little bit about what's going on at EventBrite lately? Julia: Oh goodness, a whole lot. Well, we were originally founded in 2006 by my husband and I and our third co-founder Renaud Visage, our CTO. And since that we bootstrapped the company. We were just three people for two years, very product focused. But I'm happy to report that we are now nearing 60 employees. So it's quite a different company today than it was even back in 2008. On the topic side we're just really focused on making life simpler for the organizers, and delighting our customers through innovations of simple tools they can use to publish event pages, promote their events to a wider audience, and sell out their events. So sell more tickets to their events. And we're also now looking at our relationship with ticket buyers. Now that we've helped event holders host over 200, 000 events, obviously that there is a larger accumulation of attendees that are now coming back to EventBrite to find out about more events that they want to attend. So that's a current feature trend that we're seeing. Lee: Well you know NCWIT runs events, so we could well be one of your future customers. Julia: [laughs] I'll give you the sales pitch. Lee: All right. [laughs] Julia: On a different time maybe. [laughs] Lee: Yeah. I would love to hear more. We find that running events can be very time consuming. So it sounds like EventBrite is on to something. So Julia, the first question is about technology. And first of all, how you became interested in technology? And also really interesting technologies that might you see on the horizon that would interest our listeners. Julia: All right. So my career as you said it before began in television. I was a development executive at MTV, and I worked the first season and the first movie of a little project called Jackass. Sorry, I'm not sure if I can say that on radio. And then I went on to FX Networks, and I worked on shows like Nip/Tuck, The Shield, and Rescue Me. So my career there was really high in creativity, and it was definitely pushing me up a little as they were in cable television, and the projects they worked on. But it was very well in technological innovation. So we found it very hard to break the traditional distribution mold as well as the traditional advertising mold for that matter. So my last year at FX I spent a lot of time on product placement, which was sort of a thankless job, trying to make sure that the label of the beer can was pointed in the right direction at all times in a scene. I started to get the inkling that there was something out there that would make me feel fulfilled, and I was lucky enough to meet Kevin about two years before I left television. I was able to see him start a company from inception. I was sold. Two years later I was ready to leave my traditional career and take the leap. So that's how I first got into technology. I felt like it would be something I would feel, I wanted to be ahead of the curve instead of trying to chasing trends, which I felt like we were doing in television at the time that I was working at MTV and FX. Technologies that I think are cool? Kevin is an avid angel investor and adviser. By virtue of that we were really lucky to be involved in a lot of different companies and see a lot of great trends come out of those companies, and very bright people. I always say that what I feel like is cool right now for me personally is not exactly original. But it is in the way of communication and information dissemination and I'll give you an example of how that applies to me and why I think it's cool. We were recently on a trip and our trip itinerary was shared with our family and anybody else who needed no know where we were through TripIt. We were not in touch with our family during the trip so I posted mobile photos of our two-year-old on Facebook so that my mom would know how she was doing at all times. In our company we share information through Yammer and we also share expenses through Blippy. Then, on the social side oftentimes, I'm checking in through Yelp to let people know where I am in case they're in the same area. We live in the city so it's not so large. So that idea that I can instantly broadcast and disseminate information easily and with no friction is really huge for me today being an entrepreneur and a mom. Larry: Well, entrepreneur and a mom, and you got this "techie" background, why are you an entrepreneur? Also tying in with that, what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Julia: I'm an entrepreneur because I believe that I can change an industry. I also love helping to build something that people want and that's extremely valuable. I feel day-to-day glee in making a difference, in working on projects that are both very large scale and very small scale. I also feel like being an entrepreneur, for me, I feel like I'm part owner in a movement. So I think if I were to sum it up, being an entrepreneur and being a parent, I feel equally about both. [laughs] So EventBrite is very much our baby and there is just something inherently satisfying about working on something that you feel such ownership and passion about. That's what entrepreneurship means to me. That's what excites me about it. Lucy: That's great. So Julia, who would you say influenced you or was a role model or mentor along the way to get into being an entrepreneur? Julia: The reason why I took the leap and didn't hesitate was because of Kevin. Entrepreneurship comes like second nature to Kevin, and he had founded two companies before that. So I really believed that everything would be OK [laughs] and that somehow, someway we would succeed. So for him there was just no question that he wanted to always be an entrepreneur and it was almost like, "Why not? Why not come work for free with me and see what we can do and how we can change the world?" So really he's the one that influenced me first and foremost. Our families really support us along the way. They're very unconditional about everything we do. As far as role models go, we have mentors in Michael and Xochi Birch who are a married couple who founded a few companies. But most notably and recently Bebo, they founded together. They gave us some great advice in the beginning, which was divide and conquer. As a married couple if you're working together never work on the same thing at the same time. Not only is that sort of a recipe for disaster if you're behind the same spreadsheet in trying to share them out, but also you get from point A to point B two times as faster, even maybe faster, because you have complementary skills. And that very much applies to Kevin and I. We divide and conquer in everything we do. At this point in the game we work on very different aspects of the business, and actually get to catch up at the end of the day. And ask each other how each others day went. And my parents are role models because just everything that they've done they've done with a lot of grace. And finally, two-year-old daughter Emma is a huge role model to both of us. Because I think, for me it's because she never backs down from wanting to know why. She doesn't settle for an answer that she can't completely believe. She can definitely be a role model for us in many different aspects. Lucy: Well, I certainly think parenting has taught me up. That's for sure. She probably got a double dose of entrepreneurship. We'll have to see what she ends up starting. Lee: Or determination. Lucy: Or determination for sure. So Julia along the way you've been encouraged, you started a company, you've worked in entertainment, you've had a great career so far. What's the toughest thing in your professional career you've ever had to do? Julia: The only thing that I dread and the toughest part of this gig is coming to the realization that a team member is not a right fit, and having to let them go. And for us it's been, we haven't had to let go many people, and that's great. But it's really hard when you're building a team, because you feel like this is your family. And for me, I feel like each person on our team is like an athlete. I have to keep them like well-feed and you know hydrated, and well, and out of the tabloids. [laughs] I want to take care of everyone who works at EventBrite. And to have to part ways with somebody is by far the toughest part of this gig. Secondly, I think making decisions that I feel like are going to maybe not sit well with our customers. And our interests have been extremely aligned with our customers since the inception of EventBrite. And we really built EventBrite through having a dialogue with our customers and understanding event organizers' pain-points, and how can we alleviate them through technology. But making decisions like pricing changes it's totally agonizing. And we have a story where we went from a freemium service to offering a free service and paid service, to just a completely paid service. And we fretted over it for months. And when we finally reached the decision and pulled that cord, not only did we not see the turn that we had expected, but we saw our conversion go up. Because people who were coming to the site going to have to make that decision over or whether not to sign for the free or paid service. So these kinds of decisions are really tough for us. And I feel like one thing we could have done better is not fret so much over it, and believe in our product, and our ability to delight our customers. Larry: That's great advice. So one of the things we wonder about and always ask and that is if you were sitting down right now with a person who's considering becoming an entrepreneur or just starting to be an entrepreneur what advice would you give them? Julia: I think that if you're going to do it you have to jump in. I mean I feel like when I visualized the leap that I took from a corporate secure job to running EventBrite and working on this project, I envisioned myself jumping in with my eyes closed, head first and all hands and feet in. I mean I don't think that it's possible to have success without completely committing yourself. So whether that is committing yourself completely mentally, or if it's mentally, logistically and financially you really have to put all your skin in the game to actually have a chance. Most start-ups don't' succeed and I think that it's for obviously a variety of reasons. But first and foremost, if you're going to choose entrepreneurship, you have to commit in every fiber of your body. Lee: The word devotion comes to mind. Lucy: Yeah. Julia: It takes a lot of devotion. You can't have one put in and one put out. It doesn't work very well. Lee: So, on the same note what it takes to be an entrepreneur, there's certain personal characteristic that everyone thinks of that makes us entrepreneur successful. What would you say are your personal characteristics that have given you the advantage as an entrepreneur? Julia: So, me personally, I feel like I have a very strong willingness to pitch in. Now, that we are 60 people and our roles as founder, I feel like at this point I do not get in the way of greatness. We hire very, very smart, capable, talented people and we need to let them have their freedom to really change this industry. But on the flip side, I am always willing to pitch in and help so whether that be any sort of mundane task. It is not mundane to me because it contributes towards the success of the EventBrite, of my baby. So, that willingness to pitch in is key. I also have an ability to be objective. So, because of my first start up, I'm not very dated and everything is very new. I try to just come about it and to have a fresh perspective and being very objective about everything that is happening and not ever feeling like we have to be status quo. We are actually trying to disrupt an industry, the ticketing industry, and so to look at it from a fresh perspective is an advantage in many different aspects of running a start up. And, finally I feel like I'm a 110 percent committed. I mean I feel extreme honors over EventBrite in a way of like I really care about it and I care about everybody who works on changing the world with us. And so, commitment and then accountability really being accountable for the bad things and the good things. I think that makes a big difference. Lucy: Julia, you've mentioned that you travel and you mentioned your family and you mentioned your devotion to EventBrite. So, we're curious. We always ask this question. How do successful entrepreneurs bring balance into both their personal and their professional lives? Julia: Right. So, first of all you have to prioritize and you have to perhaps write it down on a white board. What is most important to you and then write everything up. I mean we talk a lot about [inaudible 15:15] optimization here and I kind of feel the same way about balancing your life. For us, it is an interesting talent because EventBrite is very much our first baby and we have and I who is a part of this process. So, instead of dividing them into two things, we feel like we are in it together. Sort of cliché to say but it is very true. It takes a village and for me personally, I have to find my vortex of happiness so that for me is being a great mom and being a great entrepreneur. I have to be confident enough to ask for and receive help from our village of family and friends. And I have to prioritize. And so, I have to note that if push come to shove, what would I do in each scenario and how do that emergency sort of exit plan. That is also very applicable to working with your spouse. And so, I feel like for us, our family and our friends and our daughter, they are in it with us and so they feel invested and understand what's going on as well. Larry: Well, you have already achieved a great deal. You are doing a lot. You are young. You are building a family. What's next for you? Julia: My goal for EventBrite is to grow the service and to the only place you would ever go to buy a ticket for any event you would ever attend. And then secondly, I want to have more kids. Lucy: There you go. Julia: It gets a little bit harder to scale for some reason I don't know. I look at it and I'm like, I am pretty sure one plus one doesn't equal to so we'll see. [laughs] Larry: Well, I've got five kids and my wife and I are in business together so it works. Lucy: I have three. Julia: I need to sit down and pick your brain. Lee: Well, thank you so much Julia for talking to us. We really appreciate it. I want to remind our listeners where they can find this interview. w3w3.com and NCWIT.org and please do pass this along to other people who would be interested in listening to it. Thanks very much Julia. Julia: Thanks so much for having me.  Larry: Thanks, Julia. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Julia HartzInterview Summary: Julia is a reformed Television Network Executive and comes to Eventbrite by way of FX Networks and MTV. "I'm an entrepreneur because I think I can change an industry. I also love helping to build something that people want. Being an entrepreneur, for me, I feel like I'm part owner in a movement and there is just something inherently satisfying about working on something you feel such ownership and passion about." Release Date: July 12, 2010Interview Subject: Julia HartzInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:20

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Margaret Burd Founder, President, & CEO, Magpie, Inc. Date: June 1, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Margaret Burd [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Woman and Information Technology, or NCWIT. Larry Nelson from w3w3.com is here today. Hi, Larry. Larry Nelson: Hi. Yes, I'm really anxious for this interview. Lucy: Well, this is one of a series of interviews that we do with women who have started IT companies. Many of them are serial entrepreneurs in all different types of IT sectors. We ask them for their advice on being entrepreneurs and the pathways that they've taken to be successful. It's a great series. We've had a lot of interest in it. We have another great entrepreneur with us today, a good friend of ours and, I must say with great pride, a successful Colorado entrepreneur, Margaret Burd. Hi, Margaret. Margaret Burd: Hi. Thanks for having me. Lucy: Oh, our pleasure. Margaret is the founder and president and CEO of Magpie. They are a software company. They provide software services and development in the space of smart energy and telecommunications, which is where I know them from the very best. Lately, they've had even more exciting things going on, if you can imagine that, than smart energy. I mean, that's pretty exciting. But, also, there's a new spin-off trial called Magpie Health Care, which is doing some very cool work in giving hospital providers the kind of phone-based tools they need to locate either specialists or others very easily. And, they don't have to wait on the line. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice, but it's a new venture for Magpie. So, Margaret, tell us a bit about Magpie, either Magpie One or Magpie Two. [laughs] Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Well, Magpie One, Magpie Telecom as we used to call it. But, we've branched so far into other industries that we just say Magpie now. Magpie, we bought it in 2001. Which was a difficult year to start a business, with 9/11 happening two months after we started, and then telecom crashing. But, we survived all that. We have about between 50 and 60 people now doing software for a whole variety of companies. In the last year and a half, we went out and explored the whole smart energy, smart grid space. And, have found that there's a very huge market there, especially now with all the stimulus money that we could tap, with very much the same skills that we have from our telecom experience. That experience is very high-end: Bell Labs, educated people. What we learned about creating reliable, scalable and all viable networks of AT&T we can apply now to the smart grid. When you pick up the phone, you want to get dial tone. When you flip on the switch, you want your lights to come on. So, it's very similar to the ways you have to think about developing these networks. Then, as Lucy said, about two and a half years ago, we got the idea to go into health care. I started wandering around hospitals personally, and we ended up getting an idea for a product there. Lucy did a really good job explaining what that does. We help caregivers find other caregivers in really efficient ways. Because that is a product-based business, we have spun that into its own little company. And, I chair the board for that company. Lucy: So, see? She's not idle. Larry: No, it doesn't sound... Margaret: [laughs] We are pretty busy here. Lucy: Yeah. Larry: Well, that's fantastic. Margaret: But, that's really fun. You want your services business to be really busy. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: Yeah. Well, so, you've got 60 people now. I think when I interviewed Wendy Bohling you had about 12. Margaret: [laughs] That could be true. We probably had a few more than that when you interviewed her. But, yeah, we started out. There were 10 partners, and eight of those partners are still here in our office in Westminster. We also have a little office in Durango whether the partner has eight or so people at any one time. So, we've been on a growth spurt here with this smart grid energy space. And, really constant growth this year. We've hired seven or eight people in the last couple of months. Larry: Well, Margaret, you're involved with so many different things. Of course, now I see the Bell Labs connection here with you and Lucy. But, how did you first get into technology. And, what technologies today do you think are really cool? Margaret: Well, actually, I probably come to technology in a weird way. Because my first career, I was teaching math and science and coaching lots of different sports in public schools in Missouri. I had done that for about nine years. In '83, I was still making $15,000 a year. I was pretty bored with that whole teaching thing, too. So, I started looking around for what I wanted to do next. And, it just so happened that the University of Kansas let you get into their computer science master's program if you had a math degree. I applied, and they accepted, and ended up with my master's in computer science. Right out of school, I got an offer from Bell Labs and ended up in Denver. And, that's how I got into technology. Larry: Wow. Margaret: It was kind of a whim. I showed a little aptitude when I got to KU. So, it all... It was an amazing turn of events in my life, I can just say that. And, probably just because. It's one of those things that just happens. In terms of cool, my guys, if they were on the phone, they would be talking about a bunch of cool technologies that they love. But, you know, to me it's more about figuring out where to go next in verticals and what technologies we can apply. So, I think less about them being cool, actually. But, every day when I pull out my iPhone, I think that's cool. I'm still thinking the iPhone is cool. So, I'm probably not the best person to talk to about cool. But, the cool part about the iPhone is that all these people all over the world can wake up in the morning. And, in their pajamas, create an application that somebody else somewhere else in the world is going to use via that device. And, then, I could go off to the other. In torrent, we use a lot of open source software. And, we contribute to open source. I think that's another one of those places where we have involved community in the creation of really cool things. So, that I think is really cool. Lucy: Well, it is pretty fascinating. When you think back 30 years what we were doing with computer science. And, now, you think that, in fact, you can create this application and it just goes everywhere in the world. It is amazing, and I think it still deserves some awe. [laughs] Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Well, I am awed almost every day by something there, yeah. Lucy: I think that, that deserves some awe. Margaret: Yeah. Lucy: So, Margaret, I certainly knew you when we were both at Bell Labs. Then you took off and you became an entrepreneur. Why did you do that? Margaret: Well, that was pretty much because Luce had told me... Luce and I had ended up in a department of about 70 people. And, I had another 30 at Nice, France. And, we were really cooking along and having a great time building cool mobile Internet applications. This is in 2000 so that was well before those were cool. And doing some applications for AT&T. But we'd also--we'd spent a lot of time getting our department to really develop software in innovative ways and in different team ways, than had been used in the past. And we could actually show that we were improving our productivity all the time and actually had measures for productivity. We were really cooking along and everybody really liked each other, it was like this love fest in my department. I mean, we really cared about each other. And so, then Lucent told me that I should lay everybody off. And so I did, and fired myself. And we had always joked in my department, that if things got too bad, we would start our own company. And, well, things were pretty bad when you have to lay everybody off. So, ten of us out of that started Magpie. And so, I kind of just wandered into being an entrepreneur, as well. But it's been tremendously great. So things happen. Larry: Wow, that's... Margaret: You probably listen to this and think that everything just happens to me. Lucy: Oh, no. No, no. [laughter] Margaret: But it is kind of... When you get into certain situations, things happen and you can react to them and go forth and do great things, or you can not. So I really think the founders at Magpie chose a path that is pretty cool. Larry: Well, Margaret, along the way, did you have a mentor, did you have other people who served maybe as role models? In fact, who influenced and supported you in your career path? Margaret: Oh man, there's been so many. Well, one even--well, Lucy. When I look at you leaving there and starting this really great foundation and going out and raising the money you needed to do that. And to do something that is totally needed in the world, that's really inspiring to me, and it has been inspiring to me. So, I'll just say that. I learned specific things from a whole bunch of different people. I had this--which Lucy knows well--Sally Werner was my boss for some time at Lucent. And there, she really taught me about how to manage people and how to do that in a way that is just really cool. And so, I learned a ton by working for her. There was another VP there, that I learned how you celebrate success. And how you not only do that, but how you communicate with large groups of people that work for you. So it's a totally important thing, especially when you're an entrepreneur, I might add. I learned about organization development from a consultant, Susan Carabello, who's consulted with me through most of my career, actually; and learned what you have to do to create organizations that really work. And I learned about sales and marketing from another really good friend of mine, Robin Wright. And I still call her and ask her for her advice on paths that we may be taking here at Magpie, and she consults with us. And then, I think... But the most important thing to being an entrepreneur I actually learned from my mom and my grandmother. And they worked really hard and they never gave up. And I think, those are the two things, that to be a great entrepreneur, you have to get. Larry: Wonderful. Lucy: Absolutely. I think it leads to another question around the personal characteristics, you know, that you have as an entrepreneur. Because you have worked hard and you've never given up, and you also have looked at opportunities to really take them where they could go. You know, and that's a very observant thing for people to do, to be that thoughtful about what life puts right in front of you right where you can take it. So what other words would you use to describe yourself as an entrepreneur? Margaret: I'm very optimistic. And, you know, as I've talked to a lot of other entrepreneurs, I think often they are really an optimistic person. So I don't think I'm rare in that regard, at all, and I think you have to be. And that helps you see those things also. And it also can be a real detriment. You know, you have your rosy glasses on all the time and don't know how to actually look at a new idea or look at a new plan, or whatever. So I'm not saying... But you have to kind of think you can do things. You know what I mean? And that's that optimism. I think for me, especially in the services business, but probably true for lots of small businesses, it seems to be a good entrepreneur, you really have to like people. And you have to like helping people and you have to enjoy going out and meeting people. And just walking up and introducing yourself to someone. There's something about just enjoying being around new people and talking to them about what they've got going on, and I really like that. Probably most important in this business too, though, has been you have to... I think I'm good and I'm pretty creative in my problem solving abilities. I don't mind solving problems. A problem is a problem, it's just a thing to be solved today. And I think I'm creative in how I can do that. Not that other people aren't just as creative, but I think it adds a skill for being... When you are an entrepreneur, you're going to be hit with all these issues, all the time. And so, figuring out how to do them in a way that you can afford, in a way that's maybe going to work and, you know, so forth, is pretty important. And then, I think lastly, I really like to start things. That initial forming of the idea and storming through understanding what you're going to do. I really like that part of the whole process. So... Larry: Well, you know, one of the things we have to ask is that, if you were sitting down right now at a table with a person who was going to become an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Margaret: Well, first of all, I'd say it's really hard so you really have to want it. It's really risky and most small businesses fail, so you really have to want it. [laughter] And it's going to take a lot of work. But if you really want it, it's so worth doing. And I'd tell them to go find a mentor, someone that they can sit with. And sometimes you have to pay for that and sometimes you can get that for free. So, early on, I always got that for free. But there's also groups out there, CEO groups, that can really be helpful. And I've been a member of Renaissance Executive Forums, one of those groups, for a long time now. And, totally helpful, because you get to bounce your ideas and problems and everything else off a bunch of people that all have those same problems. So, I think you need that. And then, I think really think about how you're going to interface with your partners, if you're going to have partners in your business. And know that that relationship all changes as you go through the different stages of your company and have that legally set up so that you can make changes that make sense in easy ways, that just recognize that people change. Larry: That's a great list. Lucy: It certainly is a great list. And I have to say that Margaret was being modest when she was talking about her personal characteristics. I mean, Margaret is really a great leader of technologists. We rarely talk about that on this interview series. But because your tech companies, obviously... Our founders and CEO's are leading engineers, a lot of them, and that's a special skill set. Margaret: Well, thank you for saying that. I think--well, I love engineers, first of all. But they are an interesting sort that--you know--that you have to figure out how to lead along. So, thank you for saying that. Lucy: Yeah, it's always been an interesting thing. Larry writes books and maybe one day he can write a book about leading engineers. Larry: Oh. Margaret: That would be a great idea. Lucy: I think that would be a great book, wouldn't it? Margaret: Yeah, I think there's several million people that could use one. Lucy: So, you've given us probably one story about a tough part in your career that ended up where you fired yourself and started Magpie. What's another tough thing you've had to do in your career? Margaret: It's been all kinds of places at Magpie, where you get to spots where all your management team, in my case at the time they were partners, and were in these difficult situations where you have to really--maybe an example would be you have to spend a bunch of money. And it's really hard at the time, because you don't have the money to spend. But if you're going to move to the next step, you have to like go get that money, somewhere. And in our case, we were bootstrapping everything. I was taking the profits of their business to go off and do these new things, like the energy practice. That was--you know, people think, "Oh, you go start a new energy practice." But we spent a whole person's time, for over a year, figuring out how to approach that market and what software was required in that market, and actually having conversations with companies in that market. So, you know, it's a big investment for a small company to do things like that. And I think that the hard times had been in convincing your partners, for example, that that's a great thing to do. So, they've been mostly around that. Other hard times, I have trouble even really thinking about them, Lucy. Because they're not... I don't think about them as hard times. I think about--oh, yeah, that was a problem time. Last year, for example: 2009 was... I'm so glad we're through it. Lucy: Yeah, I know. Margaret: Everything was hard. Everything we were bidding on was--there were, you know, five companies bidding against us. And there wasn't very much to bid on and it was really hard. And we ended up having a flat year which was not very--that was great. In fact, I say that last year was the new great. But it's so much different now, this year. So, I mean, that was really a hard year, but it's just another problem in business that you kind of work through. I don't have lots of examples where I think, "Oh, that was something I really figured out how to work through and I should tell people." Lucy: Yeah. Margaret: There all kind of just--it's day to day problems. You know what I mean? Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Margaret: So I don't have great examples there. Larry: Well, that's--you know, starting a company in 2001, "Hi-Tech", and then, living through 2009, you're doing fantastic. Lucy: 2009 was just an angry year. Larry: Yeah, really. Lucy: I mean, it was just an angry year. It was just one of those years, that it was time to be over. Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Oh, it was just icky the whole time. Lucy: Yeah, I know. Margaret: And '02, that was really a difficult year. But, you know, when you're starting a business, I mean, you have expectations about when you're going to finally get some customers. But, beyond that, you know it's going to be hard. And so, what we learned out of that--and we always learn something out of our hard times, by the way--we learned how to do cash-flow management in great detail. And last year, I think we learned that in times like that, you have to hone your sales processes to really go after the small set of customers that are out there. And we did that. And now, in this year, we are cooking along with really great new processes and with new sales people, that really understand how to do that and with sales, there's lots of really good things that happen out of those hard times, if you make it through them. Lucy: Absolutely. Larry: Wow. You know, with all the things that you're doing, and you're expanding into new silos, and everything that you're doing in your career, how do you bring balance into your personal and your professional lives? Margaret: Balance is an interesting word. Well, I have a wonderful life partner that I love to vacation and see the world with and enjoy theater with, and exercise with, and so forth. So, I make time for those things. And I really like to go to the beach, so I go. And this may sound counter-intuitive, but I do a lot of non-profit work. So I'm on several non-profit boards and I raise a lot of money for those causes. And that is a lot of extra work, but then it also brings balance, because you're out actually giving back to people that really need your help. So that always feels really good, even though it makes me stay up way too late. Lucy: Yeah. Margaret: And then, I really like to ride my bicycle. And so, I make time, at least on the weekends, to do some longer rides. And I put my iTunes in my ears, and I've pretty much got balance then I would say. Larry: Well, just so you don't swim and bike. Lucy: Especially on your bike. Larry: Yeah, right. Lucy: You'd better have balance on your bike. Larry: Yeah, yeah. Margaret: Yeah, yeah. Oh, good point! Lucy: Yeah. If no other time, you need to balance on your bike. Margaret: That's right. Lucy: So Margaret, tell us what's next for you. You've done a lot, you've accomplished a lot, you've got some exciting new applications that you're working on and at least two companies. What's next? Margaret: Well, obviously, or maybe it's not obvious, but I really want to see where I can take those Magpie companies in the next probably two, three, four years. And I think in the health care business, we are on the edge of real greatness in terms of the application we're providing and what it's looking like in the markets. So I really want to stay around, at least as chair of that board, and see where we can take that. And then, in the services business, this energy thing is really important to the whole world, so it feels like I want to stay around and do that for a while, too. And then, after that though, I think--I've got this vision of doing a lot of work for non-profits, but also being able at that time to fund them, in ways that are greater than what I can do now. So I want to do that. And then, there's a whole bunch of South Pacific islands and beaches that I haven't... Lucy: Yeah, no. They sure beat the... Margaret: ...hung around. So I want to do that, too. Lucy: They sure beat the beach in Colorado, don't they? Larry: Yeah, yeah. Margaret: Yeah, yeah. Colorado's a great place. But without the beach, I have to... Lucy: There's no... Margaret: ...vacation other places. Lucy: There's no beach. Margaret: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah. Larry: Yeah, just don't ride your bike while you're swimming. OK? Margaret: [laughs] Well, you know, on all those islands a bike is pretty good transportation. Really. Larry: Yeah. Margaret: Yeah. But that's what I've got in mind, pretty much to follow on with some more and greater non-profit work. Lucy: Well, you know, that's very--you are very philanthropic and a very giving person and just a wonderful member of our community here in Colorado. So, we really want to thank you for talking to us. We've enjoyed chatting with you. And I want to remind listeners where they can find this podcast: you can find it at w3w3.com, Internet radio. Larry: You betcha! Lucy: And also, ncwit.org. Thank you, Margaret! Margaret: Oh, I appreciate the time and really enjoyed chatting with you guys. Larry: Alright. Lucy: Thank you. Larry: Same here, we'll see you soon! Lucy: See you soon! Margaret: See you! Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Margaret BurdInterview Summary: Margaret Burd was working at Lucent in 2000 when the tech bubble burst, and she was forced to lay off herself and her entire department. Since she and her team members were "really cookin' along" at the time, doing high-quality, innovative work, she decided she'd just start a company and hire them back. Release Date: June 1, 2010Interview Subject: Margaret BurdInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 21:12

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Pooja Nath CEO, Piazzza Date: May 17, 2010 [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, the CEO of the National Center for Women & Information Technology or NCWIT. We've got another great interview today with women who have started IT companies, and this is a really interesting one. This is a woman who studied computer science, worked in tech companies, is getting her MBA in Stanford, and also by the way, on the side is starting a company. It's called Piazzza and her name is Pooja Nath. We're very excited to have her here. I should mention she's getting her MBA at Stanford, so not unlike other entrepreneurs who have come before, who we know about. Piazzza is all about group learning. It is really interesting to go look at the site. Having a college student myself, I know that often he is studying by himself or he doesn't have the answers to questions, and I must also say he also procrastinates and could really use something like Piazzza, which helps you get answers to questions from your fellow students and from your professor all through a form of social networking. So, welcome, Pooja. We're very glad that you're here. Pooja Nath: Thank you. I'm very excited to be here with you. That was a very kind introduction. It makes me really happy when I hear other people explain the problem I am trying to solve, because when I hear them explain it so well in their own terms, I know I am solving a simple problem that is very prevalent. I try and explain to people what I am doing. It's like, "Well, students have problems when they're studying for assignments or exams, and they have specific questions that have a lot of context." Search engines can't help much, because there is knowledge out there that is too general. Discussion forums usually can't help, because there is so much lost and so much back-and-forth in trying to explain the context. The way I see it is your classmates or your teachers are best bet to get fast and efficient help, and yet today, so many students when they're struggling are trying to call their few friends they know, or trying to email their few friends they know. There is nothing connecting them to try and get them help when they need it with the largest set of most relevant people, that's their entire class. Lucy: I think that is absolutely right. Larry Nelson: Yeah. Lucy: You have to go to YouTube listeners, and look at the YouTube video on Piazzza. It's very cute, because it calls many of these students, who just like my son, "elite procrastinators." [laughter] Lucy: I know. It was just absolutely perfect. Maybe just before we get into our set of questions around entrepreneurship, tell us a little bit about where Piazzza is these days, and how you came up with the name, and what's going on with the company. Pooja: Sure. I was sitting in a finance class at GSB when I was brainstorming on the names, and I asked a student next to me, "What's a term that explains this idea of bringing people together in a common place?" He said, "Piazza." Lucy: [laughs] Oh, that's very good. Pooja: Plural of piazza was a great idea, except I don't like the sound of piazze. [laughs] Lucy: Yeah. Exactly. Pooja: And since then, coming up with that name 'pizza' just really stuck with me. When I go back to my undergrad days when everybody would be sitting together in the same lab, mostly because they were not in a financial position to own their own laptops or computers, the amount of help people got in there, and the ways in which they learned off of each other was just so beautiful. That was my fruition was to come up with a term that had the same meaning in my mind, which is everyone is in the same spot physically, except I'm trying to now do that online. My inspiration was I was one of the very few female students in computer science in India, not only just computer science students, but IIT, which is the top engineering school of India has very few women overall, so there are about 420 boys. In my class there were about 20 girls, and in computer science there were three girls. So, I would be all alone on the sidelines, too shy to ask any guy for help, and I just wished I had something that would connect me through all my classmates in a way that even myself being the shy student or girl that I was back then, I would still have a way to tap-in to their collective knowledge. Lucy: Well, I think that is wonderful, and the product looks great. Are you launched yet, or are you still in a private sort of beta, or what is the state of the software? Pooja: We're private beta right now, but this fall, we're planning to launch openly to Stanford Campus. Because of our team being quite small at the moment, we're taking a very controlled birth approach. The biggest reason for that is I want to make sure I have a very personal connection with all of my users. I'm afraid that if we were to launch too aggressively or too openly, I would lose that somehow down the line. Last summer was when I built the first prototype myself, and then launched to a single class at University of Maryland, College Park, where I did my Master's Degree. I was a professor in computer science. When that started to go quite positively, we launched to more classes at Stanford, and University of Maryland, and Santa Clara, this January, and that went even better. So, the spring quarter, we had a number of classes at Stanford, both undergrad and grad level; MBA, Computer Science, Engineering. The usage on this site continues to grow rapidly, and a lot of that is through feedback, and talking with students and faculty at Stanford, understanding their needs and then watching how you actually use the platform we've given to them, and iterating quite rapidly. Lucy: It's exciting. Larry: Yeah. It really is exciting. Wow! I wish I had known about Piazzza a number of years ago, but anyhow... Pooja: [laughs] Larry: You have a background in computer science. So, let me kind of ask a two-part question here. How did you first get involved into technology, and kind of bridge that from the past to what do you think in the future is cool technology today? Pooja: How did I get into technology? Well, my dad is a physicist, and so he generally from a very young age, always would be having us observe things from a very scientific perspective, and have us appreciate technology out there in the world, how it is affecting us in our daily life. My brother is an electrical engineer. So, I guess being surrounded by them, I had this excitement around technology, and studying engineering myself. I come from a pretty small town in India, where no girl had gotten into IIT before me. Somehow just being surrounded by my family in the way that I was, was very motivational for me to start thinking about engineering and particularly, computer science. Coming to your next question, what technologies, and how do I see that today. I love that technology lets us do things in more simple and simple ways. Just to give an example, I remember last summer when I had an idea, and I wanted to act on it. I had a very hardcore of engineering background, in the sense I only used to code CC++ server technology, and stuff like that, and Oracle, and Cosmix, Facebook. It is all back, and stuff. In the summer I said, "OK. I want to build a web app, what can I do?" And I learned more about various technologies out there to build web apps. I realized instantly that Ruby and PHP, and all these other platforms that are out there, they enable us to build a web app in 10 days. I got my first prototype in mid-July, when I only started learning it in June. I'm very impressed at how everything is moving towards making our own life easier, so that we can innovate faster. Lucy: And do your homework faster! Pooja: [laughs] Lucy: That is absolutely the case. So, you are getting your MBA at Stanford. You mentioned you got your Master's at Maryland, and you're also starting a company and really growing organically, and so on and so forth. What made you make that leap from that big company kind of environment into being an entrepreneur?  Pooja: So, I never really consciously realized I was making a leap into being an entrepreneur. [laughter] Lucy: That's probably why you're a great entrepreneur. Pooja: I still way say, though, that I had joined a pretty small startup after Oracle, which was a search engine, building a search engine at the time called Cosmix, and then Facebook, which was very startupish. I still think it is. But again, coming to my motivation to build Piazzza, I never thought, "Oh, I'm about to be a CEO" or "I'm about to be a founder." I realized there is a very prevalent problem, and after having been through a couple discussions around genders and workplaces, and women support groups, I realized that many students, even in the US, are in the shoes that I am, which is they don't feel like they have the support group they needed. All I thought of last January, the second quarter of Stanford Business School, is there has to be something that connects these students in a better and more effective way to all of their classmates and teachers. Step-by-step, and I don't know, I like to think of it as a baby step at a time, I started working toward a solution that I wished I had in my own undergrad that could have increased my learning in computer science for the four years that I was there at a wonderful engineering institute in India. Larry: Well, with everything that you've been through and are continuing to do, were there people along the way that maybe had a major influence on you and, let's say, maybe even was a mentor for you? Pooja: I think in different phases of my life I've had different people influence me in different ways and different mentors. Definitely my parents, my brother and his family have been very supportive in whatever decisions I've made. Choosing to do CS as a woman, for example. Or, jumping from the security of a large company to a startup. And, even deciding to say, guys, I'm doing my own start-up over the summer. I'm not going to have a paid internship between my first and second year. I'm going to work on this whatever hours of the day that I think I'm most effective at. [laughter] Pooja: But, their support. And, a lot of my classmates at the GSB, they understood entrepreneurship. They understood what it meant to try something. I got of support from them in very implicit ways. Then, coming to, I would say, models of leadership, there have been a few people I've really been inspired by. I was fortunate to work very closely and observe how Mark Zuckerberg runs and leads Facebook. He was an immense source of inspiration for me, watching his innate styles and how the company would function in its own powerful and effective way. Today, I've got a few mentors who have helped me these past two years as Piazzza has evolved. Mostly some of the top leaders at Palantir. They've been there. I've had questions. I don't know what to do. Some of them have been through leading a company, growing a company, and they're there to answer my questions. They pose questions in the right way that have me think in the right way. It's not they want to tell me or they have to handhold me. But, they have me thinking in the right way, which has been very helpful for me. Lucy: That's great to have that kind of advice from people around you. It really does make a big difference in terms of doing things right. And, often, as entrepreneurs tough things happen, too. You see along the way something's been particularly difficult. So far on your journey, what has been the toughest thing you've had to do so far? Pooja: When I look back at everything that's got me to where I am today, I would say the toughest thing was being confident in who I was while I was preparing as a female for the IIT entrance exam. 200,000 people get that exam each year in India. I think the number's even increased. And, 2,000 people get selected. And, of that, I'm sitting knowing that maybe 50 to 100 women get selected. But, that mindset that I had which is I'm not going to look around me and how other women see this. I'm going to say there are 2,000 people who are selected, and I have to be one of them. Getting into IIT, the four years struggling and often feeling alone trying to understand assignments and projects, were very, very tough. But, they shaped me to a point where today when I'm on this journey where many people say being an entrepreneur is lonely and scary, I honestly don't think it is that bad. Being in Silicon Valley, I think I have a lot of support. Lucy: That's an interesting observation. I'd like to add something from NCWIT's perspective about this. We hear this a lot from our high school girls who are interested in computer science. They're the only girl in the class. They're the only girl in the school. This feeling of being alone. We've started something around a K-12 award for high school girls. We're going to put a social networking site together for them just to keep them connected. They're from all over the country. Just to give them that sense that they are not alone. I think your point is brilliant which is once you've learned that you can survive alone, that's a good skill. [laughter] Lucy: I think that's great. Larry: That's a fact. Well, that's kind of a lead-in to this next question. Right now, if you were sitting down right across the table with another person, a young person, who is maybe going to have an entrepreneurial leaning, what advice would you give to them? Pooja: I think the biggest advice, I think I remember Derrick Bolton, the Director of Admissions at the MBA program at Stanford, said this once that really inspired me, is believe in yourself because we believe in you and that is beautiful. Today I am able to do my own startup because I believe in myself and I'm content that I can achieve, and I would tell them the same thing. I'd tell them believe in yourself and if there is something that you are truly passionate about, go out there and start it. Don't plan for the day when you will, just jump in and it's going to be hard, it's going to be scary and it will be fun and amazing and fulfilling in a way if I just think, I don't know personally, I feel nothing else could have given this sense of fulfillment. Lucy: Well and we have talked to you just for a short period of time here but I think our listeners were all ready now that there are certain words that describe you, as entrepreneur. One is passionate, a lovely description about why people would want to be entrepreneurial and, also, confident and certainly persistent in trying to achieve your goals. What other personal characteristics that you have that would make you a successful entrepreneur? Pooja: In my view, I would say I am optimistic. I don't know if everyone views that as a characteristic that's good for an entrepreneur. But I'm very optimistic and I don't easily get discouraged. I think I have already mentioned this but from my town, when no girl had gotten in, I don't use that dampen my spirits to apply or even the quality with which I put an effort to apply to get the IIT exams. Here in Silicon Valley, the same thing. I know there aren't that many female entrepreneurs. I wish there were. But that doesn't discourage me. I know that I will get a lot of support and when people see a brilliant product, they will support in many ways that I will need to move forward. Larry: Well, you are doing all kinds of things, building a company, gaining an MBA. Lucy: Going to Stanford. Oh my goodness, frightening right there. Larry: Yeah, how do you bring balance into your personal and your professional lives? Pooja: I don't know that I see when doing on my business and school and with my friends as clear lines between any of them, and I think a reason could be that I love all of them. There are times that I realize that I need or I want to spend more time just on my personal friend and it could be a trip somewhere with my friends. I will do that. And sometimes I realize that it is very crucial for Piazzza that a release is coming up and that I will forget about all social activities out of which people must be thinking, "Wow. Really?" But I do give up a lot of social activities and just immerse myself into building the right products for the students and professors I like. I know I hear other people have to find a balance on a daily level that's not something I do and perhaps it's because I love everything that I do so much that I try to figure out what's the right balance I should balance over a certain time period and make sure that I am balancing them all to a level so I'm not giving too much time to any one part of my life. Lucy: Well, so you are doing a lot and I know we ask our entrepreneurs their next steps. So we already know the next step for you is to get that MBA. We know you are going to launch Piazzza, hopefully this fall, or whenever it's time. What other things are coming down the road for you that you can share with our listeners? Pooja: I still see myself as a long way to go and achieving my mission that I have for Piazzza. I want to see this in every class, worldwide, and at the first step before that, nationwide. I really think students and professors will get so much value out of this platform that I am just on step zero. It's gone to some classes as a private beta at Standford. It's going to go to more classes at Stanford but, really, I hope to achieve seeing this help every single student so that no student four years out of graduation will have to say something like, "I wished I had something like that." Lucy: Well, I think it's a great vision. Larry: Yes, I do too. Lucy: And we wish you the very best of luck with that and thank you very much for talking to us. Pooja: Thank you. Lucy: And I would like to remind listeners, if they can find this podcast on w3w3.com and also NCWIT.org. Larry: You betcha. And we'll have a link to Piazzza, too. Lucy: Oh, Good. Larry: Why not. Lucy: Why not, let's do it. [laughter] Pooja: Perfect. Lucy: Alright. Thank you so much. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Pooja Nath SankarInterview Summary: Having been one herself, Pooja Nath understands the problems of students studying for assignments or exams. They have specific questions with a lot of context that search engines can't address because the returns are too many and too general. So Pooja built a prototype for Piazzza, an online forum in which students can share knowledge. Release Date: May 17, 2010Interview Subject: Pooja NathInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 17:14

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 Candace Fleming CEO and Co-founder, Crimson Hexagon Date: April 19, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Candace Fleming [music] Lee: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy. I am a board member for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and I'm also the CEO of Boulder Search. This is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs, they are women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors, all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs, and with me today is Larry Nelson from W3W3. Hey Larry. Larry Nelson: I'm very happy to be here, and this is a wonderful so reason and you make sure you pass these interviews along to others that you know would be interested and they can give it here at NCWIT.org or W3W3.com. Lee: Great, and I also have Lucy Sanders, who is the CEO of NCWIT. Hi Lucy. Lucy Sanders: Hello. Lee: Great to have you. Well, and just to get right to it, we are interviewing Candace Fleming. Candace is the CEO and co-founder of Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon's technology analyzes the vast social Internet, so blog posts, forum messages, tweets et cetera, and it's done by identifying statistical patterns in the words used to express opinions on different topics. And the product is called Foxtrot, and it helps you to develop your listening approach to many different Internet channels. So without further ado, I would love to introduce Candace, and have her tell us a little bit about her background and experience. Candace, welcome. Candace Fleming: Thank you, it is great to be here, I am excited about this opportunity to share. Lee: Well, if you could tell us just little bit about Crimson Hexagon, that would be great. Candace: At a very high level, what Crimson Hexagon does is, we have technology that goes out and find millions and millions of blogs and forums and tweets, product reviews and things that are probably available on Facebook, and reads them all everyday and can summarize opinions that are being expressed. So in some ways it's a little bit like an automatic opinion poll, but you are not actually asking a poll question because you are really just harvesting values from conversations that are already happening. Lee: Wow. Candace: And we are a 15% company based here in Boston. Lee: So basically, you have got bots or robots that go out and hit all of these different social sites and pull back the data and then analyze it, is that kind of a nutshell for our novice technology listeners? [laughter] Candace: It is that idea where we get data from lot of different sources, we license some data streams, we also do our own call link, but it is not so much the data collection that is special about what we do, it is really in the content analysis of what we do. So if you imagine, I think a lot of your listeners are familiar with Google Alert, were you can very efficiently and very quickly use keywords, and every day multiple times a day, you will get an email in your in-box with the links to mention of those words. But the problem is, when you start to build a large brand or you have a large company, there are so many mentions that it is nearly impossible to stay on top of them. We end up speaking with marketers and brand managers or PR agencies who sit down with a list of 30,000 links and they say, "How do I make meaning out of all this?" So our technology really allows you... It quantifies for you in that list of 30,000 links, what percentage of people are saying they like a specific feature of your product or what percent of people are saying they actually like your competitor's product better or really getting down to the opinions of what's being said. Lee: So we could use it to figure out what people are saying about Larry. Larry: Uh oh. Candace: Exactly. That's right. Larry: That's a different dinner gig. Lee: I'm liking this more and more. Candace: The only limitation is that people have to actually be talking about the topic. Lee: Oh don't worry, we've got plenty of info, don't worry. Lucy: So Candace, back to you. We'd love to hear about how you first got into technology. Candace: Ever since I was little, I have been noticing how technology improves our lives every day. My dad was an electrical engineering professor, and so we were always talking about science and technology and new innovations and seeing how the world progressed. And so, I've been thinking about it from a very early age, and went on to get an engineering degree in college and have always done work in my professional career around technology and algorithms and the application of technology. Larry: Oh. Lucy: So as a little add on, what technologies do you think are cool today? Candace: Well, of course our technology. Lee: Of course, you want a list. Candace: I could be honest, that I'm very biased about that. Actually I think there are a couple of things, I think there are some really neat consumer electronics coming out like they talk about 3-D TV or the Nexus One phone. But even maybe a little bit less mainstream, I heard about a technology that a Harvard biologist named Pete Gergen developed in microbial fuel cells, and it sounds like a lot of big words, but essentially what he's developed is a way to harness energy as microbes that decompose organic matter. And what that means is you can basically take a bucket of trash, stick one of his apparati into it and have light, or have enough to charge a cell phone. Stuff like that, if you think about the implications of that for third world countries or differences parts of our lives, I think it's incredible. So there's a lot of good stuff laying around. Larry: Yeah. Wow. I'm ordering one of each. Candace, let me ask this. What is it about being an entrepreneur that turns you on? Talk about that. Candace: I think for me it was all about this particular opportunity. I didn't set out to one day start a company of my own necessarily, and so in this instance I saw a huge opportunity that was so exciting that I wanted to literally drop everything and get this off the ground. I think in general, nothing is more exciting for me than pulling together a team and seeing what we can collectively accomplish. And I think in small companies, you really can see the impact of that. Where I walk into our conference room for a team meeting, and a year and a half ago these people didn't even know each other, and now they're doing things for big brands and big name companies, and really doing things that even the people on their team never knew they could accomplish. Lee: Well and forming those teams and forming something from nothing is really an exciting part of entrepreneurship. Now Candace, you mentioned that your father from a very early age was talking about technology, talking about engineering, and we find that that's very typical, especially for women. That their father or mother played a role in their early sort of sense of technology. Can you tell us a bit more about who else influenced or supported you in your career paths, or role models or mentors? Candace: So I would have to say that number one on that list is actually my husband. Lee: Yay husbands! Lucy: Yay! Candace: His name is Lee Fleming. And you know I was at a breakfast on Friday and there was a female entrepreneur who said, "Well you know, everyone knows the saying 'Behind every good man is a good woman,'" and I say the exact opposite is true as well, especially as it applies to start-ups. Behind every entrepreneur, especially if it's one who is a family, there's got to be a supportive spouse there." And so I think my husband wanted me to do this even more than I did. And so even before day one, when I heard about this opportunity, he's been helping me every step of the way. Quite literally, because he happens to be a professor at Harvard Business School, and he teaches a class on commercializing technologies and innovations, so I get some good coaching over the dinner table. Lucy: That's pretty handy! Candace: Very handy! Other than my parents, of course, who have been so supportive along the way, my co-founder, actually, who is also a professor at Harvard, his name is Gary King. He's the one who invented the algorithms that we've commercialized. So, from day one, he has said, "I think you're the one who should grow this company, I think you can make this happen and I want to work with you to do this." So having someone who believes in you so completely, and stands by you every step of the way, and is so fantastic to work with is a great gift. Lucy: That is really exciting. Lee: I downloaded his paper to read. Candace: Did you read it? Lee: Not yet, it was a little long for me, but I downloaded it for plane reading. Lucy: We just had interviewed somebody about advisory boards, and I'm thinking you've got these great built-in advisory boards. So to switch topics just a smidge from all these wonderful things, what's the toughest thing you've had to do in your career? Candace: It's actually what I'm doing now, but more specifically, starting and growing a successful company. Basically, in 2008 which is when we had the worst economic meltdown since the Depression, is by far the hardest thing that I've ever had to do. Or, at least chosen to do. But, as I'm sitting here, we just finished putting together our financial plan for the year, and I think it's going to be a great year. I feel like we've made it through and we have a lot of momentum. But, the economy has not been necessarily the friend of any entrepreneur, I think, in the last 18 to 24 months. Lee: You're right. Lucy: That's the truth. Lee: It hasn't been good to anyone. Larry: Yeah, well, boy, that's an interesting lead-in to the question I'm going to ask, and that is: If you were sitting down right now with an entrepreneur and you were going to give them some advice, what advice would you give them today? Candace: That's a great question. I would say maybe three things. First, and I mean this both perhaps literally and figuratively, eat your broccoli. Eat your broccoli because it's good for you, and it will make you healthy. But, figuratively, I mean being an entrepreneur, there are a lot of things that you need to do that are good for you even though you may not want to do them. They're good for the company, they're good for your own personal growth, and so I would say don't shy away from those things. The second thing, also I mean both literally and figuratively is to play team sports. I think, literally, go out there and play volleyball and basketball, soccer, because I think playing in a team is actually very much like working in a small company. You have the same small team environment, you need to give and take and you have rules in a company just like you do on a sports team. Learning about leadership and teamwork, I think sports is an incredible way to learn that. And then the last thing is again, both figuratively and literally, put things to bed earlier than you want to. [laughter] By that, I mean definitely get more sleep than you want to get, but metaphorically, don't set perfection as the bar for everything. I think that in many, many cases good is enough. And if I had learned earlier, I think I would have saved myself a lot of time and stress. Lucy: Well, so, my next question is about the characteristics that make you a great entrepreneur. What we just saw in that last answer was one of them is wisdom. [laughter] Lucy: So, perhaps you can, other things that come to your mind when you think about yourself and entrepreneurship. Those characteristics that you think give you an edge. Candace: I think that I'm an optimist. I think entrepreneurs have to be willing to look reality in the face and convince themselves to see the rosy side of it, perhaps. [laughs] You need to say you can be so focused and drive for something even though there are going to be a lot of obstacles in your way. The second thing is I'm not scared of hard work. That's something that I think is crucial to being able to get a company off the ground. I think the last thing is I'm fairly direct and honest. I think when you're working in a small company environment, there's - somewhat thankfully from my perspective - there's not as much politics. You sit in a room with people, you decide things and you get things done. There's not ten layers of approvals. So, I think being straightforward with people and being honest with people really carries you a long way in being successful, particularly in a small group. Lucy: I have to agree with all of the above. When you have that small group, you just have to be really direct and honest. Candace: Limit to cycles. Lucy: Yeah. Candace: That's it. Lucy: It really does. So, Candace, one of our favorite questions is with building start-ups and being an entrepreneur, as you'd mentioned earlier, it's a ton of work. So, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional life? Candace: Yeah, I think this is a great question. As I thought about this, I have, perhaps, an ironic take on this. And, that is I view my family as an enabler of my professional success. I think that I have a fantastic husband, I mentioned earlier. I have two little kids. I have a two-year-old and a six-year-old. I actually started Crimson Hexagon when my two-year-old was two weeks. Lucy: Oh, my goodness! Lee: Oh, my God! Candace: There is no better way to give you perspective back in life than when you come home from a hard day of work and you get tackle-hugged by these two little people before you can even put your briefcase down. [laughs] So, I actually think that, by having a family, it allows me to be successful at work. Because I work just as hard as the next person and just as many hours. But, I think the trick is, even if it's 15 minutes that you sit down and talk with them in a day, you make that time. And, that time gets paid back to you in a thousand different ways that help you in the rest of your life. So, I just think you have to make sure that you spend time on each, even if the time is very little. But, mentally, it's what keeps me balanced. Lucy: Absolutely the case. Those are great ages for kids, just great, full of energy. So, Candace, you've already achieved a lot. What's next for you? Candace: I have achieved some good things, but I don't view myself as being done here. [laughs] I plan to continue running and growing small companies. I think that what we're doing here at Crimson Hexagon is so exciting. This type of activity is something I want to do for a long, long time. Lucy: Crimson Hexagon is exciting. That is just a cool company. And, I feel like I want to make a plug for a Boulder-based company that's one of your partners. Because we have a lot of Boulder listeners here. Room 214 is a partner of Crimson Hexagon. So, we're just excited about that. If you come out here to Boulder, you need to stop by. It would be great to have you. Thank you so much, Candace. We all appreciate your time. I want to remind listeners where they can find this interview. Larry: At W3W3.com as well as NCWIT.org. Lucy: All right. Thank you very much, Candace. We appreciate it. Lee: Yes. Candace: Thank you. Larry: Bye-bye. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Candace FlemingInterview Summary: Data is abundant on the web, and information is free. But meaning is what matters, and uncovering it requires a good deal more than counting keyword mentions across the social web. Crimson Hexagon's technology – based on groundbreaking work conducted at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science – distills meaning about brands, products, services, markets and competitors from the online conversation. Release Date: April 19, 2010Interview Subject: Candace FlemingInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:28

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Gail Goodman President, Chair, and CEO, Constant Contact Date: March 16, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Gail Goodman [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders and I'm the CEO of National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is our next podcast interview in a series of interviews with women who have started IT companies and/or who are CEOs of start-up companies and the technology spaces. And today, we have Lee Kennedy with us, who is a serial entrepreneur and right now with Bolder Search and also with NCWIT Board of Directors. And Larry Nelson from W3W3 who has just informed us that tomorrow is his eleventh year of his Internet... Larry Nelson: ... Talk radio show. Lucy: Yeah, absolutely. Lee Kennedy: Congratulations, Larry. Larry: Thanks. Lucy: Well, in this interview is very exciting for all of us who send mail out and who know about Constant Contact. We are interviewing Gail Goodman, who is the President, Chairman, and CEO of Constant Contact. And she has done so much, both personally and through her company to really revolutionize the way that businesses reach out and send mail to their stake holders. And really since she's doing Constant Contact, the number of customers has just skyrocketing. NCWIT is a customer. We use it for our newsletters and our campaigns and everything else. So, welcome, Gail, it's good to have you with us. Gail Goodman: Great to be here and thank you for your business. Lucy: Well, you're welcome. Well, we are really eager to hear first, before we start into our entrepreneurial questions a little bit about what's going on with Constant Contact lately? Catch our listeners up a little bit. Gail: Right, for those of you who don't know Constant Contact: Constant Contact is 100 percent focused on helping small businesses, non-profits associations who look great. That's staying connected to customers, clients, members. So, we started with email marketing and that's absolutely our kind of flagship product. But, over the last couple of years, in addition to growing how many customers use Constant Contact, we also added two new products. Event marketing, so to help people run complete closed moved event registration, take money for the event and that whole community advice for business. Lucy: Of course. Gail: And an online survey tool to help people hear back from their customers or members with feedback and learn more about who those folks are, true demographic questions. Today, we have over 325,000 customers around the world who count on our service to stay connected to their most important audiences. And we are just immensely grateful to that group for their business. Lucy: Well, I didn't really know you had an event marketing tool. So, we have events. Gail: That's fabulous. Lucy: I'm going to have to go take a look at it. Gail, you're the CEO of a Tech company, an obviously you're immersed in Tech every day as you think about what Constant Contact is going to be doing in the future. What is it about technology that really interests you and how did you get into a technology company? Gail: Well, I have to say that I had the technology bug pretty darned early. I started using a computer when I was in high school, which to many of the listeners may seem obvious, but when I was in high school, they didn't have personal computers. You had to actually go find a big computer and something that looked like a refrigerator box and actually program on paper tapes and now I'm starting to sound like a dinosaur. Lucy: No, Gail, you're sounding just like Lucy and Larry. [laughter] Gail: But, I just love technology pretty early on and what excited me as I went through my career was not the technology itself, but the problems that it could solve for real people and real businesses. And so, as my career matured, it was all about solving customer problems and that really is what still excites me and makes me get all into the new and emerging technologies. How can this solve a problem that couldn't be solved with a mainframe, with a laptop and now that we have the Internet and mobile devices and it all creates new opportunities to solve problems. Lucy: Well, as you look at technology today, do you have specific technologies that you think are really leading the charge in terms of being innovative. What technologies interest you the most? Gail: As a business person thinking about what we do for our customers. The technology that interests me the most are the social networks and mobile. As a consumer, I'm really interested in the convergence of the smart phone with identity geo targeting and all that that brings together. I think it's consumers, we're just getting so empowered with the iPhone in our hands to do things so dramatically differently. It's like trying to go back and forth with trying to be a consumer and then thinking about what does that means for our business customers, how can they take advantage of that. Lucy: That's definitely the way that you have to think even in your business because your business is all about how consumers use your product. So, if we switch back to you, you started off as a techie and you loved solving problems. What moved you into being an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that you love? Gail: The thing that moved me into entrepreneurship was really this combination of wanting to solve customer problems and really feeling like I was ready to earn my own destiny. I had spent a career working for others, sort of frustrated at the pace of what I could do with a pace of change, with the pace of innovation and it just got to the point where it was time to put my money where my mouth was and see if I could do it better than all the people I was thinking I could do it better than. Lucy: Obviously being in a start up that pace is fast enough for you right? Gail: Yeah, and the very interesting challenge for me now is, I joined Constant Contact in '99, there were six people. But, the place was definitely fast enough. Today, we are 625. Lucy: Wow. Gail: And I could hardly call us a start up anymore and how do we just keep that pace of innovation going? How do we keep internal entrepreneurship going? How do we make it easy for people to get things done and make decisions? And I am increasingly challenged to keep solving the same problems I came here to solve. Lucy: That's in interesting topic. You know, we have another interview series called "The Toolbox Series" where I think this idea of, how do you take a startup that has grown to some significant size and keep that innovation, start moving? That would be a very interesting topic. Larry: Yeah, it certainly would. Lee: And that's amazing that you've been there. It'll be 11 years, this year? Gail: Eleven years in April. Lee: Wow. Gail: Me and Larry, we're both doing our 11 year anniversary. [laughter] Larry: Yeah, I'll tell you. I was thinking that, wow. Lucy: Wow. Larry: You know, along the way I'm sure that you had either mentors or role models, or people who helped you out along the way. Well, who would that be that you would pick out that has influenced and supported you in your career path? Gail: I'm going to go with two answers here. Larry: OK. Gail: And one seems just a tiny bit trite. But, my parents really were huge influences here and I think the thing they did for me that is pretty unique, for their generation for women, is they really gave me a huge belief in myself and the confidence that I could do or try anything. And that was really a huge piece of what gave me the confidence to step out from under, you know, the corporate safety net and go alone. Lee: That's wonderful. Larry: Yeah, great. Gail: And then, along the way, you know, my best role models have been my CEO peer mentoring group. So, when I was about two years into this adventure, I joined a group of other venture-backed tech CEOs, who sat down together for a day-and-a-half a quarter and really talked about what we were doing to grow our businesses. You know, the role of the CEO, how to manage the board, how to raise more money. And we helped each other grow into our CEO roles. And so, I would say all of them were role models and I learned something from each and every one of them, because we each brought unique backgrounds and experience sets to the table and created an environment where we could be completely open about the issues and challenges we were facing in our business. Lee: And you sat down each quarter for a day-and-a-half solid? Gail: -huh. Lee: Wow. Lucy: Wow, well, that's pretty intense networking. Lee: Yeah. Lucy: That's awesome. Well, you know, and your statement about your parents, we see that time and time again at NCWIT, that, in fact, encouragement of parents, especially to women, young women, who are interested in technology. As you said, you were interested in computing in high school, at a time when there really wasn't... It was hard to be interested in computing in high school. And that encouragement from your parents, I think, is quite a factor. So, switching gears just a bit, from the encouragement of parents, to something maybe not quite so pleasant. We always like to ask the people we interview the hardest thing they've ever had to do in their career. So, why don't you tell us the most difficult thing? You mentioned working for others and then you started Constant Contact as an entrepreneur; what's the toughest thing you've had to do? Gail: Well, I think the toughest thing I had to do was, you know, really face the fact that Constant Contact might not make it. So, we were venture-backed, the good news is we got some money before the Internet bubble burst. But then, we needed some money after the bubble burst, and money was pretty darn hard to come by. And so, as the cash balance was dwindling and I was counting down how many payrolls I could make, while I was frantically running around the world hat in hand, I needed to write a shutdown plan. And we got within 10 days of pulling the trigger on that. Lucy: Oh! Lee: Wow! And you got funding? Gail: You know, get the executive team in a room, tell them the plan. Tell them we're... You know, at that point, it looked more likely than not, that we were going to shut this thing down. And I think it was... You know, the full employee base never knew how close we got. But, looking around the table at the team who had been working hard every day and saying, "Guys, I think it's over," was the hardest thing I had to do. Larry: How many employees did you have at that time? Gail: More than we should have. [laughter] Lee: Oh, no! Lucy: Wow. Lee: Well, that's a great story. Right? And that it turned out happily ever after this. Larry: Yeah. Lee: So, Gail, we have a lot of young people listening to our podcasts and we would love for you to... If you were sitting here with them, what advice would you give them about entrepreneurship? Gail: Well, the thing I would say, is get a good solid foundation before you strike out on your own. So, get some experience first working for a company, and be very observant about what works and what doesn't work. Leadership style, management style. You know, it is very difficult to be figuring these things out for the first time in an environment where you are, you know, absolutely supposed to be running the place. And as you think about those first sets of jobs, be very thoughtful about the set of experiences you want to get. And I would say, get as close to the customer and the value delivery point as you can. So, if you're in a professional services company, you know, get into the client engagements. If you're in a software product company, get into product management. So, you see how the sausage factory produces a product. And not everything you're going to learn there, you're going to want to take with you, but get some stripes somewhere else. Not only will it give you an experience and guide to your own leadership and management style, I think it'll make you much more fundable, if you're going into a business where you're going to need some other people to vote for you and give you their money. Larry: You listeners out there pay attention to that reply, because I wish I had heard that, before I started my first company. But... Lee: That is. That's sage advice. Larry: So, Gale, you talked about your parents, the CEO mentoring group, and so on. Getting right into you, what are some personal characteristics of yours that have made you a successful entrepreneur? Gail: So, I'll highlight four that I think are pretty important. And I'll start with tenacity. I just refuse to fail. [laughter] Gail: Every obstacle was a challenge to be taken on. The second kind of directly relates to that which is I am an analytic animal. So, when I see challenges I don't react to them emotionally, I react to them analytically. Let's diagnose it. Let's do the root cause analysis. And let's fix it. The third thing is that I am a continuous learner. I understand that I don't know what I don't know, and I'm not afraid to get help from others. Talk, you know, peers... One of my first reactions to a problem we would have in the business is who might have solved this problem already? And how do I get access to them to figure out how they solved it? So, I'm always reading books. I am always talking to others. I am always trying to pick people's brains. And the final piece and probably the hardest piece, for me, because it wasn't natural, is I think it's important as an entrepreneur that you be immensely open to the feedback of others and recognize the weaknesses in yourself so you can complement them with the team. And so I ask for, and on a good day listen to a lot of feedback. Lucy: Well, and I think that, I'd add a fifth characteristic that you didn't mention. You have a great sense of humor. A great laugh, I have to think that that helps get through the day as well. Gail: If you start taking yourself too seriously you're in deep trouble. Larry: Yep. Lucy: Yeah. We think so too. We don't take Larry seriously. [laughter] Larry: We'll talk offline, Gail. Lucy: So speaking of your day. You have a lot of work in your day obviously running a successful company like Constant Contact. And yet you have a personal life too. We like to ask how people bring balance into their life knowing full well that perhaps most people are totally unbalanced when they're in the situation that you're in. But, we find that they amazingly have coping strategies so they do have a personal life as well. So, why don't you tell us about how you bring balance there? Gail: Yeah. Just a couple of things. I have so many interests outside of work that I have been unwilling to give up because of that tenacity. So, that's really helped. So, I happen to be a tennis addict as a player and watcher. The good thing about tennis is you've got to schedule it. So, you've got a bunch of other people waiting for you on a court, you don't blow it off. So, it happened to be a very good hobby because other people were waiting for me. To all the tennis players out, all I need to say is doubles with three people is really not as much fun. And I never said, wow, I'm not going to have that much time for that this quarter. I'm not going to sign up for the contract with the ladies. I just did it. And so that formed some anchors of things that got me out of the office and got me moving and fun. The second thing is I have always prioritized the people who mean the most to me. My family, my friends, you cannot let those relationships go. They are the most valuable thing in your life. Someone once told me that story, just think about the world from, sitting on your porch in your 80s, looking back on your life. Very few people are going to say I wish I had spent more time working. The number one thing you hear is that I wish I had spent more time with my family. And you never get a chance to go back and do that. So, I've always been very clear that while on a given day a work priority might overwhelm a family thing. As I look at weeks and months, I can't let that happen more than occasionally. Lucy: So, it's an integration process as opposed to this perfect idea of balance. Larry: Yes. Lucy: Yes. Gail: Yeah. You never get the perfect idea of balance. But you've got to keep the priorities in place. Lucy: Absolutely. Well, Gail, we have loved talking to you, and it's been so interesting. We have one last question. You've achieved so much. Give us a little insight into what's next? What's next with you? What's next with Constant Contact? Gail: So, we at Constant Contact feel like we are just getting started. We are thrilled to serve 325,000 customers. There are 27 million small businesses in the US. And when you add non profits and trade associations, the number gets up to 40 million. And we think those small organizations succeed based on customer intimacy and relationships. And our vision is nothing less than to help them revolutionize that success formula. And so we are on the march to a million, and just unbelievably excited about it because small business is the backbone of the American economy. It employs half of the private workforce and has typically been the very first to hire coming out of recession. So, literally our mission for this year is to re-energize America's small business and pull the United States out of the recession. Lucy: We're behind you. Lee: Hallelujah. Lucy: We're behind you. Larry: Wow. Gail, I just wanted to thank you for joining us today. Gail Goodman of Constant Contact. And this is Lucy, Lee, and Larry. You know the three Ls. It's really our pleasure. Your interview will be up on ncwit.org. It will also be on w3w3.com. And we'll have it on a podcast, a blog, and that social networking stuff you were talking about. So, thanks for joining us today. Gail: That's great. See you all on Twitter. Lucy: All right. Thank you Gail. Gail: Bye-bye. Lucy: Bye. Lee: Bye Gail. [exit music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Gail GoodmanInterview Summary: Gail Goodman joined Constant Contact in 1999, when the company had six employees. Today it has 625 employees, with more than 300,000 customers worldwide. Release Date: April 16, 2010Interview Subject: Gail GoodmanInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 20:02

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Beth Marcus Former Founder and CTO, Zeemote Date: January 22, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Beth Marcus [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology or NC WIT, and this is another in our podcast series with women who have started IT companies, very successful women I might add... Larry Nelson: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: ...that have started IT companies. With me Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi Larry. Larry: Hi, I'm really happy to be here. This is going to be an exciting interview. Lucy: Well, and these interviews have been very well received at W3W3. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that. Larry: Well we host a special channel, "Heroes for NC WIT, " and we get a tremendous amount of traffic from, everything from small business owners to C level, high level executives from enterprise size companies and it's very interesting and the thing that we like about it so much it's really helping support a push for more young girls to get into IT. Lucy: Well, very good. Well, you know this interview is going to be no exception to our great interview series. Today we're talking with Beth Marcus, who is the CEO, the founding CEO of Playsmart, a new venture for her, she's a serial entrepreneur. She's founded a number of companies including Exos which she sold to Microsoft on the middle of nineteen nineties. And she is, I think easily one of the most technical people we've spoken to in this interview series with a history at MIT, and a PhD and patents and very, very impressive technical entrepreneur. Welcome Beth. Beth Marcus: Thank you. Lovely to be here chatting with you. Lucy: Well we are really interested first to find out a little bit about Playsmart, your new venture. And we understand it is really geared towards having safe environments for children on the Internet. Can you tell us more about it? Beth: Sure. It's a complete media solution for kids, ages one to eight. It allows them to be entertained, educated, connected to other family members around the world and allows the parents to control what's happening with the kids' interaction with those environments and make it totally safe. No commercials are passed to the kids. Once they get into the Playsmart system which can run on any PC or netbook they can't get out of it accidentally or otherwise and they can't get to any content or interaction that their parents don't pre-approve. Lucy: That's pretty interesting. Larry: Boy I'll say. I've got seven grandchildren, I'm happy to hear that. Beth: In fact, one of the features that some of our investors are interested in is Skyping to grandchildren that you can do through Playsmart. All you do is click on a picture of your grandparent and it makes the call for you. Lucy: Oh, that is really cool, you know. My mother's on Skype too and you know she, I mean I actually think the other end could use some help with that, you know? Larry: Yes, I agree. Beth: Yeah. Lucy: I mean she loves Skype. Beth: My daughter is how I got involved in this. I do a lot of advising of other start up CEO's and I thought I was going to be taking a break from being a CEO and just help a bunch of other people, and an entrepreneur came to me and said, you know, "Let me show you what I've got, " and it was for kids and I have a five year old. So I said, "Susie, let's play with this thing, " and she said, "Oh, this is so cool." You know and her interaction with it is what convinced me to get involved with the company and become a CEO. Lucy: You know, we've had a couple of people we've interviewed whose children have helped them form the idea for their next venture or at least encouraged them to get involved. That's really interesting. So Beth give our listeners a sense of how you first got into technology. I mean you have a very extensive technical background as I mentioned before. What first interested you in technology? Beth: A million years ago when I was in school I liked science and math and I played around with computers. And I'm probably going to give away my age, but wrote programs in Basic that ran on paper tape into a terminal. Lucy: I did that too. So don't feel bad. Beth: And then, I ended up going to MIT because they had a lot of interesting science and math. And what got me into more core technology was freshman year at MIT they have a seminar series that you do, typically in January and I took aluminum bicycle frame building because I loved bikes and I thought that would be cool. I had never seen a machine shop, I didn't know what welding was. I had never done any of the stuff and through that seminar I got fascinated by making stuff and ended up being in mechanical engineering. Lucy: Well and we noticed you were judge for First Robotics which I think further extend... Beth: Ten years, which is a lot of fun. Lucy: Yeah, you're love of making things. Larry and I both judge as well with First, so it's a great program. So what technologies do you look out there today across the technical space? What technologies do you find really cool and interesting today? Beth: Of course the last company I was in was the mobile space so I think the evolution of mobile devices into computers that you carry around with you is very interesting. I mean, when I started Zeemote in 2005, when I said, "These are the computers you're going to carry with you 24/7" the potential investors looked at me like I was from Mars. Larry: Yeah. Beth: And now people do. Lucy: They certainly do and in fact the number of people are looking at mobile devices as a real tool to help third world developing countries as well. Larry: Awesome. Beth: Well, they don't have land lines. Lucy: Exactly. Beth: And even though we have them, a lot of people don't use them anymore. Larry: Yeah, let me kind of switch gears here for a second. Two part related questions. One is, why are you an entrepreneur? And what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Beth: Well, I think it's a challenge. The first company I started, I remember we had built some high end controllers, exoskeleton controllers for robots in space for NASA and other people. And I got this idea that we ought to be able to take this technology and make it into a consumer product. And I was giving a talk at a Virtual Reality Conference and somebody from a not to be named defunct computer company said, "Well if you can't spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a reality engine you shouldn't be doing VR." And I said, "We're going to do it on PC's and we're going to make a hundred dollar joystick and everyone's going to use them but they're not going to know that it's VR." And that sort of a challenge where somebody says, "Oh you can't do that." [laughter] Or even sometimes why would somebody want that. And then you put it in front of them and they go, "Oh wow. That makes my life easier"or "That makes my health better." You know. That exciting to me. Lucy: It's a very incredibly important point I think, you know, maybe I'll just digress a moment and say that you know there's always this tug of war in any corporation big or small between the business side and the technical side and often I think the business side can't necessarily see the power of technology until a technologist puts it in front of him. And... Beth: That's why I advise all the companies that I get involved with to get those prototypes built as quickly as possible with as little money as possible and get it into the hands of the end users. Because there's where you're going to find out are you smoking something and convincing yourself there's a market or does somebody really care about this. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: And you learn so much that most entrepreneurs will tell you that the thing that they thought they were starting their company on is not the one they made money on. And it's the ones who iterate and spend time with the consumer whether they're a consumer or a corporate customer or whatever kind of customer, the ones that spend the time and listen to the customer are the ones that figure it out and succeed. Lucy: That is a really important point and I think, looking forward, we may have to ask you again a month from now but you know we do a Toolbox series as well and I think that it would be great to hear your advice for entrepreneurs because that advice around prototyping is excellent. Beth: I was going to be writing a book this year. Lucy: [laughs] Now you are running a company. Beth: Company...My God. I spent some time on it this summer capturing things like that and interviewing other entrepreneurs and then I said, "OK, I got to put this aside until I do this center and I'll come back again." Lucy: I think it will be fabulous because of your technical background. I'm sure you'd have some really valuable insights there. Beth: And I am a published poet. So... Right in the way that is intelligible to the rest of the world. Larry: So now there is a third interview. Lucy: A third... [laughs] Larry: A poetry. Lucy: Yeah. You are really digging yourself into a hole. So, along the lines of entrepreneurship, we found that many entrepreneurs can point to a particular person or a group of people who influence them or help them along their way as an entrepreneur. Who are your role models and how do they influence you? Beth: I think the first person who got me the sort of excitement at making stuff work was this professor in MIT Woody Flowers who was involved in the First Robotics Company. Lucy: Absolutely, I have seen him. I have never met him. Beth: But he was an early mentor of mine and I became a judge for this mechanical engineering design contest while I was still a student. And then that's sort of got me excited about the excitement of innovating and trying new things and testing your ideas. And then when I went to start my first company, I joined the MIT enterprise forum and there were a number of people there who I had no idea even what a business plan was. And I was going to write one to raise money. So I listened to other people talk about their businesses and I got some of those people to help me write my first business plan. And then later on, a man named Don Spero started a company called Fusion Systems down in the DC area that successfully flowed against the Japanese and the patent area. Kind of taught me about intellectual property and the value of it and also mentored me generally because of his long experience in running companies. And then when I was running Exos and I realized that I was out of my debts from a management point of view. I hired a guy named [indecipherable 10:03] to come in and run my company. And he became a mentor of mine and he is still to this day a friend. So all along the way, I think the lesson for an entrepreneur is to talk to anybody you can everywhere about what you are doing and try and connect with them because you never know when you are going to stand next to the person who is going to get you a deal like I did when I was in a party in MIT. And I stand next to Bob Metcalf who introduced me to the Logitech guys that told me what product to build for an Exos to get an exit. Or whether I am going to hire somebody who turns out to be my mentor and teach me about business that leaves the exit in the company. Larry: Wow. Beth, let me ask this question. First of all, you just mentioned about you are going to write a book this year but now you are running a company instead. It took me three years to write a book that I just had published called Mastering Change. So I just want to let you know that you can do that too. Beth: Yeah but I have a five year old and a puppy. Larry: Yeah, I got you. [laughs] Beth: So I said my daughter is most important, my business is second most important and the rest will just have to wait. Larry: There you go. I agree with that. Lucy: Although I could throw little barb in here and say Larry is a five year old but... [Larry clears his throat] Go ahead Larry I was... Beth: Anything about relationship in any of that. So? Lucy: [laughs] Larry: I have been married for 40 years. What are you going to do? Beth: Adolescence. I am not married so... If any of your listeners want to apply for the job, I take resumes. Larry: We make a little commission on this... Lucy: Yeah... [mumbles] Larry: Yeah. Speaking of all that stuff, what is the toughest thing that you ever had to do in your career? Beth: I think the first time I had to fire people was probably the worst moment because at Exos we started out as a medical company and we grew to a million and a half in revenues selling orthopedic rehab devices using our technology. And we realized we probably sold all the units that whatever be sold because we were teaching people how to turn on the computer not have a measure motions and force in patients. They didn't care about that. They use a plastic protractor and so we figured that out and we had to restart the company, went from 32 people down to about eight in one day. Lucy: That's tough. Beth: And I believe that I had helped outplace...anybody who wanted to be outplaced in great jobs elsewhere, and I am friends with some of the people who left the company at that point for years. And some of my hired again into other companies. I feel good about it. I remember at the end I closed my door and I just cried because these were my friends. Lucy: We hear that a lot from entrepreneurs. I think that is a very tough thing to...not just let people go but it is theirs loss and also downsizing the company and restarting it. That is all tough stuff. Beth: Yeah. Perhaps to tell you that I learned in that experience that if I had done it sooner, everybody would have been happier. Both the people who did not fit the business we are getting into and the investors and everybody would have done better. So, my advice to entrepreneurs is don't be afraid to hire but don't be afraid to fire the person who is the wrong person for the job. You are not doing them or you any favors by keeping them around if they are not working. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: It is the truth. We have learned that lesson unfortunately in the Telecom downsizing. Well that's great advice and it gets us to our next question about advice for young people about entrepreneurship and you have given us some perils already. And I wander around online and I found some presentation you made about naming your company. What I found was pretty interesting. Beth: That is a new one. [laughs] I give that to an MIT class because I am still on the faculty there. So occasionally faculty members will call me up and ask me to come, give lecture to their class and the senior mechanical engineering design class didn't have a clue how to name their product. So I came and I gave a lecture. Lucy: That's good. I can't wait for your book. And so, what kind of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs that you haven't already told us? Beth: I think the most important thing that I talk to any entrepreneur that I coached from day one is why are you doing this? What are your personal goals? What are your financial goals? How does that fit with your family? And if you evaluate that first and write it down and keep it in front of you and then say, is what I am doing today serving my goals, the company's goals and my family's goals? And when those things start to not match, that is when you get into trouble. And if you don't bother to figure it out first, then you don't have a road map because I made this mistake. I ran a company called Glow Dog which was a failure. It was a failure because we were just about break even and about a million plus in revenue and our Christmas shipments were on the water on 911. We had just grown to the size where we need to manufacture in China instead of the United States in order to compete and they were in the container on the ocean and they could not get in the United States so there was no Christmas. And we had to sell the assets and fold the company because I didn't feel like there was going to be a return on investment if I brought in more capital. But what I didn't think about when I started that company was what was the right size for this business and did that kind of a business match what I personally wanted to do? It was just interesting. People loved the product. They were reflective coating for people and pets. And you walking your dog at night, you don't get run over, right? Well, it turned out our customers were fashion stores in Tokyo who liked the logo I designed. I didn't even know it was reflective and it was a 33% margin business in an industry that is not very protectable and that I had no expertise in. What was I doing, doing this business? So, I raised a bunch of money to make a big play, before I realized that this really was a brand company, not a technology company. I raised the right amount of money for a technology company to get launched, but it turned out technology didn't matter, and to make a brand like Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren, you need tens of millions of dollars. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: ... and you need expertise, which I didn't have. So, if I had understood my own personal goals and what kind of a work environment I wanted, and what the end game looked like at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have made those mistakes. Because Glow Dog could have been a very profitable, between $2 and $10 million dollar clothing company and pet product company, if that was its goal. It wouldn't have raised as much money. It wouldn't have spent as much money, and it might still be around today. Larry: You obviously didn't know all your life that you were going to become an entrepreneur and since we're... Beth: I thought I was going to be an academic. Larry: There you go, see... Lucy: Well, you're that too, so there you go. Larry: A little change. Beth: So, I'm an academic. I play at academia. [laughter] Beth: I actually have on one occasion taken money from MIT to teach a class, and I realized that it was not for me. Because along with taking the money, comes a lot of faculty meetings and policies and procedures, and entrepreneurs don't really love those things. What's good about a company that's under 25 people is you don't need a huge amount of that stuff to be successful. Larry: Right. Beth: Some people are really good at structure and organization and detail, and that's not me. Larry: Not you, no. Well, then, what were the characteristics that made you really become a successful entrepreneur? We want to reach out this way, because we have many young people and employers and parents, who want to know what secrets they should look at when it comes to entrepreneurism. Beth: Certainly, like anything else it can be taught, and it can be learned over time. So, if you want to be an entrepreneur and you don't really understand what it is, go get a job or an internship with an entrepreneurial firm and get to know that person who started the company and watch them. Do it a couple of times. You'll learn whether it suits you or not. But in terms of what I think gives me an advantage; first of all, unbridled optimism to the point of stupidity at times. [laughter] Larry: I love it! Beth: You know, "You can't do that! You can't do that!" "Sure I can! Sure I can!" You know there is a limit, you beat your head against the wall a few times and you walk away, but hammering on and being tenacious at getting your objective. If it doesn't happen the way you think, you think of a second way. If it doesn't happen that way, you think of a third way. Maybe you don't end up accomplishing what you set out to do, but in the course of trying to accomplish it, you figure out where the real value is. So, it's a combination of being tenacious, and also being aware and being willing to change, and willing to take advantage of what God, the world, whatever, has presented to you in terms of opportunity. So, if you're trying to build widget A, and nobody wants widget A, but in order to make widget A, you had to make a fixture. And it turns out loads of people want that fixture, well go sell a fixture. Don't keep trying to sell a widget that nobody wants. Lucy: Exactly. I like that, 'unbridled optimism on the verge of stupidity.' I am just going to have to remember that one. Larry: I was looking in a mirror when you said that, yes. Beth: Also, you have to be able to learn from everybody around you. Lucy: That's totally right. Beth: Willing to talk about what you do in a pleasant way, not obnoxious, but to anyone who will listen. Because you never know where you're going to learn something, or who's going to have, "Gee. I know the guy who started that company that you want to have buy your company" or "Gee. I had a company like that, and we made this mistake" and so you can learn to avoid that mistake. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: Or somebody you want to hire. And don't be afraid to hire people who know a lot more than you do. Lucy: Totally. Beth: It's a matter of risk right. If you're an investor, and I've done some investing as well, you look at what's the total risk package for this business. And anything, absolutely anything you can do to reduce the risk is a good thing. And so the more experience you have that's relative to the business you're in, even if you don't know it yourself or understand it. It's going to reduce that risk. Lucy: Well and that's great advice I think. It's all pointing towards another interview I think Larry. Beth: You could have me talking for days. Lucy: I know. No, no ...I've got all kinds of plans for you know now. So you've already mentioned to us that you are a published poet and we know you're a judge for many years with First Robotics. What else are you doing to bring balance into your professional and personal lives? Beth: Well, I mean it's a struggle. I mean I'm a single mom, so there is no such thing as balance in my life. But, I do things like, I've got a calendar I just printed out this morning because I wasn't sticking to my exercise routine. And just like my daughter gets stars for reading books and she turns it in at school every month. I'm going to have her help me put stars on my calendar for my exercise. Lucy: Oh, that's nice. Beth: And I have family dinner night, where I cut off work early usually on Fridays, so that I can cook a meal. And we can sit down and eat together because it doesn't happen that often. And when I was growing up that was something that was somewhat absent and I wanted my daughter to have that, and I wanted me to have that too. Because, there is this idea that, when I was in the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, I obsessed about the business 24/7 and drove myself nuts. You know, I hardly slept, and that's not the best way to be productive. As I've gotten older, I work smarter. And so I do everything that I can do to make every minute of my time incredibly effective. If I'm having a bad day and I'm not productive. I'm not going to hammer my head against the computer or the telephone, which is where most of my work happens. I'll go and do something nice for myself for an hour. You know, call a friend, go have a coffee, or do an errand I need for my home. Go do some food shopping and come back. And then I'm refreshed and renewed. I listen to books on tape at night as I'm falling asleep so that I can't think about business at night. I love novels and I love fiction. So that for me blocks out my ability to think business. Lucy: That's a great idea. Larry: Yeah, it really is, wow. You know Beth, you have achieved so much in so many different ways. Going back to your first company that you ended up selling to Microsoft and all the other Wins and that challenges along the way. You've achieved a lot what's up for you next? Beth: I would like to have a huge exit in Playsmart. So if anybody is listening who wants to buy a company like that, that's the goal. To build this to where there is enormous excitement about the product and many, many families are using it. And then get a bigger company with huge resources behind it. And then I'll be happy to step back, finish my book and invest and advise in others. Lucy: Wow, and we would love to see you write that book. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: That would be I mean great, great advice here and we thank you for taking time to talk to us. I want to remind those who are listening to this interview that they can find it at W3W3.com. Larry: That's right and we'll have it up also on our blog as well as our podcast directory so you can download it 24/7. Lucy: Well, I'm pleased to pass it... Beth: And if there are there any moms of kids interested in Playsmart. That's at Playsmart send me an email, I'll make sure you find out about a product when it's out this summer. Lucy: Absolutely, and we'll have that as well in the bio up on the site. So everybody can find it when they come to download the podcast. Very good, well thank you very much. Larry: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Beth MarcusInterview Summary: Beth Marcus has been Founder and CEO of several successful startups, most notably EXOS, Inc., which was venture-backed and sold to Microsoft in 1996. Since then she has been involved in 14 start-ups in a variety of fields as a founder, investor, or advisor. Release Date: January 22, 2010Interview Subject: Beth MarcusInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 24:00

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Emily Olson Co-founder, Foodzie Date: June 29, 2009 Emily Olson: Foodzie [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I am the CEO of National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and this is one of an ongoing series of interviews that we're doing with women who have started IT companies. We've got an especially exciting one today for all of you people who like to eat. Larry Nelson: Yeah. Lucy: And for people who like to create food, and people who like to eat. With me is Lee Kennedy who is the CEO and founder of Boulder Search, herself a serial entrepreneur and also a board member of NCWIT. And also, Larry Nelson, CEO of W3W3. Is that what you call yourself? Larry: Yeah, well, I call myself all kinds of things, but I'll take that. Lucy: CEO of W3W3. Hi, Larry. How are you? Larry: Oh, absolutely magnificent. I'm really excited about this, and as you said before, Brad and David Cohen are very proud of her. In a little conversation that I had with David Cohen about a month ago, I said, "Wow, they're doing so well". He said, "Well, you know, if you really think of it. They've got the natural product, the natural thing, and they're just tapping into the IT". So, they're very proud of you. Lucy: Today we're talking with Emily Olson. The reason why we're all so proud of Emily is that she's a TechStars alum, and her people who have listened to our Entrepreneurial Toolbox new series, they'll know from the interview with David Cohen all about TechStars. It's a wonderful program here in Boulder to help budding entrepreneurs. Emily is the co-founder of Foodzie. It's an online marketplace here you can discover and buy food directly from all kinds of passionate food producers and growers. Listeners will be very eager to know that Emily just got back from Seattle where - I read in her blog - she looked at all kinds of great food at Pike Street Market and all those other places that you like to go when you are in Seattle. Emily and her co-founders were chosen by "Business Week" as three of the most promising young entrepreneurs in tech for 2009. Larry: Wow. Lee Kennedy: That's exciting. Lucy: So, welcome, Emily. Emily Olson: Thanks, thanks. I'm glad to be here. Lucy: First, tell us, before we get into our questions about entrepreneurship, what's going on at Foodzie? Emily: Well, there's a lot of exciting things going on. We've been growing a bunch, in particular our producer base, and just getting more and more sellers on board who share their products. But more specifically, right now a lot of people want to find what's local to them and we have more filters for them because that's something that we're working on right now as far as things that we're building. And yeah, improving the way both with the tools that help our producers to sell and help people to find specifically what they're looking for so we can improve the site. Lucy: Well, and I hear you've got great customer service at Foodzie, really. Emily: We try, yeah. Lucy: Really taking care of customers, and I think Brad mentioned that you are always bribing people with chocolate over at TechStars. Lee: I remember that. Emily: I usually joke that that's how we got in. We brought some sea salt caramels and LUCA chocolate out of North Carolina. We brought those with us, and sort of, now it's the expectation that wherever we go we do bring food. So, yeah, they got to know us well and we got to feed everybody there at TechStars. Lucy: Well, that's wonderful. Let's just get right to our entrepreneurship questions. We could talk about Foodzie all day. It's just kind of making me hungry. Emily: That would be my world. Larry: I was going to warn the listeners. When you go to the Foodzie website, you will get hungry. Lucy: Oh, it's just beautiful. So, Emily, why don't you give a bit of history about how you got into technology, and how you came to start a technology company? What technologies are cool, et cetera? Emily: OK, so I was actually - I still am - in the food business, and that's where I found something that I was really passionate about. I was working for a specialty food retailer called The Fresh Market based on the East Coast, and I worked directly with the buyers there in helping to source products. And I also manage their e-commerce there. I just saw a disconnect, basically, the small producers who were trying to get into these stores. It was really hard for them because they often had limited distribution. They didn't have the margins built in and they couldn't make their way into these brick-and-mortar stores. What I really liked about technology and what the Internet provides was more of an open platform where you have unlimited shelf space, and you have all these opportunities to have more of these producers without the barriers and limitations you have of a brick-and-mortar store. And you also have the opportunity with video and a lot of the social media that we have going on to actually connect with these producers and get to know them better which we don't have the opportunity to do when there is just packaging sitting on the shelf. That's what got me the most excited about what I was doing, that I was passionate about, was using technology to make it better. Lucy: So you use technology to tell the stories of the producers in addition to showing what they're selling. Emily: Absolutely, yeah. So not only are we using technology, we're trying to make it easy for them to get on with a store, sell their products to a wider audience, but also to share their story which -- if you go to a farmer's market and you actually get to meet the person that makes the food, that's kind of what is the object behind a lot of these products, getting that story. I think we have the ability and the technology to replicate that as closely as possible. So, yeah, those are the things that got me really excited. Lucy: So, Emily, we're always curious why entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs. So, tell us a little bit about why entrepreneurship makes you tick and just what it is that you love about it. Emily: Well, initially it starts by being a problem that you want to solve and realizing that you are going to need to go and solve it yourself. I actually think that's where it was for me, while I saw I wasn't going to be able to do it, it turns out that it didn't exist and you have to create something. I think someone who is willing to take a risk and who likes creating, who likes building, who likes all of that, I think leads you into entrepreneurship. At least that's how it happened for me. Lucy: And do you find yourself continuing to take that role at Foodzie as looking for the new challenges that need to be solved? Emily: I think new challenges are presented every day. I think, yeah, absolutely, and I think what's really exciting when you mentioned customer service. We have a very close relationship with all of the producers that sell on our site, and we try to have a very close relationship with customers that buy. If you listen to them and you discover you what their needs are, then you can iterate and develop the product to their needs. I think that's the most exciting thing as an entrepreneur, that you can guide it and you can make those decisions to change something. With a small team you can make it happen pretty fast. So, I think that's something that gets really - I don't know - exciting to be able to say, "Hey, I want to do this," and just do it. Oftentimes in bigger companies, and when you're not an entrepreneur you can't quickly make those choices. So that's what has been a lot of fun for me. Larry: Wow, that's fantastic. You know, we've interviewed now dozens of wonderful women in the NCWIT Hero Series, and you certainly are one of the youngest. I can't help but ask this. Who influenced you the most? Who supported you, or did you have mentors or advisors? Emily: Well, I think early on when I was in high school I had a very strong mentor who was actually a chemistry teacher of mine, but he sort of just instilled in me that I could do anything that I want. And I think I took that with me through and into my career. And so I definitely had that foundation early on. As far as taking a risk, I think it's having the right support around you. My co-founders, Rob and Nik, knowing that you have the right team to start with when you go into business is huge. It allows you to overcome the initial roadblocks and obstacles that often stop people who have a great idea to actually follow through with it. So I think that was a huge thing for me early on, and then when we got to TechStars we had some incredible mentors that took us from the IP stage all the way, to whether it was working on price strategy or how we were going to market it or wanting it on an open platform or a closed platform and all of those questions we went through. We had just mentors who had been through it who built their businesses and could offer us really good advice and that took us, I think, several steps ahead of where we would have been on our own. Lucy: Well, and you know, your answer really points again to the critical role of the encouragement in young people's lives that teachers have, especially in high school and college, that the can give you that confidence to believe in yourself, no matter what you're working on. It's incredibly important the number of stories we've heard about math teachers or chemistry teachers or anybody else really making sure that you had confidence. So turning now to something that may be a little less positive, we like to ask people the challenges that they've had so far in their career and what the one toughest thing you had to do so far in your career. What might that be? Emily: One? [laughs] Larry: Oh, yeah, yeah. Lucy: Only one. Larry: We don't have two hours. [laughter] Emily: The hardest thing, I think, for me actually has been to find people to come on board that are just as passionate as you are as far as the entrepreneur and founder of a company. I think you take that for granted when you are an employee and you are excited. Now, running a business it's totally different, and I think finding those people... We've been really fortunate. We have two employees working now for Foodzie. One of them came to us and said that, "I want to be a Foodzie," and had everything that we needed. And I wasn't even looking for, but came to us. We've been searching for some other people that we want to join the team, but it's been really, really hard. I think we care a lot about the culture we're building and making sure that people believe in it. And so I would say that has such a direct impact on the business that finding the right people has probably been the hardest thing that we had to do. Lucy: It is hard finding good people that have that same passion that you do about the company you started. So, Emily, you had mentioned earlier in the interview that you got some great coaching from a chemistry teacher. We are always curious, what kind of coaching you would give young people, people in high school, college, early 20s, about entrepreneurship, and what advice you'd give them as far as starting a company or weathering through a company? Emily: I think that I had mentioned before about having the right team around you. I think that's absolutely critical, and I think oftentimes people get discouraged on an idea that seems really exciting to start. Then it often becomes "I can't do it" because you're missing pieces that can get you through that. And so I definitely think that above all else when you have a great idea, think about how you can round out your team. I think two to three founders to develop is the right number. It was three for us, and I think it was, perhaps, the perfect number because we rounded out the technology and marketing business side. So that's one thing. Surround yourself with the right team. But also find what you're really passionate about and make sure that this idea that you have is something you want to spend every day, all day, every weekend, thinking about for the next couple of years because it is all-consuming. When the days are really hard and long, if you're passionate about it and you really love what you're doing, it's a little bit easier. I know that's something for me. This is the space that I am truly, truly passionate about, and that work/life balance. Sometimes I confuse the two. Is this work? Is this life? I don't know. It's the same. So I think that finding something that you're passionate about is really important. Sometimes, I think that overused when people often say like, "Well, what the heck am I passionate about? I don't know. Am I passionate about this?" For me, I found I was passionate about food in college because I was putting off my homework and everything else to cook and do all these things that were related to food. And so I think if you're trying to look for what you're passionate about or trying to see if this idea you are going after is something you're passionate about. See if it's the kind of thing you would want to do, if you didn't have to work at all and you just had to retire and someone was going to pay your way and you had free time to do whatever. Would you want to be doing that? I think that's an important thing to think about. I think it is just really important when you're starting a business. Larry: Emily, you mentioned working eight days a week or something like that. Emily: [laughter]. Somewhere around there. Lee: He must be worried that you're working. Larry: Right, right. I know. I guess we can associate with that. Isn't that right, Lee? Lee: I was going to say that as being a serial entrepreneur, you've got to love it because you are doing it all the time, morning, noon and night. And if you don't love it, it's just gets to be a drag. Larry: And now I'm going to ask for a real tough question. Lucy: Oh, good. We are ready for it [laughter]. Larry: With all these... Emily: I already got that one [laughter] Larry: Oh, well, listen to this one. With all that you were talking about, how do you bring balance into your personal and your professional lives? Emily: If you're doing what you're passionate about, I think that the line is often blurred. I feel like I can go and do something like go to a cooking event and go and learn how to make chocolate truffles and that was just purely enjoyment for me. But I can tie it back to a business in a way, like I can write a blog about it or whatever might be. So for me, that's been it, because the line is kind of blurred. But even though I am passionate about what I do, I do have to disconnect and just not be doing something not related to the business. And I think for me it's going out nature. I've been fortunate the few places we operate Foodzie are in Colorado and San Francisco, California. Both have amazing outdoors and places to go and explore. And so I get to go offline and go do those kind of things like hiking in San Francisco, sailing and things like that. And also, try to plan it into your schedule. I think I've set a couple of goals for myself outside of just getting into nature. I want to learn how to play the guitar. I want to learn more about the American history and I want to join a soccer league. And that's for the entire year, but I try to work a little bit of accomplishing those every couple of weeks, so that I make sure I do those things. Lucy: Very wise. Larry: Yes, I'll say. I like that answer. Lucy: Plus I want some chocolate truffles. [laughs] Emily: That made you guys hungry, huh? Lucy: You keep bringing out the subject on chocolate that just really outstanding. Well it's really fascinating to listen to everything that you're saying, especially about the history of Foodzie. I know you have a very bright future. So this next question, which is our final question is kind of hard to ask. But what's next for you? It's hard to know, because you're right in the very beginning you started a wonderful company. But perhaps you can speculate a bit with us about what's next. Emily: Well, I think what's next is definitely something related to Foodzie. We'll be doing this for a good while. And I think our big vision is to help small food producers across this country succeed and stay in business. And we've really only scratched the surface in doing that. So we really want to just become partners with these producers and help them build their business. I know that's sort of a vague answer, but we want to have a big impact. We want to be a part of a movement that changes the way people eat in this country. And we think we can be, and I think technology has a lot to do with that. That and connecting people, giving these people the tools they need and getting people become aware of what they're doing. So yeah, I think that's it. Lucy: That's awesome. Larry: Yeah. Emily that's not vague, that's wonderful. Lucy: It's an awesome mission, I just wanted to personally know how small a producer because I'm kind of a gardener. [laughter] Lucy. I have way too much food. I give it to all my neighbors. Larry: So your website is Foodzie.com. Emily: Yeah, Foodzie.com. Larry: Wonderful. Lucy: And everybody needs to go visit and eat. Emily: Check out the chocolate section and I'm sure you'll find something that'll get you to start salivating. It's a pretty dangerous category. Lucy: Well, thank you very much, Emily, for talking with us and I just want to remind listeners where they can find these podcasts. They can find it at our website, NCWIT.org and w3w3.com. Larry: You bet. Lucy: Make sure that you pass this along to others. Emily, thank you very much. Lee: Thank you, Emily. Larry: Thank you. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Emily OlsonInterview Summary: Like many entrepreneurs, Emily Olson saw a niche, got an idea, and ran with it. Foodzie uses technology to share great food from smaller producers with a larger audience. Release Date: June 29, 2009Interview Subject: Emily OlsonInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 17:56

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Elisa Camahort Page Co-founder, BlogHer Date: June 1, 2009 Elisa Camahort Page: BlogHer [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders, from the National Center for Women and Information Technology or NCWIT. This is one of a continuing series of interviews we are doing with women who have started IT companies. We've had a great, great interview series with some very influential, distinguished and successful women, and were very happy to get all of you bloggers listening to this are going to be very happy with the interview we're doing today. It's with Elisa Camahort Page. With me is Larry Nelson, from W3W3.com. Hi, Larry! Larry Nelson: Hi! Well, it's a pleasure to be here, and especially Elisa, I just want you to know, I have four daughters. So, we're really interested in this interview. Elisa Camahort Page: Oh! Excellent, Larry. Lucy: Are they bloggers? Larry: Yeah, you betcha! Lucy: Are you a blogger? Larry: Yes. Lucy: A beginning blogger. He's turning red, everybody. Larry: Well, for three years, and I'm still bad at it. Lucy: [laughs] Well, we're very happy to have you here, Elisa. Elisa is the co-founder and CEO of BlogHer. I did a little research on how BlogHer started, and I believe it's a fairly young company, like 2005. You had your first conference in Santa Clara. Is that right? Elisa: Yeah. We had our first conference in July of 2005. So, we're having our fifth annual event this July in Chicago. Lucy: Wow! That's a pretty fast growth on your part. I know that BlogHer is really turning into the leading community and media network for women who blog. You reach over 14 million women each month, either through your conference, or the web, or through a new publishing network that you have. Why don't you say a bit about that publishing network? Elisa: Oh, absolutely. That's right, we did get started with the conference in 2005. After that conference, we really got three primary people to feedback. The first was, "Oh, more conferences please, " because there is something about that in real life connection that happens. The second was about, "How can we sort of find each other everyday?" And hence we launched BlogHer.com in January of 2006, which is really the hub of our entire network. But then, we also had a segment of our community was saying, "Isn't there a better business model? We've been trying some sites, either AdSense and other networks and other kinds of advertising solutions, but we're really getting pennies for the traffic that we're building, for the communities that we're building." So, that's what really motivated us to start the blog for publishing network, which we did in the middle of 2006. We started with just a small, little group of about 35 mommy bloggers, just to test the concept. When that was successful, we expanded. Over the last almost three years now, we now have almost 2, 500 women of all kinds of blogging topics in our network. They reach over 14 million unique visitors a month. Lucy: That's quite a network. Larry: I'm impressed, yes. Lucy: Yeah. That's quite a network! What are the hot topics these days on some of those blogs? Elisa: Well, what's interesting to us is that one of our earliest decisions that we didn't want to sell only women's interest, either on BlogHer.com or on the network and say, "Oh! We only care about parenting," or "We only care about food, " or "Beauty" or on the other hand, but women who care about politics and means and technology, only care about those things. Actually, we're quite multifaceted creatures. We care about all of those topics on the same day. So, we have always on BlogHer.com featured the full range of subject matters that can be covered in the photosphere, and our network has everybody, from every stripe of the photosphere also in it. What's interesting is how certain things bleed through every vertical. So, for instance the economy. It doesn't matter if you're a food blogger, a parenting blogger, a technology blogger, a political blogger, you're probably talking about the economy right now. Last year, it didn't matter if you were a food blogger, or a parenting blogger, or a technology blogger or a political blogger, you were talking about the election. So, there are common themes that people care about across all different areas of focus. By featuring all of those diverse places, we really get to see that full picture of what people are saying about those topics. Lucy: Well, I went there yesterday to get my fill on "American Idol." [laughter] Elisa: Oh! That's my guilty pleasure. Lucy: Well, me too. I'm sure we could take up the whole tape talking about our favorite singers, but I like Adam Lambert. Elisa: Of course! Lucy: Of course! Elisa: He should win, that's clear. Lucy: He should win. Well, this is probably a good time to get into questions for the interview. Our first one centers around technology. Our listeners always like to hear from the people we interview about the technology they think is really cool, that's going to change the way we communicate, or the way we work, or the way we play. So, what technologies do you see that are out there? Elisa: Well, I originally don't come from a technology background. I have no engineering degree. I really came into it quite late, in the high tech back in '97, when it was very boom times for Silicon Valley. What I discovered is that I had actually an aptitude for understanding technology, and then translating it to different audiences, whether they were engineering audiences, or consumer audiences, or business audiences. So, today that's still a big part of what I do, which is explain why technologies are cool to people who may not already get it, like blogging, like Twittering, like my iPhone. What I see today, what humans are doing right now with technology is they are building ways to connect and converse. In your life, most of the people I know are finding it more and more difficult to keep in touch with people face-to-face, that our lives are so busy. We're so time impoverished, there's so many things that seem to conspire against us being able to do as much in real life as we used to. People used to think that technology was an isolating factor, and it was taking us away from people, but I think what we've done is used technology to connect with people online for a lot of our time, instead of in meet space. So, I think I would debate anyone who says that technology isolates us. We've seen amazing examples of how it brings us together, and how it creates communicates across boundaries that used to be pretty drawn in the sand, social economic boundaries, geographic boundaries. A lot of those boundaries get knocked down by this kind of totally distributed communications channel of the Internet. I see that we are developing more and more ways to keep in touch, to communicate with one another. People ask me why I like Twitter. To me, Twitter is poetic almost, the way you get these little snapshots of people's lives. The way you see who they are, beyond even the thoughts and sort of planning and structure that goes into a blog post. I use Twitter often just to mention the music I like, or something I saw that made me stop and think. It's so quick and easy to get a little thought out there that really reveals who I am in a way that a blog post would take too much time, and I might not ever get around to it for something that seems so small. Yet those little small things are what completely differentiate us, and make us each such unique individuals. It's actually applications like Twitter that enable us to show that unique individuality to the world. So, I think it's a beautiful thing. Lucy: Well, and I think that really shows to the listeners. That's one of the most eloquent, impassioned descriptions of social media that I have ever heard. [laughs] Larry: Yes, me too. Me too. Lucy: I think that was just beautiful. Elisa: Oh, thank you. You know I do a presentation that blogging is about love. Lucy: Oh, that's nice. Elisa: It's about, we find, we love what we can do with this technology and we find all forms of love out there in our communities. Most people do it for love and passion. Even people who make money on it. At the core it's because they're writing about something they love. Lucy: I really love that. Larry: Yes, yes I did too. Lucy: I think that's great. You mentioned that you came into technology a little late, transitioned into it and you found that you loved explaining technology to people. Why are you an entrepreneur? We know I think why you love technology and you like to explain it to people based on your last answer but why are you an entrepreneur? What is it about that that makes you tick? Elisa: Well, to be honest I'm an entrepreneur because of serendipity and then passion. I wasn't planning. My plan, one of my earliest role models was my mother who went back to work in the 70's when I was in junior high. She was very much corporate oriented and climbed up the ladder, went from some part time person at a company to being their first female vice president. I really found myself following in that path. I planned to climb the corporate ladder but then I luckily got the opportunity to try working on my own. What I discovered was that I loved not having anyone in "management" to blame for the bad decisions. At least now if there's a bad decision, I was part of it and I can be part of fixing it. I really loved that accountability all the way to the top of the chain. I also say that wherever you work, you're going to bang your head against the wall about some things. When you're an entrepreneur, you get to bang all the different sides of your head. It's not the same thing over and over and over. It's constantly refreshing. There are constantly new things to challenge you and new things really to bring you joy in what you accomplish. There's just this sense of control, and accountability and ownership that after you've done that climb up the corporate ladder for a while and you realize how much is happening above you that you don't have that control, or really the accountability, or the ownership. It's pretty fulfilling to put yourself in that position. Larry: Well, Elisa you mentioned that your mother had an influence upon you. Along the way are there other people maybe who either been role models for you or maybe even mentored you? Elisa: Absolutely. I had a couple of early, great mentors when I decided to go into high tech. I had been in a completely different industry doing marketing but many other things in small companies. I really started at the bottom in tech, in the marketing department. I was just a junior level person. My boss, who was the vice president of the marketing department, he really, he also liked what I had to say. He liked how I thought. He included me in a lot high level calls and meetings just to observe really. Just to be a part of it and see what went on. Afterwards he wanted to ask me my take as someone with an objective view. He really gave me the opportunity from a business point of view to learn a lot quickly. Then at the same time, there was director of product management in that same department who was my technical mentor. He didn't dismiss me because I didn't have an engineering degree. He really taught me our company's technology. He wanted me to write about it. He just thought, maybe she'll write better if she actually understands it. He didn't assume, as a lot of people sometimes do with marketing people, that oh they're not going to really get it. I'm just going to get them bullet points and they'll put in the flowery language but I'll have to do all the really techy stuff. Lucy: [laughs] Elisa: He wasn't like that at all. He was like, if I spend a little bit of time, I think this person can pick it up. He was the one who really started giving more and more technical things to do and really showed me that I had an aptitude for that. From there, I had to take that and do something with it. I had to go and put myself out there for more technical jobs even though I didn't have that educational background. I'm the one who said, "I'm going to go for product manager job anyway. I'm going to go to lead this product management team anyway because I understand this stuff and I have all these other skills". It was those two mentors who very early on, really gave me the chance to learn and we're open to letting me learn. They were both men and this is a very male dominated company. I give both a lot of credit for that. Lucy: Well, and your story speaks to the important role of encouragement. To those of us who are in the business of encouraging more young women to pursue computing and technical fields. Encouragement is a huge thing. Elisa: Yes. Lucy: Just huge. On the flip side of encouragement, [laughs] and positive role models... Larry: Yes. Lucy: There also comes a time in entrepreneurial careers when something, you have to do something really hard, really tough. Why don't you tell our listeners what's the toughest thing you've ever had to do. Elisa: There are two things that I think are tough. One is tough because of what it does to somebody else and one is tough because of what you're doing to yourself. The first is that it's tough to let someone go whether it's for cause or whether it's a layoff and not for cause. It is hard to sit in a room and tell someone you are putting an end to their livelihood. It's a huge responsibility. I don't want to be someone who gets cavalier about that. I have found that over the kind of conversations afterwards, I go in the ladies room and put a little cold water on my face because it's a tremendous responsibility and it's tremendously difficult. That's not to say I would never be one of those people who said, "Oh it's harder for me. It's as hard on me as it is for you". That's bullshit because they're the one losing their job so I'm not going there but it is hard. You feel bad about it, whatever the reason. The other thing is it's tough but usually worthwhile to be the contrarian if it's something you really believe in. On a couple of occasion I have felt like I had to speak up and disagree. Sometimes this is in a room when I was the only woman, when I was the only without an engineering degree, when I was the only one; in some cases where I was the only one who wasn't already a vice president or C level person. I thought I was standing up for the customer instead of just trying to ignore that fact and move forward with blinders on. I think those early experiences really matter a lot now because Blogger is such a community focused company and we still have to think about the customer. The community member and what they think and feel first and foremost. That is what's still serves me and my company today is having that perspective. You can have that perspective even if you're at a B to B company, even if you're way back on the chain from the end consumer. Your customer is still really first and foremost I think. Larry: Wow, I'll say. You know that's a great lead in to my next question and that is on w3w3.com we've been getting overwhelmed almost by the amount of requests and listening to anything that has to do with entrepreneurship. Of course in these tough economic times, there seems to be quite a few people either out of work or whatever that are looking to become entrepreneurs. If you were sitting down right now with a young person who wanted to start their business, become an entrepreneur what advice would you give them? Elisa: Well the first piece of advice I would give anyone is take the risk. Many people never take the risk because of fear. That they allow that fear to be nameless and undefined. What I actually say is, "Think about it right now. What's the actual worst thing that could happen if this fails"? Most of us have safety nets and options that we don't fully credit ourselves with having. So in my case, I certainly had... I was living with someone who helped share expenses. I had savings. I had a home-equity line of credit. I had a lot of resources to draw on. But let's just say, "What could have been the worst that could have happened if both my business and my relationship had failed miserably at the same time?" It would not have been awesome to move back in with my mother at the age of 40, but it wouldn't have been the end of the world, either. That was a safety net I had, right? And we manned this business until we got our first round of funding. I really was... I had spent all my savings. I had taken out money on my line of credit. I had some credit card debt that didn't exist before. I really worked it to the last dollar I was willing to work it, and then we got our funding, and so that made us able to continue. But even if that had all failed and had not come through, I think it would have been worth it, and the very worst-case scenario for me wasn't as bad, once I thought it through, as my imagination was making it when I didn't really look into the details. So, I always tell people to ask themselves, "Now, honestly, really, what's the worst thing that could happen if you try this and it fails?" Lucy: That's great advice. Larry: That certainly is. Elisa: And I think most people think it through, and they imagine ending up on the streets, and I think there are some people who have different circumstances, where maybe their risk is higher, but a lot times people who don't really have... they're in their twenties. They don't really have a huge amount o'clock risk, and they have a lifetime to recover if it doesn't go well. So, go for it. You might as well act as though you're going to live until forever, and have all the time in the world to rebuild if you're in your 20s, for god's sake. Lucy: Absolutely. And I think some people worry what others are going to think about them if they fail, and that is just an ego thing. Larry: Yes, I'll say it is. Elisa: And I think that actually people are way more impressed with entrepreneurs than they even have to be, and I'm surprised how even in the early days, people were just like, "Wow. You're doing your own thing, and you're doing this, and you're doing that. Wow." I think actually people will be way more, if they care about you, you know... I think people are way more impressed that you tried something, even if it ends up failing, than if you don't. Lucy: That's the truth. So, along the lines of this question, listeners are always interested in knowing about personal attributes, or personal characteristics that you believe make you a great entrepreneur. Elisa: I have this rather checkered past career-wise. I think this is probably my fourth career. The advantage of that as opposed to someone who goes to school for something, gets a job, and then stays in that career, I don't feel like my identity is actually... who I am is not what I do. I developed this confidence that I could jump to a new career and pick it up, and do what I needed to do, and do pretty well. And it's not because I was some great student. I was actually an underachiever. But that also... even back then, I never equated my identity with the grades I got, or the salary I made, or the job title I had. So, I think that bred in me this confidence of being willing to take that risk, being willing to ask questions even if they made me look stupid, but usually, you know what? They didn't make me look really stupid. They made me look really smart. So, I think all of that goes into this... you need some chutzspah, I think, to be an entrepreneur. You need to believe in yourself. You need to believe in your judgment, and you need to not get tied up in what other people think, because you're going to get a lot of "no's" to get to your "yes, " and that's especially true if you start going for funding. Not everyone is going to want to put money into your great idea, not because they think it's a good or bad idea, but because it's just not going to fit their portfolio. So, you have to have something separate from what other people identify you as, and what other people think, that makes you believe in yourself and what you're doing. Larry: You know, you mentioned, "Who I am is not what I do." With the busy, busy, schedule, and everything that you're doing, how do you bring balance into your personal and professional lives? Elisa: Well, OK, let's be honest. I've co-founded a start-up in Silicon Valley, and we are still working to hit milestones and goals that will really propel us to a state of permanent success, not just quarter-by-quarter success. I don't think balance is a realistic part of the equation right now. I think I would be lying if I said, "I balance my personal and professional lives." I work all the time. You know, it's not like I never... my birthday was last week, so I went to the city for the weekend with my husband, and you know, we had a great time, and I really didn't get on the computer that much. So, I'm not saying I never get to do anything personal, but I really make no concerted effort to have balance, and maybe that's not [laughs]... Larry: [laughs] Elisa: Maybe a lot of people won't think that's the most encouraging answer, but this is Silicon Valley. I think that's the way it is. Lucy: And well, we find to... we ask this question of all the people we interview, and there's a wide variety of answers, but many are saying that they are completely unbalanced. In fact, I was laughing to myself when you said it was your birthday, and you took the day off. Elisa: [laughs] Lucy: I tried really hard. I tried really hard. My birthday was April 4th, and I was going to take the day off. I'm the CEO of a non-profit, right? Of course, I worked the whole day. Larry: Yes, of course. Elisa: And it is different. I though I was working really hard when I was running a team at a company, and I did work really, really hard, but it's nothing compared to when it's your own, and you could basically, work all the time. And for a lot of us who are entrepreneurs, you're doing this because you hope it's going to pay off in a way that will buy you some kind of freedom and flexibility later. But a lot of entrepreneurs I know, they go on to the next...they want to do the next thing. So, there's a certain, I think, consistency of no one who probably starts a company and is putting themselves through this is... no one is probably someone who otherwise would be sitting on a lounge chair eating bon bons. I mean, they're all pretty motivated people. [laughs] Lucy: Yes, that's true. Well, Elisa, you've really achieved a lot, and we appreciate you talking to us, but we'd also like to know, maybe as the last question, what do you see in the future? What's next for you? Elisa: Well, that's funny question, because as far as I'm concerned, there are just miles to go before I sleep with BlogHer being all consuming, and we have all this opportunity for growth and expansion, and we're figuring out the best way to take advantage of those opportunities. And I think that... and my two partners Lisa Stone, and Jory des Jardin... I think we're all pretty much the same way right now, which is that, we're not thinking too hard what's beyond, because we need to make this really happen, and it may take a year, or two years, three years, four years. And also, might I also say, that we all agree that we now made for ourselves the best jobs we have ever had. So, it's not like we wouldn't want to keep doing this forever. We get to do something we're really passionate about. We're a very mission-based organization, and we get to work with a lot of other really smart people, so I really... what's next for me is to make all the promise really come to fruition. If I can do that, then I'll think about what might happen after that. But we're not there yet. We have miles to go. Lucy: Well, and you are in a great job. It's at a crossroads of lots of interesting topics, so you certainly have made quite a great job for yourself. Elisa: Yes, we love it. Lucy: It's wonderful. Well, thank you very much for spending time with us. Elisa: Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure. Lucy: And thank you, Larry. People can find the podcasts W3W3.com., and also ncwit.org. Larry: You betcha. We'll follow up with you, too. Lucy: All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Hope you to meet at May 11. Elisa: You absolutely will. Lucy: All right. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Elisa Camahort PageInterview Summary: "Women are quite multi-faceted creatures", says Elisa Camahort Page -- women are interested in technology, the economy, parenthood, politics, and much, much more. That's why the BlogHer network comprises 2,500 women writing about a broad range of "verticals", attracting more than 14 million unique visitors per month. Release Date: June 1, 2009Interview Subject: Elisa CamahortInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 23:52

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 Carol Realini CEO and Founder, Obopay Date: April 7, 2009 Carol Realini: Obopay [intro] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO for the National Center for Women and Information Technology, or NCWIT, and this is one in a series of interviews with fantastic entrepreneurs, women who have started IT companies. With me is Larry Nelson, w3w3.com. Larry, how are you? Larry Nelson: Absolutely magnificent, kind of jittery a little bit. We just launched our Internet TV show, so things are going good. Lucy: And the name of the Internet TV show is... Larry: "Colorado Rising." Lucy: So everybody, be careful, he's after you for not just audio interviews now but live TV as well. Larry: You bet. Lucy: With us today we have Carol Realini. She's the founder and CEO of Obopay, and before that a very distinguished career in a number of high tech companies including Cordiant. Obopay is the first truly comprehensive mobile payment service in the United States, and it's really cool. You go on the website and you can basically send money to your kids. If you're kids, you can get money. I'm trying to figure out how to get my parents to do this for me even now. Larry: Yeah, I've got five kids. I appreciate that. Lucy: [laughs] And we're really happy to talk to Carol. Welcome, Carol. Carol Realini: Thank you. Happy to talk to you guys. Lucy: Oh, great. Why don't you tell us a bit about Obopay. It's a great company and it has a wonderful value proposition. Carol: Absolutely. First, I just want to say I assume you are all in Colorado today. And I'm a longtime San Francisco-born Californian, born and raised here. But I spent five years living outside of California and that was living in Colorado, and I love Colorado. Lucy: Well any time you want to come visit us. [laughter] Larry: That's a deal. Carol: Absolutely. Lucy: That's a deal. Carol: I love Colorado. So let me just give you a little background on myself, and then I'll talk about the founding of Obopay and what we do and a little bit about the company. I am a four-time entrepreneur, so this is my fourth company from the ground up. Lucy: Wow. Carol: First one, I wasn't the founder but I was a very early employee at Legato, which became a very large storage management software company which was bought by EMC. That company went public and then was bought. The next company, I was the founder of a consulting company that focused in the early '90s on helping people migrate to distributed computing. And this was when big companies around the world were trying to figure out how to leverage the client server and PC technology that was emerging. And then the next company was Cordiant Software, and I founded that and raised the venture capital for that company and was the CEO until just before the company went public. And it went public in 2000 and is still a public company. And then I retired from that and thought I wasn't ever going to work again. I'd had a fantastic career in technology, really started in the mid-'70s when it was really about mainframe. And I retired thinking I would never work again, and actually moved to Colorado and ended up getting involved in some nonprofits which were focused on fostering entrepreneurship in developing countries around the world. As a result of that, I was traveling in places I would have never normally traveled, places in rural Africa, rural Latin America, and was quite taken in 2002 with the number of mobile phones that I would see in very far away places where there was no electricity, no clean water. You would find that there was a growing number of people that had mobile phones. And this is the year 2002 when there was about a billion phones on the planet. And since my last three companies had really focused on financial service software primarily, and I had spent a lot of my time in the financial services industry building software from the biggest financial service companies in the world, I ended up starting to think about, well if there are mobile phones in all these places, maybe we could use those mobile phones to start delivering financial services to everybody with a mobile phone. It was a real simple idea, but it was exciting for me to think about the possibility that someday most people would have mobile phones, and those mobile phones could then bring convenience and access to banking like we've never seen before. So that idea got under my skin and by 2004, late 2004, early 2005, I funded some research where we went around the world and looked at some of the very early implementations of mobile payments and mobile banking. And once the research report was done, the way I think about it and this is the way it happened, when I started the research report, my career was behind me. When I finished the research report, my career was in front of me. Lucy: That's great. Larry: Yeah. Carol: Yeah. And I decided I just had to come back to work and use all my experience as an entrepreneur and technologist to build a company to deliver mobile payments and mobile banking to every mobile phone. So that was 2005, and I've worked almost every day since I made that decision. And I'm sitting in my office in Redwood City where I spend a lot of my time now. And the company is about 150 people now. And we are operating the service in the US and India, and we're in the planning stages to rolling it out in Africa and in Europe. And we get a call almost everyday from different parts of the world saying when can Obopay think about coming to this country or that country. Lucy: How did you choose the name for the company, Carol? Carol: The big idea is everybody with a mobile phone will get access to payment services and banking services through their mobile phone. And if you think about that, it's such a big idea because if you look at traditional banking, it serves let's say a billion and a half people on the planet, whereas already there are over four billion mobile phones. And so you can imagine that the people that have bank accounts and have mobile phones can benefit from it. But there are also a lot of people that don't get access to banking that will now have it because they have a mobile phone and there's a ways for these services to be offered to those people. In addition, people are still using a lot of cash, right, and sometimes checks. And my belief is that mobile payments and mobile banking will eliminate cash from use. And it's such a big idea if you think about it. About $7 trillion of transactions a year are done in cash still today. And I believe that in the future we won't be using cash, we'll be doing electronic transactions between mobile phones. For that reason, when we looked to name the company we said, wow do we relate to this big idea that someday this will replace cash? And we found that obol, O-B-O-L, is a greek coin that has been obsolete maybe a thousand years. And so we took an obsolete coin as a concept that we put in our company name. Lucy: That's fascinating, and the story of the company is interesting as well. And I would love to follow up with you because I think that the people here at the Atlas Institute at the University of Colorado - Boulder, they're starting an ITC4D program here. So they would probably be interested in having you speak. So that's really interesting. And you've been a technologist for a long time and our first question centers around that. How did you first get into technology? And as a technologist, what are the technologies you see as being especially interesting today? Carol: I first got into technology in the mid-'70s. I was a mathematician and I was teaching math at a local university, and found the computer science department and decided in my spare time to get a computer science advanced degree. It was a natural transition for me. I was doing math because I was good at it and I loved it but it wasn't my passion. But once I got involved in computers I got very passionate about computers and specifically software. So that's how I got into technology. And you know in the mid-'70s, Silicon Valley was a very small community, so a lot of my professors worked at IBM or Hewlett Packard. Once I started taking classes from these folks it was just very easy to understand what was going on in the industry and I very quickly opted in. And matter of fact, I ended up leaving my teaching position and starting work six months before I finished my degree. Larry: Oh, good. Well you've had a chance to work for others and the nonprofit experience you had, why are you an entrepreneur and what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Carol: I started my career as a typical software engineer and ended up starting to get into management. And I was quite successful in management positions. Something happened to me about six years into my career. I thought when I was working for this big company that my aspiration was to be an executive at a company like that, but I got involved in a project almost by accident. It was an entrepreneurial project within a big company, and it changed me. The company I worked for, which was a hardware company - it's called Amdol - decided they wanted to do a commercial product based on UNIX. Because UNIX was just an internal AT&T Bell Labs technology, and I negotiated the first commercial license for UNIX. And we ended up building the operating system and then providing it as a high-end version of UNIX out into the marketplace. And this all happened very quickly, it was very entrepreneurial, they were a handful of people in a big company and we built a whole business around this new operating system that we built. It was amazing. People would tell us "You'll never get this done," that nobody would ever buy it. And so I got involved in that and I saw about 15 people. We moved a mountain just by saying we we're going to do this. And I had that experience and I said, wow, I really love doing this and I'm good at it. I got a taste of it from that and then, once the project got mature and was mainstreamed, I decided that I couldn't go back into the mainstream, I had to go be an entrepreneur. I left and then I went to work at a company that was just about to go public, which was a database company - I think of that as my transition job. And then I got a phone call about 18 months after that, where somebody asked me to do a company from the ground. So that's how I got into it. I think that I had it in my blood, in my desire. I'm not sure if I would have been an entrepreneur if I hadn't had the early experience of how powerful it is. Also, I managed my career even before I left this big company, I had experience in marketing and sales. When you're an entrepreneur, you have to wear a lot of hats. You especially have to wear a sales hat. You have to go out and get the initial customers, you have to go out and get the initial founders or employees to work with you, you have to get the original investors. That is a sales job. And so somehow I've been able to over the years be quite successful at evangelizing new ideas and bringing on employees and customers and venture capital. And that's been something that I'm just good at and I love to do. Lucy: Well you know those are all UNIX projects. I'm from Bell Labs and we were probably one of your Amdol customers. [laughs] Those were fun times for sure, and it does sound like you have entrepreneurship in your blood. In terms of who influenced you, can you look back - you had an experience that influenced you at Amdol, and another experience at the database company - were there particular people or mentors along the way that influenced you? Carol: Yeah, I think there were. I was aware of what some other people were doing, so I think I was inspired by some of these early entrepreneurs. Famous ones, like Bill Gates and Judy Estrin. Or fhe less famous ones, just people I knew in Silicon Valley - I was inspired by those people. So I think, one thing that happened to me when I ended up becoming an entrepreneur -- if you had met me before I took my first CEO job, you would have said "Well, this woman..." Lone Ranger, I used to call myself. I would take on projects and I would do them, and I would have people working for me, but I didn't need any help. That was my attitude. When I started my first company that was venture-backed, for some reason I decided that I needed to change my style. I said, you know, I need help, because I've never done this before. And raising venture capital seems really hard, building a company from the ground up. I've kind of been involved in it in kind of different ways, but this seemed a really big task. So I decided to change my style and ask for help. I'd been around for a long time so I knew a lot of people, but I had actually never asked anyone for help, never in my entire career. And so when I wrote my first business plan for Cordiant, which is where I first raised venture capital, I sent the business plan to 50 people I knew, who had either raised venture capital or would know how to do it. And what was so interesting about that is that I've never asked for help before, and people were so honored that I had reached out to them for help, I got this wave of help from all these really great CEOs or venture capitalists. And that was the reason I'm here today. It was actually because I figured out that it wasn't just about me doing something. Being an entrepreneur and having a big idea, you need a lot of help. So when I reached out to these people, a lot of those folks became mentors to me and became advisers to me. And I remember, when I was raising my first round of funding, I said, look, if I'm successful at this -- and I thought this is the hardest thing I've ever done, If I'm successful, I'm going to help other people do this. You know, over the years, I've turned around and done the same thing for other folks and helped other people who were trying to raise venture capital or start companies. And something I really like to do is give back, because it was so important to me to have those experienced people help me. Larry: Wow. Carol, you know you have a number of happy, successful stories, but I'd like to ask another kind of question. If you were to pick the one, single time - I'm sure you had challenges along the way - but one, single toughest decision that you had to make in your career. Carol: Business decisions? Larry: Yeah, business-related. Carol: I'll tell you, there's a lot of tough decisions you make every day. I mean, when you're an entrepreneur, it's important to figure out what you can't do, or what you shouldn't do right now. I think one thing is, at big companies you might have the luxury to do most of the things you think are the right things to do. But in a small company, an emerging company, a new company, you have to choose every day what is it I have to do now, and what is it I can afford to do right now? And you have to make that decision every day, and people come to you and they lobby, or customers come to you. And you just have to be good at prioritizing and saying no. And that is a tough decision, but I can't point out one time I said no. It's just that every day, you have to learn to say no. Larry: OK. Carol: Hire this person, go after this opportunity. So that's sort of the tougher part, the tough decisions I make. Probably some of the more challenging business decisions were really around timing of expansion. Larry: Ah. Carol: So if you think about it, Cordiant wouldn't be where it is today if it hadn't made a decision to, very early on in the company's evolution, to expand into Europe. So they made a decision while they were in the US market for six months, they decided to go to Europe. And that was a tough decision to make because it was an expensive decision. But it turned out to be a very good decision. Hard to execute on, but a really important strategic move. Obopay has made that same decision. From the beginning, we decided that, to accomplish what we wanted to accomplish, which is deliver financial services to every mobile phone, we had to be willing to build a service that could work in places like the US, as well as India. And the only way to really know that is to build it from the beginning with that in mind, and then go to those markets and prove that it worked in both markets. That was a very tough decision to make because it's a very expensive decision, and it requires the ability to execute on two different markets. Lucy: You've given us a lot of pointers that would be helpful to people who are considering being entrepreneurs. For example, you said it became important to you to ask for help. I think you said, "Get to like sales," you know, and, "Learn how to prioritize and learn to say no." And I think the story about expansion into Europe is an indicator as well of taking educated risks and getting out there and really growing the company. What other advice would you give a young person who's considering being an entrepreneur? Carol: I think you can't learn to be an entrepreneur in a classroom. So I think you have to be willing to take jobs that help you build skills and experience so that you're able to be an entrepreneur and be good at it. You know, some people come out of school, like I was reading about the founder of Facebook, I mean, phenomenal story. He's 24 years old and he founded Facebook. I mean, that's incredible, but a lot of entrepreneurs don't get there that way. They end up having jobs that give them good skills and experience that prepare them to be an entrepreneur. So unless you're like the Facebook founder, I suggest you think about, "OK. What's the next job I could take in the company I'm at or in a different company that will help me get skills and experience I need to be an entrepreneur." So for example, let's say you're not good at strategic stuff, which is like what you need to be good at to raise venture capital, what you need to be good at to go out and get your first set of business partners in your business. If that's true and you're not good at it, you should get a job in an opportunity where you figure out how to be good at that, where you're tested, where you're trained, where you have to do it, because that's going to help you build the competency that you need and better prepare you to be an entrepreneur. I want to say one other thing about that. I knew in my heart I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and I remember one time I tried to get a sales job at a company. I won't mention which company, but I tried to get a job being a sales person, because I kind of knew I needed to be better at this. And I remember the person I went to who liked me a lot, said, "Oh, well, you're a girl. Nobody's going to buy a million dollar product from you." [laughter] Lucy: I'm sorry. Larry: Yeah. Carol: But, you know, at the time that was their point of view. But I remember thinking, "You know what, that is not going to stop me. That's this person." Lucy: Absolutely. Carol: And, you know, it may have been conventional wisdom that a girl couldn't do this job, but it didn't faze me at all, and I said, "Oh, OK. That's your opinion. I better go find my sales opportunity someplace else." And I think you have to have that in your DNA to be an entrepreneur. You have to be the kind of person that has the kind of vision and direction and drive that when some obstacle gets in front of you, it's not that it's not real, but you figure out how to manage beyond that obstacle. Lucy: Absolutely, being relentless. Larry: Relentless. Lucy: We've heard that a lot, relentless, persistent. Carol: Yeah. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Yeah, resourceful. Carol: The other thing I was going to say about building the expertise to be an entrepreneur, I have two other things to say about that. You can never be everything. You can't be all things to all people. There's some things that maybe the perfect entrepreneur would do that I'm not good at. So you also need to understand where your limitations are and surround yourself with a team that collectively has the skills to pull off the business. So you're not going to ever be all things to all people. There are some things you have to be able to do, like raise venture capital, but there are some other things your team may be able to do for you, and you don't have to do it yourself. The other thing that I would say, and one thing I like to say to the people who want to be entrepreneurs and go out and raise money, especially raising money. I said, "If you think about being entrepreneurs, don't think about success being raising money." Because let's imagine you're going to be successful raising money. Success is when you get the money and you've got the company, that you're successful with the company. You have to think less about sort of the, "Oh, I can get a VC to fund me," and more, "I can get the capital I need to build the company I need to build, " and it's a different mindset. And you have to have the mindset of, I not only have to be able to raise the venture capital, I have to be the kind of leader that once I have it I can build the company. So you kind of raise the bar for yourself and what you think you have to be able to do to build the company. You have to raise capital, and you have to make that capital turn it into a successful business. Larry: Carol, with all the things that you're doing and you're at the office right now, how do you bring balance to your life, both personally and professionally? Carol: I don't think I have a balanced life. [laughter] Lucy: Yeah, we're heard that before too. Yeah. Carol: But I don't know, you know, I think about that I have three children, and I love them and they're all successful. They're grown. They're in their twenties. I love them. I don't see them as much as I want to, don't spend as much time with them as I would like. I have a husband who I've been married to for almost 30 years. I love the outdoors. I'm very athletic. But the fact is when I'm doing this I would say that I don't have the kind of balance that would be the perfect balance, and I just accept that. That's the job. The job is to have a little bit of struggle with balance, because the job is going to be really, really demanding, and I've accepted that. I had five years off, six years off where I was able to spend as much time as I wanted with my kids and my husband. And I biked and hiked and skied 60 days a year. That was fabulous too, but, you know, there's nothing like building a company from the ground up. Lucy: And that's the case, and we've heard that from some of our other interviewees as well, that it's more of an integrative thing. You know, that you have all these interests and you integrate them, but it's not like every day is balanced. Larry: Right. Lucy: That's really interesting. So, Carol, you've done so much. You're a global visionary. You give back. I wanted to mention to listeners as well that Carol was on the board at the Anita Borg Institute, which is one of the co-founding organizations of NCWIT, really focused on women and innovation and computing. And you mentioned earlier that it's important for you to give back. So across the board you've done some pretty phenomenal things. What's next for you? Carol: No, I am very passionate about entrepreneurship, so wherever possible I support entrepreneurs, either through my own time or through donating to organizations that support entrepreneurs. I'm passionate about education. There are places in the world where children don't get access to free education, places like Uganda or a lot of places I go in the world. And so my husband and I both donate a lot to programs that get the kids that are left out of the education system access to education. So we do that and that's something we do on an ongoing basis. You know, I'm kind of doing Obopay full-time. It's interesting. I was on boards when I started Obopay, and I got off all of them. And I did that because I just felt like for an early stage company I didn't have the luxury of having time to be a good board member for them, but I think for the next couple years, I'm pretty much full-time doing this. But I don't have a lot of bandwidth to do other things right now. When this period is over for me, I don't know what's next for me and I'm not worried about it, because I love so many things. I have so many hobbies, so many interests, I'm not worried about what comes next. I'm not a worrier anyway. I'm just dedicated to doing this now, and I know when I'm doing this that they'll be something else great for me to do. Larry: Well, I couldn't agree more, yeah. Carol: Oh, that's another word for entrepreneurship, fearless. Larry: There we go. Carol: There you go. Larry: Well, Carol, I want to thank you for joining us today. Carol: Oh, you're welcome. Larry: And we'll put your link up in the website. That's Obopay.com, but we'll put it up on NCWIT's website. That's ncwit.org, and also at w3w3.com. And by the way, I want to say this to the listeners. Pass this interview along to others that you know would learn from it and would enjoy an interview on this kind of a topic. Thank you much, Carol. Lucy: Thanks, Carol. Carol: Thanks, bye. Lucy: All right. Thanks everybody. [music] Transcription by CastingWords Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Carol RealiniInterview Summary: Carol Realini is an imaginative pioneer whose foresight and business acumen have changed the landscape of technology, and whose global vision is providing hope and a future for people in developing countries. Release Date: April 7, 2009Interview Subject: Carol RealiniInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 24:49

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 Selina Tobaccowala Senior VP of Product and Technology, Ticketmaster Europe Date: July 30, 2007 Lee Kennedy: Hi, this is Lee Kennedy and I am on the Board of Directors for the National Center of Women and Information Technology or NCWIT and this is part of a series of interviews that we are having with fabulous entrepreneurs. Women who have started IT companies in a variety of sectors all of whom have just fabulous stories to tell us about being entrepreneurs. With me is Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi Larry, How are you.? Larry Nelson: I'm fantastic, and I'm real excited. Again this is another wonderful interview you guys have lined up. That's super. And W3W3.com we're a web‑based Internet radio show. We podcast and blog and everything else, and this is right up our alley. Lee: Great, and just to get right with it we are interviewing Selina Tobaccowala. Selina has a really interesting background. Selina was a Stanford grad and right out of school started Evite, which I think everybody in the universe knows about, and if you've ever been invited to a party or an event. She is currently working at Ticketmaster. So Selina why don't you start and tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to be in technology and an entrepreneur. Selina Tobaccowala: Thank you Lee and Larry. From my standpoint from entrepreneur and how I got into technology, it's very much being surrounded by technology my whole life. My father was in computers as well and started doing the initial punch card programming in the 70s and eventually got into management and so forth. And then going on to Standford where you are surrounded by technology everywhere. I mean, I graduated in 1998 and in that time frame there was Yahoo, Excite, and Apple. Everything was around us and everything was started by Stanford entrepreneurs. So being in computer science at Standford there was just so much opportunity to go and do something in technology, which was very exciting. Lee: Great. Larry: I can't help but ask this. You've kind of led into it already. Just for a little clarity, you were one of the co founders of Evite. Selina: Yes. Larry: And that is how you ended up where you're at now. Because I kind of went and checked you out online. You've got a very interesting product that you're working on there at Ticketmaster. I can't wait to see where you're going to be going next. [laughter] Larry: How did you first, you mentioned your father. I can remember punch cards. I was doing some work at a University back in Wisconsin. I dropped the basket, oh boy. What was that transition in terms of what you think is really cool today going on in technology? Selina: In terms of technology today, some of the stuff I find cool possibly being in Ticketmaster and being surrounded by music is all the conversions in devices especially around music. So just looking at the iPod and what it's been able to do, and some of the products surrounding that from iTunes to iLike is something that actually Ticketmaster has invested in. And it's just a great convergence of taking new music, all the new web technologies as far as taking consumer data, and being able to help you discover new music. But it's all really from a standpoint; those are some of the things that I find really interesting in today's pace. And it is really tying together all the devices if you look at Google Maps tying into the GPS on your phone so you always know where you are, and driving those things together. I just feel like right now we're in another interesting time where the hardware has been able to catch up with what people can do from the software perspective. And being on the software side, obviously I find that very exciting. Lee: So it sounds like you really love being on the leading edge of technology and integrating all the latest and greatest devices. When you think about your role as an entrepreneur, what is it that makes you enjoy being an entrepreneur? What about being an entrepreneur really makes you tick? Selina: I think the key for me, based on my personality. I like to really dig in and solve problems and looking out there in terms of business opportunities and then using technology or consumer problems that people actually have and then using technology to take advantage of them. When you look at everything in my history, it's all about consumer products and making it easier, using the web to make your life easier in an off line way. So whether that's sending invitations so you don't have to try and coordinate thirty people via phone and email to actually organize an event, and actually make that event happen. Or having people very easily get to a live show and at a fair price. From my perspective it's really about taking technology to make the consumer life easier, and I like that. And there is so many opportunities as technologies get better, consumers always have problems. Larry: Yeah it is. Let me ask this. Kind of going back in history because we're trying to get a feel of what really makes an entrepreneur and how this all comes about, one of the things that we've noticed that you and others have mentioned is people that are mentors to you, roll models. Who would somebody like that be in your life? Selina: I think I already mentioned a little bit, but definitely my father. He and my mom came over to the U.S. probably with not that many resources or opportunities that I had. And my dad started doing basic computer technology and in the end was managing quite a bit at EAS and then jumped into a startup, then did two startups after that. And watching, he jumped into a start up actually a year before I did at Evite and watching that and saying, I think I can do that too, and then encouraging me to do so. And graduating from Standford and seeing people take jobs at general consulting firms and saying don't worry about it. Take a risk, now's the time. To me that was really important to have that around. And again, just through silicon valley there are so many different mentors around, and people encouraging you to just try and jump into businesses and take a risk, and that it's OK to fail. Which I think is one of the key things about being an entrepreneur is that you're going to try things that are not going to work, whether it's a product that you're going to put out there. We had four products before we launched Evite and we tried a product and it didn't work. We built a new product and it didn't work, and it's a matter of testing what consumers respond to, then putting something out on the market that actually works. And I think that the U.S. And Silicon Valley specifically completely encourages that. Lee: It's really cool that your dad was one of your key mentors in life. I have to say that some of the other women that we interviewed talk about how their father was either an entrepreneur or technical or an engineer and how that played a big influence in their life. Selina: I think that if you're surrounded by it. One of the things I think is great about the National Center for Women is if you're surrounded by it and get involved in it early, you really have the likelihood to see the value in technology and bring it out there whether for consumers or businesses. Lee: So thinking about everything you've done in the last ten years or more. Starting a new company from scratch and now doing amazing things where you're at. What do you think is the toughest thing that you've had to do in your career? Selina: One of the things as an entrepreneur is that you're not always going to succeed in the way you want to succeed. And that's part of taking the risk and that's part of the excitement but at the same time it's not going to work out. Evite we did a lot of things right and we sold our product and people still use it. But we did hit the downturn in the 2001 time frame, and we had to downsize. That's something as a leader is really hard, because you put your time, and investment, and people, and they give their time and ideas and thoughts back to you and to the organization. And that always is one of the toughest things is that you know, fundamentally, if your business doesn't succeed to the degree, sometimes you need to let go parts of the team, and that's always going to be the toughest thing in any business. Larry: Yes. I have to tell our listeners, off‑line, just before we started, I asked Selina, "How come I only got three Evites this week?" And I said, "Was it a slow week?" She said, "Well, either that, or you have to get more friends." [laughs] Selina: [laughs] Larry: So anyhow, Selina, if you were sitting in front, right now, of a young person who was contemplating whether or not they wanted to become an entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? Selina: I mean, from my standpoint, as cheesy as it sounds, definitely go for it. [laughs] Larry: [laughs] Selina: But definitely, after that, it's really what I was saying a little bit before, which is you need to take risks. From my standpoint, it's prototype something as quickly in the marketplace as you can, see what's working, see what's not working; especially when you look at new technologies and web technologies. You can track everything. You can test everything. So you can get stats, see results, and then tweak, tweak, tweak. So it's very easy to sort of weed out stuff that's not working, try new things, and get it working and build a sustainable product. So, in terms of, again, that's more based on web technologies. It's harder to do if you're talking about hardware or physical goods. But the principle; being of prototype, get it out, market test it, and then keep building; is still the right thing. Larry: Great advice. Lucy Sanders: Well, Selina, one of the questions that we're always eager to ask is, with all the amazing things you've done, when you think about yourself, what personal characteristics do you think have given you any advantages as an entrepreneur? Selina: I actually would ask somebody else. [laughs] But I would say that, from my perspective, one of the keys is, actually, I'm not a very patient person. And although that might not be seen as a general advantage, it is sort of an impatience with the status quo, with what's out there, and being able to be curious and question and say, "Why are things working this way? How are things working?" So we constantly try to think about how to make it better: "How can I improve on what's there?" Whether that's in a small way, from a product perspective or a feature perspective, to actually say, "Is there a full business opportunity here?" It is probably, for me, the largest thing, from a personal characteristic standpoint. But I don't think there's anything that different in terms of besides the willingness to be able to take a risk. Lucy: Mm‑hmm. Great. Larry: Well put. Well put. I must say, being a serial entrepreneur myself, I can relate to that. Here's kind of a tricky thing. You're a hard worker. You love what you do. And of course, that's the good side. Well, you're a hard worker, and you like to do what do you do. How do you bring about the personal and professional balance in your life? Selina: [laughs] Larry: [laughs] Selina: A bad question when I'm at work at 7:15 at night. [laughs] [laughter] Selina: No. I'd say there's a couple of things, which is, even doing Evite, and we've been working intense hours‑‑every Friday, at least, Friday evening and Saturday, spending time with friends and being able to say, "I'm going to take out X time, and no matter what else is going on, spend time with other people." Because it does actually reinvigorate you, give you new ideas. And then another thing, for me, is I absolutely love to travel. And so it's really saying that taking, even if it's just one week out every year, but it is taking that time and actually going and seeing someplace new, because, again, I feel like really taking some time out to just go do that. And it does bring on new ideas, you do relax to a different degree, and your mind sort of refreshes. And I think that that's very important. And I'd say the last thing is I love to read, and every night, before I go to bed. It's like it takes your mind to a different space and does give that relaxation that you need. Lucy: Gosh, I think that's the best advice I've heard yet from anybody on how they get balanced. Yeah. Larry: Yeah. I love it. Yeah. Lucy: Because being an entrepreneur requires so much creativity, because you're always faced with new challenges... Selina: Yeah. And the thing is, if you don't get away from the day‑to‑day ever‑‑I live in London now, and one of the things is, no matter what else, I walk to work every morning. And it takes me about 35, 40 minutes, but it's like I'm walking through a park, and it's like it lets you actually think through everything. Even if it's just an hour here or there, taking the time out to refresh yourself, because you end up actually thinking through things more clearly and being more productive. Larry: You brought up London, and I have to ask this. Here we are, sitting in Boulder, Colorado... Selina: [laughs] Larry: Sunny skies, 80 degrees, gorgeous outside... Lucy: You rubbing it in, Larry? Larry: Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. Selina: [laughs] Larry: And I know it's evening there now, but what was it like earlier today in London? Selina: Well, actually, today was absolutely beautiful. [laughs] Lucy: We caught you on a good day! Larry: Oh, wow. What a setup! What a setup! Selina: Yes, it was. The summer months are generally just beautiful here. And as I said, I walk through the park with wildflowers... Lucy: Oh. Selina: And I was in Germany for work yesterday, so it's very easy to see new places. [laughs] Lucy: Well, the last question we have for you is‑‑you've already achieved so much at such a young age. What's next for you? Selina: As Larry said, the whole serial entrepreneur. One of the things, Evite got bought by the parent company, IAC. And I've been doing, to a certain degree, startups within IAC‑‑started a group at Ticketmaster first, then went on and started an online organization for Entertainment.com, and now came to Ticketmaster and doing European products and technology. But I think the next thing for me is I will get back that itch to do a startup from scratch, [laughs] and coming up that idea and finding the next thing. And for me, I love what I'm doing now. We're doing great things in terms of new products and launching it through the different European marketplaces. But I'd say, after Ticketmaster, it's definitely jumping back into a small organization. Larry: Oh, we just have to ask this. With your experience, and now your worldwide travels and involvement and all, what do you see, technology‑wise, that's coming down the pike that's going to make a big, sweeping difference to all of us? Selina: Oh, wow. That's a tough one. [laughs] But again, I don't see any single technology. And I think that that's the way I think. I don't see that, all of a sudden, everything's going to migrate to mobile phones, or there's going to be any single device or any single technology that's going to sort of change everything completely. I mean, there's a few of those that come up occasionally, like, obviously, adding search to the web changed it dramatically. But I do see that what you have today is finally, as I was saying before, the ability to suddenly drive everything to the web, from, rightly, with software applications that used to could only sit on your computer. I think, all of a sudden, you can be connected from everywhere, and you can get to everything from everywhere. And I think that just changes the mindset in terms of continually and always being able to access your information and, to a certain degree now, other people being able to access your information. And it changes the whole how anonymous you can be within an everyday life, and everybody's more connected and the web connects people, and so I do feel that more and more technologies are taking advantage of that. But it will change how people interact. Lucy: Yeah. There's definitely some exciting things. Larry: Are we going to follow up on this, Selina, or not? We can tell you're going to have a super, super career, and we definitely will follow you. Selina: Well, thank you. Thank you for taking your time as well. Lucy: Well, Selina, thank you so much. It's been wonderful learning more about you today. Remember, these podcasts will be on www.ncwit.org, as well as www.w3w3.com. Larry: That's it. Selina: Great. Lucy: Thanks, and pass these on to a friend. Selina: Thank you so much. Larry: See you soon. Lucy: Bye‑bye. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Selina TobaccowalaInterview Summary: When Selina Tobaccowala co-founded a little web company called Evite as a junior at Stanford, she was one of just 18 women majoring in computer science. Release Date: July 30, 2007Interview Subject: Selina TobaccowalaInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Lee KennedyDuration: 16:05

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Eileen Gittins Founder, President, and CEO, Blurb, Inc. Date: July 10, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Eileen Gittins BIO: Throughout her career, Eileen Gittins has been at the intersection of the Internet, consumer and enterprise software, imaging systems, search, and digital photography. A passionate advocate for enabling technologies that offer new ways to do valuable things, Eileen is now democratizing publishing for the rest of us with her new company, as Founder and Exec Chairman of Blurb, a software and services company that passionately believes in the power of books: making, reading, sharing and selling them. Eileen is also the Co-Founder and CEO Bossygrl. Eileen has served as CEO of several pre-IPO venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, including Personify, an e-commerce data mining and analytics company; and Verb, a context-based search engine company. Each was acquired by Accrue and Attenza, respectively. At Qbiquity, a viral marketing platform company, Eileen served as Board Chairman and interim CEO, where she was instrumental in negotiating the merger of Qbiquity into Collabrys. As a CEO, she has raised over $40M in venture capital throughout her career. Most recently, Eileen served as interim executive management at Viant, a San Francisco-based investment-banking firm in the technology and media sectors. Eileen has also served in executive positions at Wall Data; Pivotal Corp, an Eastman Kodak spinout; and Kodak's Business Imaging Systems. Previously, Gittins was vice president and general manager at Salsa Products, a division of Wall Data, where she created a 100-person department and launched 17 product lines. She was also co-founder and vice president of marketing at Pivotal Corporation and held various sales, marketing and management positions with Eastman Kodak's Business Imaging Systems Division. Gittins completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in art (photography/digital imaging emphasis). She has also completed the Stanford Executive Management Program. Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and this is another interview in a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous women IT entrepreneurs, women who have started just the most amazing companies. With me is Larry Nelson and Pat Nelson from w3w3.com. And today, we're interviewing Eileen Gittins, the founder, president, and CEO of Blurb. Hi, Eileen. Welcome. Eileen Gittins: Thank you for having me. Lucy: And Larry, welcome. Why don't you say a few words about w3w3.com, since this podcast will be hosted on your site as well as the NCWIT site. Larry Nelson: Well, I'll tell you what, it's really a pleasure. Lucy, you and your team have lined up some magnificent IT entrepreneur heroes, I guess would be the right way to put it. It's our pleasure on w3w3.com because we are just an all‑business, primarily high‑tech business radio show, where we archive anything. So we'll have this up for a long time at w3w3.com. Thanks. Lucy: Well, Eileen, welcome. We're really happy to have you here and to get your thoughts on entrepreneurism. And before we start, I'd like to hear a little bit more about Blurb. It's a fascinating company, a print‑on‑demand book business. But it's ever so much more than that. Really, investigate your website, it seems like it's a community site. It's a site for people who like to create books and read books and share. So, why don't you just tell us a little bit about Blurb? It's a company that you've said was possibly your most fun company. Eileen: Well, I think you're doing a great job. You're right. Blurb is more about a community. So we are a creative publishing service that enables anyone to create a book, market that book, distribute that book, and perhaps even profit from that book via our service at blurb.com. So there are three components to the service. The first is free software. It's called Blurb BookSmart. It's purpose‑built to enable folks like us, who may not be book designers, to focus on our content. So it's a drag‑and‑drop kind of metaphor. There are hundreds and hundreds of page layouts and themes, backgrounds, borders, custom illustrations ‑‑ a whole grab bag of cool stuff that you can do to really make your book look professionally published. We've hired book designers ‑‑ not just graphic designers, but actual book designers out of the industry ‑‑ to help build out all of the page layouts and themes for this application. So then you can import your photos, your blog, your cookbook, your recipes, your story, your poetry, whatever your expertise is, into these page layouts. And when you're ready to rock and roll, you hit the preview button, you take a look at it, and if it looks great, you then upload the book file to blurb.com, and you get your book back in about seven to 10 business days. Larry: Wow. Eileen: You can order just one copy, or we're delighted if you'd like to place an order for tens or even hundreds. Prices start, for a seven by seven book in a soft‑cover edition, at $12.95, for a 40‑page color book. I will tell you that, for your listeners who may on occasion have to run down to Kinko's or your favorite color copy shop, you can barely print four or five pages for that price, let alone a 40‑page, beautifully produced book for that amount of money. We have four book sizes at the moment: so the 7X7, 8X10, 10X8 ‑‑ so that's landscape or portrait ‑‑ and then a big book, which is our 13X11‑inch book. And all of these are supported with templates and themes. Once you get your book back, then the very cool thing about Blurb is you automatically get a free bookstore. And you can keep that private, meaning only you can buy a copy of your book. Or you can share it with friends and family. You can send a link out, so it's still a private bookstore, but shared with people that you know. That's particularly useful if, say, you're doing a family book, maybe a baby book or a wedding book or something, and frankly, you like to not be in the post office business or the bank business, meaning you'd just as soon not have to collect money and ship books to everybody, and you'd much rather them be able to come and look at the book themselves and decide for themselves if they want to purchase a copy. And then, finally ‑‑ and this may be of great interest to your listeners because I think this is really turbo‑charging our business right now ‑‑ one of the challenges for people who are interested to make money on their books is, in the traditional book publishing and distribution process, there's a lot of people who need to get paid in that food chain. And so what Blurb has done is said, "You know what? If you make your book using Blurb, you can market it for free in the bookstore." You can put your blurb about the book up. You can have a free book preview. You can now bookmark it and send that out to a number of different locations, like del.icio.us and Digg it, and say, "This is a really cool book." You can have Blurb badges, which are little widgets that you can put on your blog or your website that promote your book, and when people click on them, it takes them automatically to your book in the bookstore. And then, here's the cool part: you can set your own price for the book, and you keep 100%, the uplift. Lucy: Wow. Eileen: Yeah. And then, finally ‑‑ very finally ‑‑ you mentioned community. You will be seeing from Blurb in the near future all kinds of very cool new community features to enable people to share ideas and share tips and tricks and to help each other, as well as a profile so that you can kind of get a feel for who are the people that you're talking to. All kinds of very cool new community features coming up from Blurb. Larry: Well, Lucy, I've got to get going because I'm going to go home and finish my book. Lucy: Larry is an author. This is definitely one of his favorite interviews. He just loves it. I mean, lots of really cool features. And the other thing I liked: you have some great vocabulary. I'm an observer of words. And so, Blurberati? Eileen: Yes. Lucy: Blurbarians. Eileen: Yes, the Blurbarians. Lucy: Blurbarians. Yeah. Eileen: Blurbarians, the Blurberati. And of course, we've made Slurpers, and Slurpers are tools that will enable an end‑user to get their content in there. So, for instance, if any of your listeners might have their photos on Flickr, we've built a Flickr Slurper. What's so cool about that is, as you may know, when you typically post photos on a photo community, they're down‑sampled for screen resolution ‑‑ usually 72 DPI, which is not so great for book printing. So what the Slurper does is we have written to a commercial API from Flickr, so we're able to grab the high‑res version for you automatically, bring that into your little workspace in the application, so that then, when you drag and drop those images into the book, they're the resolution that you need to print, big and beautifully. Lucy: Fascinating. We could probably talk for Blurb for the whole interview. But I suppose we should start the interview. Larry: Yeah. I've been hearing all this. A question that Lucy generally gets to ask, I can't help but wonder, how did you first get into technology? And by the way, is there anything cool out there that you feel is out in the marketplace today? Eileen: Yeah. How did I first get into technology was actually through photography. Larry: Ooh. Eileen: So I'm a photographer. And I worked for Kodak for many years. I have a degree in photography, I used to teach photography, and I've been a custom printer, blah blah blah. And what's so fascinating about photography ‑‑ and I'm talking traditional photography, film‑based, darkroom‑based photography ‑‑ is that it's really the intersection of art and craft and technology. I mean, understanding shutter speeds and apertures and understanding chemistry and understanding the process of silver halide and what happens with a developer and with fixture and reciprocity failure and all those things that are the more technical aspects of photography are what made me appreciate that I am actually one of those people who lives at that intersection between the creative mind and the technical. And so I'm consistently drawn to things that give me that opportunity to marry those two things together. And when you think about software ‑‑ in particular, applications software that consumers and end users and normal people use, not big, enterprise‑class, back‑end kind of things ‑‑ that is exactly that, right? That is, how can we apply technology to enable mere mortals to either get things done more efficiently than they could before, get things done at all that they couldn't do before, or in the case of Blurb, some of both, right? I mean, for the very first time ever, really ‑‑ I mean, think about it, ever ‑‑ could I make a book that looks like a book that you'd buy at Borders for $20, and it's four‑color and laid out and designed and beautiful. When I think about the application of technology to enable people to unleash their passions, to do more with less and to just enjoy life is really what gets me out of bed in the morning. Lucy: And I think that you've partially answered our next question. You are a serial entrepreneur. And certainly, as the founder and CEO of Blurb, you continue to be entrepreneurial. What is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Why are you an entrepreneur? Eileen: Because I'm a builder. I like the creation aspect. I mean, there's nothing that gets me more excited than seeing an opportunity that's not yet there, [laughs] and where I can see it, I can see a market, I can see a convergence. I see patterns. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs train themselves this way. I know I didn't wake up one day and just all of a sudden saw patterns. Over the course of many years, I think I've trained myself to look at those convergences. And sometimes you just see patterns emerging, and you see gaps in the marketplace, and you just think, "Wow. That's big. That's really interesting. That's a problem that I'm having, or that other people are having, and I need to go and figure out why hasn't it already been solved." And then, once I've figured that out, then it becomes about the economics, right? Because there's two parts to it. It's not enough to have a great idea. It's important to have a great idea for which there is a business need and a business application and a market that you can efficiently reach, with economics behind it that are going to enable everyone to have a nice payday as a result of investing your energy. And so I just love solving puzzles. I mean, I just really am one of those people who likes to look at what's not there yet that should be. Lucy: I think it's great to compare entrepreneurship with being a builder. Larry: [laughs] Yeah. Lucy: I think that's a really nice analogy. And on your path as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you had role models or mentors. Who influenced you the most, or what influenced you the most, on your career path in entrepreneurship? Eileen: Can I go back to your last comment before I answer that one, the builder comment? Lucy: Sure. Eileen: By the way, I'm married to one... Lucy: Oh. Larry: [laughs] Eileen: Who actually is a builder. And we talk, in software and in the IT world, of course, about things like architecture all the time, and blueprints and project schedules and all that... Lucy: That's right. Eileen: And I find that the analogy is maybe more perfect than any other single one I can think of. What we are doing and what other entrepreneurs in the IT world do is they imagine the building that's not there yet, right? And what should it be? And what's its function? And who should it house? And then how does it grow over time? And does it need to have additions? And does it need to be architected in a way that it will support a third story, even though that's not there yet? So all of that level of abstraction, the technical level of the engineering, and then coupled with the aesthetic beauty, which one hopes results from the actual building that's built, is very analogous, I think, to software development, and, in fact, to Blurb itself. So yeah, I think I am a builder. And I'm also married to a traditional builder. All right. So then, the follow‑on question was about mentors and who influenced me along the way? Lucy: Right. Eileen: Well, there are two things. One is I was in college, and I was working my way through school, and I had a night and weekend job at a big, fancy department store out here in San Francisco. And I was selling men's designer clothes or some such thing. They paid me well on Sundays, right? Yeah. I mean, I worked my way through school and didn't pay off the last student loan till I was 30. That was my opportunity. I had to put myself through school. So here I am, working at this store. And they had a management training program, which is, for any person who works at the store who's getting a college degree, they invited you to interview for a job, basically, as a management trainee for the company. Well, I will tell you that I really didn't want to go into retail. That wasn't really my aspiration. But hey, I was just delighted that somebody wanted to interview me and that somebody might potentially want to give me like a real job that I went down to the big hiring office in San Francisco and ended up interviewing. And I will tell you that the net result was I was not hired, because I was not considered management material. And I will tell you that I am one of those people ‑‑ and I think there are many people who are entrepreneurs who are like this, who are naturally competitive. The minute someone told me that I was not management material was the day that I decided that I was going to be the CEO of a company. Lucy: [laughs] "I'll show you!" [laughs] Larry: There you go. Lucy: Yeah. Eileen: I mean, seriously. So that was the first thing that happened. And then, on the positive side, my very first manager at Kodak was a wonderful woman ‑‑ actually a woman, which was interesting at the time ‑‑ and she was the person who taught me the most about the value of team and the value of people in building not only a great life but a great career. And I came in thinking I was God's gift to Eastman Kodak Company. And in the nicest possible way, she reminded me that I was brand new, and that there were a lot of people around who knew a lot more than me, and that I would be wise to be a bit of a student, right? And I took that very seriously. And to this day, I remember her often. In fact, there was recently an article written about Blurb, a really nice piece in "USA Today." And I got an email from her. And I haven't talked to her in years. And I got an email from her, and I felt like I was back at the student level again. Larry: That's fantastic. Let me ask you this question, Eileen. You've had so many neat little successes ‑‑ little and big successes ‑‑ along the road. What was something along the way that was a challenge that you were not able to overcome and you were forced to learn to live with? Eileen: So, wonderful question, because I think you do learn the most from your failures. Gosh, there have been many failures. In fact, I will tell you that life in a startup is a series of them. We talk now about "fail fast" as a new mantra for building our business, and our whole goal is to get things up and expose them to real people, and identify the ones that fail quickly and reinvest in the ones that succeed quickly. And so, just as a mantra, I think, at some weird level, it is all about failure and learning from that. On a personal level, a couple companies ago, I had a board that, frankly, I learned the lesson of "choose your board members very well." Larry: [laughs] Eileen: Now, you don't always have the leverage to do that. As a first‑time CEO, sometimes you inherit VCs and you inherit a board and you just inherit things. But what I learned from that experience is, if you don't have shared values with your board ‑‑ and I mean both on a personal level, frankly, and on a company level; what is the company trying to achieve ‑‑ then, at the end of the day, frankly, the board holds the tickets, right? You don't. And at the end of the day, they can make other decisions. And in the life of startups that are VC‑financed, even though you may think it's your company, in order to get that financing, you've had to give up ownership of the company, so it's not your company anymore. You may put in the insane hours each week and feel like it's your company, but literally, it's not your company. So there was an occasion where, in a past company, there were a number of companies that wanted to buy us ‑‑ big companies, big money ‑‑ and I was advocating that the market was shifting and that we should take one of those offers. And we, frankly, had a board ‑‑ and understandably, at the time. This was big IPO‑fever time, back in the day. And they really thought we should hold out for an IPO. Then, of course, it very quickly became I was the person who was in favor of selling and so needed to move on and find somebody else who really believed in the company and believed in the IPO. So there I was, no longer running my own company. Very tough lesson to learn. Lucy: It is a tough lesson to learn. Eileen: Yeah. But you know what? I did learn and I have great respect, now, for the fact that investors invest in companies and they invest in momentum and they invest in people. At any given time you really do serve at their pleasure to some extent. Don't think that your vote counts the most, because it doesn't. So you have to really choose people with whom you have great trust and great rapport. They have confidence in you and you in them. Then it's like any marriage, you need great partners. Lucy: Well, and that's terrific advice. I'm wondering if you have any other advice if you were in a room talking to a young person thinking about entrepreneurship, being an entrepreneur. What other advice would you give them? Eileen: And I do this all the time, as a matter of fact. I serve as an advisor to a lot of early stage companies. The number one thing is, "Do something you're passionate about." Life is too short to do something that is just for money for just for job or just for ego. Do something you really love. If you love it, it's funny how we all tend to be good at the things we really love to do. So there's a happy convergence there. Find something you love and figure out how are you going to make a business or how are you going to make money from doing the thing that exists that you already love to do. Larry: Boy, this is a great segue right into my next question. That is, if you were to take all the different characteristics, both on a personal and a professional and if you were to select one characteristic about yourself that makes you successful, what would that characteristic be? Eileen: I think I'm a good judge of people. Because at the end of the day, team is everything in an early stage company. I will argue in a later stage company, too. In particular in an early stage company where they may only be one or two people in a given discipline. Boy, they better be the right one or two! Because you don't have 40 you got two, right? [laughter] Eileen: I think being able to judge people well, to be a good judge of character. To be able to motivate people, recruit people and identify good people, just have a good sixth sense about that. I think that's probably my strongest suit. Lucy: We've heard the theme of really emphasizing team before on this series. Certainly being a good judge of people is absolutely mandatory to building a good team. Larry: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Is that a fact? Lucy: Absolutely. I just love, by the way as an aside, personal characteristics. I love that phrase "happy convergence." I just have to tell you, too, I think you have a great way of putting words together. Eileen: [laughs] Well, maybe I'm in the right business then. Lucy: Yeah, I think you have a great way of putting words together. I want to shift a little bit to your personal life and how you bring balance between your personal life and your professional life. You're obviously very busy in both spheres. Eileen: Yeah. The first thing is I'm really fortunate to be married to a wonderful man who is my best friend. Who keeps it real, as they say. [laughs] He reminds me I am not the boss of him. Lucy: [laughs] I know one time my son said that to me. "You are not the boss of me!" Eileen: "You are not the boss of me." You know what? Everybody needs that in their lives. I go around here and, of course, I am the boss of people, right? So you need somebody in your life, and hopefully somebody in your close immediate family who reminds you that, "That's your professional life and now you're home." Lucy: [laughs] That's right. Eileen: "And that's not how the rules are played here," in the kindest and most loving way. I think that a big part of it is that I have that balance with my husband who plays that role for me. The other things though are, a couple. One is, I do think it's really important, especially when you're founding a company. It can be all consuming. I suffer from this as much as the next person. You just have to find a moment where you do something completely different. For me right now, when I was younger I used to swim competitively. We could have a whole conversation about that and team building and being sports minded and all that. But I was a serious swimmer, I was one of those insane people who swam two hours in the morning and two hour every night and was a nationally ranked swimmer. Then life intervenes and you get involved in other things and pretty soon you realize, you're not in shape anymore. You're not physically fit. You're not, hopefully, totally overweight or anything, but you're just not fit anymore. So a few months ago I just decided it's about making a decision to become fit because you can always find the excuse. I don't care if you're a CEO or a full‑time mom or even just somebody who you'd think would have all the time in the world. It's not about time. It's about making the decision. So I went back into a pretty rigorous physical fitness regime a few months ago. It's time that I know that I'm doing something good for my long‑term health, my well being. I feel better, I look better, I sleep better, my stress levels are better, everything is better! Right? Larry: I [inaudible] better. Eileen: It's just, you've got to make a decision about doing something that's not work. That is improving balance in your life. For me, that's been it since last October. Larry: Wow, I tell you, that is a wonderful answer. I was guessing ahead of time since your husband is a builder and you're a builder. I thought maybe the way you did this balance was probably building a Lego library or something. [laughter] Larry: Nonetheless, you've accomplished a great deal. You've got a lot that you're going to be doing with Blurb, but outside of Blurb what is next for you? Eileen: Boy it's hard to think outside of Blurb when you're in it like this. Probably another one. I am not going to be one of those people who, even if I financially did really well, that would mean I'd be going and hanging out on the beach. That's just not me. Something else will capture my attention and I'll go do it. I'll tell you a couple of areas that are interesting to me. One is education in this country. I'm very interested in how some of the things that I've learned along the way, maybe even some of the technologies like Blurb and others can really inspire and motivate young people to want to learn in different ways. In an earlier life I thought maybe I'd be a teacher. But again that doesn't have the leverage that I want and I think I've accrued some knowledge along the way that can be better leveraged. So very interested in education and how I may be able to apply myself to help move that needle. Lucy: Well that would be wonderful. At NCWIT we care a great deal about K‑12 education and computing technologies. It's rather circular. You can use information technologies to improve education about computing maybe. [laughs] Larry: There's an idea. Lucy: There's an idea. Eileen: Yeah. No. It's really true. In fact I'll tell you, even with Blurb we've made a point of going and meeting with schools. I went back to my high school. Met the now principal who was a teacher when I was there who remembered me, God forbid. I'm going to be teaching a class there in September on publishing. Lucy: Wow! You'll have to do another interview and find out how that goes. Eileen: Yeah! Larry: At she won't have to study for it. Lucy: Eileen's return to school. Fabulous! Eileen: Eileen's return to the principal's office. Lucy Sanders: No! Don't you dare go to the principal's office. Eileen, we really appreciate you taking time today to talk with us about yourself and your career and also about Blurb. It's been really, really interesting. I want to remind listeners where they can find this podcast. They can find it at www.ncwit.org and w3w3.com. Pass it along to a friend. Again, Eileen, thanks a lot! It was really, really interesting. Eileen: Listen, my pleasure. I'm honored to have been invited. So thanks again. Lucy: Thank you. Larry: We'll call on you soon. Eileen: Cheers! Lucy: Cheers! [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Eileen GittinsInterview Summary: Eileen Gittins wanted to create a beautifully designed and produced photo essay book, something that looked like a book you'd buy at the bookstore, but she only needed 40 copies. This turned out to be remarkably painful, expensive, and time-consuming, and she thought that was just wrong. So she founded Blurb. Release Date: July 10, 2007Interview Subject: Eileen GittinsInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Pat NelsonDuration: 25:00