female founders

Talk-Commerce Heather Barr

SaaS by SaasWest BigCommerce with Heather Barr

BigCommerce is Open SaaS means building a great community around it. Heather and Brent talk about the growing BigCommerce community and how to get involved. @hnbarr_

Heather walks us through how to get involved and introduced to the BigCommerce community. There is a lot of firsts happening at BigCommerce, and the community is strong and growing.

Heather tells us why it is unique in the commerce space and especially in the SaaS space. So many things in the works, and this is the perfect time to get involved. Will there be a BigCommerce event in Austin? SaaS by SaaSWest?

https://sites.google.com/bigcommerce.com/devx-at-bc/devx

Check out the post on why you need a community manager.

5 Reasons Why You Need a Community Manager in Your Developer Community
5 Reasons Why You Need a Community Manager in Your Developer Community

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to Talk Commerce. Today I have Heather Barr. Heather is the community developer manager, or the developer, community manager with BigCommerce heather, go ahead, introduce yourself. Do a much better job than I did . Tell us your day to day role and maybe one of your passions in life.

Heather: Yeah, absolutely. So great to be here. Thank you so much, Brent. Like you mentioned, I am the developer community manager at BigCommerce so I basically just do the day to day admin type things with our developer community spaces. The most puppet is our Slack. In addition to that, I build out some programs and host events and things like that.

Heather: And now that we have a really awesome solid developer relations team I work. Very closely with them to do exactly that and just improve the developer experience or try our hardest to do that at the commerce. And one of my greatest passions is it actually is somewhat of a newer passion.

Heather: Maybe in the past, like year or two, I have built out a, like a van, like a camper van out of a old like Amazon truck. And so I really love traveling around in that and just doing some camping or glamping I guess you could call it. But. 

Brent: All right, so now I’m super jealous and maybe after the interview we’ll have to talk about camper vans cuz I had the same idea out of an old, like a sprinter van or something.

Brent: Yeah, I love that concept and it gives you an opportunity to get out on the road and see things. So that’s super cool. Okay, so before we start the really fun interview, we’re gonna do the free joke project. And I did prep you on this, so it’s, I’m gonna just tell you the joke and then the goal is this a free joke or is this one we could charge?

Brent: So I have a very, I have a quick and simple one today. Ready? All right, I’m ready. To the guy who invented zero, thanks for nothing. 

Heather: I like that one. That one is definitely charged worthy. It’s simple. It’s to the point. And it definitely 

Brent: crack a smile. All right. Good. Do you wanna try one more or are we good?

Heather: I like that one, but if you have another, I can handle 

Brent: another. All right. I got an easy one. Okay. What does scholars eat when they’re hungry? Academia nuts. . 

Heather: Okay. ha ha, I really like that one. good. That one I would pay for . 

Brent: Thanks for playing along. Yes. I need a little jingle for that, I oh, definitely. I’ll think about a jingle later on. All right, so let’s dive into the bigCommerce community. I’m excited about the BigCommerce community cuz I was just, I was at the partner summit and it has this sort of open source vibe that some of the other communities have. Tell us how, what you’re doing in the community and how you’re helping the community grow.

Brent: And tell us a little bit about the Slack channel and. Yeah, go for it. 

Heather: So we have a Slack workspace and we are working on getting it to a point where we can just like fully blast it. But everyone listening to the podcast definitely reach out and get involved. I can have a link for bread that he can share, so you can join us there.

Heather: But yeah, that’s our most popping space right now. But we have other things going on in the community as well. The slack is just more of the I guess a real time peer-to-peer resource that we have available for developers and partners who are building solutions on the platform. And so in there we host some series events like AMAs.

Heather: We’re asking anything events with some of our product members. So basically if. People in the community have some interest in meeting with like someone from product or a team from product like mobile or headless or page builder or building widgets or whatever it is. Then basically we get those requests and then we just host like a small sort of intimate meeting in Slack and one of our like dedicated channels where you can just ask product anything about that topic.

Heather: So those are really cool. And we do those we do about two to three or four possibly every year. And we can increase that if we get a little bit more resources or help . But yes, so that’s one of the main things I guess going on in like in the Slack. We also have some other types of events depending on, like what you as a partner or developer are interested in.

Heather: Let’s say you want to I guess market or just promote your service to merchants and just have a space where you can talk openly about it and just have a real conversation about what you’re solving for and what are the, maybe the plans to come and so forth. We have an a series event like that as well.

Heather: We do it two to three times a year as well. And that is in our customer facing community. But to sign up, it’s through our developer community and then through My partnership with our developer relations team, Katie and Steven and Constance, which I know you already met with Katie. We are doing some bigger events, so those are really awesome.

Heather: So we did our first hackathon, which was really great. We planned to do many more and then, Also this past year we actually had our first community lead event too, which I know is huge, like in the space where you’re from. But it’s new here at BigCommerce and I really hope to see like more of these types of events and other types of content just like organically forming.

Heather: But that was with Space 48. So they held a, like a paneled type of, Virtual event where they basically were able to grab some partners from the community and just share tips and all types of stuff and just like things that they’ve learned like while developing on the platform. And it was completely community led and it just blew my mind.

Heather: It was so awesome. And yeah, I mean there’s just a lot of firsts going on right now and our developer community, and I think that is what’s really exciting is because, we’ve been building it for a couple years now, our. . Yeah, so we’ve been building it for a couple years now, and it’s just like we’re finally getting to a point where we’re able to.

Heather: see these types of opportunities and like actually really go forward with these types of opportunities ourselves, like internally. So I would say the big thing about getting involved in our developer community right now is that there’s a lot of firsts. So if you have any ideas or if you just wanna be a part of the beginning, like it definitely has.

Heather: That type of vibe where it’s like we’re, we’re getting that momentum and so we have a lot of stuff in the works and we have we just have a lot that we all wanna do as well. So it’s a really good time to participate. 

Brent: Yeah. And I can say that we worked with Space 48 on that first event in for another community in Austin in 2016 with Shipper HQ and Karen Baker.

Brent: Nice. , that was organized and we ran that until 2019. So it was it’s a great place and I’m gonna propose that we, we do a big the big Dev X or whatever we call it. Yes. Event in, in Austin next year. Maybe we should call it BigCommerce by, we have to think of a name to mimic off of, So by Southwest, right?

Brent: Ooh, okay. Commerce by SAS or something like South SAS by sas. Yes. We’ll have to, oh 

Heather: my gosh. Include you in the party planning committee. SAS by sas. Thinking of. So next year big developer things. And we’re starting to start conversations about those now and seeing who we need to talk to make these things happen.

Brent: Yeah. And there’s a great event space that we’ve always, we’ve done it in twice. It’s called Trinity Hall. It’s on Trinity, and I don’t know. Anyways. It’s in downtown Austin, but yeah. All right. So if I’m a new developer and I want to get involved in the developer community, and I, maybe I wanna build an app, is there a, is there like a place that, So I’ll join the Slack channel, and then is there a way for me to easily get started?

Brent: Walk me through pretending that I’m a developer and I really would like to participate in the BigCommerce c. . 

Heather: Yeah, absolutely. We have a lot of different spaces where developers can try to, reach out or get involved with others. But I would say Slack is definitely the most popular, but it’s not the most visible.

Heather: So that is something that we are working on now as far as like how to get that to be a more visible place and whenever we are able to get it to be a more visible place, that’s the other side to it. So depending on where this app developer, came to us or found us, whether it’s Twitter or our help center forum or stack overflow or whatever it is we would be reaching out.

Heather: So that’s what my team does. We reach out. And then also Katie, she’s really great with our Twitter. . So yeah, we basically would get in contact to find out what you’re trying to do, and then if we feel that, you’re an app developer, so we would obviously send you the link to get involved with our Slack community, and then there you can connect with other developers, other partners that have been building apps forever.

Heather: And so you have those resources but also build that relationship with you and then really provide some resources that help you individually, but that’s like linking the correct docs to you or different. And right now actually our developer relations team is working on a like an app series or they will be starting soon.

Heather: Because that is a gap right now too. It’s partners and developers are just like people that are new to building solutions on the platform, having that hard time getting an app off the ground, I guess you could say. And so that is something that we are actively working on right now. But I would say, the best or like the vibe right now in the community on how we could help is just really getting to know you one on one and providing those resources to you one on one. So it is more of a, Hey, let’s connect, let’s help each other, like that type of vibe. As we continue to grow, we can scale and can provide more resources and pump out more resources ourselves.

Heather: That’s when, you know we can provide those links and you. That content. 

Brent: Yeah. And there, there are regular public facing document doc, there’s a dev doc series that you have that’s public, so I could start there and then also get in contact with you to join the community and get going. How about I know that you mentioned having your.

Brent: First hackathon. , what are the plans around maybe having an in person 

Heather: hackathon? There are plans to having an internal hackathon. Yeah, that was our first one and it was a blast. And it got a lot of people excited. So that was like external people as well as like BigCommerce employees as well.

Heather: Everyone was just so comforted about the hack up on. And with that comes more I guess you could say. So teams, approaching us saying, Ooh, like we wanna, what about our thing? What about our thing? And they also third party at companies as well, saying Ooh. And so there is a lot of interest, which is really good for us because we get to plan out in advance let’s do this hackathon, virtually this one hybrid, this one in person or whatever it is.

Heather: And we can plan all of those out. And maybe we can make all of them hybrid. Maybe we can try different locations. There are a lot of ideas. Basically just a lot of ideas on what we wanna do as far as getting one planned. We’re not sure which one we’re gonna do next. Actually we do have one next, but we can’t talk about it right now.

Heather: And it. , that one maybe virtually. But midyear or like maybe late in year, I think we’re gonna try to do something a lot bigger, and that would definitely be a hybrid or in person. And then potentially doing some like small, like little dev challenges virtually, or even like doing some small popups in person would be really cool.

Brent: Yeah, I think we usually cap hackathons at 80 or a hundred people just because of the amount of people that you could fit in a room and we always hit it after an event. And it was always really fun. How about including people other than developers like project managers and solution architects?

Brent: Do you see a space for them in the community? I definitely 

Heather: do, and we have some of those Those types of roles are people with those roles in our developer community Slack right now. And so basically our developer community, Slack it’s like a umbrella acceptance. I guess you could say if you sit under the technical umbrella at all, if you work with.

Heather: Your developers. If you’re a CTO or a solutions architect or something like that, then you definitely are what we’re trying to have in this space. But for these events, I definitely see a benefit in having them. I think project management especially would be. Excellent to have because that’s what they do in their job and they really help the development lifecycle.

Heather: And so I think there’s a huge benefit of having like one project manager, like per team. I think that would be a really nice way to divide it up and then just really have a lot of success in the hackathons and from the submissions and on a team level. 

Brent: Yeah I, There, there are some other events that happen in other communities that are longer, or maybe they’re a weekend event, maybe a Friday night through Sunday event.

Brent: And then you, where you come together, build your ideas that you want to do. Then you put a team together and then that team goes and tries to get as much done as they can. By Sunday night. , so that comps would include a project manager or some kind of a architect, maybe some, there’s a lot more room for roles there.

Brent: Yeah. And then some people that aren’t so technical wouldn’t feel left out and they can participate in the event and have a lot of fun. 

Heather: Yeah. I think the more diverse the team can be the more successful it can be, honestly. 

Brent: Where do you see the BigCommerce community going in the next year or two?

Heather: In the next year or two, I see us doing so many more events really honestly. I see that being our, I guess our biggest opportunity is doing hackathons, doing smaller like developer challenges and then also just Getting ideas from our community as well. If there’s something that they, like our members really want to push out or just wanna be involved or really want us to push out or, and just see as an opportunity, we are all ears for that.

Heather: Like I said earlier, like we’re just in a time of a lot of firsts and so we are so open to making this the, this community. The best it can be for our members. We really want to hear from our members. We really want to just give them what they want. And I definitely see events being a huge thing for us this upcoming year.

Heather: And that’s a whole different type of just a broad range of types of events that I see coming. 

Brent: Are there any plans around, seeding other sort of community leaders to. build communities in other countries. In other areas. 

Heather: Yeah. So that would be that would be incredible. I think so there’s a lot of like really mature communities and then also just some really engaged like younger communities that are doing this right now.

Heather: And that have been doing it for years. And that’s something that I would personally love to see. Like for the Hackathon, for example, we had people that were, it was a worldwide type of event and it was really cool to see because we only had two weeks to really announce it. But it was like split between many continents, so it was, it would be really nice to just have I guess like focus groups or just user groups or just super, just whatever we wanna call it, but just like based groups in different regions.

Heather: And I think , like Magento or a lot of other types of different communities where they have they host like their own meetups and stuff like that. And even if it’s super casual but then we can be involved like on our side of hey, like we can help organize it or whatever. But then yeah, like y’all totally own it, like y’all are there.

Heather: Let us know how we can help. Notion does this I really love that productivity tool and they. They have a really excellent community, but but yeah, I definitely see that. I’m not sure how realistic that is for like this coming year since we’re like, we’re just now being able to like host all these really cool events.

Heather: But hey, if it happens, like I am all for it and I, yes, I’m like for making it happen to you. So whatever I can do to help with that and if we have a lot of interest and a lot of engaged people in different regions, like I am definitely for helping getting that. , 

Brent: I know in the agency space it BigCommerce is growing so fast that it’s been difficult to sometimes find developers and so you have to train developers.

Brent: Is there a easy way for an agency head to say, get to, to hire somebody that’s been involved in another SAS platform and convert them or help them understand? Getting up and running on BigCommerce yeah. So we 

Heather: have like big dev boot camps. That’s one of our excuse me, that’s one of our products or one of our services for getting started.

Heather: It’s like an onboarding type thing. So if you are a developer or if you have a developer that is like new to building on BigCommerce and you really wanna set ’em up for success Big Deb Bootcamp is a great option. Excuse me. Yeah, so you can get involved with Big Deb Bootcamp. I can actually get the link for you and I.

Heather: Include it so that you can try to like, push that out with your recaps and all that. But basically it covers developing on stencil on different types of getting started with like headless all of our APIs. Goodness. And just basic development, like getting started developing absent themes going over all of our resources basically.

Heather: So it’s a really nice program to get involved with if you’re new or if you’re just like trying to take advantage of what other resources are available to 

Brent: you and do you see developers quickly being onboarded and getting up to speed. On BigCommerce 

Heather: I guess you could say it really depends.

Heather: So with BigCommerce, we have developers that are, like third party developers as far as everyone, is a third party developer, but we have freelancers, we also have like developers that work for our partner agencies, and so it really depends on their relationship. I would say as far as what type of onboarding they get, which is something that we are working on as far as onboarding just developers in a better way in general, no matter you know, who or we know what they’re with.

Heather: I would say our. Are our partners. They have I would say more visibility to the big Deb Bootcamp. So I’d say that is something that kind of sets that like those developers aside because if you are a partner, you have more visibility. You just know about it more. If you’re a freelance developer, you probably have to discover it in a little bit of a different way, which is possible, but it’s not as visible to you.

Heather: So I would say. as far as like resources, like big dev bootcamp, it is a little bit more accessible if you are a partner. But then everything else as far as our documentation and our communities, like those are all very open for any sort of developer. So no matter if you are just doing freelance or you working for an agency or one of our partners, then you have access to the community.

Heather: And with that you have, the community team and then also Dev Rail to just walk you through whatever you would. 

Brent: and I would imagine that the amount of BigCommerce developers is like an iceberg where there’s the ma vast majority that aren’t involved on the Slack channel.

Brent: And it would be great to get ’em all involved. Yes. . Yeah. So maybe a message out to all the agency. Heads to tell their developers that there’s this great place that you should join and absolutely get questions answered, right? I think that’s the main key about the Slack channel is that if you do have questions, there’s so many people in there that are so smart, then that can help you get those questions answered quickly.

Heather: I agree and if you are a partner listening to this podcast or this interview we are going to have our own spot on the partner newsletters, the agency and tech partner newsletters. So that’s new and keep a lookout for us. We’re hoping to keep coming monthly with new content and also always having that CTA where you can share with your development teams to have them join us in the developer community.

Heather: We would love to have all of you. 

Brent: So a, as we finish things out today if you have one like little nugget that you could give a developer who’s starting right now besides joining the Slack channel Yeah. What would you tell them? 

Heather: I would really tell them to take advantage of. Us. That would be me, that would be Katie, that would be Steven, our developer advocates.

Heather: And it’s not only through Slack. We are, you can meet us on Twitter, you can meet us at some events. You can meet us wherever LinkedIn, this podcast. If you are struggling and you’re maybe posting on Stack Overflow or in the help center, reach out to us like dms because we wanna get to know you and we wanna get to know like how we can.

Heather: Not only just you, but also just every other developer that might be going through like a similar experience as you. And we really want to talk and connect and we do. And so if you’re a developer and you’re not super into that, totally understand. I would say something that could help.

Heather: Ah, goodness. Reaching out really does the best, even if it’s like on a GitHub repo or something, just letting someone know. That’s really how we make our changes. Even product. If you comment on GitHub or if you submit an issue or anything like that, or reach out to us in some way, or even tweet at us or whatever it is reaching out does.

Heather: Really help us make it better. So if you can find a way to reach out to us in some way that is what I would 

Brent: recommend. Yeah. And there’s also a BigCommerce Twitter community space now. Yes. As well. So that’s another good place for people to join. And there is more people in that space than another platforms I’ve noticed recently.

Brent: So that’s good. It’s being used. Yes. would add that as a developer and I’m going to admit that I started as a developer a long time ago. It is sometimes hard to ask questions and reach out and you really wanna solve it yourself. But once you’ve once you’ve paired up with, if you find somebody who can really help you, and I know when I got started I found somebody could help me.

Brent: And I think I was on MSN Messenger way back in the day and man did they help me, and there was so much more that I could get through with a little bit of guidance and mentorship. That, I think that the big com, I know that the BigCommerce channels can offer you even better than stack overflow or something like that.

Brent: That gets your question. You ask questions that’ll get answered quickly. So I can’t advocate more for using that and taking advantage of that as a developer. And it’ll really launch your career as a developer and help you accelerate your learning and getting things done. And then I would also say play around in a sandbox environment and make some stuff.

Brent: Yeah, 

Heather: absolutely. I second everything that you say. I agree a hundred percent. I can’t agree more actually. 

Brent: Great. As we close out, Heather, they I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. Okay. What would you like to plug today? 

Heather: Goodness. I’ve been prepping for this question. I’m not sure I’m having a hard time threatening a shameless plug.

Heather: I’m not gonna lie, but I will say if you could invest in a. Reusable water bottle. You can take it to the airport, you can take it everywhere. If you could fill it up. I actually went to a place to eat not that long ago and I was like, Hey, can I just fill up my water bottle? And they’re like, Yeah, do it.

Heather: Of course. So definitely get yourself a reusable water bottle or a few. That’s my stainless plug, . 

Brent: Cool. Thank you so much. Heather Barr, the community development developer manager for BigCommerce thank you for being here today. Yes, thank you 

Heather: for having me.

Talk-Commerce Jen McFarland

Entrepreneurial Empathy with Jen McFarland

Will your employee go a little further when times are tough? Jen McFarland ( @jensmcfarland )talks about entrepreneurship, marketing, and living in Kazakhstan. Listen for the size 45 clown shoes. Are they European sizes, US sizes, or clown sizes?

Mentorship, empathy, marketing, and NOT being a hater! If you are an employer, this episode is for you if you are an employee, this episode is for you.

If there is one theme to hear throughout this podcast, it is this quote from Jen:
“Smart Women in tech leave because of bad management.”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jensmcfarland

https://www.linkedin.com/company/epiphanycourses

https://www.epiphanycourses.com

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to talk commerce today. I have Jen McFarland coming from Oregon. Did I get that right? Jen, Oregon? Yep. Yep. Jen, go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about your day to day role and maybe one of your passions in 

Jen: life. Oh, wow. Hi my name’s Jen McFarland. I am a marketing coach, even though I don’t like using the word coach.

Jen: It just seems to be what people call me. I also do a lot of hands on work. My favorite thing to do in my role as a marketing agency is I work with the city of Portland’s economic development division through their inclusive business resource network and we help people of color with their marketing so that they can build their businesses.

Jen: And that’s one of my favorite things to do. I’m also passionate about travel. hang out with my friends. It’s lovely here in Portland, because right now it’s summer and I am not originally from here. So when the rain comes, that’s not really my favorite time 

Brent: and it never rains on, in, in the west coast, right in Portland.

Brent: It’s always bright and sunny, just like San Diego. 

Jen: That’s what I a lot of people get it wrong. See, it only rains once in Portland, it starts in October and it ends in late may. 

Brent: Oh, that’s better than starting in October and ending in September. 

Jen: well, that’s true. We’ve had that happen before though. That was summer was on a Tuesday and it was pretty fun.

Brent: Yes. I was in Duluth this weekend and summer’s done already there, so no 

Jen: way. I can’t okay. Checking that off the list. Not moving to Duluth. 

Brent: Yeah. Duluth is very lovely in the summer. So July some parts of August depends which way the wind is blowing. Off the lake or not. How all right. The only thing I know about Portland is Portlandia.

Brent: And so I know that you probably go to one of your local restaurants and get the name of the chicken that when you’re gonna sit down to eat, is that right?

Jen: They don’t always tell us the name of the chicken, but it’s, it’s 50 50, if you get the full lineage of the chicken. So yeah. Portland idea, totally accurate.

Jen: A hundred percent. 

Brent: all right. So Jen I know some of the topics we talked about in the green room were around certainly entrepreneurship, but how you went through the peace Corps and then got into entrepreneurship or how the peace Corps helped you get into it. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jen: Yeah. So I love travel. I am a unique person in that I did peace Corps with my husband. He also likes travel. So we went as more mid-career entrepreneurs. So we were both in our thirties and we, so when you go as a couple, you can’t go to as many places as a single person, they have to have a place for two people to live and all kinds of things.

Jen: So we went to Kazakhstan. It is it’s not like Borat he’s, supposedly from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is a country south of Russia. It’s the largest land locked country in the world. And people there are insanely nice. So nice to the point where. It would be considered kidnapping in this country.

Jen: So I was walking, we were teachers and I had a long walk back to the host family. This is when we were training and my husband was ahead of me and somebody saw, it was like, oh, the American is alone. I want my niece to talk to the American. So basically they’re like, come on in. And I’m like I have to get home.

Jen: It’s dinnertime. They bring me in and this, I was so inexperienced that I didn’t know how long this process would be and they start cooking and I’m like, oh no, I’m in deep trouble. I don’t have the phone number to get ahold of my husband, the person I’m supposed to talk to. Isn’t in the house. I don’t know any of these people, what is happening.

Jen: I think I was there for about two hours and about halfway in this woman, young woman comes in and sits down and I can understand enough Russian at that point to understand that this is the person I’m supposed to talk to you. And she speaks English. And that is how I met my best friend in Kazakhstan so we talked, it was awesome.

Jen: We left that training place and then we ended up moving back there and living there for a year and Rahan saw me and was just like, oh my gosh, it’s you? This is so great. And that’s how we met each other. But like in America, these are things that never happened. You’re not walking along the street and somebody’s Hey, come on in.

Jen: Talk to my niece. Like you would never stop. You would never do it. And so that’s how I learned that sometimes you can take these risks that just seem insane and crazy, and it turns out really good. So this was somebody who I was really close to for that time. I miss her all the time, even though I’ve been back for a long time.

Jen: And I think business is a lot like that. Sometimes you have to take that chance. You have to be like, is this for real? I don’t know if this is for real or not. And then you. Yeah, it’s cool. And you take that risk. You take the plunge and it works that way. It just works out. And that’s really what happened.

Jen: I would say then when you fast forward and I’m an executive at the city of Portland and I decide to leave, but I don’t really have a parachute really set for myself. I knew I wanted to have a business, but I hadn’t really set it up. And I was like it’s gonna work out. And it has, it’s just crazy sometimes how.

Jen: works that way. You have to have a certain degree of trust in order for it to really work out and Peace Corp was we loved peace Corp. It was super great. 

Brent: Yeah, that’s good. So the peace cor in Kazakhstan. Wow. I have I’ve and you lived there for a year. Tell when was this? When did you do this? 

Jen: We lived there for two years.

Jen: Two years. Okay. It was in the early two thousands and it’s cold. it’s really cold there. I would say that the weather is probably similar to Milwaukee Wisconsin, except there’s no central heating. I remember sitting next to, we had, I don’t know what you would call it. It was technically supposed to be a heater, but it was like these bare wires that would just heat up I don’t know.

Jen: It was so cold that I sat so close to it, that I set my pants on fire and I didn’t notice it for a minute and I. I was like, do you smell smoke? It was breakfast. And I was talking to my husband. He’s like something smells funny. And I looked and, but I was like, I also felt warm, so I wasn’t complaining and then I looked down and I.

Jen: oh, I just burned a hole in my pants. I like you just no, it it’s a different experience there because it’s very cold and very snowy and like the vitreous fluid in your eyes freezes, and so you’re blinking a lot and it, it’s just an interesting experience.

Jen: And then it’s like insanely hot in the summer. And I think Milwaukee’s kind of that where, Minneapolis is like that too. Except you have a lot of mosquitoes there compared to Kazakhstan. So it’s a lovely, wonderful place that nobody’s ever heard of. And it was just a wonderful experience and it was very hard and also awesome.

Jen: We only had running water, I think about. we would leave the tap opened, cuz we weren’t sure when the water was gonna come on and we would fill the bathtub and then use the water. We had a water distiller, so it would be clean and everything. So it was an interesting time, an interesting experience.

Jen: And I think that’s why, my husband and I have weathered COVID really well. I weather uncertainty a lot better. I think that’s. I think that’s why people call me a coach, even though I’m really a consultant. And I do a lot of hands on marketing for people. It’s because I have this really grounded oh, it’s gonna be okay.

Jen: And I think after you have some of these experiences, like I’ve had experiences at the enterprise level where like we melted down entire. Servers and everything came to a grinding halt, and we had to match data among like hundreds of thousands of people. And we’ve, and I’ve lived in countries where I didn’t have running water.

Jen: Like it just, everything always works out. And I think that grounded feeling I have about things is really because I’ve lived in places without any creature comforts, I’ve had all kinds of experiences and at the end of it, it’s great. Everything works out. Everything works out in the end. 

Brent: So two comments, number one, I’m sad to hear that you associate Minnesota with mosquitoes, which we have a state bird. It’s not the mosquito number two. I did spend a lot of time in the eighties watching the show, Laverski and Shirliova. It’s a Kazakhstan program about two ladies in a beer bottling plant that in nevermind.

Brent: It’s a, that’s a tie back to Milwaukee Laver, Shirley and Milwaukee. Yes. I know I’ll stop. So do you please, do you think there’s a special risk factor or no, maybe not risk, but there has to be something in you or. Something you can’t quite quantify to be able to leave your job as a public employee or a city employee, and just jump off and go for it.

Brent: Do you think there’s something that most people can’t quite identify with? 

Jen: I don’t know. I certainly had the golden handcuffs on if that’s what you mean, had every, I was paid I had. still have my retirement from there. Certainly if you know all of the security in the world, I don’t think I was actually gonna lose my job.

Jen: But it, I wasn’t happy. So I think that when you look at your life and you’re like, this isn’t really what I want. I, I don’t know. Some people will decide to. and be miserable. And I just, that, wasn’t what I wanted for myself. And I wanted something different. I also have the experience that when my dad was around 50, he was being worked to get to death at the state of Idaho and had a bad situation.

Jen: And he ended up having a heart attack. And I was like, I don’t wanna be like that. He didn’t want that. And so I think that as I, got into my forties, I was like, yeah, I Don. This is not the road. I know where this road can lead because I had seen it with my dad. And I was like, I don’t want that road.

Jen: And I have been so much happier since taking the risks since doing something. But certainly I would say a lot of people don’t do it because maybe they don’t have the same sense of adventure. They don’t have these experiences where they’re like, Yeah, I’m just gonna go move to Kazakhstan now, ha that’s crazy.

Jen: Most people that’s crazy. So I do think that there’s a part of me that is really adventurous and willing to take these chances and take chances on myself. And I would say certainly I’m the person who gets the LinkedIn email, the little messages and I’m like, is this real or not? And I’ll actually research things that don’t.

Jen: real. And then that’s how I ended up I had a film crew at my house earlier this year because they read one of my blog posts and they’re filming a documentary and they wanted me to be in it. And it was just a random request that came into LinkedIn, but I’m willing to take the risk that that could work out.

Jen: And it did, it was fun. It. Unique. Doesn’t happen every day that I have a film crew at my house. So I do think that we have these opportunities as entrepreneurs where we can either be like, oh God, I get so many LinkedIn requests all the time. I’m just gonna ignore all of them. I don’t even know these people.

Jen: And I’m that. Odd person. Who’s oh, is this looks neat. If this is real, then I’m gonna pursue it. And I think that we have these opportunities all the time in our lives, and we have that choice. We have the power to make the choice about how we’re going to navigate and proceed. Do 

Brent: you think it gets more difficult as you get older to make that decision?

Brent: And I’ll just back that up with, I started as an entrepreneur in college, I went to college for eight years and decided. I wanna do something different. So I dropped outta college sure. After eight years and I started a business. But I really didn’t know what I was doing or getting into at a younger age.

Brent: Sometimes you can jump into those things and it just happened, whatever that I got some traction and it worked, but some people as they get a little bit older might think I’ve got a career and I don’t know if I want to, chance on not having a paycheck. Do you think it’s more difficult as you get older?

Jen: I do. And I would say that, at the time I was leaving my executive role, that all played into it as okay how much runway do I have? The truth is I had more runway because I had more savings. had more experience it. It was a different runway than if I had decided to do it right outta college.

Jen: Like you, that would’ve been a disaster for me. I know who I was and where I was at that stage that would not have worked for me. It was also not on my roadmap. Peace Corps was a hundred percent on my roadmap coming outta college, having my own business. That was something that kind of simmered later on.

Jen: And I think that you have to have that entrepreneurial mindset, that entrepreneurial spirit, and I guess I had it all along. I just didn’t identify it as that ability. Be adventurous and take the plunge. I don’t think that’s for everybody. I don’t think that everybody feels that way about life.

Jen: about what they want for themselves. Everybody’s different. So I do think that those decisions become a lot harder because we have families, we have more complicated lives than we do out of college or when we’re younger, there’s just not as much complexity. Maybe we don’t have a house. I had all of these things I had to worry about.

Jen: We have a house, we have, I have a marriage. I can’t just run off and join the circus. I could, but there’s not really a lot of circuses anymore. Size 45 clown shoes in case anyone’s curious, but I can’t do that without talking to somebody. I can’t just run. And do whatever I want anymore. So I think sometimes we get lost in that complexity and we decide it’s just not worth it because there’s too many elements to work out.

Jen: So I think that can be a hard stop for people when there might be gold there. If you did take that plunge, if you did go out there and do something new. 

Brent: Yeah. I can think of so many, like be your own boss. Do your own business. There’s so many people like that are pushing franchises or something like that.

Brent: And I think there’s a distinction between taking somebody else’s dream and going with it and doing your own dream. Maybe it’s harder to do your own dream because especially as you said, as you go along, you have more entrenched things that you want to stick with. And part of it being an entrepreneur is being able to let some of those things go and embracing change.

Brent: Oh yeah. You had mentioned earlier about being an accidental entrepreneur. How do you, how would you relate to that?

Jen: I said earlier that I wasn’t gonna lose my job, but my job was very uncertain. It was a year to year deal where I had to wait for the budget to go through, there was a lot of uncertainty around that and I was really unhappy. I really, at one point thought that I would bounce around at different roles at the city.

Jen: And it became clear that this role I was in was that was where I was gonna be. And I. Like it. I created the job. I created the entire department. I had been doing a lot of projects. That’s really what I would do that was my role at the city was I would create new programs and places and policies, and I would move around a lot.

Jen: And I became clear that this is, this was it. This was the landing spot. And I was like, oh no, this is not interesting to me. as I was making this entire. role and crafting this program. I was like, wow, I wonder who’s gonna have to do this all the time. And then it turned out to be me and I was not happy. So what happened then is in life outside of my work, I had a friend who had their own business and I began to see how I could help other people in smaller roles in smaller businesses.

Jen: Where it wasn’t an enterprise large business situation. And I started to realize that some of the things that I took for granted and thought everybody knew they didn’t, about marketing, about technology, about how to get all the pieces to fit together. And so I started helping people as side hustle, is what people call it now.

Jen: And. from that experience. I was like, I could really do this. It wasn’t the intention. It was all by accident, helping somebody in need. And then it became another person and another person in the meantime, during the day, I’m in a role that I’m really unhappy with it’s budget season. Again, do I want to go through another.

Jen: Will I, or won’t I have a job, even though I think I will. The program, it’s been years now and it’s still running, so yes, I would’ve had a role. So it all happened. Like the kismet, like all of the things started happening and I was like yeah, it’s time to go. I need to go.

Jen: I wasn’t happy. There were a lot of reasons. so I took the plunge, but it wasn’t some grand master plan. I think a lot of times when people go into, should I have my own business or not, they’re looking for some sort of bright light that they run to, or all kinds of certainty and knowledge about how it’s all gonna turn out.

Jen: it’s not like that. it just doesn’t happen. I don’t think for a lot of people, maybe some people do have funding set up ahead of time, or they have banked a ton of clients. That’s certainly not what I was in when I decided this is what I’m gonna do. This is what I enjoy more. And there’s just a lot of factors that go into it.

Jen: So it was accidental. And it took a little bit of time to decide that this was what I was going to do. 

Brent: If you were to think between say the employer role and the employee role you talk a lot about how you’ve helped others as an employer, do you want to encourage your employees who you recognize could be good entrepreneurs to chase their dream?

Brent: So basically you’d lose them, but they would have their dream. Is that something you think as a good entrepreneur, you should be doing? 

Jen: Absolutely. My role in companies, when I go work there is to work myself out of a job. I’m not real big on the whole, have a retainer for life kind of deal. Like I like people to move on, get out of my nest and move on.

Jen: And I feel the same way about the people who work with me, who work for me. Part of what we’re doing is we’re fostering the growth of others. And in that we have to allow them to blossom and grow. And one of the reasons I feel that way is because that wasn’t something that was an option to me at several different points in my career.

Jen: So I don’t want to inhibit the growth of somebody else because I know what that feels like. 

Brent: I can remember people that have helped me and people that have hindered me in the past. And certainly maybe the ones that have helped me the most are the ones that are more confident in the abilities for them to succeed in their own roles, knowing that they’ve now fostered somebody to go out and chase their own dream. Is there any advice you could give an entrepreneur to help them, maybe it’s insecurity where somebody feels as though that they wanna retain this person for the rest of their lives.

Brent: And I’m not saying that it’s bad to have an employee who’s gonna be there for the rest of their lives, because there are people that simply want to be an employee that are not interested in being an entrepreneur. Not everybody is cut out for that. No, but I do feel as though. Some employers could be a hindrance to somebody’s upward career if they were to, I don’t know, a stranglehold or something 

Jen: well, I will say that I haven’t had as many mentors as other people have.

Jen: And I think that sometimes what happens is, and by mentor in this specific case, I know that you can have mentors that. Anywhere. But a work mentor, like somebody who was above me in an organization, mentor me and helped, find another role somewhere else. I work really hard. It’s one of the things that I do.

Jen: So I didn’t tend to attract mentors who wanted me to leave. So they wanted me to stay there because they knew. Whatever they needed, it was gonna get done because Jen would do it. And I can tell you, by the time I left the city, there were like four people doing what I was doing. Like I was taking on so much and I would just get it done.

Jen: That’s what I’m good at. I’m an implementer, get stuff done. I can say that just because somebody is working really hard. And I think that we’re seeing it now with the quiet quitting is what they’re calling it, where it’s basically people who have really good boundaries. And they’re saying, I’m gonna come in.

Jen: I’m gonna do exactly what you want me to do. I’m gonna leave on time. I’m gonna turn my phone off. I’m not gonna answer your. And people are really upset about it. And I’m like, why they’re finding that you’re gonna pay them the same, regardless of what they do. If they work extra or not, and they’re not interested and you’re not helping them grow because they wouldn’t be doing, if you’re doing it, if you were actually fostering a better relationship, For entrepreneurs.

Jen: Yes. It’s hard to have somebody leave. I get it. You don’t wanna have to train a new person. It means that you have to take on more for a while you find a new person, train them and get them to that next place. I will say though, that in the long run, you have to think about all of these things in the long game.

Jen: If you foster somebody and send them on their way, and you have a really good relationship with them, meaning they don’t quiet, quit. There’s not a big argument. And they leave . That is a partner that you have in the future. That you can be working with. This is somebody that you can join forces with maybe at a later date, but you are building a community of people who are going to sing your praises, their potential contractors later on down the road.

Jen: You don’t know where that’s gonna lead, but you do know where it’s gonna lead. If you burn somebody out and don’t help them grow, that never ends well. Never. 

Brent: It leads to resentment and things that aren’t happy. So on the on the flip side of that is the employee relationship.

Brent: We talked about the entrepreneur, the employee how as an employee, do you see ways that you can encourage your employer, maybe to have this fostering role rather than working you to death. And I do agree that now today’s new world that they want to have that time to themselves.

Brent: And the motivation to just work for the sake of work is not there anymore. 

Jen: That’s true. I think a lot of it is that the new younger generations. Relate to work differently. And I think that they get just as much done as anybody else. , it’s just how they do it looks differently. I have, I’m still seeking a mentor from, generation Z.

Jen: I wanna know exactly how people feel and very curious, because it’s not my generation, but I will tell you. . If you come into an organization, you have to understand that you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you. So that’s the first thing, right? You don’t go. You ask questions, you go in and you ask a lot of questions.

Jen: So you can be really clear about the role. You can be really clear about what the environment is like. You talk to other people who work there. That’s the starting point. If they pass over. Hurdle then the next hurdle is then you make it clear about your future goals. Like where is it that you see yourself going and you need to start having like conversations with the person you work for to help build those skills so that you can make it to the next place.

Jen: And I think that you will find people who are very open to that. You will also find a lot of people who are very, not open to that. And I think that. It really is about having those conversations early. It’s about meeting with your boss and talking through problems and solutions and what that career ladder can look like for you.

Jen: It does mean being brave and a little bit bold and. These things don’t happen overnight. and I know that we all want it. I remember when I was younger, I thought I knew everything. I thought that I should have this, and I should have that. Sometimes these things take time, not as long as your boss wants it to your the entrepreneur wants you around as long as possible.

Jen: So it. There is a little tension in that conversation, but I think it’s worthwhile for both parties to start really having these mentor mentee conversations, help building skills, because they’ll be a better employee up until they leave. Anyway, if you just open the doors and sometimes people will go, oh, there’s a lot.

Jen: I don’t know. And you might end up having them longer. The more, you open the curtain so they can see the mess of everybody’s business. Cause none of our businesses are perfect. You might actually find somebody who can help you in ways that you don’t know. If you start to give somebody more responsibility and teach them as much as possible.

Jen: And then as the employee you’ll wanna stay longer because you’ll see more and you’ll learn more than if you go elsewhere or if you go and embark on having your own business. 

Brent: I think. What you said earlier about burning bridges that applies even greater for the employee, because if you can leave on good terms yes.

Brent: And you can provide value to your previous boss. Now that boss becomes a conduit for you for your next job or your next role or whatever you’d like to do. What advice would you give to a a younger employee who’s trying to navigate learning how their boss is gonna react to, Hey my timeframe is 24 months and I’m gonna be leaving.

Brent: Right. some bosses are gonna say they’re gonna say to themselves, that’s great. I’m gonna look for a new person already, cuz I know in 24 months they’re gonna be gone or the boss may just come out and say, that’s not gonna work for me. There’s a certain amount of rapport that has to be there in the beginning.

Brent: But then there has to be. almost there has to be some not psychology, but there has to be some way to learn and feel out where each person lies without necessarily giving out your entire hand. 

Jen: Absolutely. This is about relationship building and a lot of what I believe in is honesty and transparency.

Jen: building those relationships over time. Now, as you begin to get to know your employer, , you might realize that they’re not interested in what it is that you want, and you may not be able to be all the way to look, I have a 24 month window here. Like you might not be able to share that part that might be too much for that person to handle.

Jen: So you need to. Feel it out. This takes time. You don’t know the person as well, as you think, particularly in the beginning when everybody’s on their best behavior, like things change and evolve over time. So certainly you have to be careful and strategic about it, but being honest, it, it really does pay off.

Jen: So you’re not just shocking somebody because that can be part of burning the bridge too, is if you’re just like, whoa, piece out and it’s over, you have to give, you have to have open communication. And that’s part of it is if Y and part of it can be covered in the interview process. If you’re getting a sense of, they don’t, they’re not really interested in having any sort of.

Jen: Mentorship type of relationship with you. If you are not getting the sense that this is a growth opportunity, that’s gonna be very telling and you have to be strategic about how you ask about those things as well. But it is something that I think you can feel out early on, and hopefully you can talk to other people who work there.

Jen: You can also look at things like Glassdoor and stuff to see what former employees say. It depends on how big an organization is. All of which to say, it’s not an overnight thing, no matter what, no matter how open somebody is, but you also have to take care of yourself. You can’t just stay somewhere because somebody needs you.

Brent: Do you think it’s a red flag as an employee that, if your boss clearly doesn’t care at all about you or your personal life, is that a red flag for you? You as an that’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it? I don’t even know why I asked it. I can say that as an employer, I’ve gotten much more aware of the fact that I need to know about my employees and there is a world outside of their job.

Brent: And simply asking some of those questions and being interested in what they’re doing helps you as an employer to build a better relationship with your employee. And it just does go vice versa. Is there anything that you can say to extract some of these things out of an employer as an employee?

Brent: I don’t think you can ever teach anybody to. I think somebody has to make that revelation themselves, as an entrepreneur, as an employer, if you’re narcissistic and you only see anything other than the end of your fingers, then you’re never gonna move past that point.

Brent: But there has to be some growth on both sides and as an employee, It is a delicate art to try to coax that out of people.

Jen: Absolutely. And I’m laughing because I worked for somebody who absolutely didn’t think anybody should be friends with people from work. And I will tell you that it wears on you after a while they’re talking about themselves and they have no care about what’s going on in your life.

Jen: I’ve worked for people like that. And I can. . I said, I worked hard and I do work hard, but after a while, you don’t wanna run into the fire with that person. If they don’t care about you, you will not run into the fire for that person. As the employee, you will go to a certain point and then you’ll be like, I’m done.

Jen: I’m out. This is hard. And because when it gets hard, you want to have somebody that is with you. and if you don’t care about anybody but yourself, and everybody’s just there to support you, but you don’t care if they like to go hiking or if they have a boyfriend or not like that’s, it’s gonna be game over sooner rather than later, because we all have lives.

Jen: We all have things outside of the business, outside of whatever it is that you’re expecting somebody else to do for you. 

Brent: Yeah, that’s a really good perspective. I make a point of in my day job, I make a point of interviewing or at least talking to everybody every quarter.

Brent: And I think it’s about 65 people that I do my best to talk to every quarter. Yeah. And I’ve gotten to the point of saying, are you happy? At least, I’m trying to build a relationship and I’m trying to learn more about. But I think that’s a good question. Do you think that I would go with you into the fire to take something out?

Brent: That’s a hard question to ask cuz they may not answer it truthfully and you don’t wanna say, would you come with me? Cuz of course they’re gonna, yeah, of course they’ll come with you. But that’s not the real answer either. You wanna somehow build that? As the employer, you wanna support your employee. You don’t wanna force their support on you. You would like them to support you because they enjoy their job. And they would like to continue on and build this momentum that you have as a relationship. And as an employee, employer, you don’t wanna say you have to run in there with this, into the fire regardless.

Brent: You would like it to be voluntary. . 

Jen: Yeah, okay. So this is an eCommerce podcast. We haven’t talked about that this is marketing people don’t buy from you unless there’s no and trust they’re buying in to what it is that you are selling. So as a leader, why isn’t it the same thing?

Jen: Why is it that we expect people to just do it? Because I’m paying you, they’ll go with you because you’re paying them. I’m talking about will they go a little bit further when times are tough? When things go sideways, are you nice mistakes happen? It, there are all of these opportunities that you have to really build that relationship so that your employees know can trust you.

Jen: And when things go bad, cuz they always go bad. Nothing’s perfect that they will say, yep, I’m here for you. I’ll stay late. I’ll do what it takes. Let’s make this happen. Let’s make the magic, let’s turn this around. And that’s really what it comes down to. It. It is that you have to build those relationships in the same way that you would with a customer who’s paying you.

Jen: It’s a two way street. And I think oftentimes as employers, it can be forgotten because we have so many things to do, but it’s really important to surround yourself with the people who are. going to support you, who are gonna help you and who are going to help you bring the people in that you need to keep the thing going.

Jen: And you have to look at that holistically. And if you can’t do that and people are leaving, sometimes that’s a you problem. It’s not always that everybody there’s that nobody wants to work. It’s that’s not always the answer. It’s that? You’re not providing a safe community for people to work in. 

Brent: I’m just gonna write that down safe community to work in.

Brent: That’s a good one. You, I would like to talk about let’s I would like to talk about your podcast. So women conquer business. Yeah, can we, and we were gonna talk about marketing too, but now we’re already at, we’re already at 38 minutes. I know. Do you want to take a little bit of time and talk 

Jen: about that?

Jen: Sure. So yesterday we recorded our hundred and 50th episode. I’ve been a podcaster since 2018. I will say that I’ve had probably four or five shows in that time. I used to do. interviews don’t do interviews anymore. I used to talk about all different types of things. Now we just talk about marketing it’s I think that over four years you change a lot as an entrepreneur.

Jen: What you talk about changes. and certainly the show is a reflection of that. So now what we’re doing are marketing howtos. So I help people understand concepts that can be somewhat challenging and drill into the essentials. I think yesterday we talked about course platforms and how to find a good course platform if you’re just getting started with online courses.

Jen: So a lot of my bread and butter. would be, if a CMO was, somebody came and said, we wanna do this thing. And you’re like, I don’t really know what that is. I can talk people through what something is and help them. And that’s really what the podcast is about is if you wanna do X here’s, how you get started or, and it can be at different levels of complexity.

Jen: So that’s really the bread and butter, and that is. And one of the opportunities. So when I was talking about opportunities, one of the opportunities I had really early with my podcast, I was approached by an organization I’d never heard of. And they said, we really like what you’re doing. Can we repurpose your show and pay you?

Jen: I was like okay, is this for real? I don’t even never even heard of you. So a lot of early solo shows have been repurposed and sold on another platform. I retained the rights and. that is how my new business epiphany courses was born. Like I have a lot, even though I don’t work at enterprise all the time, a lot of my content that I create and share is sold to enterprise companies as part of an eLearning platform.

Jen: And that is the baseline for epiphany courses because we know that all of that information and that content has been vetted. And is very popular among you. Fortune 500 fortune, 100 companies that are consuming it on this other learning platform. So we’ve started making a learning platform for small business owners where they can also learn in this container and get that information and then supply a community for people to talk through it.

Jen: So that’s really the essence of what I do around the podcast. They’re really these lessons. That then get repurposed elsewhere that then we turn around and make courses around. It’s an interesting concept. I never thought that what I do would evolve in this way. I think that when I started my business, if somebody had said you’re really gonna be into creating content.

Jen: I would’ve been like, I don’t even know what that. I didn’t, it was never on my radar, but as you can tell, I like to talk. So it seems to be working out for me. 

Brent: Yeah. I think that’s such a great way to look at marketing as well is repurposing content. And I now, there’s this content driven eCommerce and everything is around.

Brent: eCommerce and even no UX eCommerce, where it is all about a conversation. You’re gonna talk to somebody in WhatsApp and they’re gonna place the order for you or whatever. I think that you’ve taken the opportunity. You’ve taken that risk and that challenge and. Stepped up on it.

Brent: So one of the things that I’m on the entrepreneurs organization board here in Minneapolis, and I’m on the DEI diversity committee. Yeah. And we in Minneapolis, we’re not incredibly diverse. And in, even in the entrepreneur C. I think we’re 15% women and 85% men.

Brent: So if the math is right, is there a particular struggle that women, this is a rhetorical, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to phrase this, but , I know that there’s struggle in, in people that aren’t white, bald males to break into the entrepreneurial community.

Brent: Through all kinds of factors. . Do you talk about that, those struggles in your podcast? 

Jen: I did. I talked about that a lot early on as a woman in tech at a large organization, meaning the city of Portland. I experienced a lot. I had a lot of days where I felt like I should just walk in with a helmet on, I had people.

Jen: Call me, Jenny, like as a way, a very pejorative way of little girl I’m gonna pat you on the head and stuff. So it was . I dealt with a lot, and I have a bank of content that really talks through some of those struggles and how to get through it. And all of that.

Jen: I think that a lot. what I have learned is, if you go to my website, I there’s nowhere on here where I’m saying I’m gonna empower you because empowerment comes from within. If you even look at like the definition of it. So the truth is we can talk about it a lot, and I’m glad to talk to people about the struggles of women in entrepreneurship.

Jen: Certainly, I would invite that and also. we just have to put on our helmet and go in and do it. Anyway. I was at a networking event once they brought me in to speak. It was a small group. I was my friend who invited me and I were the only women. There was a man sitting next to me. I handed out my business card and I saw him playing with it the whole time.

Jen: He, I hate to say it, he was a bald white guy. So no offense to bald white guys. I. Including you, Brent. He was playing with it and all kinds of stuff, and we got to the end and he was like, I just, I gotta tell you, I’m never gonna send anybody to you because of your business name, women conquer business.

Jen: And I was like, okay. And I was really taken aback. And in the moment, I didn’t know what to say. I was like, really, I had just spoken. as you can tell, I’m fairly friendly. There’s not a lot here to really be angry about, I didn’t think. And I got home and I was like, you know what?

Jen: That’s really good marketing, cuz I didn’t really like that guy either. So if he doesn’t wanna work with me, like that’s an example of good marketing. And I think that women have to find those corners where we fit and people are willing to help us because there certainly are corners where people.

Jen: Aren’t. And I think though, that’s also the case with men. I think that’s the case in the transgender community. I think that this is fairly universal. It’s just that for women, there are a lot more corners where we don’t fit. And I think that really stunts the growth a lot is that, and so when we talk about, we’ve talked a lot about mentorship.

Jen: I do think that sometimes as women, we. men to be our mentors. They need to come and they need to say look this, Jen’s really cool. Like she knows what she’s talking about. Let’s how can we support you? I think that’s part of it. I think also as women, we need to say, you know what, a lot of people don’t like us, they’re gonna hurt her feelings.

Jen: Oh when we just have to keep going. So I think that it’s really hard and it’s difficult and. Over time. I have really strengthened my own helmet, to where I just don’t care as much. about, I don’t focus on the people who don’t like me anymore, because I have a hater every time I put something on YouTube, there’s one person that dislikes it.

Jen: I’m like. What it’s just, and I think it’s the same thing. Like they just, maybe I said something one time and I’m like, I could focus on that one person, but then I’m ignoring all the people who I could be helping. And I’m ignoring all the people who like me, if I just focus on the one hater.

Jen: And I think that as women, it’s a lot easier sometimes for us to absorb that criticism and focus on that when the truth is we have to focus on. all of the other people who are helped by us who want to help us. And I think there’s a lot more of that than the other. 

Brent: Yeah. I think a good lesson for every, a male, whether they have hair or not is empathy.

Brent: Because if as an example, that person that made that judgment based specifically on a name that maybe they lack some empathy, but if you have empathy and you put your, if you could put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and I run for a team called mile in my shoes where you’re running with people in homeless and people coming out of prison, that if you could put yourself in their shoes for a mile.

Brent: You can empathize with them. And I think there’s a tieback as being a good employer to have empathy for your employees because they’re going through their own struggles and you can’t thrust upon them your own. Like I can’t thrust upon. Anybody my own things without having some buy in from the other side.

Brent: So I’m trying to navigate the whole subject. And I believe that talking about it is better than not talking about it. I agree. 

Jen: And I think that there has to be some realities out there and, may speak to the male listeners for just a minute.

Jen: It’s easy to say we’ve made so much progress. That’s not really a problem anymore. The gendered issues, the differences in pay, so many things that are going on. And yet I can tell you that I’ll go out on Quora. And there are like executives from Google who are like women don’t like tech, so they don’t need to have jobs in tech cuz they don’t like it.

Jen: The truth is we leave smart women in tech leave because of bad management. because we’re smart. we don’t wanna put up with it. So we are interested. We’re interested in everything. We are smart. We’re capable. We can do all of those things. We’re not there yet. We still need. empathy and we need compassion.

Jen: And just like you do, I think men need it too. I think that those are the things that we need to realize is yes, we’ve made so much incredible progress and things are looking so much better for women and people of color. And we don’t have equity yet. We’re not there yet. So we just need to have that compassion for each other and build those relationships and we’ll go a long.

Brent: Yeah. So I, we are running up against the clock and I feel like we need to have a follow up conversation about marketing specifically. We’ve talked about a lot of great topics and I thank you. I know we talked earlier about my free joke project and I don’t want to, I this is a terrible segue, but let’s just talk about the fact that. My free jokes land very poorly. And you had a much better joke with the size 47 or 45 clown shoes. cuz I said 17 and I was just thinking American sizes, but you said 45? Yeah. And you weren’t thinking European, you were thinking clown sizes. That’s even better.

Brent: I appreciate that. And you caught me off guard so I’m gonna tell you a joke. And the goal from the joke is just to know if I can charge for it or if it should remain free. okay. All right. 

Brent: What did the tectonic plate say when it bumped into another, sorry. My fault.

Jen: I do like that. 

Brent: I have one more. 

Brent: My doctor says I’ve developed a German sausage phobia. I fear the wurst. Oh. I know that was just a, that was a free one. That’s a free one. The first one, I think the first one should it be chargeable or not? Yes, it should be. Wow.

Brent: All right. Yeah, I’ll 

Jen: give that an a plus. They’re both great, but I love dad jokes, 

Brent: all right, good. Jen at the end of every podcast, I give my guests an opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like, what would you like to plug. 

Jen: I would like to talk about epiphany courses. This is our new project.

Jen: It’s at epiphany courses.com. It’s a course platform and a community where we talk about marketing and we’re focusing on service based businesses in particular people who are coaches, consultants, all types. I have acupuncturists, I have intuitive coaches in there. all different types of people who are building all types of service based businesses.

Jen: And we talk. marketing and how to build your marketing platform. How to we answer questions. We have some mini courses, our bread and butter are courses that are under an hour. Hence epiphany. We wanna give people in as brief amount of time as possible, all the information that they need so they can make a decision about whether or not it’s even a viable marketing tactic for their business.

Jen: And that’s all at epiphany courses. 

Brent: All right. And I will put those I’ll put the links in the show notes and and what’s the best way to get in touch 

with 

Jen: you. Oh, I’m all over social media, but yeah, you can find me at LinkedIn on LinkedIn, Jen McFarland on LinkedIn. And then also through my 

Brent: websites.

Brent: All right. Thank you, Jen. Thanks so much. And I’ve enjoyed this conversation. 

Jen: Thank you.

Talk-Commerce Danielle Asah

Becoming Your Dream Self with Danielle Asah

Sometimes young people need a boost to overcome certain challenges that might be stopping them from achieving their dreams. We interview Danielle Asah, the CEO and founder of Day Dreams, a digital marketing agency that helps visionary entrepreneurs and professionals amplify their messages and build their brands.

Danielle coaches aspiring writers to publish non-fiction books and has a book entitled Becoming your Dream Self, Seven Keys to Own and Control your Life as a Millennial.

She is part of an NGO in the United Kingdom whose goal is to motivate people to follow their hearts and make a positive difference in the world via their own unique actions.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce coming from Cameroon west Africa. Today, I have Danielle Asah. Danielle, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you do on a day to day basis and maybe one of your passions in life.

Danielle: Thank you so much, Brent, for having me on it’s actually an honor to be here today. yeah I’m an author, I’m a marketer and I’m the CEO one founder of Day Dreams, a digital marketing agency that helps, visionary entrepreneurs and professionals amplify their messages, build their brands and drive mores to social media.

Danielle: And for over six years now, I’ve lazed a unique path, which is that of digital marketing. And my pursuit of new and challenging opportunities led me to become a developmental editor where I have aspiring artists to write and publish their books like nonfiction book in less than six months. And in addition, I’m a member and associate director of World Game Changers.

Danielle: This is an NGO in the United Kingdom whose goal is to motivate people, to follow their heart and make a positive difference in the world via their own unique actions. I am passionate about two things. First of all, I’m passionate about helping being visionary entrepreneurs and professionals.

Danielle: And secondly, I’m passionate about helping being young millennial to overcome certain challenges that might be stopping them from becoming their dream self or achieving their dreams, which is also the reason why I wrote a book entitled becoming your dream self seven keys to own and control your life as a millennial. 

Danielle: Thank you so much. 

Brent: One of the things that you do is branding, but it sounds like you do a whole lot more of that. Can we talk about the world game changer? That you’re part of a little bit it sounds like a fantastic program and you’re helping young people and a young entrepreneurs break in into entrepreneurship.

Brent: Tell us a little bit about that. 

Danielle: Yeah, the world game changer is is an organization in the United Kingdom, as I said, and we are just a group of people all over the world in all the continents in the world where we generally come together and talk about certain issues about how to improve maybe the product of living, how to make people follow their own path and their dreams and the little change we could.

Danielle: To actually impact our own people in the community where we live. So talking about the young millennials it’s actually a passion because I grew up, I remember 10 years ago, that was in 2012. I almost dropped out of school, like of college because my parents did not have money to send me to the univers.

Danielle: But I had this passion. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So at that very level, I was forced to become an entrepreneur, and I also went after graduating from college, I went to the university, while some of my friends were taking some vacation. I was actually working to save money to consequently to achieve to go to the university to be able to pay for my school fees.

Danielle: and definitely, this also led me to working in different companies like doing some certain activities like those door sales working as the marketing agent in the building and construction company. And later on I actually learned about entrepreneurship when I a very young age and growing up and starting my own business.

Danielle: And also this also taught me something great. And I just had this passion of hurting other young people around me because I know, especially in Africa where I we have a lot of young people who are still confused even after their graduation from college are still very confused about what to do. They don’t actually know about what their passion is.

Danielle: So I’m actually that person, I’m that person that would like to help them to find their purpose, to embark on that particular journey and help them to achieve their. Through some of the training program I used to give online, like I train these millennials on spec, specifically digital marketing skills, which I’m more specialized in.

Danielle: It’s been amazing so far. Like I’ve heard so many people and even the people that I work with in the team, they are all millennials. Cause I just find passion helping working with them so that we can mutually help us serve and grow together. 

Brent: Do you think there’s a disconnect between the way older people think like myself and millennials would think in terms of how are they gonna get into the job market?

Brent: And even as an entrepreneur how you want to portray yourself to let people know what you’re doing and how you’re gonna break into the job market?

Danielle: I think, yeah, I think there’s actually that difference when it comes to young people, because, and I would say that it depends on the, like the community where we grew up, like the situation in my country and in the Western world is quite different. I remember one year ago I met someone on LinkedIn, a guy, I think he’s 18 years old. He was in the US. And he has found out his company since ever since he was 18 years. So I was like, wow, this is great. But it’s actually a big challenge in Africa and in my country Cameroon because we have most of us are just focused on going to school.

Danielle: They just wanna acquire a certificate, but actually they don’t think about a career after education, which is some of the things when I have an opportunity to empower young people and to teach them that you have to not only focus on going to school, but definitely you have to think about in life after education.

Danielle: So I think there is that difference. Cause young people, they feel like, okay they still have time. I remember high spoke with a father, like he’s about 70 years in mine and he told me that There’s one thing that young people have, which old people don’t have, which is time. And I really agree with him when you are young, you feel like you have all of the time on earth to do whatsoever, but when you are much older, you don’t have time.

Danielle: I’m sure like you, you have a very busy schedule. You need to schedule time for everything so it’s the same. We have time, the young people, they have time. So it’s important. As they have the time to develop their skills. But when you come much older, you have many responsibilities and we needed time. 

Brent: Yeah. I think there’s one more thing that older people don’t have that young people have and that’s hair. That’s a small joke about my haircut, but let’s keep moving. So I think that you’re helping young people build their personal brand. Tell us some of what you’re doing to help them on branding and personal branding, I should say.

Brent: And why that’s so important right now.

Danielle: Yeah, that bread. That’s a very interesting question because I can try to share my journey about how I got into building my brand. Even getting in contact with you, getting noticed by you, like with getting noticed by a top leader, like you.

Danielle: It all started in 2018 upon my graduation from university, I had my master’s degree and I was still confused. I didn’t even know what to do, but I knew that I had a passion in digital marketing. So I started taking some online courses, taking some certification program and also getting an internship.

Danielle: Or a job in a digital marketing company. So after this I was looking for a job in a company by then. I was less experienced. I didn’t I didn’t have any visibility. No one knew about me. And at that time I remember I was in 2019. I applied for a job after I have optimized my Linkedin profile.

Danielle: I applied for a. In a company like a digital marketing company in Germany. So it was an online job. And I remember the guy told me that he rejected my application from, because he said I was less experienced. And I couldn’t learn the job. So I tried to convince the guy like I’m ex I, even though I don’t have the experience I’m willing and I’m really zealous about learning this thing.

Danielle: And he was like, no you’re not the right fit for this job. And I said, okay. So can you just imagine that after one year of consistently building my brand later on, I got contacted by this same person and this same company. And he never wanted me because the first time he wanted me to be an intern is in, in his company.

Danielle: So the second time he wanted me to be the co-founder of his same organization. For me, that was a that was a big win. I like, I began to feel like, okay, this I have, I’ve been able to build my brand. So that is just to show the importance of building a brand. First of all, I want to say what personal branding I want to give a brief definition of what a personal branding is because people get confused about it. And I would say it’s about like developing a clear and an authentic image of in the mind of your targeted audience or targeted clients in order to achieve a specific goal. And the first thing is you have certainly heard about this code does says marketing is about yeah, marketing is about asking someone out on a date and branding is a reason for them to say yes

Danielle: Yeah. So definitely it, personal branding is a process of is a process of positioning yourself as an authority in your. As an influenza as it means it’s actually standing out from the crowd because there are 100,000 people just like you out there. So what makes a difference between you and that person is actually the brand.

Danielle: What makes you to be visible, to learn, be recognized as a top leader is the personal branding. And when it comes to personal branding, it’s about highlighting your strengths, your beliefs, your competency, and establishing that reputation and trust and communicating your unique value.

Brent: One question I have about the personal branding for anybody, but I think it’s more for younger people that they want to have this persona that is for their friends, that they’re going out and partying and they’re having a great time.

Brent: And then they want to have a business persona that they would like to give people as well. How do you advise people or younger people, especially to make sure. maybe on LinkedIn, they’re gonna have all business persona and then some other social media platform. They’re gonna have a, more of a fun personal persona, but sometimes in the past, people have gotten into trouble because they’ve posted too many things, maybe on Facebook or YouTube, that there are some mixing with your different personas on different social platforms.

Brent: And do you advise younger people? When they’re doing that branding that they don’t put too much out there on social, or they have one persona that’s one thing. And the other persona is another thing, but be careful how you portray them. 

Danielle: One thing I would say is that I think that’s a great question because definitely when it comes to young people only knows we have, they actually don’t overthink about what they post online.

Danielle: So they just go on and share. But definitely what you share is visible to everyone. I remember there was last year, I was invited to a show where I had about 50 people and I asked them who have ever Googled his name. And I remember out of the way, young people and out of. 50. I had just one person that said he has ever Googled his name.

Danielle: And there is one thing we ought also know, like when you Google your name, what pop up is exactly what the other people see. And I can imagine that for young people, their goals can maybe starting their business, as you said, and, or maybe learning a job in a serious or big corporation or company.

Danielle: Whatever you post online, whatever you share, you have to know that it’s all visible to everyone. And those exact same thing is what your target audience or recruiters. They will see what they Google your name. So personal branding here is about controlling or managing the narrative or the messages that are about you.

Danielle: And it has to do with what you post. And the first thing that you need to act yourself is what do I want to be known for? What do I people to know me for and start creating message that is in mind with that message that you want to communicate or what you want to communicate out there. It’s very important because whatever you put out there, other people are seeing it and it can either, it, that would determine whether someone should trust you, whether that someone should collaborate with you or whether someone should do business with you or not. And there is this great said Gordon. He once said, when people love you, they will listen to you. But when they trust you, they will do business with you.

Danielle: So it’s all about building that credibility and trust. because you want to collaborate and do business with people and you have to be serious about the messages that you are putting out there because it has a lot to play in there. 

Brent: And when somebody does post something, it is out there forever.

Brent: Some even sometimes if you delete it, somebody may have captured it. And so that posting is there indefinitely. So it is a good advice to say make sure what you’re posting and think about it. And and don’t post things that are going to well, it’s hard for a younger person to know what’s gonna be a problem for them in the future, but think about what you’re doing.

Brent: I myself post and think about how do I wanna be perceived? And I try to stay away from some of the controversial things. Also in the controversial things, it does raise questions and it helps to push boundaries and it helps to talk about some of those important topics.

Brent: There is important things around that. Exactly. Is personal branding for everybody. Do you think that everybody should have some thought about 

Danielle: this? We have all been sold on the idea that personal branding is just. influencers, it’s just for big corporations or top topnotch leaders, or I don’t know celebrities, but it’s, actually’s very wrong because I’m personal branding is for everyone.

Danielle: Everyone that wanted to stand out is for everyone. Now we need to, there is alight daily. She said we often think that branding is just for, it’s just done for large corporation, but it’s actually, has everyone has a personal brand, and brand, we need to keep in mind that you can actually begin developing your personal brand.

Danielle: The point in your career, regardless of whether you are successful, whether you are wealthy or whether you are well established as a business or not. So whatever you stage in life, you can definitely start building your brand. And I would tell you’ve been successful or having the skills does not automatically make you to stand out.

Danielle: because, like I said, there are 1000 people just like you, there are thousand people like like person thousand, like thousand personal brands, specialists, or professional out there. Now what makes a difference between you and the other one is personal branding, is building your brand consistently.

Danielle: And I would say no one else is the same match like you or combination or no one has the same exact combination of your skills and expertise like you. Personal brand is about demonstrating, trying to put out your personality or your professional and personal abilities, your skills, your experiences.

Danielle: And you have to know that we have the social media platform. I will not say it’s the only way to actually build your brand, but it’s one of the major things you can use in order to view your brand online. And so just to conclude, I’ll say neither fame no worlds will actually make you to pan out as an authority or to be noticed in your niche, but just try to stand out, just try to stand out by building your brand.

Brent: What advice do you give people to help them stand out? 

Danielle: Yeah. When it comes to standing out our, first of all, say there is only one view and building, building a personnel brand is like creating a unique you. And in addition to that, building a person that brand requires just more than just creating.

Danielle: Some quality content, building relationship with colleagues and friends. It requires more than that. So when it comes to personal branding, I would say the first thing to do is first of all, craft a brand vision which is similar to a statement generally the like classic way or the classic example here is I have eight Z Y.

Danielle: like me, I would say I help entrepreneurs and professional build their brands with growth marketing strategies. So leadership begins because of all communicating your why, when it comes to you have to start cause all by communicating your why we, you know, of this popular author Simon Sinek, he said start always start with your why

Danielle: and he say, people don’t buy because people don’t buy what you sell, but people buy people buy why you do it. that’s quite amazing. So once you craft your brand vision, you can decide what you want to be known for, which I already explain. And the next thing developing a consistent message, which you’ll be sharing and communicating on your different social media.

Danielle: Your logos, your brand colors, everything has to be in sync, right? They have to know you for your brand colors. For the message you share and maintaining that consistency and also be genuine and authentic, it’s really easy to identify who is fake. You need to be true to yourself, true to other people.

Danielle: And be honest, don’t try to be like anyone else. When it comes to brand building, be yourself. Try to be unique. Try to be genuine. Then we can also do like building or social media presence, build your social media presence. It can be establishing a LinkedIn setting up your different social media profile.

Danielle: and account like on LinkedIn setting up and optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Cause this starts from there. One thing I do with my client most of the time is making your LinkedIn profile look like a landing page. Like when I went to your LinkedIn profile, I was able to find out about you because LinkedIn is the biggest platform for professional.

Danielle: And it’s both the personal and professional representation of who you are. So definitely you want someone to get into your LinkedIn profile and be able to find exactly what you do and how you can help them. And and also I want to insist on being consistent, like when you are sharing content online, you need to stay consistent because that’s what will make people to actually remember about you.

Danielle: Because there are 100,000 people just like you, you wanna break through that noise. So stay consistent and people will admire you for that. When you want to build a brand, those are some of the steps by step process you can actually take in order to build a powerful brand online

Brent: Being consistent and then being engaging as well. I think for your social media, especially if you’re just posting and never responding. Then people just think that you’re a bot or you’re just not listening to them. Yeah. Because part of that is the message you’re putting out. But part of that too, is knowing and listening to what people are saying to you.

Brent: And if they have a specific question, knowing that you should respond to them. And I think on LinkedIn, if you’re frequently posting, but never responding, then people stop listening to you because they know you’re just posting and not listening 

Danielle: back. Exactly. So people generally want to make sure that you care about them.

Danielle: And if they ask the question, you have to be capable of responding and also engaging like you, you care about them engaging on other people’s profiles, who are the people you want to reach out to. And when I think when I talk about posting on them, it’s about adding value. It’s not about selling. Most of the times you hardly see me selling, like on my profile, I don’t sell because people are there.

Danielle: When someone can actually see that he can help him solve a particular problem, he’ll reach out to you for help. So what I do generally is normally they say we need to apply the 80 20 rules when it comes to content posting content online. 80% of your post should be about adding value.

Danielle: And the other 20% should be about promotional content. But generally I would say 5%, only 5% of your content should be promotional content, right? People hate when you are always selling to them. So why not creating values, like sharing content, sharing stuff that can help people and you. Stand out as an authority because you cannot call yourself an expert.

Danielle: If you are not adding value in people’s life, if you are not constantly trying to help people, if you’re not sharing valuable content. So you have to not only engage with your audience, but also see how you can constantly be sharing contents to add value in their life and try to be like getting interested in what they are doing.

Danielle: By you can also do networking. So apart from content, there’s also networking, trying to reach out to people, ensuring that you care about them finding about who they are, what they do and what are their challenges on the daily basis? Yeah. And how you can help in very interest. 

Brent: I think that’s one of the hardest things to realize when you’re building your personal brand.

Brent: And it’s part of it is about yourself, but when you start to add value to others, that’s when the branding really takes off, because there’s something that others see that they get in value from you. Other than just a really fancy looking page. Having that value added is one of the biggest thing that you could impart on a younger person to help them understand why any, even an older person like me, anybody like that, they can understand.

Brent: Then if it’s only about yourself and you’re never adding value to somebody else, then there’s really no point in somebody wanting to look at your brand or think about why would this person add anything if they don’t add any value. Exactly. You had mentioned asking why, so I do wanna ask about your book.

Brent: Why did you write your book and tell us a little bit about your book. Yeah. 

Danielle: I wrote my book, which is sightful becoming your dream soul seven kids to own and control your life as a millennial, Because of my experience in life, having almost dropped out of school when I graduated from college because my parents did not have money to send me to school and later on becoming an entrepreneur, doing all types of job, because I wanted to save to go to the university.

Danielle: And also starting my business as a millennial, I wanted to help other people like empower other young millennials and tell them it’s possible to become whoever you want to be. If only you can take the necessary steps, which I explain in the book. So in the book, I just highlight the seven steps I took in order to become my dream self, because this has always been what I wanted to do to have my own business working with young people.

Danielle: In this book, I just try to align as with the mission of helping young people out there. And that is my why. Everything I do. My objective is to help young people. And also these visionary entrepreneurs. I know the struggle that entrepreneurs are going through, like setting up a business and it’s not working most of the time.

Danielle: It’s because they don’t have the know how to actually run a business. So if I can be like that person to get up with my team, helping them to support their. Businesses build helping them build their brands and grow, but that is not part of the book. So the book is more focused on the millennials by helping them, empowering them, giving them some great tips that they can use changing their mindsets, setting goals, long term and short term goals.

Danielle: What do they want to accomplish networking with people? And lemme tell you something. LinkedIn has been a game changer for me. What I’m doing today because of the relationship, the network I’ve dealt online, the people I connect with on a daily basis and I exchange with, and, it’s the book is actually there, anybody that is struggling, that it be a young that is struggling and doesn’t even know what his

Danielle: purpose is because I found myself at this stage. I didn’t even know why I was created in the first place. What is my mission? What is my purpose on it? Why am I created? So I just came to the realization that I was created to use my, give my skills. Am I talent to serve other people?

Danielle: And ever since then, I’ve been helping people all over the world, like in the US and UK and in Canada. To build your brand together with a team, with team of young people. And it’s been super amazing. And whenever I have the opportunity to help young people I really want to do it because young people they struggle a lot cause I’ve been there and at times they just need someone that can tell them what to. They just need someone that can encourage them, mentor them and tell them, okay, this is what you can do, because this is exactly what I went through. And this is how I overcame this. And so my book is on Amazon and I read during the pandemic.

Brent: Yeah. And I’ll make sure I put the links and the show notes for your social media and your book. Danielle, we have a few minutes left. I do want to just you had mentioned that you help people to write nonfiction as well, is that correct?

Brent: Yes. Let’s just briefly talk about how would you help somebody like me write a non-fiction book and how would you come up with a topic? And do you have a exercise 

Danielle: that you’d go through? Yeah, definitely. I work with an an expat and also being someone that have written a book and have also ghost written or helped other, like for now I’ve heard five people write their.

Danielle: I know that for older people, they don’t have time when it come to it. They don’t have that time to write a book, but they have the know how, which can definitely help other people out there. So what we do is that we try to listen to your story and see which one is the message that you want to communicate out there, which is definitely from the experience you’ve been through your personal experience.

Danielle: And then we craft a message around there, like a title around there. And then we work on the title of the different topics, the different chapters, and they start writing the process. So literally what I do is that I do sessions meeting sessions, where we meet, and then I ask you some questions and you answer them.

Danielle: And then I sit down with the recording and I try to develop a story chapter by chapter, but I make sure that everything that is written in the book is from you. Because one thing I say is that the best person that can teach you something it’s someone that have been through a particular situation. Yeah. So that is a process of writing the book but why I say non-fiction book and focus more on transformational book, like books serve her books, where you can just read and then gain one or two things that can definitely transform your life. 

Brent: We have a few minutes left now. I give our guests a chance to do a shameless plug, which is promoting whatever you’d like, what would you like to plug today? 

Danielle: I would like to share about my experience working with the entrepreneurs and young people and how they can build their brands online. Talking about personal branding, I would say it is very important and for everyone that wants to make a difference out there, whether you are a professional, whether you are seeking for a job, whether you want to start your own business, I would tell you it’s very important to start building your brand because when you build your brand, you start attracting the right people with the same goals and vision.

Danielle: And this is a game changer in your career. It can help you to get opportunities that you would’ve never, ever imagined in your life. if you don’t know how to grow about it, I can help you. Together with my team to start building your brand online. And also I’ve been able to help about 50 professionals who wanted to land a job, like setting up their LinkedIn profile and start building a brand for them.

Danielle: So if you are a professional, that is, that needs a job. So we can help you to build your brand, set your social, your LinkedIn profile. And if you are business owners and you have been struggling with your business and you don’t even know how to go about it. I urge you to just reach out to me at Danielle Asah

Danielle: and I will definitely see how we can help you to, but if you can also follow my content, because I share content on the daily basis on how to build your brand. If you want to do it yourself, or if you wanna reach out to me just for a strategy session, I can give you one or two tips. You must necessarily not work with me.

Danielle: I can give you some. And also share with you how I was able to build my brand. And in less than two years, I was able to stand out as an authority in my field. Thank you so much. 

Brent: That’s probably exactly how I found you. I think I found you through LinkedIn and I think I found you through the world game changer.

Brent: Danielle, thank you so much for being here today Danielle Asah, I will put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so people can contact you that way. It’s been a pleasure talking to you today, and I wish you all the best. Thank you.

Talk-Commerce Katie Hoesley

The Simple Formula for Success in Open-SaaS and the BigCommerce Hackathon with Katie Hoesley

Open-Source and Software as a Service have traditionally not been aligned. The traditional SaaS model is closed code on a multitenant host. The Open-Source model is something you have complete control over, and you have to host it yourself.

Open SaaS brings the idea of open source to the SaaS Community. We talk to Katie Hoesley about the Big Commerce Hackathon and how developers can be active in a vibrant community.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to Talk Commerce, the BigCommerce community channel today. I have Katie Hoesley. Did I get it right? Katie Hoesley. So Hoesley go ahead. Introduce yourself. Tell us what your day to day role is and one of your passions in life. 

Katie: Okay. Yeah, I’m Katie. I am the senior developer advocate at BigCommerce.

Katie: And I think the things I’m really passionate about. Completely unrelated. I’m really passionate about education and I’m really passionate about being outside. I live in Colorado and I’m from Minnesota, like you Brent. I’m really passionate about the outdoors and education. 

Brent: Good.

Brent: Today we’re gonna talk about some developer things at BigCommerce and how maybe developers could get more involved. Yep. In some of those activities that BigCommerce is doing. Tell us about what you’re doing in that role and some of the things that we can do together to encourage developers on the BigCommerce platform.

Katie: Yeah. So my position at BigCommerce, I describe it as to people as I swing on a pendulum between our product and engineering teams and then the developers in our developer community who actually use BigCommerce tools and who build on our platform. A big part of what we’re doing right now is just trying to get more people engaged in our community in general.

Katie: And the thing we have actually running as we speak is the first ever developer hackathon at BigCommerce. So it’s a two week long hackathon. We have participants from all over the world and it’s been really fun. It’s the first time we’ve run anything like it. And of course, now that we’re running it, we have 2 million ideas of the things that we wanna do moving forward.

Katie: More hackathons, more community engagement, more open source, contribution competitions stuff like that. We really want anyone that builds on the platform to join either our slack community or follow us on Twitter. Because we have a huge number of people that build on this platform and we have such a small percentage of them in our engaged community.

Katie: And so if I could tell them all one thing it’s that I really think you get a lot out of engaging in the community. You engage with us on the dev team. You engage with the other folks that are building on the same platform. And you can eliminate a lot of multiple people doing the same work, we find out that people are building something that someone built five years ago, but they just don’t know it exists.

Katie: My day to day is really trying to get people into that community and then trying to create initiatives that really bring them a lot of value. And then. We have a perfect direct line into our users to bring feedback back to product and engineering, to tighten up those loops of iterations of products.

Katie: It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, like BigCommerce gets a ton out of us having an engaged community and the community itself. I think also gets a lot out of just being there and being with each other and with 

Brent: us. I think that you had mentioned open source and that’s a little bit unique to the SaaS community.

Brent: Tell us about open SaaS and open source and how BigCommerce views open source and how open source then is is participated in from the broader community. Yeah. 

Katie: Great question. So BigCommerce is moving in a direction. Like I feel like we’re partially there, but the larger initiative in general is moving towards being like an open SaaS platform.

Katie: Which means that we accept contributions from the community. You can go look at the code base of big design, for example, our like modular design library that has all these reusable components that you can use. Anyone can use them. They’re open source. And if you find a flaw or if you wanna improve it, like you can do that.

Katie: We can have all of this contribution from our community so that our community is not reliant on our developers fitting some bug fix or some feature request or whatever into a sprint, rather if you know how to fix it, or if you wanna add something, you can go ahead and do that. And I think anyone who uses a particular software consistently, or anyone that’s been a software developer knows that the community finds things that the developers on the back end don’t see, because they’re building the product.

Katie: They aren’t necessarily using it over and over and over. So the more contributions we get from our community in tandem with what our very skilled developers are building better for everybody. It’s a really cool concept. I don’t know if anyone else is doing or is as focused on it as BigCommerce.

Katie: And if I was a, if I was a developer out in the wild and I had to pick something, I feel like I would wanna pick an open SaaS platform over something that’s completely closed. And if I have any sort of issue or thing. I know I can just go fix real quick. I have to wait for it to fit onto a product roadmap where open SaaS or open source contributions in general are just a way for the community to directly affect the product that they use every day.

Brent: Maybe describe briefly how a developer gets. They find a bug, how do they get that fix into it? And how do they verify it’s been fixed? If it’s a SaaS platform. Yeah, 

Katie: that’s a good question. You would have to find either in the documentation or by contacting someone where that repository is of whatever that open.

Katie: Thing, you’re looking at, say, it’s the big design. You could find the big design repository and you would submit a poll request for whatever change you’re making. And then someone on our end would either accept the poll request or they would reject it. You would find out, probably get like a GitHub notification.

Katie: I’m guessing if that’s how you’re doing it. And if there’s some major thing that you wanna change, they’re not gonna. Users create like humongous features, I don’t think at this point any platform would let users create something huge, but you would just submit a poll request and then you would know whether or not that got closed, like rejected or closed 

Brent: accepted.

Brent: Are there, are you recognizing those people in a way, in any way? 

Katie: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t know if we have a system for like recognition of con contributions. I don’t know if we’re at a level where we’re getting enough contributions to think about it.

Katie: But we should, we definitely should. There should be an incentive. There’s an inherent incentive because it’s improving the product that you use, but there should be a greater incentive for people to continue contributing, cuz that’s the goal, right? Like people they start contributing and then they get the bug and they want to contribute more and everybody wins.

Katie: As of right now, I don’t know if there’s like a true incentive outside of the product being improved. 

Brent: Have you looked at other open source communities that are doing the same thing that wouldn’t be SaaS? An on-prem open source software has a lot of these things that we’re talking about already

Brent: ingrained in ’em because people can run the whole system on their local machine and find those things directly. Have you looked to see what other communities are doing to see how BigCommerce can evolve in that as a SaaS company? 

Katie: I don’t know if Magento qualifies for this, but when I first started in devel, I was like talking to everyone I could find online about dev and about their experiences, wherever they are.

Katie: And I kept hearing that Magento’s software is over 50%. Open source contributions. And that creates this awesome ecosystem where people want to contribute. They’re saying their contributions recognized developers love it because they don’t have to sit and fix all these things or add all these these little tweaks that they trust their community to do.

Katie: And I heard over and over these like rave reviews about just that. I think right away, I was sold on uping the open source. Just like upping people’s knowledge or awareness that like, you can do that here. And so our hackathon is our first big thing, but an open source contribution competition, or some way to get people to contribute to our open source content is definitely on the top of the list of things we wanna do next.

Katie: So yes and no, I think I don’t have a lot of direct things to look. There’s not I don’t know that there’s an exact parallel to what we’re doing for me to look at, but I heard over and over from people who had worked both in develop as a developer and in other roles at Magento that that was a huge thing.

Katie: That was a huge reason for their community growing so much and staying so big. And like I said, there’s so many devs using BigCommerce and there’s so few of them proportionally active in our community. Active in slack or active on Twitter or wherever it is our forums. And I’m hoping that more initiatives like that can get people in, people can see this is fun and it’s not that hard.

Katie: And you can solve your own problems, which I think for a lot of developers being able to solve your own problem. Is why you became a developer most of the time. You can do it yourself, you can build it yourself. So yeah, Magento is the big one that I kept hearing over and over.

Katie: Obviously you’re familiar with Magento. And so just hearing that alone, inspired me to really keep that on our developer relations roadmap of a really cool thing. We can get people. To be aware of and to 

Brent: contribute to. Yeah. And I do know a little bit about Magento but I do also think it’s a good if you look back in history, it has a good roadmap of things that have worked and haven’t worked in a community.

Brent: And it’s a good way to collaborate with another community to find things that are working from one community, the other. And I think as a community leader the core of it shouldn’t be commercial. The core of why we’re in a community is to do great things together as a community.

Brent: And I applaud the hackathon. I think that’s very exciting. Is it the first eCommerce hackathon for a SaaS platform? 

Katie: It might be? I’m guessing other companies have done one. I know Shopify did one years ago. I know it’s the first one at BigCommerce. We’ve never done an external hackathon before.

Katie: And when I looked around to try to find examples of other hackathons, so I could figure out how to run one and figure out what I needed to do in order for it to work. I really couldn’t find a whole lot of stuff. So I don’t know if this exact model of us running one, not in tandem with an event.

Katie: It is its own event on its own. I think that setup is fairly unusual. Normally a hackathon would be, the final two days of a week, long conference or something like that. So I didn’t have a lot of examples to look to. I just had my previous experience of being in hackathons. So we could stitch together what we thought we needed to do. I’m not sure if we’re the first oh, SaaS company to do one. I doubt it. I’m sure someone has but yeah, it’s our 

Brent: first one. I think it’s super exciting. It’s the first one of a SaaS company I’ve heard of, but then, okay. I’ve been involved in another community for a long time that’s not SaaS, so I’m not the best expert in that.

Katie: We have, I think like a third of our participants are in Asia.

Katie: A third are in north America and a third are in Europe and 1159 central time is like 8:00 AM someplace, it’s all over the place.

Brent: Great. Is there, so is there plans to do an in person, like maybe in Austin, an in person hackathon it is 

Katie: top of mind. I think running a virtual one has been awesome, but it just makes me that much more excited to run something in person.

Katie: I guess anyone on the internet knows it’s much more difficult to connect with people via discord or even via zoom. So we would love to have some sort of developer-centric event BigCommerce traditionally. I don’t think we have very large developer events. But as we dig a little bit more into like developer relation, as we invest more in our developer relations team and our community team I think it’s become clear that we have a ton of people in Austin.

Katie: We have a ton of people that would travel to Austin if we were doing some big, awesome things. There’s no date but it’s on our like mental roadmap of when can we do this? And we are excited. I really wanna do something 

Brent: soon. Yeah. And I know John Woodall of space 48, and I know Tom Robertshaw who just did big DevX.

Brent: It was a virtual event too. Yeah. Our first event with him was in Austin. Okay. It was called ma Titans. And I think there’s probably a lot of opportunity. And I know Space 48 is fantastic in the collaboration space and especially in the developer space. And Tom is such a great person to lead that.

Brent: It seems that type of event would be a big hit in Austin. And I would be one of those people behind it that would be pushing for it. And it is fun. We have organized a number of the Meet Magento events, and typically after the event, we would do a full day hackathon in conjunction Adobe slash Magento always sent their community leaders there to help put those pull requests in at the end.

Brent: At the end we would have some scorecard items around how many bugs were squashed and how many pull requests were accepted. And it’s always a fun time. And then the developers, if their bug does get into the core. I think with the open source that you can download, you can actually see your name inside of the code base.

Brent: What is that? But it is it’s, I think from a recognition standpoint, it’s always fun to know that, Hey, I’ve contributed back to this software and it’s a good talking point for BigCommerce as well that you can participate and then give back to it. 

Katie: Totally and like doing a hackathon like that too, a really short, like one or two days is a completely different energy than this two week one, this two week one, I think is gonna primarily be people working on or starting to work on apps that they do plan to bring to the marketplace, so I think we’ll have a lot of like MVPs that will get iterated on after. I’m sure Space 48 is gonna come out with some fully done app within two weeks. I don’t even know what those guys could do. Probably a fully completed app, but the energy of a two day one is really fun. Yeah, if we did some sort of open source competition or, whatever it is.

Katie: And also we have so many partners that are doing such interesting things. It’d be so fun to have speakers from somewhere like space 48, someone like you to come up and talk to the other developers in a real, in person forum. I’ve never even met my coworkers or seen our office, so it would also be cool for me.

Katie: But yeah, something in person is like definitely top of mind and being able to in incentivize and encourage open source contributions would be huge. 

Brent: Let’s make sure we do a follow up after the hackathon and see how it goes. And definitely we have a few minutes left here and I have a new project that I’ve started personally it’s called the free joke project.

Brent: Okay. And I’m working on telling a joke during the podcast rather than. just Having a joke prior to my podcast, which I give away a free joke prior. I’m gonna tell you a joke right now.

Brent: And and then you can decide if it’s free or. Should I charge for it? That’s the question. Should it be an open source joke or is this one of those jokes that we want to really tie it down. We don’t want even anybody to modify the payment gateway on this joke. 

Brent: That’s how closed it is. All right. So what do you call it? What do you call a detective who just solves cases accidentally? What do you 

Katie: call detective who just solves cases 

Brent: accidentally Sheer Luck Holmes. 

Katie: I think you got charge for that one. Really? I think that’s gotta go behind the paywall. That’s a good one.

Brent: Behind the paywall joke. You’re the first one who has said that. Thank you so much. Katie, at the end of every podcast, I give the guests the opportunity to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today? 

Katie: Okay I think what I’d like to plug is joining our developer slack space or following BigCommerce devs on Twitter.

Katie: That is me. I constantly retweet myself, so you’ll know right away it’s me, but that is I think the top of the funnel to joining our developer network and to really seeing what we offer and being able to engage with people just like yourself and people from my team. We’d love to have more people join the community and really see that it’s a great place to be.

Brent: Yeah. And I will just add that we’ve started a BigCommerce community channel on Twitter. Yes. That we’re trying to get more people. It does have more people than another platform that starts with an M that now starts with an a, but also has a large following. So I would encourage everybody to go to Twitter and join the BigCommerce, Twitter community channel.

Brent: Yeah. And we are trying to post something in there almost every day. Katie, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for having me. It’s been a great conversation and I wish all the luck for your hackathon. And lots of bugs, squashed, and lots of new features seen. 

Katie: Yes, exactly. Thank you so much.

magento-association Marta Molinska

Helping Ukraine with Marta Molinska

We talk with Marta Molinska (@molme) about how she has helped hundreds of Ukrainian refugees as they crossed the border during the war. We talk a little about the Magento Association and how Marta is helping with events and the community. Ukraine can still use your help!

https://www.hospitallers.life/about-us

Marta runs a sky diving business in Poland and is passionate about the Magento Community.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this special episode of the Magento association. Talk Commerce collaboration to bring out more about the Magento association and what we’re doing to help the Magento community today. I have Marta Molinska Marta, please introduce yourself. Tell us what you do on a day to day basis.

Brent: And one of your passions in. 

Marta: That’s a very nice way of introducing myself when it comes to passion because what I do on a daily basis is my passion. So I run a drop zone. So we are jumping out of planes and my personal role on the drop zone is to teach people how to And my side job is actually involved in Magento and Magento association as well.

Marta: I’ve been organizing Meet Magento Poland for 9 years straight and now I’m more involved in Magento association and in helping with communication with some consulting and I guess that I try to be a kind of maybe not community manager because it’s for me, the community is not something that you can manage.

Marta: It’s something that you can join and be part of it. And I guess that I want to be a part of it. 

Brent: Thank you so much. And so today we’re gonna talk a little bit about Ukraine and how people can help Ukraine and maybe how both the Magento community and the Magento association can participate in helping Ukraine.

Brent: So sure. Give us a little bit of background on, on what you’ve been doing so far. 

Marta: It’s it’s already a few months since the war broke. But the first weeks were obviously the most intense a couple of days after this shocking news when when Russia attacked Ukraine we in Poland, we were devastated.

Marta: And as I said, we were just in shock, but after a few days and when the migration crisis took place on the border we saw a horrible, horrible videos and pictures from from the border. We could see that the huge crisis is coming. And I guess that the whole nation was thinking just the same, but I need to step in.

Marta: I need to do something and people just open their houses, they open their their homes and they really welcomed total strangers. Of course, if someone that, needs help you’re open to share some of your personal space, but it I think that it never happened. At this scale, it was hundreds of, and thousands of people who welcomed Ukrainians in their homes.

Marta: But I saw that it’s not enough. And since I don’t have much space in my house but I do have a lot of spaces at the airfield as my drop zone, especially in the winter time when we are not operating. We decided quickly to share every inch of space that we had and we recreated every office and the room that we had to the refugee center.

Marta: And yes, as mentioned before the first week was we’re very busy and we had hundreds of people not at the same time though. We had a rotation. So families were coming in they stayed for a few days or weeks depending on what their next plan was. And then when they left new families were coming in.

Marta: Yeah, a rotation system. And then after each family left one by one we continued to help in their settling in process. Like with finding a job or doing some paperwork with school or providing some basic supplies for the new start you can just imagine people.

Marta: coming to to Poland with all their belongings, not in the suitcase, not in even, a backpack. It were just a plastic bags like from Walmart, and they were occurring at for 2000 kilometers. It’s I don’t know, 3000 miles. Yeah, that, that was something that was obviously the most intense time of my life.

Marta: That’s for sure. And the most rewarding as well. And from this point I also wanted to thank a lot some Magento community members that stepped up really quick and helped me to continue the work because on the very beginning, it was quite easy to gather funds for running the shelter.

Marta: But since it’s not my daily job to run this kind of places I had no competencies to do this. And also not much resources. First of all Karen Baker, she was the first to help me out with covering some basic costs that we had on the beginning. And also Hyva especially Vinai and Willem.

Marta: I was touch with them from the very start and 10% of their income for two months was dedicated to the shelter that I was running. And also a lot of other people coordinated to my PayPal account. It really helped. It was not in vain. It never occurred to me that I had so many friends who wanted to help.

Marta: I really appreciate it. And you can be really proud of yourself. You help? A lot of people, we had 426 people in total at the shelter and yeah, including 270 kids. So thank you very much. 

Brent: Is the shelter still going or there was no need her things.

Brent: Okay. Yes. So things are start. I don’t wanna say normal, but 

Marta: they’re, it is still far from normal. We didn’t have to keep the shelter up and running after end of May. So we had it for three months. But I have to admit that it felt like it was three years really. But yeah, after three months it was no longer needed because.

Marta: The waves of refugees started to fade out and people found their more permanent places to stay. So that was one reason. And second reason is, was that we needed to start our operations. So we needed the spaces for our usual business as well. But on the other hand, we we still have a couple of processes that are

Marta: open and they’re constant. Together with my dad I’m not, I don’t think that he’s ever going to listen to this, but still I’m really proud of him because he’s keeping up an amazing work for the past weeks. He was able to gather funds for four ambulances. And now he just got an amazing support again from Magento community from fi and Tomic KKA.

Marta: Many of you might know them from Devant company. They were really helpful and they were so kind to donate money for two ambulances, which are going to Ukraine in a couple of days 

Brent: I saw some stories about ambulances that were coming into Ukraine and then volunteers that were going to the front line to help evacuate people, especially older.

Brent: I think a lot of elderly people that are stuck in that area are finding it very hard to leave or just even evacuate or at the time, especially, it was very difficult for them to move across that area. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I applaud you. And I thank you so much for all your hard work.

Brent: That is so great. 

Marta: It’s something that we are neighbors. We can’t really, leave our brother nation. When they’re at war, we just need to step up. 

Brent: That’s good. Switching gears into the Magento association. I think, I think that as you’ve helped with the Ukrainian crisis, you’ve also always helped with Magento and Meet Magento, and now Magento association.

Brent: Do you wanna talk a little bit about what you’re doing for the Magento association 

Marta: now? Of course I’m happy. For we started our cooperation on the beginning of the year. It was just, it was short before the war started. So the beginning of the cooperation was a bit hectic.

Marta: I shifted my focus on on the shelter, but now we are obviously back on track and I’m pretty much involved in events. I guess this is my domain and I helped in organizing MA connect this year and also in previous year as well. We have two additions. And one addition in 2020 when the pandemic started and one in 2021 and 20 22 now.

Marta: So yeah, I was pretty much involved in, and I hope that we’ll be back in within next month with some good news about new events. 

Brent: I saw that Adobe is going to have their summit in Las Vegas in March of 2023. So hopefully we can come up with a Magento association event that piggybacks on the Adobe summit and have a little bit more Magento representation at the event.

Brent: I would love. Yeah, as I remember too, there’s a down payment at somewhere in Las Vegas, still. , that they used. That’s true. There was a 2020 event that was planned. I’m sitting on the Magento. Membership committee and I am always looking for ways that we can entice people to join

Brent: the Magento association. I just interviewed Vijay Golani from India on some of his ideas on how we can get people to join. Do you have any thoughts on encouraging people to join the Magento association and the reasons why they 

Marta: would obviously the first reason. To be more present in the community and to, for example, to be able to vote when you have the voting, you can say that you have the real influence on what’s going on within Magento association. But obviously there are also other ways You only want to get involved in in the Magento community you can reach out to Magento association and there are a lot of committees that work on a regular basis.

Marta: So it’s it’s very easy to to join or to suggest some ideas, but you are asking how we could encourage people to join. I am a fan of asking the community directly what they want, because we can think that we know, but maybe we don’t, maybe we just assume that something and if we start with wrong assumptions that we would go wrong direction.

Marta: So if we ask the community what the community really wants, then we can address the needs that really exist. 

Brent: I think you’ve been involved in the Magento community for a long time. You’ve been involved in meet Magento, Poland in the past. What is it that drives you to want to be in a in the community and organize events? You’ve done so much for the community. What is it that lies within you that makes you want to do that?

Marta: I wish I knew I don’t know. It’s I’m a very community person. And the same as in my skydiving community, we have we have a lot of connections and this is something that I really like about the Magento ecosystem. It’s not the only business, like there are a lot of different initiatives, different backgrounds, different companies.

Marta: Everyone has the same goal. Obviously we are in a business it’s it’s our way to make a living. But still it’s something more than that. Maybe that’s why I still stick with the Magento community because it’s still alive. It’s still there. I know it sounds like a cliche, but still it’s about the people.

Marta: And I like so much being around Magento folks that I can’t really describe this and maybe that’s why I stick to events, because where to meet Magento people just on the events. Yeah. That’s why we missed in person events so 

Brent: much. . Yeah I agree. There’s some sort of magic there. I don’t know.

Brent: I haven’t been in, I’ve been involved in other communities, but it hasn’t been as magical as this and maybe there’s definitely a people aspect to it. I always enjoy, I enjoy going to meet Megento Poland, meet Megento Germany, nether. All those different places and traveling and meeting all those people.

Brent: And it isn’t the event so much, it is the people. And then when you start to get to know those people and enjoy their company and having some time with them, I think that’s the important part. Do you think there’s another community that can match the vibrance of the Magento community? Do you think it’s unique in any way or is there anything that’s this magic Elixer 

Marta: I don’t know if there are any other communities which might be similar to Magento.

Marta: It has an orange vibe, and I guess this is a really unique group of people coming in and coming out also because it’s a living organism. It’s not like a solid rock, I guess That’s exactly why it is unique. It shapes our real from day one to now and to the future.

Brent: Yeah. I think part of the uniqueness too, it was born from the founders of Magento Roy and Yoav and then Bob Schwartz and even Mark Lavell really embraced the community. I saw that, when eBay did their, when they were there, there was a kind of a drop off and. when when Mark Lavell started again, he really embraced it.

Brent: And I think that’s part of it is that the, whatever the brand is that’s around the community. If there is a brand, there has to be buyin from all parties, I think is part of it. And now I think Magento’s finding its place in the world with Mage-OS and the Magento Association.

Brent: I think it’s starting to find its feet again. 

Marta: I really hope that Magento association is is going to play a major role in shaping this Magento reality. And I know that it is not always been perceived as an important player, but now when the changes are being applied, the changes that are

Marta: really going to reshape the Magento association and with the more open attitude to, towards the community. I really think that we are going to make some difference. 

Brent: Yeah. I can say that from the membership side, from the event side, there’s a lot of very exciting things happening and I’m seeing a lot more transparency, especially from the Magento association.

Brent: So we’re seeing more about what’s happening internally and we’re seeing more news from each of the community meetings and it’s an exciting time and I’m very excited for what you’re doing in events and I you’ve joined our membership committee as well. And and had some very good insight for us.

Brent: Thank you. Marta as we finish out, I give everybody an opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like to plug today. What would you like to plug. 

Marta: I think we can, we started with with Ukraine and to be honest, I would like to end our episode also with a personal request for, to each of you.

Marta: If you can find a way to help Ukraine, everyone wanted to help on the very beginning and was eager. Either send money or supplies or to help in any other way, like offering jobs and so on. But after some weeks this general willingness to help faded a little bit and the war didn’t fight that much.

Marta: Didn’t fight at all, actually. So Ukraine still needs a lot of help. So each of us can really make a difference. I can say from my heart that every single act of kindness or any single act of help is changing someone s life. So I would really like to each of you to find a way to.

Marta: Ukraine in any way you can 

Brent: thank you. Yeah it does. It starts with one person. I before this, I was talking to Dmitri from Swiss labs, Swiss up labs, and he also had a very good recommendation for a paramedic service. We will put any recommendations in our show notes today and make those links available to everyone.

Brent: Marta, what is your next event coming up? What is your next big thing you’re gonna be doing? 

Marta: We’ll, I hope it’s going to be either ma connect. So our online event, or maybe a Magento association in person event, we’re still figuring out the details, but I really hope this is it.

Brent: Yeah, me too. Marta, it’s been so great talking to you. Thank you for the time. Thank you for a wonderful evening. Thank 

Marta: you. Bye bye. Bye.

Talk-Commerce Lisa Hammett

Dare to say NO with Lisa Hammett

When you say yes to something, you are saying no to something else. What are you saying no to? @lisahammett

If you’ve ever experienced burnout, it’s like hitting a wall. You’re done. You’re mentally and physically wiped out. You’ve lost your capacity to see beyond your present situation. Your life has become gray, devoid of color.

Lisa talks about her experience with burnout and how saying yes too much can contribute to this. This is a great conversational interview that covers a variety of topics that causes stress and burnout in the workplace.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisahammett/
https://www.lisahammett.com/book

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce today I have Lisa Hammett.

Brent: Lisa, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you’re doing in a day-to-day role and maybe one of your passions in. 

Lisa: Thanks, Brent. It’s so nice to be here. I am Lisa Hammett. I am a success and mental fitness coach and I help executives and business owners reduce stress. Hopefully to prevent burnout, but I have helped others get through burnout, by developing mental fitness so they can leave a healthy, happy, productive life.

Lisa: And having been through burnout myself, I am really passionate about helping others get through that because oftentimes when you reach burnout, you feel like you have no hope you’ve hit a wall. I like to equate it to the world kind of goes gray devoid of color and it can really seem like there’s no hope.

Lisa: So I like to give people hope. 

Brent: That’s great. And I know that what sparked my interest was that you had a article on LinkedIn and I think it was about just say no. So tell us a little bit about the reasoning behind that and some of the things you found out of that. 

Lisa: Absolutely. So one form of stress management is setting healthy boundaries and that falls into the self care equation.

Lisa: And oftentimes when we think of self care, we think of what we eat, how we move our bodies, our sleep water, which are all amazing, but setting healthy boundaries is just as important. And especially for managing stress. So just say no was about how you can set those healthy boundaries and you don’t need to apologize for it.

Brent: in just say, no, your article was directed to both entrepreneurs and employees. 

Lisa: Yes, 

Brent: absolutely. And maybe speak to how entrepreneurs sometimes would say yes to everything which causes them to have more stress. 

Lisa: Oh, I can so relate to that, cuz I’ve been an entrepreneur for quite a while and when you’re hungry and you’re starting your business, you don’t wanna say no because you don’t want to develop a reputation of, oh, I can’t do that.

Lisa: Or, if you’re in the business, Sector. You don’t want people to think that you’re not a team player, but what I have found is when you learn to say no the right way and set those healthy boundaries, it actually commands more respect and you don’t need to apologize for it. In fact, apologizing for it sets a negative example.

Lisa: It’s okay to say no, in fact, it is encouraged. 

Brent: Do you think there’s some truth to focusing on a couple of things is better than trying to do everything and by saying no, you’re really just targeting those specific things that you’d like to work on. 

Lisa: Absolutely. Absolutely. So somebody explained to me and I thought this was such a unique way of looking at it is, when you say yes.

Lisa: To something you’re actually saying no to something else. So it then begs the question. What are you saying yes to? Are you saying yes to the wrong things, which ties into what you had just asked? Are we focusing on the wrong thing. So we are not able to really drive our business or move forward in a relationship, make positive change in our life.

Lisa: It really begs the question to assess and say, okay, what am I actually saying no to, and should I be saying yes to it a way to shift it a little bit. 

Brent: Yeah. And I think there’s some things in there that business owners would say yes and no to, and I want to break it into two parts right now.

Brent: There’s the customer portion of it. And then there’s the inner drive to do something new portion of it. And I think Verne Harnish calls it the shiny object where that thing is making you add something more to your list. Let’s talk about the customer first. You mentioned that they would have more respect for you for saying no.

Brent: Talk, just dive into that a little bit. 

Lisa: If you are saying no, from a place of authenticity, you’re not apologizing. And you’re being honest without providing a dissertation, people will respect you because oftentimes other people want to say no as well, but they don’t know how to, or they’re afraid of offending somebody.

Lisa: And when somebody is honest and authentic, it’s very refreshing. For example, when dealing with customers saying something to the effect that. Unfortunately, I cannot do this for you right now, due to X, Y, Z, in my schedule, I want to make sure that I am able to provide you the best service. And by saying yes to this, I won’t be able to do that.

Lisa: Somebody said that to me, I would be thank you. I might be disappointed, but I would be so appreciative because how many times have you been in a situation where somebody told you yes to something and then it surpassed, it went the deadline just kept pushing out and you never got constructive feedback as to what was happening.

Lisa: And it really developed some resentment. 

Brent: I think a real life. Way of looking at it for a business owner would be to look at the restaurants that have a list for you to sit down. They are telling you no. You can’t sit down right now because either we don’t have enough room or we don’t have enough staff to handle all this.

Brent: That no, then sets your expectation for when you’re going to be able to eat. There’s a direct correlation with that. That’s more of a quick thing where, Hey it’s gonna be 45 minutes, but I could see all these open tables. Well, we don’t have enough people to cover all those open tables.

Brent: So if we were to seat you, you would still sit there and wait. Do you think there’s a, a way that business owners can work or let me just back up a second, are there some exercises they can work through to help them to understand when they should say no? And when they shouldn’t. 

Lisa: That’s a good question.

Lisa: I think a lot of times it boils down to what is most important, and I’m gonna go to the shiny object thing that you were talking about earlier. It’s we get distracted by things that we put too much importance on, so it really boils down to prioritization. And what is of the utmost importance and when we are,

Lisa: squirrel squirrel shiny object. That is not helpful. So sometimes, it’s as simple as doing a brain dump and just writing down. Okay. These are all the different things that need to be accomplished and then start prioritizing them in need to be done now, need to be done. And X number of time can be done later.

Lisa: And. It sounds remedial, but it really does work. 

Brent: I think too, the making sure that you, from a customer standpoint, when you do say yes, looking at that entire journey that the customer’s gone through and then going back and doing a little retrospect on how did that actually go and are we serving them in a good way?

Brent: Maybe we could talk a little bit about the monetary side of that. Cause I think a lot of times newer business owners always wanna say yes, and they don’t realize where their profit comes from. And there is a actual monetary value that you could put on saying no. In economics it’s opportunity cost, right?

Brent: So every time you say yes, you’re giving up potential opportunity for a higher revenue. In your coaching, how do you like coach that into somebody that isn’t sometimes very receptive? 

Lisa: Oh, gosh, I personally went through this when I lost my lost launched my business. You almost want to be something for everybody and then just see kind of where it sticks, but that doesn’t work.

Lisa: I mean, it’s really more effective to narrow down specifically who your clientele. Is and be very, very specific because oftentimes we get so focused on, oh, here’s something here. Oh, here’s a little bit here. Well, what happens is that just takes time to prevent you from really going after that ideal client it’s just becomes like busy work.

Lisa: If it’s somebody that isn’t really going to help you develop your offering in a sense that can actually help you move forward. Do they have people that they could refer you to? Is it really the, the area that you want to.

Lisa: become involved in, as opposed to, oh, here’s just something that’s gonna get me some money. Does that make sense? 

Brent: Yeah, that’s a really good way to look at it. Okay do you think it’s harder to pivot from nos to yeses at some point? And I’ll give you the example. The agency that I run was specifically a Magento agency and Magento’s an eCommerce platform.

Brent: The name of the agency is Wagento. And a couple of years ago, we took on another brand, another partner called BigCommerce. And it was very difficult because we were so hyper focused on the one platform to get people to understand that we’re gonna add another one. So that pivot took a little bit of time.

Brent: Some may argue that, Hey, if I’m so hyperfocused, it’s gonna be harder to branched out when we’re ready to branch out what sort of advice or coaching can you give to somebody like me? Who was so hyperfocused for 10 years?

Brent: And then suddenly I’m like, oh geez. You know, I’m gonna have to do something new. How do I start saying yes again to something. 

Lisa: I think having somebody to coach you through the process is really important to have somebody who’s outside of the situation. And I’m not saying actually hire a coach. It could be somebody, a mentor that you really respect.

Lisa: A fellow business owner who has gone through a similar transition, but somebody who can look at it objectively and really provide you with some great feedback because when we are so focused on one thing, it’s really hard sometimes to shift that focus, cuz it’s been so ingrained in us and it served us well, but now we need to take take the lens back and really look at it from a different angle.

Lisa: And I think that’s a good place to start is to find somebody that you respect to help you with that. 

Brent: Yeah, I think that’s a lot of businesses do QBR or quarterly business reviews or quarterly business planning. Mm-hmm and when we’ve had a facility come facilitator, come in and help us do that. I feel as though we’ve been way more productive than if we just did it as a leadership team.

Brent: Cuz I think sometimes as you said, it’s hard to see other perspectives without somebody who doesn’t have a perspective to come in and look at it. And maybe some of those questions they ask help you to spark those new questions to ask about your business. I wanna ask specifically then about if how do you coach a business owner to not be defensive when they say, how about this?

Brent: Why aren’t you doing. In EO, we don’t should on people. You should do this. You want to sort of do some experience sharing. Do you find it delicate sometimes when speaking to business owners about some of these topics to help them through that, 

Lisa: I think they need to focus on, and I know this can’t always a hundred percent of the time be the case, but

Lisa: oftentimes when we get so focused on a goal and something that is not going right. We just dive in and focus all our energy on what is not going well, instead of really focusing on what is going well. now with that said, I’m not saying put on rose colored glasses, and if you have a problem that needs to be addressed, throw it under the table.

Lisa: Absolutely not. But I think when you’re having a conversation with somebody that. They need some coaching and development. It’s really, it’s starting with their strengths and maybe they’re in a situation that isn’t leaning into their strengths and maybe it needs to be shifted into something else.

Lisa: I think that’s really what needs to be understood first is where is everybody best suited? And sometimes it isn’t the right fit and that can be addressed, but. When you’re leading from strengths personally how does that make you feel when somebody is saying, you know what, Brent, you are so talented at this.

Lisa: It’s just, it’s a real natural fit for you. You did such an exceptional job and X, Y, and Z. So if somebody were to say that to you, how would you feel. 

Brent: Obviously it makes me feel a lot better so leading with those type of questions is much better than leading with criticizing questions.

Brent: Right. 

Lisa: Right. 

Brent: We’ve talked about the kind of customer dynamic as a business owner. The other dynamic, a lot of business owners have, would be I’m gonna rescue everything. And then suddenly. If you have a team of 20 people or 50 people or a hundred people, your bandwidth becomes completely lost because you’ve now said yes to your entire team to rescuing them instead of helping to enable your team

Brent: to solve some of the problems. How do you work through that type of situation where you want to encourage the business owner to delegate some of that work? It might even come from a lack of trust in your team to solve those problems. But I, and again, then you need to lead with the strength.

Brent: How do you encourage them? Not to say yes to everyth. 

Lisa: That’s oh, that’s a great question. And I’m gonna lean into Brene Brown, who I just think is phenomenal. And she talks a lot about this type of thing in Dare to Lead, but it’s, it starts with first of all, creating a safe space for people to be vulnerable and authentic and to be able to share when they are struggling and

Lisa: if your culture does not have that type of environment then situations like you just described arise. And the manager for whatever reason, supervisor, business owner may not feel like they have confidence because they’re not having open ended dialogue with their team and they’re not encouraging that.

Lisa: So they’re feeling compelled that they have to do everything themselves. Well, that’s not an effective leader. I mean a leader is taking the spotlight off of themselves and developing and encouraging their team. So again, it starts with having that open, honest culture where you can share ideas without judgment and criticism, which can be challenging.

Lisa: But when you have that starting ground things really start to 

Brent: shift. Do you think there’s the opposite problem of somebody who’s giving credit to somebody else all the time, even though that person didn’t do it, 

Lisa: so like favoritism and 

Brent: nepotism, that type of thing, not favoritism, but I I’ll be honest that a lot of times I like to give credit to somebody else for an idea because it makes everybody look better, but.

Brent: Maybe, I don’t know. I’m just thinking out loud right now. Maybe it’s not a great idea to give ever, or talk to them in, I suppose, in advance and say, Hey, this is a great idea. And I feel like you came up with it. I’m gonna give you credit for it. Well, I 

Lisa: think it’s important to give credit where credit is due, you know, and that is really, what’s going to build the authentic, open, honest

Lisa: environment, because if you’re starting, if you’re doing that and giving credit where it’s not fully due, other people are gonna start to pick up on it. They may not initially, but then it will start to cause resentment. So I understand why maybe once in a while you might want to, but it’s not a good practice to be in.

Lisa: And I’m not saying as a business leader to say, oh, I’m so awesome. I did this, blah, blah, blah. In fact, if anything, even if you did do something exceptional that shouldn’t come from you that should be noticed by other people and not, you should not. Toting that yourself, because that’s really demotivating to your staff.

Brent: Yeah. Is there something around the business owner, always being in the savior?

Lisa: Yes. It, that’s not a good thing either. They need to be there to support if something goes wrong, but if you are developing your staff the way they need to be developed then you shouldn’t have to save them if they do something that maybe they shouldn’t have, or they made an error, or it could have been done better.

Lisa: They can recognize that and learn from that and they don’t need saving. Does that make sense? 

Brent: Mm-hmm yeah, that’s a good way to put it. As a business owner, if I am overwhelmed with a certain thing, but I don’t know how to ask for help. Is there keys and is there coaching things that you could tell me to say, Hey, you know, and I think too, as business owners, sometimes we don’t feel like we wanna be that vulnerable to say, I can’t do this.

Brent: I’m gonna need help. Is there ways that I could express my myself better to say, you know, I’m a hundred percent on this. I don’t have any more capacity. How can you help me? Or can. 

Lisa: So I think that goes back into, if you’re in a situation where you can go to a mentor to help that. That’s awesome.

Lisa: Now, if you are needing to share this with your staff, you can do it in such a way where it doesn’t come across, that you are floundering because you still want to appear. I don’t wanna say stable. Don’t give a false sense of impression, but you want to be reliable to people, but you know, if you are really asking for authenticity, you in turn need to be authentic as well.

Lisa: And that doesn’t mean saying, oh, I can’t do this, blah, blah, blah. You know, but if finding a way to maybe integrate somebody else into the equation to help manage the load. so to speak Does that make sense? Yeah. And then when it actually comes down to maybe if you’re starting to feel as a business owner, overwhelm yourself, that’s where I illustrate mental fitness and how that can really help by shifting all that negative energy, which is in your left analytical side of the brain, which

Lisa: stems fear and anxiety and stress and overwhelmed that all comes from your left side, quieting it so that you can then transfer your focus to the positive right side of your brain. So you can be a little more clearheaded because oftentimes when we get in that space of being overwhelmed, we’re not clearheaded.

Lisa: It just snowballs and then we start over dramatizing in our mind and assuming that, oh my goodness this could happen. Well our thoughts are not facts. 99% of the time we tend to overdramatize them. So this just kind of grounds us. So especially if you have to have a difficult conversation with

Lisa: a person that you are working with an employer or mentor, whatever. It’s always good to come from that positive right. Side brain. 

Brent: Does that make sense? Yeah. And I’m left handed, so I’m using my right side all the time. As you know, as you were talking about that, I remember myself, let’s just say 10 years ago or five years ago, even that.

Brent: When I felt overwhelmed, I would start lashing out at people by saying, I can’t do this anymore. Or, I think that the emotional side sometimes comes out and that and employees don’t absolutely can’t and don’t understand that. I think one of the things I read was emotional EQ 2.0, which was a great book.

Brent: And going through that book and learning more about my emotions and how those emotions affect your team, helped me through some of that. And I’ve realized as we’re talking now that it’s been five, six years since I’ve experienced that overwhelmingness. That has caused me to start lashing out at people about whatever the issue is.

Brent: So, not that I’m fixed, but I can now relate to the fact that I’m not that I don’t experience that anymore. 

Lisa: right. And that’s a, oh, that’s not a fun position to be in, but you know that we are emotional beings and when all that negative emotion bubbles up, that is one of the responses that happens.

Lisa: And yeah, if that is not managed oh, that can create a toxic mess. 

Brent: So. And just as a facilitator side of things we, as a group hired a facilitator to facilitate that book. And there’s some tests. If you read the book, there’s a test you can take in the beginning and then they would like you to go through a bunch of exercises and take another test.

Brent: So it was a great experience. And I would encourage any anybody business owner or not to read the book and do some of those exercises because I feel as though. I even thought maybe anger was a good tool to use. Cuz you think about coaches and you look at a coach in a locker room and they’re yelling at their players, right. 

Brent: at some point that doesn’t work anymore. And I think that’s not the most effective way of coaching your team yelling and getting angry with them. and that the book itself, that was one of the big things that I got out of. that’s awesome. I wanna switch gears now to the to the employer, employee relationship mm-hmm and the fact that some employees work a lot and they, they tend to not say new, no to their employer.

Brent: And there is a little bit of a conundrum in there. Like I am a results person. So I would expect less. I would love it if everybody worked less than 40 hours. If we were all in Europe, we all work 35 hours when we get August off plus another two weeks. Right. But in America it’s different, right?

Brent: We’re all expected to work 60 hours a week and not take your vacation. So there is a conundrum in there and I think the specific conundrum comes down to you want your people to work no more than 40 hours, but let’s just say somebody’s worked 40 hours on Thursday already. Do you expect them to work on Friday?

Lisa: That’s a really good question. I think it depends on the business and what is happening, you if there’s been a lot of turnover, it’s not ideal. Let’s kind of go backwards a bit. So let’s just say you are starting a new position at a company and you were informed that this is the expectation of the number of hours that you

Lisa: should work in order to get your job done. Well, if you start from day one, when you’re there telling everybody, oh, I’ll work the weekend. Oh, I have no problem working over time. Oh, I’ll take my laptop home with me and do this. You’re putting this expectation on yourself and sharing that with others.

Lisa: So then they will just come to assume. Well, this individual has expressed that this is not a problem, so they will continue to hold you to that expectation. And before you know it, you have no boundaries. You’re 24 7, you’re taking your laptop on vacation. So you’re not really on a full vacation, so 

Lisa: that is one thing that needs to be established upfront, and again, I’m not saying that in particular situations that maybe you are open to stepping up, but. You’re the one who sets that expectation up front. So don’t set the wrong expectation. And then if it gets to a situation where there’s staffing issues and there’s not enough people, and you’re doing the job of three people, If it’s getting to the point where you’re starting to get chronic stress, it’s impacting your work life balance, and you are working as hard as you can, but you need help.

Lisa: Then you have to say something. You can’t just, oh, well, no I can’t say anything. That’s gonna make me appear weak. No, you have to ask for help. I’m not saying you’re always going to get it, but you have to ask for help. And it’s how you ask for help. It’s kind of with the solution in mind, it’s like if you’re presenting a problem to somebody you don’t wanna just appear, like you’re a complainer, you want to provide a solution as well.

Lisa: That solution may note be taken into account, but at least it’s going to show that you’re trying to be proactive and you’re not sitting there complaining. 

Brent: I think that there’s a dynamic there where the employee may not have the skills to be able to delegate yet as a coach

Brent: how would you encourage them to do some of that delegation work.

Lisa: I think it really boils down to sitting down with them and, okay. So where is the fear coming from? Is it a fear that, oh my gosh, I am going to look like I can’t do my job if I delegate it or is it not going to be done right. Because I’m delegating it. So it’s really looking that fear in the face and then working on moving through it because fear ultimately can paralyze all of us

Lisa: at any point in time. And that’s the, one of the largest reasons why people do not achieve goals is fear. It’s either fear of success, fear of failure. And it can manifest in very weird ways like procrastination, or you become a hyper achiever because you won’t delegate and you have to keep doing it all yourself.

Brent: Do you think the other problem in that is, is also. The employee has so much to do that they couldn’t possibly be successful at everything they’ve been. They’ve said yes to doing. 

Lisa: In some cases that might be the case. Certainly the working world is very different today than it was.

Lisa: I know when I started decades ago, it’s very different. And especially now as we still try to get through the whole pandemic issue and the whole flexible workspace and it’s just it’s constantly evolving into different things. So it, that could be. But not always. 

Brent: And just to be clear, you and I have both established that we’re both in our mid twenties, so yes, decades we’ve been working since we were five years 

Lisa: old.

Lisa: yes. We’re amazing humans that way. 

Brent: absolutely. Lisa, we are running out of time here quickly. As we close out the podcast, I give everybody, a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug today? 

Lisa: Well, thank you for that opportunity. So I have a book, it’s my first book that I am publishing next month.

Lisa: That’ll be mid month and it’s From Burnout to Best Life. And it integrates my story of reaching burnout and how I overcame burnout, but it’s really a guide to your happiest, healthiest life. So after I went through burnout, I started my personal health and wellness journey and I lost 65 pounds. And I have been a health coach for many years.

Lisa: And then during the pandemic, I added the life coaching piece of it as well. So the book encompasses both areas. So it talks about healthy eating, and diet and everything, but also like we discussed fear. How do you deal with fear? Setting healthy boundaries? A lot of the topics that we discussed are in the book.

Lisa: I am starting speaking engagements. I’ve been doing podcasts, but I’m actually doing a Ted talk coming out at the end of August. So really looking at the book as a way to just get speaking engagements and just kind of open doors. So that’s, what’s 

Brent: happening with. Yeah. So let’s definitely do a another interview when your book comes out and we can dive into more of these topics.

Brent: It’s been a, it’s been very interesting and just as we close out too, I am a running coach. And so physical. And I recognize how important that mental aspect is to especially running. But even last night I had a conversation with another coach and I was asking about something and he said, I think you need to work on your mental toughness because a lot of times we think we can’t do something and as I’m running and I’m in a long run, I always say to people, I think running is

Brent: 90% mental and the other 15% is in your head. Then I wait for the reaction some, and it depends how well they’re doing or not, but it is a lot of that. And I think you’ve really illustrated how important a lot of these things are from a mental standpoint to be healthy. And how if we’re putting our employees under so much stress that.

Brent: Really degradates and it just didn’t people are gonna find a new place that is less stressful. The great resignation is telling us that people would like to be stress free rather than stressful. 

Lisa: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I hundred percent agree with you. It’s I tell people all the time it’s, if your head’s not in the game, you’re not gonna be successful.

Lisa: And you have to visualize, you have to believe that what you want to achieve will happen and really have a clear mental picture. And when you do, you can be successful. 

Brent: Lisa Hammett thank you so much for being here today at thank you. I look forward to another conversation when your book comes.

Brent: Thank 

Lisa: you so much. This has been great. I appreciate it.

magento association sushma vyas

Meet Magento Singapore with Sushma Vyas

We interview Sushma Vaya (@sushmavyas) with Ranosys from Singapore. #mm22sg Sushma has been organizing Meet Magento Singapore since its inception. We learn about Singapore’s vibrant and friendly city-state and the great event the team organizes. Listen to the entire episode and give me your feedback on the MA Pledge commercial I created at the end!

Meet Magento Singapore happens live on August 25th, 2022. Don’t miss it. https://meetmagento.sg

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this special 

Brent: Magento Association edition of 

Brent: Talk Commerce

Brent: today. I have Sushma Vyas. She is in Singapore and she is with Meet Magento Singapore. We are going to talk about the event and how fun it was and how fun it’s going to be into the future. Sushma, go ahead,

Brent: introduce yourself. Tell us what you do on a day to day basis and maybe one of your passions in life. 

Sushma: Thank you, Brent. Very happy, feeling really related to be part of this. My name is Sushma as you already shared with everyone in summary. If I would say one liner, my day to day job is to make sure people associated with us are happy.

Sushma: I act as the COO chief operating officer with Ranosys, I’m the organizer also for Meet Magento Singapore. I take care of end to end operations for the company, making sure all the departments meet their KPIs, people attached with us. I really mean it. Whether they are partners, our customers of all important people, team members, employees are happy.

Sushma: That’s the goal. And that’s what I do being in Singapore for past 18 plus years now. And yeah, I think that summarizes that’s. 

Brent: So your real role as a chief happiness. I wish . I went to Meet Magento Singapore in 2019, and it’s such a great city, such a great community. And the event was so well put on, tell us a little bit about the history of Meet Magento Singapore, why you guys started it and a little bit about the event.

Sushma: Thanks. One of my favorite points to talk about we’ve been associated with Magento per se from I’d say it’s childhood days, because we used to do those little Magento meetups when we were very young as a company, Magento also was running community editions and all, and we did see. Real good potential traction people attached around 2016,17,18.

Sushma: We did attend a lot of Magento events globally and that got us excited that let’s have one Meet Magento Singapore itself. And the thought was really well taken by Adobe commerce aka/Magento. And we got this to own and organize Meet Magento Singapore. It was really, it has been an exciting journey.

Sushma: It was when the very first event, what I’d say was the most exciting for us was that Singapore hosts and is easy for people. It attracts people, businesses, retail, commerce, especially a lot more. Easier. Sorry. If I sound biased than a lot of other countries, it has that reputation and comfort as well.

Sushma: The venue has been amazing, I’d say. And we’ve enjoyed. And of course we all know since past three years, the journey we have seen how pretty and commerce has transformed. Likewise has the event itself opening it up for online presence mix of both. So in all, I’d say it’s been insightful.

Sushma: This is something that we ourselves learn from people around the globe when they come here and everyone builds that bond, that community. So exciting journey. 

Brent: If you were to say to someone to attend the event what would be the some of the big draws to attend meet Magento Singapore. 

Sushma: I’ll talk about Singapore, right. First is really the place, because as much as it is a little red dot, a small place, it brings, it offers everything. It attracts businesses. It adopts technology really fast and well. The place itself is an attraction

Sushma: we, I would say people to come and visit and see how this is so well organized, disciplined, yet open for innovation. And it implements that. Of course, because of all these things, there are huge brands companies who have their foundation here who have their offices here. So they can see and communicate, I mean, that community bonding and they can see how these big brands are facing the challenges, implementing it via technologies, solving it.

Sushma: For Meet Magento Singapore, I’ll say, come for our after parties as well. I know after parties are fun everywhere, but I, I really Bo that some of the best after parties we’ve had the venue is great Marina Basin and it’s real fun here. Meeting people from close to a hundred plus countries and connecting, talking.

Sushma: it’s a different mode that you see them in after parties and different insights that you get during the event and talks. 

Brent: I think that we forgot about the importance of meeting people in person and everybody thought, oh, now that everybody’s doing zoom meetings and online that the live event is dead.

Brent: But I think what we’ve found is that, people desire to see people in person. And not only do you get to go to a great event, but you get to see a great city and then you get to see different cultures and all kinds of things that are wrapped around traveling to a different type of place. And I agree that Singapore is very easy to get to for us in the US.

Brent: It’s a long way. It’s halfway around the world, but yes, you know, it’s very easy. It’s very accessible. And I can say that even the customs. Everybody was so nice and it’s so easy to get through the cultures. There’s multiple cultures. We in 2019, we brought eight people from our office in Ahmedabad to Singapore.

Brent: And what did we do as soon as we landed, everybody wanted to find their Gujurati restaurant to eat at. So we all found the section of town that had a Gujurati restaurant and we ate there. So it, there, there is food for everybody. Something for everybody to offer. What would you say to a sponsor who would like to sponsor Meet Magento 

Sushma: for sponsor?

Sushma: See, I think there’s a wonderful mix of audience because there’s a very good balance in terms of merchants, in terms of technology, partners, partners, and end users customers. So with this balance, they get to have their message reach the right people. It’s not lopsided.

Sushma: So there is one real advantageand we take of it. Otherwise, even the ecosystem is such that it attracts all these different pool of people. So that’s one of the biggest advantages for sponsors plus I shared, there’s this very easy ethos reputation of delivery that its Singapore has gained.

Sushma: Its its rapport in terms of making sure businesses are smoother run. The government would say, we’ll take care of the hassle for you. We’ll make sure things are things are not full of bumps for you, and you make sure that the business is flourishing. So that kind of something is a healthy sign for someone to sponsor in an ecosystem like this.

Sushma: So usually this is also something that we hear from our sponsors and, Yes, digital marketing and all there’s a good outreach. There’s a good reach that they get from. So, yeah, that’s what we would tell them, 

Brent: From the event organizer side. So I know renos has been organizing, Meet Magentol Singapore.

Brent: If other organizers would like to organize an event in a different region, a different city, do you have some advice for them that to get started and some reasons why they would want to get started organizing a meat Magento in a different city?. 

Sushma: Why they should or why they good for sure.

Sushma: Organizers do gain a lot of publicity for sure. And learning on top of that, because something that we, even our own customers, our partners, something that we see them when they are there on the stage speaking or discussing, it’s a very different learning and insight that we get, which otherwise in day to day

Sushma: communication or interactions we don’t get each other on that level of thinking or discussion. This is something we must do because meeting and meeting them in a different mindset is together new learning. And we build a bond, a community which is memorable to us, plus helping the overall ecosystem.

Sushma: if there are any tips or anything, that we follow, or we would prefer people to follow is maintain that local touch, what that place is known for, because people would come from far away from different places to also know more about that place as it there’s nothing beautiful or ugly.

Sushma: It’s the combination that makes that place really different and unique. So I’d say maintain that, make sure people also know more about the place, know the local touch, local flavor. So that event automatically becomes very special and unique. There are many things, but this is what I feel we must consider.

Brent: I like what you said about having a different mindset to learn. And I think that oftentimes as we are pushing our whole team to do work that we forget that our team has to also learn about what’s new. If we continue to work on what’s old, then all we’re gonna do is create old things, creating new things requires new knowledge.

Brent: And I agree that you get put into a different mindset and you’re not in front of a bunch of screens. You may be in front of your laptop while you’re watching the speaker speak, but you’re not in front of 10 screens with a dog barking and somebody asking you it’s time for dinner. It puts you in a place where you are in a learning mode.

Brent: Maybe speak to that learning mode a little bit.

Sushma: If I take myself as an example, I don’t come from a technical background. But when I’m there, I listen to those even technical talks or innovations, it makes me more excited to know more Magento as a platform. I would’ve never known otherwise. Except for that. Okay. Customers need this.

Sushma: We fulfill this, the depth of it. I would’ve never known or never have been inquisitive to know that. Okay. Alright. There is this feature. So because when during panel discussions or somebody shares, you can do this, just talking about that specific feature, which to me appears like magic. And then I feel, oh, okay.

Sushma: Then what else does it do? What else does it do? Where else can it be implemented? And it gives ideas. Okay. Not necessarily here. It can be used somewhere else. So I’m a student there. Actually, when I participate or I hear the talks, the speakers talking about it. Likewise, someone whose technical may find interesting business cases, which he, or she, would’ve not thought of while working on that piece of code or that piece of integration. 

Brent: I know that there has always been a developer track or a technical track, and there has been a business track. And that just means that there’s something for both audiences. There’s something for merchants to learn about what are the new things that I can do on Magento or Adobe commerce.

Brent: And I know, especially for the developers, they can learn about the newest technology things that may put a merchant to sleep. Having that ability to see those different pieces of the puzzle and spark some interest. And I’m just gonna say that those new things create innovation because a merchant may say, oh, I saw this at this event.

Brent: I’d like to do it on my site, but I’d like to do it in this way. The pushing the boundaries. I sit on the membership committee and Meet Magento Association is trying to get more members as part of the Magento Association. What would you say to people who not are not sure or don’t know why they should join.

Brent: Do you have any good advice for them? 

Sushma: I’d say definitely join because. I’ll make it a little more philosophical if you hope you don’t mind, because at the end of the day, all of us want to contribute. All of us want to give back. In that effort, what we gain is enormous. When we join our intention was really not, oh, we give back, we do this.

Sushma: You know, okay, it’s a community we want to learn. I’m very attached to this by the way association, because we’ve gained a lot, whatever we’ve gained, I’d say from our years still now it’s because of that and because of the community it creates. So the fulfillment part is huge. In addition to what we gain in terms of repeat learning resources to knowing problems before you face it and solutions, how these get resolved.

Sushma: All this is. I always are like, I’d say golden assets of having being part of a community in which Magento association gives you so readily easily. I would not ask anyone to think twice about it because this is one of the strongest, one of the biggest, and I wish all the best because that shouldn’t die.

Brent: And even at the lowest level, it’s $1 a month, so $12 a year. And I think that allows anybody, the facility to join and they’re coming. We are coming out with some other models where companies can sponsor their employees to join as well. So there’s gonna be continued innovations from the Magento Association to help membership grow.

Brent: Sushma as we close out our podcast every week, I give the guests an opportunity to do a shameless plug about anything promotion about anything you’d like to promote. What would you like to promote today? 

Sushma: Hadn’t really thought about it so much what I’d like to promote, but, since I’m part of Ranosys, I’m part of this whole company that’s one, one thing that I can promote is that explore, recommend, refer, explore services.

Sushma: I think that’s about it. I wasn’t really that prepared about it. What, in my mind. So that’s what I can think is the first thing that’s. That’s 

Brent: Thank you, Sushma. So thanks for staying up so late for me. I really appreciate it. Oh, 

Sushma: it’s a 

Brent: pleasure. Pleasure talking to you. I wish you all the, yeah, go ahead.

Sushma: I was saying you have some really interesting questions there. 

Brent: Good. Yeah. And I, I wish you all the best in your event coming up. I wish I could be 

Sushma: there this year thank you. Thank you so much. 

Brent: I will miss you 2023. Yeah, hopefully, 

Sushma: definitely. Yes. Thank you. All right. Thanks Brent. Have a lovely day. Bye-bye.

Talk-Commerce Kate-Bradley

Looking for the patterns in your marketing with Kate Bradley

In this week’s episode, we talk about everything from entrepreneurship to employee happiness. (@LatelyAIKately) Kate talks about the pressure on a start-up CEO and how it is compounded by trying to run a successful business and raise money at the same time. Kate reveals one really cool new feature on Lately.ai. (You must listen to the end to hear the big reveal!)

What you will learn from this episode and about Kate

• Passion for floating in a pool and listening to 80s music

• CEO of Lately, an AI that repurposes long-form content

• Focus on making fans, not sales

• Educated on Black American perspectives •

White Elephant in the Room: lack of diversity in podcast

• Advice to never assume what any side wants

• Value of lifting others up

• Making a fan creates a machine

• Marketing is about getting a fresh perspective

• Overuse of words leads to dull communication

• Creative use of language to engage people and make them react

I absolutely think that people who are focused on clock punching rather than performance and outcomes are missing out. Clock punchers are focused on the wrong thing and don’t understand the bigger picture. They don’t see how their work fits into the bigger picture and how it contributes to the success of the company. Performance and outcomes are much more important than just showing up and doing the minimum. If an entrepreneur is focused on performance and outcomes, they will be able to make better decisions and find more success.

Kate Bradley

Kate is the Founder & CEO of Lately. The A.I. that learns which words will get you the most engagement and re-purposes video, audio, and text into dozens of social posts containing those words.

Kate is a former rock ‘n’ roll DJ and served 20 million listeners as Music Director and on-air host at Sirius/XM. She’s also an award-winning radio producer, engineer, and voice talent with 25 years of national broadcast communications, brand-building, sales, and marketing expertise. What she learned in radio about the neuroscience of music helps fuel Lately’s artificial intelligence.

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this wonderful episode of lately on Talk Commerce. I have Kaitlyn from lately today. Kate. Please introduce yourself. Tell us your day to day role in one of your passions in life. 

Kate: I formally was a rock and roll DJ broadcasting to 20 million listeners a day for XM. So I have a soft spot in my heart for podcasting, of course. I love the theater of the mind so much. I love radio. I love that you Brent have this I don’t even know if you know that you have it, you have this beautiful power to create what I call a two-way street, even though it’s one way.

Kate: I You wield the microphone here, but people listen and trust you and they lean in because you have this ability to create that magical kind of feeling as though they’re part of the conversation. And so that’s what attracts me to radio and podcasting specifically. And I don’t miss it.

Kate: Cuz can I swear in your show? I don’t know. Yeah. Go for it. I had a shit time. there, there’s great things about radio. I met my husband there and his record was our favorite record of the year. And of course, total job hazard. Cause I dated musicians do not recommend, found the one good one, who’ve cut his hair and wears chinos and now he’s. Sales bless his heart, but radio is a boy’s club, of course. And me too, and all that stuff didn’t even exist. And the rewards you got for participating in sexual harassment were large. It was applauded. And so we all did it, and I, not only, and I was a recipient of course, because, I don’t have a phase for radio.

Kate: Yay. And there’s no women either. So of course, like every day my boss would ask. Bradley or your hands queen, meaning could I hold this Dick while he peed? just, it was just the locker room bullshit. So that. Bizarre because what started happening? I don’t know why I’m going down this thread with you, but Hey ladies, listen up the the sexual harassment turned into a hostile work environment because of course I was great at what I did and I arranged.

Kate: The first ever marketing newsletter for any of the channels, it was ours. And it got all of this. This is before MailChimp. Okay. So I was like in outlook having to send multiple copies because you could only send it to 250 people at a time. Remember that there was like no formatting. And I got us. Just a huge amount of press.

Kate: Just because I’m a bulldog, and I was like I think we should do this. And I’m gonna ask all these people to republish it and forward it, et cetera. And they did. And and then I got shit on for my success. So that was confusing because you’re like, I’m killing it. Why aren’t people excited about this?

Kate: It’s because they’re threatened. And I dunno if that’s why I have my own company and I don’t have to deal with. Ego, except for my own. now , the mountain. What were the other two questions you asked? 

Brent: What is your day to day role and one of your passions in life?

Kate: Oh we might have covered the passion but I think at the moment, my biggest passion is floating. I love the weightlessness of floating in a pool and we have a kitty pool and in text one, thank God for those people democratizing this thing, and we’ve had one for a while. It’s 12 feet by four feet, maybe three.

Kate: And there’s just enough room for two people to float. We built a solar heater out of black hose and a black piece of wood and a there’s a pump. And it does when there’s not a heat wave. It’s usually 88 degrees, which is what I like Brent, and me and my noodles are out there just floating away every day.

Kate: I’m allowed three songs, so I bring the Bose out there and I listen to three songs on the radio. Actually, I can still tolerate live radio and by tolerate, I really mean that cause it’s. Fucking terrible. Really terrible, but there’s this one station here that they mostly play 80 songs with and I’m a child at the eighties.

Kate: So I’m like, Hooters, Eddie grant, Steve Miller. Yes. And sometimes I’m lucky and I get three great songs. Sometimes they throw in some, another seventies, crap like BGS, or I don’t really like Harry Nelson, stuff like that. And I’m just like, I’m just waiting for the next good one. But that’s my passion at the moment.

Kate: And then. Who am I? What am I doing? I’m the CEO of lately lately uses artificial intelligence to repurpose long form content like text and video and audio into bite size social posts that it knows very specifically, which parts will get you the highest engagement. . 

Brent: Yeah, that’s great. And I am a, I’m a user of lately for longly.

Brent: It’s been a great tool for us. I do want to just dip back into podcast guests, because it’s not always a two street. And when people come on as a guest that are, that have an agenda that are trying to. They are not a good guest. And I sometimes just look at the clock and think, oh my God, can this 30 minutes be over?

Brent: And now the 110 guests that I’ve had are thinking, are you one of them? Kate, you are not because this is the second time you’ve been on and I really appreciate you coming on. But it is sometimes difficult and it’s, my, my job is made much easier. when the guest holds the conversation, but it’s not a sales pitch.

Brent: And I, there’s nothing more than I hate in a sales pitch from a guest. But anyways, this is my pitch for lately because it is, it’s such a great product. And I’m falling in love with AI. I just signed up with open AI. I would I want want to get into the Dolly thing and there’s so many fun things happening in.

Brent: That I’m very interested in. But I do wanna talk a little bit about some of the entrepreneur journeys you’ve been going through and also, in our green room, I do wanna just bring up the white elephant in the room, which is me. And we did talk a little bit about, and you brought it up too.

Brent: The fact that there isn’t I don’t have a lot of diversity in my podcast and I would like to work on that. I’m part of the entrepreneurial community here in Minneapolis and Kate. I was just educating Kate, when we, before as well, Minneapolis is a city in the middle of the country.

Brent: And I know people on the coast don’t realize that there’s a part. World that between New York and California, but we don’t have to go into that. So I’m on I do sit on the diversity and inclusion committee. and I always ask myself, why should I be on this? And actually if I had some good guess, and they’ve given me some good answers on why me as a white male should be on this.

Brent: And part of it is just awareness and talking about it, because if everybody doesn’t talk about it, then it becomes something that’s back room. And I think it’s always better if we do talk about it. So not to belabor the point, but I know that there’s challenges in that. There wasn’t even a question 

Kate: in there.

Kate: I have a comment though, if you don’t mind. My friend, please, Jen. God, what’s her last name? Vander something, sorry, Jen. Vander. Awesome. I’m just gonna call her that. So she, we were on a panel once and she. express this in a way that was the first time I got it, which is this, when you are the underdog, you can only be lifted up by those who are on top.

Kate: And the mistake many people make is not including the people who are on top in the conversation and we rely on them to lift us up. So in your case, it has to be white men in the conversation because they hold the power in the world. They. For the most part. And not excluding them is just a stopper right away.

Kate: So I get that on the, just a flip side and we should go into politics cuz that’s dangerous. But I did, I was a marketing consultant for a company called the perception Institute for about a year and their mission in the world or a nonprofit is to change the way that black men are portrayed in the media, black men.

Kate: And. . And so I learned a lot about people, about black Americans specifically and how they feel about white people of intervening in their business. And it was mostly not nice, which was interesting, and the overall reaction was like, stay out of it with your woke perceptions. Because what you think is right is not what we believe at.

Kate: And I’m generalizing. So forgive me there, but just a perspective, like it’s the S U right? You have to never assume what the other, what any side wants. Everybody has to be at the table for the magic to happen for the two-way street to happen. Let’s get back to that. And the second comment I had related to that was.

Kate: You touched on what makes for a good guest, so I believe it or not, I was a terrible interviewer on radio for a long time. I would get very nervous and I was young. And so I didn’t have a lot of experience, doing that. I was, it was the me show. I was great at the me show , I didn’t know how to make people shine or ask the right questions, cuz I was so nervous about pushing all the buttons and getting things right at the same time. Cuz you’re in my day you were managing like the whole show, just like you are with your podcast. So there’s a lot to do behind this in the green room, as you’re saying.

Kate: So to tie in what makes a good guess is when you are able to lift others up. Number one a and that’s I think that goes both ways, but as an entrepreneur. what we say is make a fan. Don’t make a sale right now. The value there might sound corny, but I believe in the long tail, this is the radio that I grew up in is all about the long tail.

Kate: The album cuts, not the hits, right? Get people to buy the records, make fans who are loyal to the death. And I saw the power of those people because when you make a fan, they work for you for free and they can’t help the. And so you get multiple banks for your buck because you make the sale and you make a machine, 

Brent: right?

Brent: Yeah. No. And I really apologize for what I’m gonna say now. because I do feel like now I want to change the name of my podcast to ceiling. Because I would love to get ceiling fans but keep going. I know. I’m sorry, Brent. that was so bad. Hold your nose, 

Kate: everybody. 

Brent: Yeah. So I, my wife and I had this conversation about ceiling, the Mar Marcia Beski talked has a song about a hundred tampon.

Brent: And in, there was there, there was the first lady in space. They gave, she was gonna be in space for a week. So they gave her a hundred tampons and and she has a she’s on Ted. She has a Ted talk anyways. So they, she talked about the fact that she has this song. And then all of a sudden, all these men started berating her about, you shouldn’t make fun of these engineers at NASA.

Brent: Like who knows, like you, you need a hundred tampons right. For a week. And it was, we had a very good convers, my wife and I had a very nice conversation about it. And I, for me, I thought it through and I’m like, yeah, that doesn’t really make sense. I don’t, I don’t know any better, but her point was, there was a lot of men that came out and were.

Brent: Hit Eric making her feel bad that she’d come up with this song or not making her, I don’t know the right words, but sounds funny. They were ham whatever social media, what social media does, that’s what they were doing. 

Kate: I have a segue 

Brent: for this.

Brent: Okay. Yes, we need a segue. Yes, go. 

Kate: So one of my favorite lines is Catherine Hahn in. the, we are the Millers when she calls it a Tanin and she’s from the Midwest. She is in this movie anyways, and so around my house, it’s called a Tanin and we laugh every time cuz it’s so funny to us, but that’s that ability by the way to take so.

Kate: and spin it in a new way, which is really what our jobs are about. This is marketing. How do you get fresh perspective? Whether it’s a hundred tampons in space or throwing a hot dog down a hallway, as she says, right? There’s I love that. I love. we, I just did a post on LinkedIn. I don’t know why I was inspired by somebody on Twitter.

Kate: And I said, words that make you like wanna bar. And I said, I’ll start. And the word was trousers. And so everybody piled on with not only just words that they don’t like the way they sound moist, got a lot of votes. For example, salacious got some. But then also biz lab was all over the place. So people were like partners and utilize at the end of the day, like all that kind of 

Brent: stuff.

Brent: I’ll reach out to you later. Yeah. 

Kate: Yeah. So I was just thinking about the, how we. how we can overuse words to death. So they don’t mean anything like awesome, which I am guilty of as well. All of America overuses. Awesome. But the whole point of communicating well is to don’t only communicate well, but to communicate with meaning.

Kate: and to hear some biz bla drive engagement, to make people lean in is to take something very familiar and just turn it just enough so that somebody is you catch the ear and you make them react. It’s the reaction that we all want. And I love thinking about that. I love so my husband is great at this he’ll he has all these isms one.

Kate: The hammer lane and the granny lane. That’s what he calls the fast lane and the slow lane on the highway. Or dirt nap. That’s like obviously dying 

Brent: dirt nap. Okay. 

Kate: Or booger sugar is cocaine , which we were just watching that Tom cruise movie American made, which is a great movie, by the way.

Kate: Even if you don’t like Tom cruise, it’s a 

Brent: great movie. I agree. I’ve seen it. Very good. Okay. Alright, so let’s move into little, let’s talk a little bit about entrepreneur entrepreneurship. My daughter just got a job with a CRM company called endear and they’re based outta New York, a very young entrepreneur lady who started it with a partner and te.

Brent: Did you have any struggles as an entrepreneur? 

Kate: oh, so many. I think the one that’s ever present for me is it’s, I don’t know if it’s confidence I, I don’t have an imposter syndrome per se, but I take things personally, that, that whole. Bullshit about it being work and business and not personal it’s it is bullshit, to me it is of course it’s personal, it affects people’s lives, right?

Kate: I That’s, it has to be right. And I’ve had to make decisions. I’ve had to let people go. I know how all that, how hard that stuff is. But I,

Kate: the pressure that I put on myself is pretty sprint. I perceive that there’s pressure being put on me by others as well. That may or may not be true, but there’s certainly that there’s that perception whether it’s my customers, like I wanna succeed for you. Whether it’s other women entrepreneurs, my investors, my fam, my family my team, obviously Lauren and Brian and Kristen, Jason and everybody, Kristen and Katie, Greg, I think that’s all.

Kate: Did I forget anyone, Emma Alex , and I, the problem is I don’t know what failure looks like. So let me just put this in the ground for everybody. We’re bringing it down. Brian, my CTO is very good at being positive and PR and practical. He’s an engineer. So he, he, he shoots pretty straight and I’m always.

Kate: wallowing in the negative. And he’s dude, like you have to really understand this, the odds of what lately is. So the chances of startups succeeding at all is already ne it’s negative. The fact that lately still exists. The fact that we have revenue, that we have hundreds of customers, we’ve had thousands before, we’re figuring out how to do it all here.

Kate: He’s like lately should have died a million. So you really need to acknowledge this, but it’s not that I don’t acknowledge it. It’s that the road to getting to the next level, like the levels, the goal post move a lot, which is very frustrating to me. Like I’m trying to figure out Brent constantly not how to win the game, how to beat the machine.

Kate: Okay. That’s all I think about how do I beat the fucking machine? Beat it into the ground. That’s what I. That’s all I see. And it’s not enough for me just to have a nice little business here. That’s not the game I’m playing, right? That’s not this game. And when you do everything that’s prescribed and you do it like to the fucking awesomeness of awesome platinum level superstar, galactic awesomeness, which is what we do.

Kate: And you still can’t hit the milestones. That’s defeating debilitating to me personally. I take it personally, cuz then I think, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I fucking do this? And I hang my head in shame, honestly. The buck stops with me. It has to be me. It’s not I can, there’s all, there’s the great resignation.

Kate: There’s, COVID, there’s the market. There’s all these things to blame, of course. But I don’t think of any of them. It’s always hard. There’s always some shit out there. So it’s me. I’m the one where that can control. What’s happening or figure it out. And, I think just generally that’s the biggest hurdle is my, is myself in a way.

Kate: I don’t have an off button, cuz I want this. It’s not that I want this so bad, but I know it’s I know it’s not even possible. I know it’s probable. I.

Kate: And so I also, that means, I know all the pieces are in front of me here already. I know that they are, this is a matter of assembling the pieces. I have the right. Is which is a blessing and a curse. It’s right here. But the fact that I can’t figure it out makes me feel like an idiot , and none of that’s true.

Kate: I rely on you. I rely on our customers. We’re always asking for feedback. I’m terrible at taking criticism, but my team is great at it, which is why I had them, and we’re always looking for ways sorry for rambling but entrepreneurs, here’s a great tip. Someone told me, and you get a lot of tips that are garbage, cuz everybody wants to give you some advice.

Kate: But a friend of mine said, look for the patterns. So if you can look for the patterns in everything, whether it’s the way the funnel works or how much MRI you’re making or what customers click first, right? All these little patterns are macro and micro patterns. You can double down or then fix them.

Kate: and my, I joke all the time. My, my great skill is seeing the glass half empty. That’s what I do. I look for problems, patterns of problems, so can you imagine being my husband? He’s a nice guy. 

Brent: yeah I am. I am the glass half full and my wife is the glass half empty. So we actually balance each other out.

Brent: We’re either full or empty at the same time empty we’re empty. So I definitely can empathize with your struggle. And I do of want to talk about as a leader that empathy part that you have to have for your employees do you see a difference in differe? Styles of leadership that work or don’t work, or I don’t know.

Brent: I I see sometimes that some entrepreneurs want to like they assume that your employee feels some way and if you feel differently, it doesn’t matter to what it’s not it, the feelings of your employees don’t matter. And I feel like that I’m I believe they matter, but that some of that empathy isn’t there in a lot of entrepreneurs.

Kate: I had a shitty job, so I know what it feels like to have that kind of panic attack and go to work and dread every day. And I don’t want to any make anyone feel that way. I am very lucky because all of those people on my team are very kind and they’re very loyal and they’re also very smart. I forget sometimes.

Kate: That they can’t read my mind. I try to apologize for that. Luckily they have a high tolerance for my bitch. That’s ano very lucky thing, because I can be an asshole. I can be, of course, and I’m so grateful. I have to surround myself with people who have that tolerance because I.

Kate: Always apologize for it. There’s too much to go on, but I have to also obviously reward and acknowledge. And so I need also the kinds of people who either don’t need that all the time can get it from each other. My re I feel my perception is the reward is to provide a workplace that is fun, which it really is.

Kate: It’s we have like unlimited vacation, no one ever takes a vacation. I don’t know why they don’t, but they don’t. You can, you don’t have to ask to go to the doctor or anything. You just, nobody cares. Get the work done. We don’t really care what you’re doing during the day. If there’s. And everyone is very autonomous.

Kate: There’s, some things I’m a micromanager about. I know this, but my aim is to not be that way and to, to a fault, honestly, like sometimes I’m trying to figure out why these people, these two people, maybe aren’t getting along or hearing each other. And then I realize , I don’t bring them together enough.

Kate: cuz we’re all just out doing our own thing. We’re running and running. And one thing sometimes I forget that. Because we’re, know, we are dispersed and we always have been dispersed and I like that because I feel it’s so much more productive. I hate being in office when people are coming in and talking to me all the time.

Kate: I hate that. I can’t get anything done, and. , I will forget how smart they are. I’m like, shit, Chris has really good ideas. I need to ask him these questions more often and then utilize them, or Lauren is, I think she’s 15 years younger than me. I forget, but she’s younger than me.

Kate: And I forget that she is because she’s so 

Brent: she’s 10

Brent: And I talked to Lauren. Lauren is fantastic by the way. Isn’t she great. Keep going. Sorry. Yeah. She’s didn’t mean interrupt to you. 

Kate: No, I’m sorry for she’s so smart. And my, for all of them, my expectation is I, these people are on a scale of one to 10. They’re twelves. They’re all twelves. And so when they’re only tens, I get on their asses about.

Kate: Shame on me. Because I believe in them I respect them and I’m so impressed with them. And Lauren is certainly one of those people, and but she can tolerate my shit, which I, that this is also what I appreciate. So the way I try to reward, money is not the thing that motivates my team because.

Kate: We often can’t pay each other or the salary isn’t very high, but I try to create a workplace where there’s like a ton of flexibility and a ton of autonomy, because these are the things that I need personally. And I know there’s people out there like me, and I think to providing a safe place, like I call it where people can be themselves.

Kate: Like we don’t, we don’t really have a lot of rules, the golden rule, our biggest rule. And. a lot. We have two meetings a week, one for sales and one for the whole team, cuz we’re small enough. We can do these things still. And at those meetings we have what’s called the rolling agenda. And so the rolling agenda is a Google doc that goes on and on for years and everyone’s name is on it and you’re supposed to write what you’re doing, what you’ve done and what you’re doing there.

Kate: And everyone reads it an hour before the meeting and at the top of the meeting is the actual agenda discussion items. And the discussion items are the things that we all actually need to talk about together. Cuz I don’t need to have a report of what you’re doing and plus I can see it all in slack. Our slack channel is I don’t I poo threads because I want everybody, I want it to bleed over for everybody.

Kate: It saves me the time from repeating myself from silo to silo and it makes everybody sympathetic or empathetic. And so the rolling agenda what’s so funny is there’s almost never dis any discussion items cuz we’ve already had the discussion. So it’s a hang we get on the phone and we find out that.

Kate: Chris’s son, Zach just performed at a comedy club and killed it with amazing jokes. A couple of Dick jokes, in front of his grandparents, but I guess they were killer. Awesome. Katie’s daughter, Ruby just scored some major role in a play. I think it was beauty. The beast she’s the lead, which is pretty great.

Kate: Kristen’s getting ready to go to Paris with her two children. For the, and her husband. So the first family vacation and maybe the last one, cuz everybody’s going to college, this is what we talk about, I love that about them, Brent, how lucky am I? 

Brent: Yeah. That’s building a team like that is, is like the dream of any entrepreneur.

Brent: It I think you’ve talked to a lot about, about that team building and how you’ve been successful in it. What would you. If you were gonna say something to an entrepreneur who was hung up with instead of that mentality that you have for performance I don’t care what you do all day, just so you deliver what we’re expecting.

Brent: The opposite of that is I, all I care about is that you come in and punch the clock. right there. There’s a dichotomy there and there’s a big swing, right? If you’re just assembling something and you’re punching the clock, you know what you get because you’re assembling something.

Brent: But the same thing is you could come in and assemble something very poorly. Or, if you’re not checking, there’s gotta be a balance between performance. I’m a firm believer in performance and the outcome of that. Do you think people that look at clock punching, miss the outcome part? 

Kate: Sure. I’ve been that I worked in retail in the mall.

Kate: I know what it’s like. it sucks. And I hated it. Sorry, dad. I worked for my dad for a while. I love my dad. I think, so like begets, like when you are around other people who are working at a superior level and you’re not, it’s obvious and you feel bad and you want to catch up. So that’s one thing, right?

Kate: And I’ve surrounded myself. I’m very lucky to have these people who are, these are amazing people. Please never leave me please. And I’m always concerned when, like one of them, if someone’s gonna get married, Girlfriend moves in or something like that. I’m like, is my productivity gonna go down?

Kate: It’s so mean, that’s my first thought. Then my second thought is I want joy for this person. Hello. What’s wrong with you, Bradley. But I think that I think we were saying earlier, like the work life balance is bullshit. Like work is life and life is work. And if you’re not having a great time during what you’re doing, you’re not feeling fulfilled and joyful.

Kate: and like you’re doing something to improve the world or yourself, then you really need a different job. I It’s so important. I think, for entrepreneurs, the objective, I always think, and I think about this, especially when I’m like arguing with my husband is what is money? What is the outcome that I want here?

Kate: What’s the outcome. So let’s back into it is the outcome to make someone feel wrong because they fucked up is that the. that you want, you wanna make them feel bad. So then they don’t sell shit for you all day long. Cause they feel bad and they’re done. I’ve done that before. I’ve done that. I like making PE people feel wrong.

Kate: Like I do. I like calling them out on their shit. I’m trying to go to therapy to improve this, but it’s there, it’s the thing. And I, but I’ve learned not to do that because what is the point now? Now sometimes you have to correct someone on what they’ve done in order for them to improve.

Kate: I’m not great at this, but I, that is my aim, Poor Lauren. She, I like people to write copy for me. So we’re always, we work together on sales. And so she is in charge of the follow up with the sale, right? So we have a call. We have to email them, she’ll draft an email and Google I’ll take 95% of it apart and rewrite it and then be like, okay, here you go.

Kate: Now her feeling can be defeat defeated, like thanks for wasting my time. I explained to her, I was like, you don’t know how much time you saved me just by starting this. And my point of taking a part isn’t to shit on you. My, my point is to give myself something to play, where I can move around.

Kate: And I said, this was a, like earlier last year or something. And I was like, I will do. I promise to do a better job of telling you why I’m rearranging these things and what, why I’m putting these things in here. If you wanna learn how to do it better, but at the same time, I have to remember.

Kate: Lauren came from she. So she has a she’s smarter than all of us. She has a master’s degree in psychology analytics. And she came from working at the cancer ward in a hospital, God. And took the first job at lately as head of customer service, which she killed it at. And then she ran our sales team and now she.

Kate: Chief operations officer. So she has some very deep legacy knowledge of the company, but she didn’t come from sales. That’s not her background. None of us actually have come from sales me the most. I have the most experience in sales and we have a 98% sales conversion. Brent, Kristen come from sales.

Kate: Chris comes from radio like me,

Kate: the reason, of course the product is awesome, but we. Fucked up that demo 50,000 ways sideways to Minneapolis. Okay. I’ve seen it. Me too. And the demo does sell itself, but it’s the people, it’s the people that sell it. And it’s because Lauren, her ability to read the room and by the room, any room in a room, an empty room on a camera, in a zoom call or a room full of 85 people at SAP.

Kate: Like she has those nuances. And that, and Chris has the same thing as well. These guys this is about being nice, right? It’s about being thoughtful. It’s about listening. It’s about they know both of them are, I’m talking about them cause they’re my chief salespeople specifically, but like they can stand on stage any kind of stage, whether it’s just a call or actually on a stage and lead a room, they have that capability to do.

Kate: But at the same time they know when to listen. I don’t have that capability. I just like to be on stage and hear the sound of my own voice. Sorry.

Brent: So what would you say to To an entrepreneur then that is that they’re building this team and they’re, they seem to be getting a lot of turnover. Is there a magic formula in that team building model or is there yeah. Something to create community or is there anything that somebody could start.

Kate: I think the first thing is just to really think about how you wanna be treated. That’s just the most important thing. And that’s very hard cuz like you’re trying to get shit done, so you have to be very reflective constantly and to not just how you wanna be treated, but when you’re at your best, when you’re in the zone, right?

Kate: What are people around you doing to facilitate that for you? And then try to replicate that? I think that’s the first thing I. the second thing is to know this is so important. You have to ask people about their fucking lives, right? There are so many times where I just wanna get the meeting on and get stuff done, but I don’t, I make sure, Hey Brian, how was your trip?

Kate: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, Hey Jason, I saw that me is on Instagram and she’s like doing this whole abs routine. She looks amazing. What is that about? So he’ll tell me. You have to start that way. People want to talk about themselves. Obviously look at me. I’m someone who talks over people, Brent and I have no patience for people who are offended by that.

Kate: Honestly I believe in passion and I believe in the power to express your passion and that an interruptive culture should be celebrated because people are so excited to share their ideas.

Kate: and I don’t believe in democracy. Lately is not a democracy. I’m the leader. Although you have to make people feel as though they bring listened to right now, you can only do that with people you wanna listen to. So if you’re hiring people, you don’t wanna listen to, then you are an idiot, you’re, you have to really think about who you’re.

Kate: And we’ve made mistakes. Lauren will know, and she rolls her eyes and she tells me every time and I still make this mistake. I constantly think we need an experienced salesperson to come in here. And so I hire these fucking dudes. They’re always dudes. And. some dudes. I love they’re some of them are dudes.

Kate: I love some of them are dudes. I don’t love, and it never works out because they’re probably bold 

Brent: white dudes. They’re the worst 

Kate: is that where, how was, yeah. Or so one mistake we made by the way, which I didn’t know, this was, you cannot hire a salesperson to be both a manager and a salesperson.

Brent: Yeah. Very true. Absolutely. You can’t hire anybody to be either to do dual jobs. They’re gonna do two jobs poorly. 

Kate: Yes. And that is a mistake that I made. I didn’t. I do that. So I don’t understand why someone else can’t do that, to be honest with you. And Lauren does that. There are Brian does that.

Kate: I have superior people in the world who can do that. So it’s of like why, but it’s not everybody’s nature, so I think that’s the first thing a very easy tell for us is this is if your company, if the PE, if your employees aren’t saying. you’re doing something wrong. 

Brent: Yeah. If they’re saying you Kate, that then also you, and I’m, they don’t because I’ve talked to your employees.

Brent: If they are though, just always referring back to you, that’s also could be a problem. 

Kate: I do that by the way on purpose. So I rarely, I don’t like it when people call me the boss, I correct them and say, don’t say that I don’t like. I say we all the time, my team I rarely say my employees, I rarely do.

Kate: I need them and I don’t like the word need, this an needy team is needy, but I cannot live without them. And so they know that

Kate: I send them gifts often, like little surprises, even the. Some T all guys like pocket knives, you can give them endless pocket knives. Am I right there? 

Brent: send ’em a box of tampons. A hundred figure out what to do with these . I do, I want to just go back cuz I you talked about re you’re editing Lauren’s copy when she started it.

Brent: And I think that and it sounds like you explained to her. Why you’re doing it, I’m trying. Cause I think a lot of times a lot of times leaders will jump on they’ll just take it and they’ll do it, but they don’t give any feedback on why that happened. And that just leads to narratives in people’s heads.

Brent: And I think 

Kate: I made that mistake actually, because I assumed that she would understand and know right. And I assume that she would take the time to read it and think about it. But of course, Lauren is busy and she’s just trying to check shit off her list and get, cuz she’s the queen of productivity.

Kate: She knows that. I respect that. And so either one of us weren’t both of us, didn’t want to take the time to do what you just said, which is a very important thing to do cuz who can learn if you don’t do that. And. , know, like I said, why can’t someone read my mind? What the fuck when it’s so obvious to me, but I’m sure at the same time, she’s thinking why can’t Kate read my mind. 

Brent: So yeah, I, I have definitely got, I’ve gotten into the habit of explaining I’m always now trying to play chess with Anticipating the way somebody’s thinking. And I realize that people that are happy are more motivated and that they’re gonna be more productive when they’re motivated and that when they’re happy and productive, they’re gonna get a lot of work done.

Brent: So if I’m gonna be critical of somebody, I would like to explain all those reasons why that’s gonna. and I maybe now do it to, is the word in nauseam or something like that where you do it too much. Yes. Ad nauseum, whatever in nauseum I’m nauseous. Just that, that verbal feedback, because I think we do I also suffer from that same thing.

Brent: Of course, everybody should know what I’m thinking and yes, everybody can do this. Everybody can be a great salesperson. They can also be a developer. I fall onto that trap because I used to be a developer and I would. Of course, you can do that in AWS. I can do it in 20 minutes. Let’s watch me do it.

Brent: And everybody’s oh God, this is the worst time of my life. You can see everybody’s eyes are glazing over and pretty soon, like they’re, anyways, so to read the room, right? Yeah. Read the, yeah. And then it makes it worse on zoom, all everybody’s camera goes off and then you get done with your demo.

Brent: And then, so what did everybody think? And nobody’s there, it’s silence. Everybody’s gone to the bathroom. Oh, I’m sorry. And then one person leaves the mic on and the flush sound comes out and your zoom call was ruined or saved yeah. Or saved exactly. 

Kate: yeah, I think I oftentimes I wish people would ask me why I do.

Kate: and they don’t. And so that, that is frustrating to me because I want the initiative to, to be there and that’s, my problem is that’s why I’m the entrepreneur and these other people are not right. That’s a different skill, so I have to constantly readjust my perspective to reality and think about.

Kate: What’s gonna, what’s gonna get the job done. Like you said, like, how do we get people to be happy and motivated and successful all at the same time? I think that

Kate: it’s important to ask people. Do you like working here? Sometimes you, I brace myself for the answer. You still like working here? Are you leaving? I just wanna know. I think that. knowing what your weaknesses are really important. Like I said I’m not a great cheerleader, but Katie Jordan is, she’s amazing.

Kate: She does it for me. And Chris is great at that. Everybody is there everybody piles on, but you need a cheerleader on the team if it’s not you that bubbly. When, when Lauren’s on vacation, slack is quiet. And you feel that energy gone like that. It’s so important. She she doesn’t even real.

Kate: I don’t know. She realizes that she probably does that. How. Much that energy. Slack is our workplace, right? That’s our work environment. And so it’s the, you can see the thermometer of how things going now. When I like last week, an investor who had hard, committed first to a smaller amount, and then to three times an amount hard commit pulled out for no reason.

Kate: I just was like, mother, fuck. I said every swear word of the thing like that could be. And no, I don’t do it in the general channel. I just did it with Lauren, Jason and Brian because I don’t wanna upset everyone else, but I need them to know cuz they’re my they’re. We are running the business together.

Kate: We’re running the numbers, we’re looking at all these things, but Brian and Jason are co-founders like, they do need to know what happened with this investor. And I need the ability in a place to express. Frustration. I also need them to have sympathy for me because like, when I have to ask them to not have a paycheck, they need to know exactly why, and I’m not doing it on purpose and it’s not cuz I’m selfish or I’m money grubber, there’s a real reason and it’s very painful for me.

Kate: So that sympathy, empathy thing here I think is so important. Like I’m just a person, Brent, I’m trying to do this thing. and they are these people’s lives are in my hands a little bit. Cuz a paycheck is a paycheck. I 

Brent: Yeah I want to just jump on that happiness thing. I had a post on LinkedIn recently that I just put out there.

Brent: I meet with every person on my team every quarter. one on one, just for 15 minutes to get to know them. And we have team members in India and Mexico . I do that and I’ve always had this. I’ve always had a question that I’ve asked and I think I’m asking, are you happy in your job or something like that?

Brent: And I been thinking about it and like I was thinking like does anybody ever ask, are you happy? And period, because yeah. Are you happy period? Because there is. And maybe happy in your job or happy, whatever it’s different. And knowing if you’re happy, if you’re not happy.

Brent: Again, people probably aren’t gonna tell me in that short time, hopefully, maybe over time. In fact I recently did have an interview that I did where he said that I’m very intimidating and it’s hard. Like you had said, you want people to tell you the things that like if they don’t understand something and I think people don’t tell people things because leaders can be intimidating.

Brent: I can get very impatient and then become very I can be an asshole. And and especially when something going the way it should go and. I’m gonna assume you can relate with this. This is something that’s so obvious. Why aren’t we all doing this? Whatever that thing is oh my God, this is obvious. We should know this. You always get French fries at McDonald’s what thing? Yeah. Which I don’t, it’s the thing I don’t, I’m just making the insane, but it’s come on, everybody knows that in. As you’re driving on the freeway and you stop and you get a burger, you get fries, right? You get a Coke and a fries. Everybody does that. What the heck is going on with our team?

Brent: You guys are only getting chicken sandwiches. This is ridiculous. Everybody knows it.

Brent: It’s true. So I don’t know, is there, I think it’s a hard that’s, it’s gotta be one of the hardest things as a leader to give that space to somebody to allow to to open up and tell you, cuz it is a little bit of vulnerability from that person. And and maybe that’s I’m dealing.

Brent: Three different cultures. It used to be four. We used to have an office in Bolivia. But we have three cultures now. So I think culture’s a little different, right? 

Kate: Yeah. I think, one thing is I always, and I’ve said this before, like I expect them to go to to complain about me, to each other.

Kate: I expect that happens to all managers and bosses. That’s part of the role that you’re accepting. And so good. Do it complain to each other, get it out of your system, certainly. The same way how many times you be, are you like fucking Brent? I say that of course, about myself, about, oh, whoever it is that’s just your, and it’s not you mean like you, you have to know that, like to and express a frustration.

Kate: because someone isn’t perfect in this second moment. It’s meaningless it’s just this thing, evaporating the world. And when you have people around me sometimes I’ll complain to Lauren about other people and the company and just cause I need that outlet with somebody and the validation that I’m not alone in this thought, and I’m sure they all, I know they all do this to each other, which is fine.

Kate: And I think they’re, that’s part of the culture that you wanna encourage, right? People are gonna vent it’s. This is human nature. And I think of it as if lately if everything about lately was. Just smooth sailing. Boy, we have no fun whatsoever. This is part of the adventure.

Kate: Are we gonna make it, are we not? So it, that ups and downs, it keeps it interesting. Like I, I think that’s why they come to work every day is cuz they’re wondering what’s gonna happen. I don’t know. 

Brent: That’s it’s often said that without stress, without contention, without arguments, that you don’t move anything forward.

Brent: If everyone is always on the same page you could be going in the right direction, but you may not. And having a dissenter, there is always a, it was always, it’s always a having a dissenter there to ask those questions is important. And I think that essential. Yeah, it’s essential, right? We, as a leader we need to make that space.

Brent: I know that we’ve sent people we’ve sent Indian developers to Germany in onsite to work. And one of their, one of their things that they’ve said was that they were surprised that other team members on the German team would. Hard pushback to the boss in the room. And for them, that was an eye opening thing.

Brent: Cause their culture more is more around. And I’m sure I’m gonna get a whole bunch of Indian developers not telling you. No, it’s not like that here. But their culture is more about doing what you’re told. And you don’t often. It’s not a strong cultural trait to question the boss and to say this I’m a white guy anyways.

Brent: I don’t know, concern that because that’s my perception of the culture. I’m gonna I’m making a disclaimer. I’m gonna put a little asterisks in my transcript. Don’t get back to me on this, but I digress. 

Kate: Yeah, I gotta go do shit, Brent.

Kate: I’ll say this one thing, we just released a new feature where the AI is rearranging what it finds to pull out into wholly new content. Okay. it, we just launched it like the other day. We haven’t told anybody. We haven’t even told our customers like so you’ll just start to see it suddenly the surprise you’ll be like, who wrote this?

Kate: Oh my God. The AI. and it’s pretty good. All 

Brent: right, I’m gonna go try it. 

Kate: Yeah. Keep an eye out. Yeah. 

Brent: Kate, I always give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug at the end of the podcast. So what would you like?

Kate: Oh Jesus, I’m gonna plug forgiveness today. Forgiveness. 

Brent: all right. Thank you. 

Kate: Yeah, I think we all 

Brent: need a little mark. Kate Laly Kate . 

Kate: This is why just so you know, I’m on the air. I stopped saying my name because I mispronounced my own name once in an interview with the guys from we. And so I never said it again.

Brent: Yeah. Did you wean yourself off that? 

Kate: About a thing on me. Oh my God. I love you. 

Brent: Yes, you’re so funny. Kate Bradley co founder of lately, CEO of lately. Thank you so much for being here today. 

Kate: Thank you, Brent. 

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